If you had to be anywhere in Canada on this International Overdose Awareness Day, it would be Vancouver, at ground zero and the front lines of the war on drug users.
The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) rallied on this International Overdose Awareness Day to denounce government inaction in the face of a seven-year public health emergency which keeps claiming the lives of thousands in this province every year.
At least a hundred people took part in the march, led by the mandatory mock coffin, which went from VANDU’s office to Oppenheimer Park, chanting slogans such as “Safe supply saves lives!”, “Whose streets? Our streets!”, and of course “Fuck the VPD!”
Protesters occupied the intersection of Main and Hastings for about fifteen minutes, during which speakers reminded the crowd of the long laundry list of grievances the community held against every level of government, starting with of course the city of Vancouver.
Garth Mullins, for one, stressed that only direct action and civil disobedience would get the job done in a drug war against a racist government engaging in a campaign of genocide using this crisis as a proxy weapon.
Of all the speakers though, I would say the most eloquent was Vince Tao, whose words I shall just borrow verbatim:
We see that every overdose death is a police killing. Because we remember that the police don’t just kill with bullets, they kill with their budgets. Every single dollar spent on the police to enforce this drug law is a dollar taken away from housing, from social services, from welfare, from the people.
Vince Tao, VANDU
We had to make way for an ambulance between speeches, which of course everybody knew was rushing to the site of the latest overdose.
Then the procession continued to Oppenheimer Park, where the participants would gather in a circle around more speakers, telling how the system drives people to street drug use by denying them the medication they need, including of course painkillers. Which shows current policy is about controlling the drug supply, not saving lives nor giving patients what they need.
The event continued with a ceremony, and later with a barbecue which I did not attend; I had to go back to Victoria before dark so I left early.
On my way back, I stumbled onto the site of yet another overdose, at East Hastings and Gore. I had a chat with the lady who administered naloxone to the patient. She told me it’d been her second intervention within the hour. I can attest this claim is credible, there being first responders at every other street corner all day long. This International Overdose Awareness Day was just another day for this patient, and for countless others, surrounded by people who themselves did not need to be reminded they are constantly surrounded by preventable death.
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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.
