Ending the Drug War, December 7, 2019
keynote speaker: Dionna King, Policy Manager of the New York office of the Drug Policy Alliance
Scholars and activists have documented the devastating consequences of the War on Drugs throughout the Americas. This conference explored how people are creatively resisting prohibitionist policies, repairing the harms caused by the Drug War, and offering alternatives, in Maine and beyond. The new political landscape in Maine has reoriented the collective response to the overdose crisis towards public health, but without state endorsement of proposals such as safe injection sites. This conference allowed activists and scholars to explore Maine as a front in the Drug War, shifts in drug policy rhetoric and response, and how community activists are taking action.
Conference Agenda:
9:30 Welcome: Winifred Tate, Maine Drug Policy Lab at Colby College; Maddy Madgnunson, Maine Health Equity Alliance; Cait Vaughan, Maine Family Planning
9:45-10:45 Keynote: “Restorative Justice for the Drug War” Dionna King in conversation with Maine Access Points. Learn more about the reparative justice campaign in New York, Color of Pain.
11:00-12:00 Alternatives in Focus
Expert Update: Decriminalization in the US: Meagan Sway, ACLU Maine
Expert Update: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization: What are the Lessons for Maine? Rob Glover, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Maine
Work Session: Advancing Reproductive Justice for Maine’s Impacted Families
Facilitator: Cait Vaughan, Maine Family Planning
Description: This is a forum focused on ending punitive responses toward pregnant people and parents who use and/or are in recovery, through applying a reproductive justice lens to drug policy & culture change work. This will be a discussion-based “working” session where participants identify and explore grassroots and small-scale approaches to culture change at the intersections of parenting, poverty, substance use and stigma.
12:00-1:30 Networking lunch
1:30-3:00 Communities on the Front Lines
Session: We Need Each Other: Mutual Aid, Harm Reduction & Organizing Post-Drug War Communities
Moderator: Cait Vaughan, Maine Family Planning
Participants: Maine Access Points, Portland Overdose Prevention Society, Waterville Needlepoint Sanctuary, and Students for Sensible Drug Policy (USM)
The first half of the session brings together representatives from existing community-based harm reduction projects across Maine to discuss frameworks for offering mutual aid and peer-run alternatives that both center and leverage the human rights, dignity and power of people who use drugs (PWUD) to end overdose death and rebuild more equitable and healthy communities. A facilitated discussion during the second half will address challenges of organizing communities to embrace harm reduction initiatives and alternatives to existing punitive responses to drug use. This discussion will be grounded in an analysis of how racism, classism, ableism and stigma shape who ‘belongs’ in communities, and address how organizing can transform the ways we are in relationship with each other and systems.
Session: Resisting and Healing from America’s Drug War: Maine’s Front Line Communities Respond
Moderator: Ambureen Rana
Participants: Maine Wakanaki REACH; Barbara Taylor, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP); Melissa Dunn, Restorative Justice Institute
The session focuses on the far-reaching and targeted harm of Drug War policies on Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and immigrant populations across the U.S. and Maine. Panelists will draw connections between drug policies that target People of Color and attendant oppressive ideologies and campaigns. The discussion will also include collective acts of resistance and healing among Black and Brown people, and how Maine can repair systemic racist harm among directly-impacted communities.
3:15-4:15 Plenary: A Collective Conversation on Repairing Drug War Harms in Maine
This conference is made possible through support from the Global Drug Policy Program of the Open Society Foundation and the Maine Drug Policy Lab at Colby College.
Previous Events:
2nd Waterville Community Forum: Talking About Stigma, April 29, 2019: Speakers Casey Henderson, woman in long term recovery; Cory Miller, physician assistant, MaineGeneral Psychiatry; Cait Vaugn, Maine Family Planning and impacted family member; and Hilary Eslinger, co-founder of Maine Access Points led a discussion on how stigma around drug use impacts our community and access to treatment.
Waterville Community Forum on the Opioid Crisis, February 28, 2019: Speakers State Representative Charlotte Warren (D-84), Director of Opioid Response for the State of Maine Gordon Smith, Waterville Police Chief Joseph Massey, impacted family member Lisa Hallee presented to a gathering of more than 70 people. See coverage in the Morning Sentinel:70 People Turn Out for Opioid Forum.
State Representative Charlotte Warren addresses the crowd at the Chase Community Forum while impacted family member Lisa Hallee and Waterville Police Chief Joseph Massey look on.