- We're here for International Overdose Awareness Day.
There's 50 programs that are participating
in this day of honoring our dead and asking for change.
(upbeat music)
With a 308 billion dollar budget in the state of California,
the word overdose is never mentioned once, not one time.
We also know that harm reduction lost funding this year,
at the same time as overdoses rose.
- Currently, we're in the worst overdose epidemic
this country has ever seen.
In the past year, over 2,500 Angelinos
have died from overdoses from substances,
including methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Fentanyl in particular, a synthetic opioid
that has kind of like
taken over the drug market in Los Angeles,
accounts for the exponential rise of overdose deaths.
- Overdose deaths in California, in Los Angeles in my city
in my district are a public health crisis.
In LA county alone, We've experienced a 48% increase
in drug overdose death during the first five months
of the pandemic compared to the same time period in 2019.
48%, these startling statistics beg the question to me,
when is enough, enough?
- How long are we gonna keep doing the same thing?
That's what I wanna know.
Like, when are we gonna say,
"Hmm, maybe this isn't working
and maybe we should do something different."
- I am a former person who used drugs
and I'm worth the same as I was back then.
I'm worth the same right now,
I just happen to not use today.
That's it, I'm the same person I was back then
under a bridge using, to try and cope with my pain.
- Harm reduction is a basic human principle
where we're meeting people where they are
and helping them reach their individual goals.
It's not about putting our goals on them
it's about helping them reach whatever goals they want.
It's about respecting autonomy, meeting them where they are
in terms of what they would like to accomplish
and helping them do that safely.
- I was extremely disheartened
by the governor's veto of SB 57 last week.
A bill that would've allowed supervised injection,
pilot programs in LA, San Francisco and Oakland
to prevent drug overdose deaths
and to connect people to treatment for addiction.
In fact, this council passed a resolution asking
for this bill to move forward
and asking for these sites to be placed in Los Angeles
where we have so much need for them.
Safe injection sites are evidence based,
they are a harm reduction strategy that works.
Healthcare professionals have rallied around them
because they will prevent deaths, promote treatment,
lead to cleaner streets, increase safety,
prevent the spread of disease while saving taxpayers money
on ambulance calls and emergency room services.
This is an intervention that simply makes sense
and yet we're saying no.
- We see decreases in rates of HIV,
we see decreases in incarceration,
we see decreases in death
and we see people like living longer healthier lives
that are reaching their goals.
We know harm reduction works,
it's just something we have to like implement in society
and fold it into normal conversation.
So it doesn't become this strange scary concept for people.
On a very basic level, medicine is harm reduction.
We wear bike helmets to stay safe, we wear seat belts,
we take vitamins, all of that is a form of harm reduction.
- They talk, we die.
They talk - [crowd] We die.
- They talk - [crowd] We die.
They talk, - [crowd] We die.
- We have thousands of people every day
utilizing supervised consumption sites, and those are bars.
Those are places where we go in just to drink
and not just to drink a drink like multiple too many drinks.
You're allowed to drink irresponsibly
just for the sake of drinking,
just because you're coping with life,
you're relaxing, whatever happens to be.
So we have no shame in it.
And what happens is people don't hide.
They get to have drinks and have friendships
and conversation, and they're not sitting there
alone feeling ashamed of themselves.
- What do we want? - [Crowd] No more deaths.
- When do we want it? - [crowd] Now
- [crowd] Harm reduction saves lives.
- Harm reduction saves lives.
No more deaths. - [crowd] No more deaths
- No more deaths. - [crowd] No more deaths.
- Yes you can give the people more care.
Yes you can give the people more care.
- I think sometimes the choices on these issues are painted
in a way that
(soft instrumental music)
enables us not to look
at what are the costs of not doing this work.
A few months ago in my district,
we lost someone to an overdose in a porta party.
That's a human, that was someone's son,
someone's brother, someone's family member.
That person deserved help.
They deserved a place where they could work through
what they needed to work through with dignity.
And that is what we all deserved as humans
and that's what we all need to be fighting for
and I am so ready to be here and fight
for that with all of you, thank you all for your leadership.
- We're just so conditioned to shame and blame people.
We're so conditioned to look at other people
as different, as bad, as weird, as lazy as a problem.
And then when it happens close to home
then it's like, oh shoot.
When someone that you love or yourself,
then you reach out to us
because you know that we're gonna love you
and the only way to heal is to have a safe space
where you can go and be who you are.
- We need to do everything we can to save every life,
every individual's life is important.
And I wanna support the advocacy and the efforts to move
this work forward with the resources
and strength that it needs.
- Harm reduction is not just about us
and the work that we do on the ground every day,
harm reduction is about you.
We need the community to be engaged
and care the same way that we care
and say that, we don't wanna have any more overdose deaths.
We can end overdose, it is possible to end overdose.
What's our call to action?
You can start simple, you can go to harmreduction.org
and you can educate yourself because one of the big things
that's really important for us as a society
is to face our stigma, to face our judgment
and to face our shame.
So we're counting on you to do your personal work inside,
as we continue to do our work together as a movement.
(upbeat music)