Harm Reduction as Anarchist Practice: A Users’ Guide to Capitalism and Addiction

1. Harm Reduction as Anarchist Practice: A Users’ Guide to Capitalism and Addiction Luke Dunn, Jon Paul Hammond, Kathy Rigby, Christopher Smith

2. Harm Reduction as Anarchist Practice: Outline • 1. Introduction: ‘You may already be an anarchist / harm reductionist’ • 2. Anarchist theory and the philosophy of harm reduction • 3. Interrogating institutionalization: Public health, the pathology paradigm, and the de-politicization of harm reduction practice

3. Harm Reduction as Anarchist Practice: Outline (cont.) • 4. Reclaiming the future of harm reduction as anarchist practice • 5. Conclusion • Addiction, capitalism and the ideology of science: A radical critique of the differential experience of harm reduction’s institutionalization in Canada and the U.S. … or… • Depathologizing drug dependence: A user’s guide to capitalism and (this space/force, thing/[phenomenon we call) ‘addiction’

4. Background, Context, Disclaimers: • Background: Anarchist Free University, Toronto (Jan. 2007)  Philly freeskool @ a-space (July 2010): The Politics of Addiction: Harm Reduction as Anarchist Practice • Critical/creative collaboration (from hushed discussions  a revolutionary manifesto): Luke Dunn, Jon Paul Hammond, Kathy Rigby • *** A note on absences and presences *** • Warning: Critique and the Personal / Political • A users’ guide to the users’ guide (single quotes)

5. 1. Introduction: You may already be an anarchist(/ harm reductionist)

6. Crimethinc:http://crimethinc.com/Fighting For Our Lives:http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/pdfs/fighting_for_our_lives.pdf

7. Paris, May 1968

8. ACT UP demonstration (http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSiUvnzR 7TStmXbzH9PVZU6tl7tWMqutcxDRVGYQ9DB0oJZ1SmFLA )

9. The federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs was finally lifted less than a year ago, in December 2009.

10. Typical Canadian Safer Crack Use Kit supplies.

12. “I’m speaking, of course, of anarchists…” “You may already be an anarchist…”

13. “Whenever you act without waiting for instructions or official permission, you are an anarchist. Any time you bypass a ridiculous regulation when no one’s looking, you are an anarchist. If you don’t trust the government, the school system, Hollywood, or the management to know better than you when it comes to things that affect your life, that’s anarchism, too. And you are especially an anarchist when you come up with your own ideas and initiatives and solutions.” Crimethinc, Fighting for our lives

14. 2. Anarchist theory and the philosophy of harm reduction

15. Basic principles of social anarchism • Anti-authoritarianism • Abolishment of the state and its institutions of power and control • Distrust of hierarchy • ‘No gods, no rules, no masters’ • Mutual aid • Creation of intentional communities; dinner party metaphor

16. General components of the philosophy of harm reduction • 1. Drug use as health issue, not moral/criminal problem (biomedical approach) • Shift in control from legal  biomedical authority • 2. Shift in focus from drug use to drug-related harm (‘user friendly’, ‘client centered’) • *** How many harm reduction organizations funded a peer to attend this conference?

17. General components of the philosophy of harm reduction • 3. Emphasis on human rights approach; ethical imperative to care for marginal/ized (?) populations • We are all users • Harm reduction philosophy born in the streets • 4. ‘Amoral’, ‘value-free’ approach to drug use?

18. HR’s amoral approach to drug use? “In a context where drugs are predominantly identified as bad (or even evil) and drug use as pathological, a view that drug use is neither right nor wrong is not neutral, but is itself a committed and critical standpoint” (Helen Keane 2003: 228)

19. Pathology Paradigm / Brain Disease Model • Critique: Addiction not a disease/pathology, but product of social, political and economic forces of modern capitalism • Therefore, capitalism as disease, addiction as symptom / adaptive response

20. Capitalism + Dope = Genocide (Tabor, 1970)

21. Anarchist practice within institutional harm reduction • Underground crack kit distribution • One-for-one exchange syringe distribution • Encouraging unsanctioned 2ndary exchange • Peer-based naloxone training • Informal safe injection sites • Clandestine ibogaine treatment teams • Doctors writing off-the-books narcotics scripts

22. 3. Interrogating institutionalization: Public health, the pathology paradigm and the depoliticization of harm reduction practice

23. Harm Reduction & Institutionalization • Oppositional political origins of HR practice • Institutionalization = Depoliticization • Alignment with biomedical establishment; Reliance on quantitative, epidemiological data

24. Harm Reduction & Institutionalization • Addiction-as-pathology paradigm shifts attention away from structural critique • Cost/benefit ‘bottom line’ arguments • HR as strategy to “minimize risk from, and maximize control over, marginal populations” i.e. people who use drugs? (Roe 2005: 245)

25. Failures of institutionalized HR policy: • Syringe exchange vs. distribution (US / CDN • Stasis of mobile outreach exchange sites • Municipal funding cut for crack kit distribution in Ottawa (ironically, due to ‘scientific’ data) • ‘Liquid handcuffs’ and institutionalized dependence (i.e. ‘ball and chain’, discipline and punishment model of MMT)

26. 4. Re-claiming the Future of Harm Reduction as Anarchist Practice

27. Re-politicizing HR practice • From within: underground, autonomous acts of resistance (i.e. temp. autonomous zone) • From without: ‘progressive policy reform’; structural critique of the systems that produce and perpetuate harm; shifting the terms of debate on ‘addiction’

28. Re-politicizing HR practice (cont.) • 1. From within: Increase capacity for fluidity and flexibility; Create in/formal spaces to adapt and extend HR practice to reflect changing user needs… • 2. From without: Challenge addiction-as-brain-disease model; Destabilize traditional (quantitative, epidemiological) orientation of drug research

29. Re-politicizing HR practice (cont.) • Centrality of user autonomy; Re-situating the experiential knowledge of users / peers / people with lived experience as the central driving force behind harm reduction practice • ‘Collaborative Autonomy’ • *** How many harm reduction institutions funded a peer/user to attend and participate in this conference? • What (or rather who) fuels your practice?

30. 5. ConclusionThe differential experience of HR institutionalization in Canada & the U.S. … or…Depathologizing drug dependence: A user’s guide to capitalism and ‘addiction’

31. U.S. vs. CDN experiences of institutionalization United States Canada Progressive policy reform (scientifically-driven and politically safe) Widespread public acceptance and policy adoption of HR i.e. Vancouver’s InSite, the first and only safe/supervised injection site in North America (+ NAOMI…) • Innovation of underground models / tactics / spaces of resistance within a highly repressive political context • Slow institutional adoption of HR in official policy • i.e. Dec. 2009 lifting of ban on federal funding for needle exchange

32. Safe/Supervised Consumption Site? • Whose safety? • Supervision of who and by whom? • ‘Public order’ vs. private/privatized harm? • Disguised strategy for both cleaning up the streets and regulating/disciplining the ‘deviant’ bodies and behaviors of people who use drugs?

33. On ideology and science • Ideological alignment between harm reduction policy, the biomedical establishment and the addiction-as-brain-disease model… •  Privileging of ‘objective’, quantitative, epidemiological data… •  Cost/benefit ‘bottom line’ justification for HR claimed to be ideologically neutral… •  Incapable of taking explicitly political position or engaging in structural critique

34. Concluding equation • If… capitalism + dope = genocide [Tabor 1970] • Then… genocide + anarchism = harm reduction (i.e. the political origins of) [Stoller 1998]

35. “Thank the heavens we have nothing. Help us not to hate the ones we must destroy” (Crimethinc, Fighting for our lives) We dedicate this presentation to Jon Paul Hammond, our dearest friend and critical/creative co-conspirator, who died on the First Friday of November in Philadelphia. Battle-scarred by the drug war, Jon Paul was a militant harm reductionist, political agitator, and queer Quaker anarchist to the very end.

36. Contact Info Christopher: cbrs1977@gmail.com 267-602-6715 Luke: twobitpalooka@gmail.com 610-996-3047 Jon Paul c/o Wende Hammond: wendentia@gmail.com Kathy: 215-289-5676

37. http://crimethinc.com/tools/downloads/pdfs/war_on_drugs.pdf