I moved to Connecticut to be an organizer based on liberation style organizing. When I was looking at what school I should go to for grad school, I found that U Conn is actually one of the few schools that offers community organizing as a method. I basically was organizing for cleaner streets, cleaner neighborhoods- basically the signs of the Drug War on our streets, organizing to get that off of our streets. But through that process I realized that we just displaced the problem, we never really solved the problem.

That was the first time, through that process, that I began to question the whole idea of the War on Drugs.

So I left that job, not for that reason directly, but other reasons and started working for an organization on community research. I was a public health researcher and I worked with high risk drug using populations around HIV prevention. I was brought in to utilize my organizing background to work with high risk populations to identify their needs and issues. I was able to utilize my background, but at the same time, I was exposed to the idea of harm reduction- of meeting clients where they were- not forcing clients to get off drugs, but finding the space for them to live and move on their continuum. That philosophy to me seemed much better than the “drug warrior” philosophy that I just came from. Harm reduction focused on preventing HIV transmission, on building lives rather than destroying lives, treatment on demand when necessary. Drug warrior mentality didn’t do that- it was just, clean up the areas, put people in jail, and that was it.

I guess since I have the organizing skills, this is where my philosophy of life really started to change in a sense. I was there for four years, working on these types of projects. I reported on HIV research, data, which clearly showed a disproportionate impact of HIV on people of color. I reported on social network theory and looked at the social relationships of drug users and HIV moving throughout these networks.

Social networks are so fascinating. We found in those communities that are older, more established, where relationships are weaker because they know everybody so they are less likely to call someone a friend, because they already know that guy’s baggage- in those communities, HIV was more prevalent. In the drug using communities where people were closer, called themselves being closer, but participate in more risk, HIV was less prevalent. It was fascinating. I don’t know what it says about the virus, but what it clearly says is that just because you participate in more risk doesn’t mean that you’ll get HIV. The African American community was the older community in Hartford, they’d known each other for years, they’d burnt each other three or four times. The younger was a transient Puerto Rican community, more on the periphery. They were sharing more.

The goal of this project was to identify people willing to participate in organizing efforts to get drop in centers. We wanted to organize people around the VANDU model where they had relationships with the police and be able to get off with the supervision of a nurse. We were able to organize a group and we found that people were talking about what was going on in the streets, but people didn’t seem interested in a consistent, coherent group for a long time. We weren’t able to pull it off because of race and poverty. The way people think about drug users… the way they think about themselves. They’re often their worst critics, it’s not a very pleasant view of themselves…