Postmortem: Aubrey’s Run Across BC

As those who have been following this blog for a while already know, I was helping with organising Aubrey’s Run Across BC, which aimed at raising awareness of the drug overdose crisis and further the political case for a safe drug supply. This was my first campaign assuming an organising role, and I have to admit the experience, although welcome, was humbling and brutal.

This blog started on the premise that analysing past protests’ performance would improve the effectiveness of future ones, so I’ll go through the whole campaign from its inception, looking from a nonpartisan standpoint at what went right, what went wrong, and which lessons can be learned from the experience. If you’re a fellow rally organiser and you want to improve your game, keep reading.

Disclaimer: This article is my own initiative, written primarily from my own perspective. My views may not reflect that of Jessica Michalofsky or Moms Stop The Harm. And it’s definitely not a credit grab; my contribution, while significant, extends mostly to the Vancouver and Victoria events, along with some planning prior to the run proper. This campaign was made possible by dozens of volunteers scattered all across the province and discussing everyone’s contribution lies beyond the scope of any article.

Marathon-a-day for a safe drug supply

Jessica Michalofsky started running laps around the BC Ministry of Health’s office on Blanshard Street in Victoria on a daily basis last fall, in memory of her son Aubrey who died of a fentanyl overdose in August. It was just a few months after I’d joined Moms Stop The Harm, aiming to diversify their tactics, so I was looking for a new concept, something that would work with an extremely well behaved crowd. It is with that mindset that I approached Jessica for the first time.

To be honest, at first I thought it was only a gimmick. I mean, running and drug use, what’s the connection? I ended up changing my mind after seeing how well it translated on the ground. It turned out to generate a lot of media coverage and proved an effective vehicle for advocacy. It didn’t take long before we got acquainted with just about everyone in the neighbourhood, and word would spread beyond that. So I researched running for a cause and it turned out to be much more of a phenomenon than I had realised (I would end up writing an article on the topic), and after partaking in it myself I came to realise why: it’s a fantastic way to reach out to people, as opposed to calling for rallies. Better go to people than wonder why they don’t come to us.

Moms Stop The Harm was also interested in the concept from the beginning. From the organisation’s standpoint, Jessica was the ideal poster girl, who had done an outstanding job at putting a face on statistics with her son Aubrey, even more so than other Moms. It didn’t take much arguing to persuade them to hold a rally at the BC Ministry of Health’s office in support. And another one weeks later.

So we got a lot of attention and generated a lot of conversation. That was great! But it wouldn’t get us anywhere with our obtuse government, which first made a shameless attempt at using Jessica for political purposes by inviting her to speak with Sheila Malcomson, then Minister of Mental Health and Addiction, before just ignoring her.

One day, Jessica looked really dejected (I know, it’s hard to imagine, but make an effort). She’d reached the same conclusion as everyone else, and flat out admitted she was looking for an exit strategy, like one final rally and then go home. That’s when I interjected that one alternative was to take the marathon-a-day to the roads, pointing out it’d been done by many runners since Terry Fox, and even proposed to ride along with her as free labour for the whole trip. I had little expectation the suggestion would go anywhere, but why not.

Surprisingly, Jessica turned out to be interested. She kept asking people for ideas to respin the marathon-a-day, and I kept pushing for taking it to the roads. Then one day she decided to do a run across BC (I guess asking for a run across Canada was too much) and that’s basically how it started; just our small pack of crackpot runners wearing purple T-shirts, brainstorming ideas to take our message to the masses, and against all odds making it happen.

Well, that was the easy part. Anyone can come up with a cool idea; implementing it is another matter.

Getting everyone on board

Of course such a campaign required the backing of an organisation. After all, we plotted to hold rallies in over a dozen cities across the province. We also knew we would need help raising funds. And we could also use help in getting the word out. So our first move was to sell the idea to Moms Stop The Harm.

And we waited. For several weeks. According to Jessica, even getting a reply to an email was excruciatingly slow. It came at no surprise from my standpoint. The larger the organisation, the slower its reaction time. Besides, our proposal constituted a serious investment, unlike the couple of rallies we had just held at the BC Ministry of Health office. It would take time.

As Jessica grew impatient, I proposed holding a press conference, just to get the word out and spur other players into action, and she agreed. Although it was the right call, none of us had much experience dealing with the press and we rushed it in an amateurish fashion. We had nothing special prepared for the event, not even the eye candy press material journalists take for granted, and the banner Jessica had ordered wasn’t ready on time. If I remember correctly, only CTV News showed up, and ended up not publishing any of the footage it took.

But that’s just fine. Although minimal, there was press coverage. It got the word out. It generated excitement on social media. Harm reduction advocates took notice. We got momentum as a result, and in a long-term campaign, momentum is everything. Better to make bad decisions than no decisions.

It would often be like this throughout the preparation phase. Jessica is shrewd and showed initiative, but she’s no natural born leader and was never comfortable assuming the role. As a fellow introvert, this is a feeling I can relate to, and I’m glad I wasn’t in her boots. Still, she struggled to make decisions involving other people, often changed her mind, and sometimes offered rationales not grounded in pragmatism. At some point I decided not to challenge the decisions she did make because I didn’t want the initiative to lose momentum. Fellow rally organisers, take notice, because this is arguably the most important lesson I learned from this experience.

To show how things can (and did) go wrong due to indecision, let’s discuss another idea I had which didn’t work out. I proposed circulating a petition calling for a safe drug supply, which we would send to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia; the idea was to force the government to take notice by having an MP submit it to the floor, and the run was a splendid opportunity to collect signatures. Jessica liked the idea, and approached the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition for this purpose.

Surprisingly, it fell through. The main reason, according to her, was that the Coalition couldn’t agree on a statement for the petition. You’ve read this right: the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition failed to produce a policy statement for a petition because it couldn’t generate consensus among its own ranks. This kind of dysfunction is sadly common whenever more than three people gather in a room.

In the end Jessica went for postcards addressed to Carolyn Bennett, then federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, with a vague prompt for more harm reduction. Although not what I originally had in mind, I still like the idea, and it too worked well with the concept of the run. I also learned that one can send mail to members of parliament without postage, which makes it simpler and cheaper; few people could be bothered to go to the post office and line up to buy a stamp just for that one postcard, but dropping it in one of these ubiquitous mailboxes is virtually hassle-free. My point is, Jessica may not have made the best call, but she finally made one by leaving everyone else out of the decision process and implementing something on her own, which is sometimes what leaders have to do when faced with a deadlock.

The Vancouver rally

Our worst snag by far was the Vancouver rally. Which came close to not happening at all.

Of all the localities along the run, Vancouver was the only one where no local MSTH member or community organisation stepped in to host a rally. Both Jessica and I were complaining as early as April that no one from the area were returning our emails. Somehow Vancouver existed in a weird bubble of cynicism toward outsiders that would prove supremely hard to burst.

I was originally supposed to ride along with the run but that deal fell through as well; once I saw the inside of the minibus four people would have had to fit in, I was almost glad I didn’t join. So instead I decided to help with the rallies, and in desperation I stepped in to take charge of the Vancouver rally, praying I could somehow convince a couple dozen people, one notable speaker, and at least one reporter to attend.

It was mission impossible, and no one was more aware of it than me. I wasn’t even living on the mainland. I knew no one from the area. My budget was a small margin on my income assistance cheque. And the MSTH leadership would later make it plain that while it was grateful for my taking charge, I was on my own. So I travelled over there in late May, and I had one day to walk around the DTES, shake hands with outreach workers trying to convince them to help us promote the event (or perhaps even attend?) by displaying a poster that wasn’t even ready.

Go ahead and say it: This is no way to organise a rally. I knew it from the start. And roughly one week prior to the scheduled date we still didn’t have an event.

I have to admit Jessica saved my ass here by putting me in contact with Lizzie from MSTH, otherwise it would have been a complete disaster. It turned out several other members in the greater Vancouver area were wondering about the vacuum. One blunder I made months prior was not joining the MSTH liaison group on Facebook, something I neglected because I’m not into support groups, so I only cared about the Zoom meetings. That group turned out to be an invaluable resource I could have tapped into from the start and saved myself a lot of trouble.

Another blunder was waiting indefinitely to set a date and time for the event. If I could go back in time, I would either force Jessica to decide before leaving in May, or make the decision myself. And I would make my own poster, as modest as it would be with my meagre graphism skills, rather than wait to modify the Victoria poster (more about that later).

I went with a local advocate’s suggestion to hold the rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery. While this isn’t a bad location for a rally, it’s better suited for larger ones. Also, parking a minibus in downtown Vancouver was bound to be a challenge, one which I was unable to resolve even scouting the area a couple hours ahead of time. In retrospect, we should have picked another location, like CRAB park.

And that’s not the end of the blunder list. Perhaps the worst was neglecting to ask who was in charge of the PA equipment. Jessica asked on the eve of the rally, and it turned out everybody thought some other team member had it covered (I myself thought Jessica would have brought it along with her). So I had to scramble a solution within hours, by borrowing a portable Bluetooth speaker, turning an old laptop into a makeshift audio loopback device, and buying a tiny 20-buck microphone at Best Buy on Granville.

This blunder in particular has earned me a well-deserved comment from Jessica that the Vancouver rally was the worst in terms of organisation. I’d seen it coming, to be honest; the circumstances were most trying, I had negligible experience and resources, and like most introverts I’m much better at making plans than carrying them out.

So, how did it turn out? By my standards, it was a flop, well beneath my meagre expectations. We were eleven people in total. No one from outside our group showed up, not even the rare few confirmations I’d managed to snatch. I’d been unable to recruit a guest speaker. Not one reporter attended; just as well, it saved us further embarrassment. Jessica at least was satisfied, since it was no worse than other rallies in smaller localities, but for a large city like Vancouver this result is obviously underwhelming.

Victoria rally at the finish line

We were much better organised in Victoria for the finish line rally. Other MSTH members took over the boring bureaucratic duties and logistics, and did a very good job at it. So I was able to focus on promotion, distributing dozens of posters across town and shaking dozens of people’s hands inviting them to join us.

Before I elaborate on that, I would like to come back to the topic of the poster, shown below, which I’m apprehensive about. On the bright side, it’s a beautiful piece of work, manifestly designed by a professional, and that made it easier to convince people we were serious. On the other hand, some relevant information fails to stand out, especially the safe drug supply part; I ended up modifying it for the Vancouver rally. Also, it was designed for 18″x27″ posters, which are huge and expensive; it would have been wiser to scale it down to 8.5″x11″, better suited for displaying on billboards or distributing as leaflets. And the PDF file wasn’t flattened, which for a graphics designer is a rookie mistake since printers usually turn these down; on the bright side, it made the poster somewhat easier to modify, although way harder than if we’d had the source files.

Back to promotion. Unlike for the Vancouver rally, I was a local who’d spent a year reaching out to the community and fellow activists, so I had weeks to walk across town shaking hands with people I was often already familiar with, and send email invites to the rare few I didn’t come across. Moms had already covered local businesses like athletics stores, so I went for the locations they were unlikely to approach, starting of course with nonprofits, shelters, supportive housing, and harm reduction resources, but also less obvious targets like community centres (they have billboards for local events), the BC General Employees’ Union (which is part of Greater Victoria Acting Together), the Victoria Fire Hall (I see them answer an OD at least once a day), and the Wildfire Bakery (we had snacks there every Wednesday, and the owner was very generous toward us). Reception was overwhelmingly positive; not one location declined the poster, and some asked for two. Walking across town with my purple T-shirt also drew the attention of people who had supported the marathon-a-day. This approach paid off; I would later recognise quite a few people among the crowd that I had invited personally. Although, sadly, some people who had said they would didn’t actually show up.

On Jessica’s side, reaching out to the running community dramatically swelled our numbers. Dozens of supporters weren’t drug user advocates but fellow runners eager to put on their shoes for a good cause—and many were Jessica’s friends. This is a good example of tapping into a hidden pool of supporters to boost a rally’s attendance and exemplifies the power of networking.

We experienced a few problems on rally day. The most notable was the inflatable arch we had planned to set up at the finish line; we couldn’t get it up because it required two air compressors and the person in charge only had brought one, so we had to forget about it. Also, I got feedback that some people couldn’t join the running party due to lack of communication, something I would definitely address in a future run.

So how did it go? Apparently there were many people running with Jessica from the onset at Brentwood Ferry, and the mood was cheerful; the running community was very enthusiastic about this event. We had about sixty people waiting at the BC Ministry of Health office, forty of whom would walk the last kilometre with us downtown. Crowd size at the Legislature was an estimated 150, way higher than any MSTH rally I had documented but short of the 200 I had anticipated. The real downer was the lack of mainstream media coverage; other than my own blog article, it would only be covered in a podcast by the Vancouver Island Mental Health Society (CTV News reportedly interviewed Jessica but I’m not aware the footage was actually published). I observed than whenever a news organisation announces an upcoming rally, that means it will not cover it. Media fatigue may have contributed to this result.

Retrospective

Back to our original questions: Was the campaign a success? What can we learn from the experience?

Of course my primary objective, and that of many Moms (Jessica begs to differ), was to obtain a safe drug supply from our provincial government. When I started making projections, I took two prospects into consideration: that we would send a petition to the Legislature, and that there would be a snap election this fall. The petition didn’t materialise, and while the postcards are very cool (I love the idea of spamming a politician’s mailbox), it is strategically inferior. As for the election, if the NDP government follows the politician’s playbook, it is bound to call one by the end of October, in which case a safe drug supply is certain to be at the centre stage of the electoral debate. I say it’s too early to call.

Short of that, the run still proved to be a very effective platform for advocacy on a provincial scale, especially in smaller communities, and generated a lot of conversation online. It also came at an unexpectedly opportune time, in the middle of a wave of disinformation pertaining to hydromorphone diversion which advocates complain was a huge setback but I actually think was a boon. The run gave more material to retaliate against naysayers; even the most callous right wing troll would struggle to argue against a mom running across the province holding her dead son’s framed picture.

As I already mentioned, Jessica did a wonderful job of putting a face on statistics, and the resulting imagery was powerful. Just like detractors make it a point to portrait drug users as wretched junkies crawling on sidewalks and dark alleys, Moms Stop The Harm’s strategy is to make overdose victims look like the prodigal son every parent wish they had. In order to sway the masses, a good story is far more important than facts and figures. In this case, the message was Aubrey’s picture: young man, educated, good upbringing, bright smile, winsome face, curly hair, and of course a Nirvana T-shirt. It proved way more persuasive than grim death tolls and clinical studies.

The campaign also allows for interesting follow-up developments. With the political capital she amassed, Jessica was invited to review a draft CUPE BC resolution, yet to be released at the time of this writing, calling for the union to collaborate with harm reduction organisations in solving the overdose crisis; the motion is even being tentatively promoted at the national level. She is currently pursuing other initiatives which I am not at liberty to discuss at the moment; expect exciting developments in the coming twelve months. This may be a postmortem article, but the initiative isn’t dead; just like Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope, it’ll keep on living as ripple effects spread throughout the advocacy landscape.

I’d like to conclude by making a confession. I repeatedly portrayed Jessica as an indefatigable triathlete with quasi-supernatural powers to move the masses. I’m sorry, I lied: she’s just like the rest of us, with the notable difference that she’s bold enough to take the lead without worrying about whether others will follow. Documenting protests convinced me that the world is driven by crackpots who dream big and dare pull crazy stunts rather than making excuses not to. I think we have a lot to learn from Jessica’s spirit of initiative here; if she could do it, so can the rest of us.