Public Health Experts Hold Rally and Press Conference at NY City Hall in Support of Supervised Consumption Spaces. Bottom two photos by Erik McGregor. Top two by this author.

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Jaron Benjamin posted a photo from the April 5^th Action at City Hall

Happening now: Housing Works Inc., Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY),GMHC and allies blocking the entrance at City Hall calling on Mayor DeBlasio to release the Safe Consumption Sites study

Harm reduction activists, including this writer, protesting in the fight to end overdose deaths in New York, stage a die-in at the steps of City Hall. Photo by Mikola De Roo of Housing Works.

On Thursday, I got an email from my friend Reed Vreeland, the Director of Policy at Housing Works, reminding me of a rally for supervised consumption spaces at City Hall.

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for confirming that you can attend the rally on Supervised Consumption Spaces at City Hall today at noon. Today public health experts and community members will come together to talk about the 30-years of evidence showing that Supervised Consumption Spaces prevent overdose deaths, improve drug user health, and increase access to drug treatment.

Please try to arrive at City Hall a bit before noon to get through security.

At a joint budget hearing in Albany on February 5^th, Mayor de Blasio said that the Supervised Consumption Site feasibility study, which had already finished by the City Department of Health, would be released “soon.” As of today it has been 66 days since he said that the feasibility report would be released soon and said, “and I always say to people, when I say soon I mean soon—or I wouldn’t use that word.” Well, the Mayor used that word and there have been approximately four New Yorkers who have died of overdose every day—an estimated 264 overdose deaths in NYC since the Mayor said “soon.”

Thank you for helping keep up the pressure on the Mayor so that he treats this issue with the urgency that is needed.

See you today at noon.

I rode my bike over to the rally thinking about friends of mine who have died of overdoses, by themselves. I was also thinking about the prohibitive battles that the current administration is waging against planned parenthood and sex workers, who hope to advertise on Craig’s List and Backpages, both of which were shut down this week, in anticipation of federal action.

Joe Mullin notes “H.R. 1865, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), allows for private lawsuits and criminal prosecutions against Internet platforms and websites, based on the actions of their users. Facing huge new liabilities, the law will undoubtedly lead to platforms policing more user speech.” And the senate supports it.

Censorship is spreading. And as it always does, it trumps public health.

When I first got to New York, the Giuliani administration sat on its own study lauding the benefits of harm reduction and syringe exchange-based programs. The pattern only continued when advocates, such as Housing Works, wanted to make their case and were denied access to space at city hall. Housing Works sued and the city was forced to back down.

As the New York Times reported in November of 1999.

THE MAYOR LOSES FREE SPEECH CASE

By BENJAMIN WEISERNOV. 13, 1999

In another First Amendment defeat for the Giuliani administration, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday that city officials had improperly retaliated against an AIDS service organization that had been critical of the mayor by moving to make it ineligible for millions of dollars in federal money. The group, called Housing Works, has been a relentless opponent of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's policies on AIDS, using guerrilla protest tactics like blocking rush-hour traffic on bridges and tunnels, interrupting the news conferences of city officials and conducting sit-ins in city offices.

Arriving at City Hall, those old days of us getting locked out of city hall park were running through my head. Walking inside Officer Rivera told me I could not enter city hall. Its not close to capacity, I told him. Why I asked. His Sargant told him no one else was allowed inside. I asked to speak with him. We went back and forth. And finally they let me inside.

Walking inside, I saw my friend Valerie Jimenez speaking about the need for safe consumption spaces. She spoke like Keith Cylar spoke, as someone who cares, as someone who hopes no one else suffers the way she had to.

Walking up to stand with my friends from Housing Works and VOCAL, I greeted my friend Elizabeth, one of the organizers with VOCAL who gives everyone a hug.

As Valerie finishes, one of the speakers with VOCAL leads the crowd in a chant: “NOT ONE MORE!” “NOT ONE MORE!” He explains that SCS are gateways to health. They connect users with care, breaking down isolation, creating spaces for mutual aid and drug education.

Too many people are dying by themselves, isolated in shame and stigma.

There should not be barriers to doing this so people die. Our neighbors in Canada and Europe do it. Drug users are experts in public health. They helped us cope with HIV and Hep C, creating effective, evidence-based prevention interventions.

The war on drugs takes thousands and thousands of deaths; each are preventable.

Yet, today there is a war on healthcare, a war on sex workers emanating from Washington DC, tickling into NYC.

San Francisco is going to follow the evidence and open SCS. We needed to make this happen, noted a doctor from San Francisco. Our health commissioner, board of supervisors and mayor supports it. We hope New York will follow the lead.

Mariah, of STAR, stood up to remind us that sex workers have always been at the forefront of social justice movements and movements for freedom. Today there is a war on sex, noted Mariah, carrying a sign calling for the decriminalization of sex work. Add funding for women of color, for trans women. Add trans rights to human rights law, she concluded. She suggested we look to the lessons of STAR. “Sylvia always said take care of the most vulnerable in your community,” she concluded.

Finishing the rally, we lay for a die-in at City Hall, demonstrating what happens when people overdose. Too many people are suffering on their own.

Statement at Public Health Experts Say YES to SCS Rally, NYC City Hall

by Valerie Reyes-Jimenez, Housing Works NYC Community Organizer

My name is Valerie Reyes-Jimenez and I am an organizer at Housing Works.

The idea of a Supervised Consumption Spaces (SCS) is not a “new radical concept.” It is a proven, effective harm reduction approach that has been around not for years, but for decades!

These service sites are known to work in countries, like Germany, Spain, and Canada—AND they work in 65 other places across the world, and it will work right here in NYC! And we have the nerve to call ourselves the capitol of the world? How shameful, that we aren’t doing more for our own inhabitants that are living in active addiction?

On February 5, Mayor de Blasio said in a public hearing that he was reviewing the SCS feasibility study that the City Council commissioned in 2016 and that the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) completed in December. In that statement, the Mayor said that the report would be out “soon.” Today makes 70 days since the Mayor said “soon,” and there have been approximately 270 overdose deaths in NYC during that time. 270 lives lost to our Mayor's inaction.

By the time this day is done, in NYC alone, four people will die from a drug overdose. FOUR!

It may not sound like a lot, but that adds up to 28 individuals every single week.

That is 112 human beings in one month.

Over 1,300 New Yorkers a year!

Enough already!

These people are someone's children, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, neighbors, family, and friends. I should know. I am a child to my mother, I was a wife. I am a mother, a grandmother, a neighbor, a family member, and a friend to many. I am a survivor. A substance use survivor. I suffered from a disorder. A disease. I was pretty sick back then. It’s been a little over 25 years since I last misused a substance on these city streets.

And you know what? Even though I didn’t inject drugs myself, I fell in love with someone who did. My husband and father of my two children. Had there been a safe place where he could have gone and learned about his addiction—how to better take care of himself—he wouldn’t have contracted HIV and passed it along to me. And he wouldn’t have overdosed the handful of times before he finally succumbed to both diseases in 1992.

You know what else happened in 1992? I saw my first Supervised Consumption Space, when I went to my first International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam. That was 26 years ago. Twenty-six. So I can say with confidence that at the very least, we have known about these services for over 26 years!

There is an old saying that goes “once an addict, always an addict.” Well, I know that it doesn’t necessarily have to ring true. A user can stop using, a user can lose the desire to use, and a user can learn to live a different life. But first, there has to be a “safe” place where people can go to. That safe place is a Supervised Consumption Space.

At least 28 New Yorkers have lost their lives to the disease of addiction since we last stood on these very steps last Thursday, April 5, and the Mayor continues to sit on his support for Supervised Consumption Spaces.

We are calling for the Mayor to release the report so we can get to the business of saving lives. Hey, by the way Mr. Mayor—people living with the disease of addiction vote. As do their friends, relatives, and advocates. Maybe we’ll decide to sit on your vote, too, when election time comes around.

Housing Works NYC Community Organizer Valerie Reyes-Jimenez, talking about the need for Safer Consumption Spaces (SCS) to end the overdose crisis in New York City at the April 12, 2018 rally at City Hall.