Mission of NC Survivors Union

NCSU is a community-led, statewide organization made up of people who are directly impacted by drug use. Our mission is to improve the lives of people who have been targeted by the war on drugs by: 1) organizing, growing, and strengthening community-led grassroots groups, 2) educating, mobilizing, and advocating for policies and programs grounded in harm reduction, healing, and disability justice, and 3) providing direct services in areas where high-risk communities are denied even the most basic services. Our programmatic activities include running a user-led syringe service program (SSP) and community space in Greensboro, NC, community organizing, harm reduction-based education and leadership development, civic engagement, and harm reduction mutual support groups. 

 

Core Values

Centering the voices of people who use drugs

1. Centering the voices of people who use drugs and building  community led groups and horizontal team based leadership is grounded  with the understanding that  the people  who are affected by a decision / and or problem have a right to be involved in the decision-making / and or problem solving process.

2. User led and community directed is structured with checks and balances and undertaken using a system which demands that the contributions of impacted people have the most influence around topic areas.includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision. 

3. Public participation promotes sustainable decisions by recognizing and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers. 

4. Public participation seeks out and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision. 

5. Public participation seeks input from participants in designing how they participate. 

6. Public participation provides participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way.  

7. Public participation communicates to participants how their input affected the decision.

 

1.  We aim to build the health of all people.

2. Drug – Induced Homicide Laws

3. Build leadership

4. Grow Horizontal Leadership

5. Build A statewide group

6. Work with others to build national campaign

 

HARM REDUCTION POLITIC

 

USU- The Harm Reduction Politic

 

Urban Survivors Union is the only authentic national drug users union in the United States. We represent and organize people who use drugs. We are fighting to end the racist war on drugs, end the war on sex workers and underground economies, end the war on poverty, end prohibition, and liberate all of us in society who have been living in poverty and fear, hiding away as if we were criminals, and internalizing messages of shame and self hatred based on discrimination and stigma. 

 

The drug war infiltrates one’s life in a million different destructive ways.  It is insidious.  You think that society’s structures such as shelters, child protective services, laws, treatment services etc.  are there to help you, but then as life unfolds and you read the small print you realize these very structures are the tools used to imprison, entrap, separate, and destroy people who use and sell drugs, people who trade sex, and people of color, policing the ways we survive poverty.

 

Because the regulation and criminalization of drugs and sex work are major tools of systemic white supremacy, which targets the most vulnerable drug users, drug sellers, sex workers, and trafficking survivors, especially black and brown people, as a national drug users union which includes people who trade sex, we are uniquely able to face these structural tools of racism head on. This is a powerful strategy for dismantling the racist, classist, and genocidal drug war that has devastated so many of our communities.

 

Black and brown people have borne the brunt of this intentional system of suffering which is perpetuated and fueled by prohibition. Our failure as a country to learn from history, grow as a society, and move away from all systems which are built and dependent upon differences and exploitation of people based on skin color, gender, sexuality, disability status,and socioeconomic status has resulted in a system that disregards the lives of black and brown people. Drugs, sex work, and underground economies are not our enemies. Hate and fear are our real enemies.  THIS IS NOT A MOMENT. THIS IS A MOVEMENT. THIS IS ONGOING.

AIDS UNITED

BROADWAY CARES

NATIONAL HARM REDUCTION COALITION

INJURY AND PREVENTION BRANCH OF NC STATE

OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION

NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR MENTAL WELLBEING