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I have certainly had some very bad interactions with HR organizations – like the dick who tried to bully me into quitting heroin when I went in for a HIV test, and pretty much kept me from getting another HIV test for a few years, or when I was volunteering at a needle exchange where NO ONE was out about their history of drug use and it was standard to treat the people who came to get needles like they were sneaky children.

And what starts out as palatable spin for funders (like getting people into treatment) seems to always become the mission over time.

But I have been listening to Alan Clear’s Harm Reduction Coalition podcasts, and I think there is still a passionate group of HR people out there who really care about human rights, and who see that creating a safe, non-stigmatizing space where people can access services that they already want but were too marginalized (and also too justifiably angry and alienated) to access otherwise, can help people manage their use in a way that’s closer to what they want it to be.

I worry that user’s unions are not immune to the issues that corrupted harm reduction, that as you get bigger, you need funding and real estate and managers to make things run.  I don’t know as much as I should about VANDU, but it seems that they have a significant number of supporting members (i.e. with no history of drug use).  Although their constitution says that supporting members cannot be director, from what I’ve read about Ann Livingston (co-founder and long-term coordinator, or maybe executive director), she came out of social welfare agencies and not personal experience with drugs.  And they’ve accomplished some pretty amazing things, but would maybe not fit everyone’s definition of a user’s union, and also seem to be getting sucked into a more formalized, public health role.