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Please
note: As of August 2007, the members of the Springfield
Users' Council are all currently working on new
projects. We have left the site standing as a resource
for our friends & comrades. Please feel free
to contact us with any questions.
The
Springfield Users' Council was formed in 1999, the
year the Center for Disease Control ranked Springfield,
Massachusetts the 11th highest per capita AIDS rate
in the nation.
The
council is a drug user-run, grassroots organization
working with fellow drug users and our families
and neighborhoods to minimize drug related harm
in our beloved city. The council can be characterized
as "harm reduction by drug users for drug users,"
but it is also the political core of our organization.
We are not merely a "user friendly" organization,
but we are committed to providing and maintaining
the structural conditions for drug users to design,
administer and govern our programs.
Although
our main service is providing injection drug users
with safer injection equipment and information to
protect their health and safety, we also engage
in political and legal advocacy, direct actions
and community organizing and mobilization to address
the root causes of drug related harm. As such, we
not only apply harm reduction strategies through
a public health model, but we also situate drug
use within the larger socio-political context in
which it is practiced. We recognize how poverty,
racism, incarceration and other forms of discrimination
and inequality further affect the social relations
of our constituency. Therefore, we've made it our
responsibility to challenge institutions and social
structures that have historically exacerbated drug
related harm while also providing a supplemental
and pragmatic alternative to the dominant model
of abstinence-based drug treatment programs.
The
Users' Council wishes to thank the following organizations
for their kind & generous support:
-
The Colin
Higgins Foundation
-
The
Comer Foundation
-
North American
Syringe Exchange Network
-
The
Tides Foundation
-
United Auto
Workers Local 2322
-
Unitarian Universalists
of America
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