Content Warning: Sexual Harm 

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We write this in the spirit of love and transparency. This week, we reviewed a call for collective accountability ([link removed]) related to conduct of a former employee of Harm Reduction Coalition, Kiefer Paterson. The actions and behaviors described in the document outline serious patterns of abuse, violence, and harm, and we recognize that these patterns have repeated themselves across the history of the harm reduction community. We affirm that accountability is for everyone, including cis white men and including people with histories of employment or affiliation with us.

We highlight here one of their demands to social justice and harm reduction communities:

“We call upon the harm reduction movement to seize this hard but transformational moment in time. We need this moment to prompt an examination of the safety and accountability processes that have failed, and the creation of ones that are inclusive, transparent, and responsive. Femmes and survivors need to be included in these dialogues and decision-making. Our movement needs to stop ignoring our friends, lovers, and co-workers’ mistreatment of others. We need to believe survivors.”

Over the past two weeks, many of us have been engaging in deep reflection and dialogue about the dynamics of sexual harm, safety, and accountability within the harm reduction movement. These are not new questions, nor are they new challenges; we are not the first movement to grapple with them ([link removed]) , nor the only community working through them today. What we are reckoning with at this moment is why, over the last three decades of the harm reduction movement in the United States, it has taken us too long to get here.

Harm reduction insists that we bring our full selves — our hearts, our hopes, our vulnerabilities — to our work. We are compelled to come together to envision and create the conditions of safety, healing, and accountability that would allow all of us to build movement and be in community together. That begins by standing with survivors, and extends to heeding the call for broader transformations in our relationships, organizations, and culture. And we cannot do so without focusing on the gendered and racialized dimensions of power — including the legacies of stigma, criminalization, and trauma — that have shaped and distorted our field.

We are working to identify concrete commitments we can make — including sharing, shifting, and mobilizing resources, financial and otherwise — to working with others to seize this transformational moment. The questions we are asking ourselves, and invite you to think through with us, include:
* How can we harness the expertise and wisdom of transformative justice to increase the capacity of our organizations and communities to develop practices and policies to respond to harm?
* How can we increase safety at our national conference and at other harm reduction gatherings, convenings, and events?
* How can we interrupt patterns of harassment, abuse, and violence by ensuring that the most vulnerable members of our community have access to support?
* How can we facilitate the development of spaces for survivors to share their experiences and allies to bear witness that don’t risk or result in triggering and retraumatization?
* How can we increase access to healing and support for survivors of harm and violence?
* How can we establish community-wide norms, skills, and standards to prevent harm and support accountability?

We will be laying out our plans and commitments to address these and other questions in the coming weeks and months. Transformation does not happen overnight and we have a lot to unpack; we uphold a vision where this reckoning ultimately brings us together in greater alignment, rather than fracturing us into warring factions. We want to be in deep community with you to shape a future with greater safety and justice for all of us.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please reach out to us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) . We are grateful over the past weeks for the conversations we have already been having, internally and externally, and ready for deep transformation.
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