In what has become a quarterly morbid ritual, moms have come back to hang pictures of loved ones lost to the drug overdose crisis in front of the Ministry of Health's office. Sadly, it won't be the last time.
About sixty protesters answered the call of Moms Stop The Harm to once again rally before the BC Ministry of Health’s office to demand the government put an end to the drug overdose crisis emergency it declared seven years ago by providing desperately needed harm reduction and treatment—starting with a safe drug supply.
As is customary, the organisers displayed the opioid crisis’ grim death toll in huge digits, along with dozens of pictures of loved ones lost to our poisoned street drug supply. Plenty among the crowd had lost loved ones as well and brought signs of their own to commemorate them.
Several speakers came forward to address the crowd, starting with presenter Jennifer Howard from Moms Stop The Harm. Most notable was Shane Calder, coordinator at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. With a cannon in place of the mouth, he acutely voiced his anger at a colonialist system discriminating against the disenfranchised, starting with racial minorities, using drug policy as a tool of oppression meant to set people to fail. He shared with the crowd his exasperation of having to convince our crooked elected officials that drug addiction is a health care matter as opposed to a criminal one, and that our health care system needs to be as accessible as our carceral system, instead of suffering from deadly wait lists and limited spots in timid pilot programs.
Niki Ottosen, from the Backpack Project, also came forward to remind us how tightly intertwined the drug overdose epidemic and the homelessness crisis are, as there can be no question that one also fosters the other, and echoed Shane in calling the war on drugs a war on the poor.
Least notable among speakers may have been my raucous buddy Jeff, who like me spent years homeless and watched hundreds of close acquaintances become statistics to our government’s disastrous and callous policies, and reminded us that if the government cannot deliver then it is in no position to complain that we the people step forward with criminal initiatives like the Drug User Liberation Front, which indeed delivers a safe drug supply where the government won’t.
We circulated a sign up sheet by the end of the event to enlist people who wanted to help with future rallies, and ended up with dozens of entries from participants who were fed up with our government’s excuses and wanted to get involved. Our next event shall be on June 25th, when Jessica Michalofsky completes her run across BC for a safe drug supply; be sure to follow her Facebook and Instagram pages to stay updated. See you then!
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Never take your rights for granted. Women in particular know even hard-earned ones are never far from being taken away.
Although the event was a relative success, its outcome leaves me most apprehensive. Regretfully, we had to end it early.
