Submitted by: Yarrow Collective | Presented in English with Spanish interpretation

We will explore the intersections of harm reduction, liberatory justice and peer support movements through the lenses of history, values and stories. Harm reduction is often narrated as a set of approaches implemented by public health systems for “high-risk” people who use drugs, but we see it as a life philosophy rooted in liberation and radical love. Liberatory Harm Reduction Peer Support involves speaking about, sitting with and relating with substance use and people who use drugs in radically new ways. In this session, we will share the history of harm reduction as shaped by BIPOC, sex workers, IV users, LGBTQIA+ and disability communities. Our values—bodily autonomy, self-determination, social justice, equity and anti-oppression—enable marginalized community members to claim their own stories and be seen as the experts in determining what works for them.

Presenters: 

•  Kyle Rogers, Harm Reduction/Reentry Navigator, Yarrow Collective
•  Ashleigh Jones, Training Director and Family Support Advocate, Yarrow Collective
•  Lucrecia Medrano, Harm Reduction and BIPOC Program Director, Yarrow Collective

Objectives:

• Critically narrate the history of harm reduction and its connection to liberatory justice.
• Examine how to truly center the voices of drug users and what it really means to meet people where they’re at.
• Explore how our lived experience empowers us to rewrite the narrative of our stories and how we can use that to create change in our communities and in policy.