Drug User Activist Need @#Reform19/USU Convening

Urban Survivors Union needs funding for additional needs for drug user/sex worker activist members at the Drug Policy Alliance’s International Reform Conference in St Louis, as well as our USU Constitutional Convening there. We’ll be using the funds for methadone guest dosing fees, disability accommodations, daily stipends for members and our new board, and more.

For years, scholarship attendees at Reform included only 7-10 of the most well known drug user advocates. USU is planning to bring over *40* active drug users, sex workers, formerly incarcerated people, and others targeted by the war on drugs. We've provided for travel, lodging, and conference fees, but members require further support.  And we expect 70 directly impacted activists at our convening restructuring our governance model. 

We’re living in a brutal drug war. 70,000 + drug users died in 2017, a direct result of lethal drug policy. We need to strengthen and formalize impacted people's leadership through our national union and represent ourselves at this international conference now. This can’t wait until the next event.

To truly lead, we must enjoy the same comfort at this conference that middle class allies there expect as we network and build organizing skills. Most members struggle to survive day to day, paying out of our own pockets supporting grassroots activist projects, many houseless and living below the poverty line. 5 days without working is a financial hardship. We'll be endangered outside our homes, stripped of the hustles we use to get by. We shouldn't be faced with new, potentially deadly circumstances without adequate support at this historic event.

The event must be a taste of liberation: 5 days without being consumed with navigating poverty, trauma, disability, and the drug war. We should be able to focus on the convening and conference without worrying about making money to eat and guest dose every day.

The Thankless Poverty of Drug User Organizing

“I must work at least thirty hours a week on harm reduction and drug user organizing...without pay,” USU San Francisco lead community organizer/USU National Racial Equity Liaison Isaac stated. 

"I supplement my SSA income by eating regularly at soup kitchens--I don't imagine there'll be any near the conference hotel," he added wryly. 

“Currently, I have to try to live on just my $700 monthly social security disability insurance income...since I'm not paid or getting stipends for harm reduction and drug user organizing work,” USU member and Boston New England Users Union Secretary  Anne explains.

“I am a sex worker who lives alternately with clients or in my truck, working hard to survive through serious mental illnesses as a queer woman," USU sex worker organizing group member Alex, a radical MSW who is creating a series of presentations for us on drug-using sex workers and domestic violence, states. "I’m proud to uniquely represent my community’s needs in ways that more privileged attendees cannot.”

“To attend, I’ll miss work, and I may have to [sex] work in St. Louis to catch up,” she goes on. “Funds to cover lost pay, food, or my housing Sunday would make an incredible difference in my ability to function at, and benefit from, the conference.”

Methadone, Disability, and Access

One of the major disability accommodations inexplicably missing from many drug policy and harm reduction conference scholarships  is compensation for methadone guest dosing fees and transportation to and from a nearby clinic. This further limits drug users’ ability to state ‘nothing about us without us’ to the wider harm reduction and drug policy world.

USU sex worker liaison Caty Simon and other members were quoted in a VICE article last year by Zachary Siegel, “The Hell of Getting Methadone When You’re Away From Home”, which related how nightmarish traveling on methadone could be even at an event like the Harm Reduction Coalition Conference in New Orleans in 2018, where the Harm Reduction Coalition actually *did* facilitate guest dosing arrangements with a nearby clinic, pay attendees’ dosing fees, and provide transportation to and from dosing each day of the conference.

The traumas of the drug war and poverty often exacerbate or create disability. Many of us have other disabilities which require accommodation.

"I have physical and psych disabilities as well as trauma history," Anne says. "...I might need to take time to take short rests during long days so being able to easily get back and forth from the conference hotel to where I'd be sleeping would be really helpful.”

With your help, we'd like these tireless drug user organizers to be as comfortable at this conference as they can be.