 How is it to be a drug user in New York City, like, what are the major difficulties you face in your everyday life? If you don't mind getting searched anywhere at any time, you know, pat it down, searched. And if you don't mind the pressure of knowing that when you're going to get the drugs that you may get arrested at any time, you start getting real sharp in knowing what cars the detectives drive in, the undercover cars. And if you don't mind that, then you'll have a good day. But it's almost just, it becomes a part of life. You know, to get what I want, what I believe I need, I have to live that lifestyle. So it's very hard, it's difficult, but it becomes a part of your lifestyle. We are seeing user unions and people step up and say, you know, I am a person who uses drugs, and I have a right to health, I have a right to liberty, and, you know, I have a right to organize. What's the role of user organizing in developing harm reduction programs? There have always been users in the harm reduction movement. When I started doing needle exchange, I was a heroin user, but we weren't organized as such. We were just, we just blended in, and now it's more possible to organize as drug users and have an independent voice. You know, once you start setting up an organization, you worry about funding, you worry about your relationship with the health authorities, with the government. And users have an independent voice that can say, no, wait a minute, this is what we need. This is how harm reduction is supposed to work. One huge barrier that we have here is that when you out yourself in America as a drug user, you are actually putting yourself at great risk for loss of freedom, loss of if you have children, your children have the likelihood to be taken away from you. There is a political pushback that people think that drug users can't organize, that they're too chaotic, but here we are in this country that the ban is finally lifted and that was driven by drug users finally organizing themselves. We do community organizing to help drug users and people with HIV who previously had no voice in government to open a forum for them to speak and explain their issues. One of our main goals is to fight the stereotype that drug users are passive or incapacitated or unable to make opinions or shape policy. Stigma is a big issue. People stigmatize us based on who we are. Stigma can be challenged, you know, and that with challenging the stigma something can change. We say in harm reduction movement, any positive change. Drug users were denied access to hepatitis C treatment. Unless you can document you had three to six months clean, you can get treatment to hepatitis C. If you were a prisoner, forget about it. But we organized ourselves so that we would be vocal. We would say that we were drug users and had a right to treatment, had a right for respect and dignity, and had a right to participate in the decisions that affect our lives, you know, as drug users. One of the bills we were working on is the syringe access bill. The health code in New York stated that it was okay to have clean syringes distributed, and the penal code insisted that it was not legal to do that. So what we did was we sort of changed the language of the bill itself to reflect that a reconciliation was needed between those two agencies so that people would not be afraid to exchange needles without fear of police harassment, you know, and we've done that. That's one of the things that we try to stay conscious of through user organizing is being accountable for the community and holding each other accountable for the community to kind of set a different precedent, a different understanding of what it means to be a user. That you're not running around ripping people off or stealing ladies' purses or, you know, going to your grandma's purse or boosting or whatever the attitudes are, it's not necessarily true and it's probably the exception to the rule. People who are involved in our group, they feel bad about themselves. We're giving people a positive connection to their endogenous drug users. They're actually doing something to help themselves and others. If we don't organize and stand up for better laws and tear down the stigmatizations, then there's no organization that would do it for us and who better can do it than the users themselves. We are the community. We are the brothers and sisters in your community. We are the mothers and fathers in your community. You know, we are the sons and daughters in your community. You know, we're not aliens, you know what I mean? We're right next to you, right in front of you. You know, we're everywhere. We're the silent majority, you know, but we need to break the silence to challenge the stigma. To organize is to live for me and I think that it's needed in all parts of the world, you know, to be able to be heard, to be able to have quality laws that mean you have a richer quality of life because it's legal. You have a right. You have a bona fide right because you were born, you know, not because you're a user or not and you live here or there or you have or have not. Just because you were born, you certainly have privileges.