RAz

London, UK

Raz is a queer Mad Latine migrant committed to drug user liberation and abolition. He organizes with RATS, a London-based drug user union founded by queer/trans people and sex workers, centering harm reduction as radical care, against criminalization, punishment and stigma. Catching his breath after a difficult year, he holds to the discipline of hope, believing a kinder world is both necessary and possible.

Selected quotes:

“[Ive] been [in] a constant process of reconsidering what is harm reduction--for me as an individual, for the people that surround me, for the country I'm from ... I think the concept has become ever more expansive. And perhaps from what was originally a quite an intellectual exercise, it became a deeply personal exercise and one of sort of care for myself, for others, and for those who will come after us. ... I cannot think of any point where I was not a drug user and not practicing some form of harm reduction ... [I`ve come to understand harm reduction as] the exchange of tactics on how to protect each other and ourselves and transform the world.”

“It was on 26th of June, [RATS] ran a demo safer consumption site in a central location in London, Allen Gardens, near Brick Lane. … the whole of the city, as is the case with all of the countries of the UK, except for Scotland, lacks a safer consumption site. … [this is] such a basic need of any person who doesn`t have a place to use drugs privately and is forced to use in public, often in really undignified conditions, anyone should have access to a safe place to use drugs. … we don’t have to wait for the state to do this. And indeed, the state won’t do it like anytime soon. And if it does so [without being led by drug users, but rather] with the collaboration of charities who tend to be neoliberal structures that are subcontracted by the UK state to provide `drug services`, it will run in a way that is punitive, exclusionary, and not to our expectations”

“There’s such a strong anti-drug use sentiment in the UK. … We thought we were going to find [at the demo] that among the public [that they] were going to have that animosity. And actually, 160 people came over through the five hours that we were in the park. And by and large, I think apart from three people who were hesitant, apart from that handful, like everyone was sort of like, why is this not already running? Because, people are not stupid. People know that their neighbors are struggling.”

“Harm reduction didn’t spring from the veins of white European men drug users … there are so many practices, including among indigenous communities that we could sort of understand as a precursor or actually as harm reduction ‘in the wild’. Harm reduction existed already before somebody in Europe named it as such.”

“Queer people are more likely to be homeless, queer people are more likely to use drugs and be exposed to state violence and neglect. People who are queer very often live with needs that are unmet because the state is unwilling to make space for us. There’s so many reasons that expose queer people to drug-related harm and push us towards drug-related harm.”

“Hierarchies are a bane of anyone who’s really committed to harm reduction. If we do not use our experiences of vulnerability in relation to these systems to actually connect with each other in our pain, in our precariousness, in our marginalization, but rather use them to think that we need to carve out exceptions for ourselves. That is a selfish reflex that we need to extricate from our communities. The war cry should always be solidarity and not just between drug users but between anyone who’s experiencing oppression. That can really strengthen our movement. So, whenever I hear drug-user groups self-defined as like single-issue networks I cringe.”

“The politicization of drug user organizing is something that I find really positive at the moment in the UK. Perhaps it’s just an example, but there’s a lot of harm reduction organizing happening among trans communities, in relation to access to hormones, access to equipment for the use of that. And I think there’s something really interesting there of almost like a new generation of harm reduction that embraces radical community care as like an ethos.”

“What gives me hope in relation to overcoming [current] challenges [within the harm reduction movement] is … the emergence of drug user and harm reduction organizing that understands itself as a vehicle for radical care, [that ensures] our people don`t perish under the weight of [oppressive] systems. … these groups give me hope that we are mounting some sort of resistance against this evolution of the state, which is really threatening. And then I am sometimes quite worried that there’s people sort of actively torpedoing that process. How many times I hear people say, `Harm reduction is not political. Harm reduction is about finding compromise`. …  And it’s like, no, you are asking us to compromise the sort of very forces that are in our lives that will kill us.”

Full interview transcript: