Harm Reduction & Syringe Access Saves Lives Campaign; Get Involved!

Please help support Harm Reduction Coalitions and programs to help provide addicts and users with clean, sterile syringes to lower the risk of HIV/AIDS and infection, just to start.

Additionally, these clinics will offer a medication for users to keep on them in the event of overdose; thus lowering the rate of heroin related deaths.

This man shares his story regarding how Harm Reduction saved his life… Please watch…

From the site:

For over twenty years, we’ve supported syringe access programs through trainings, conferences, technical assistance, and advocacy. Communities struggling with the harms of drug injection – overdose, HIV, hepatitis C, and other health problems – reach out to us when they need guidance and support.

This year we’re helping new syringe access programs start up in places like Kentucky and West Virginia, which have never had programs before. But in too many places, syringe access programs are too controversial. Over one-third of the country doesn’t have any syringe access programs. We have to get the word out that syringe access works, and we need syringe access now.

That’s where you come in: help us kick off a new campaign to spread the word and expand syringe access. We’re planning a social media campaign that raises the voices of people who care about syringe access – people who care about those struggling with drug use. People like you.

We’re in the midst of a new heroin crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country are injecting drugs, and too many of them don’t have a syringe access program nearby. The stakes have never been higher, and the opportunities for expanding syringe access have never been greater. We can end the heroin crisis and save lives – through hope, compassion and harm reduction. That means sharing a simple message: Syringe access now, syringe access everywhere!

How We’ll Do It

Syringe Access Saves Lives will be an online campaign using words and images to advocate for syringe access programs in the places that need them most. In September, we’ll bring the talented photographers from Luceo to the United States Conference on AIDS. They’ll photograph conference attendees and capture – in their own words – why their communities should support syringe access programs. These words and images will be the foundation for a national awareness and education campaign, reaching policymakers, health officials, and the general public to support grassroots advocacy for syringe access. The funds that you donate will directly support the costs of developing and producing the Syringe Access Saves Lives campaign.

To read more and/or to donate anything; even just one dollar to better society; to help one soul, please, please click the funding link HERE or share it with others... Remember, if we want a better world and if we want to help give other people a chance, we have to be active… Talking is no good without some form of productive action so please… Please just share if that’s all you can offer; anything is better than nothing…Thank you…

#Suicide Among the Unemployed vs Bankers & Mental Illness Education

This article is about suicide, unemployment, the media and mental health, mainly…but it also is about the media’s coverage -and lack of coverage, of a serious illness. I have also included resources below for those in need of someone to talk to…

First, however, I would like to make an apology and an explanation for a poorly and insensitive post I wrote a few days ago about a young banker whom has killed himself. When I came across an article written in the RT regarding the 14th banker dead due to suicide, (and you can read the post that sparked my previous post here)

I went into a frenzy of rage for many reasons. It took my wonderful father in law, however, to make me rethink what I wrote (you can check out his wonderful blog by clicking HERE).

In my last rant, I didn’t even make the point I wanted to make. I simply read the article and went into a blind rage -and I directed it in the wrong direction, carelessly, and worse, thoughtlessly. I truly and sincerely apologize for that. In this post, I would like to correct what I wrote, but also write what I was trying to say, now that I am level headed and have thought about what I said.

We Are Putting the Wrong People in Prison…

Just a reminder that the people in prison for “crimes” are far too often the wrong people in prison. When child molesters, rapists, murderers, people who have been proven psychologically to have no conscience and no one to obtain empathy; those are the people who should be in prison. Not someone who is an addict or even drug dealers; they need help, not punishment. Something is wrong with a society that lets pedophiles go free before someone who is addicted to drugs…

And to make things even more interesting, the number of things punishable by prison are rising, everything from cyber offenses such as we have seen with Bradley Manning and Anonymous to abortion and women’s rights. It is no coincidence everything is becoming punishable by prison when the prison industry is making money off of each head in their prison….

Black Business Owner Framed by Undercover Cop- It’s VITAL we Remember Black Wall Street and Make Sure This Stops, NOW.

In New York an undercover cop informant walked into a Black owned business and planted cocaine inside (crack, to be more specific). He then proceeded to photograph it, and in the end the innocent business owner was arrested. What the brilliant police informant didn’t know, thankfully, was the entire falsification and crime this informant committed had been captured by the security camera.

 Andrews’s lawyer can be heard narrating the shocking surveillance video.

“He comes in, places the crack on the counter. Crack, which under federal sentencing guidelines, would get him 4 years in jail. Under New York State law would get him 2 to 7 years in jail,” attorney Kevin Luibrand says in the video.

I don’t care if he had a smoke shop; and it makes no difference how the people may use the LEGAL items in his store- if a store sells rope and someone uses it to commit suicide, is that store owner responsible for the death? NO.

It enrages me the video mentions he had a “smoke shop” where you can buy smoking “devices” and things of the like. That’s not relevant. Not to mention, crack cocaine and marijuana are two MASSIVELY different things.

Let’s go back in time for a moment now… Note the similarities?

[ First…For those who would rather watch than read, below is a brilliant and tragic documentary… It is one everyone needs to see, I believe. If you’d like a shorter version, there is one at the end of this article.]

In 1921 there was a community known as Black Wall Street located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before I go on about that let me touch the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, on how horrifically hard life was for Blacks in America in the 1900s.

On the one hand, it’s great as slavery was now illegal by text (as it still is,,,by text); lynchings and horrific public killings went on as a normal and acceptable occurrence, and no one was exempt. Not women, not men…not even children. After slavery was made “illegal” one must realize it did not vanish overnight. It still hasn’t vanished today with our prison system but that’s another blog.

After slavery was put on the books as illegal, slavery did not vanish. The now former slaves either were not made aware of their new “freedom” or convinced to stay there- for they had no where else to go. The government didn’t give any aid or help in how to start a life of ones own, getting a job in a white world where you don’t know which white person is kind and which had the desire to lynch you would have paralyzed me with fear -as I am sure it did far too many. So many people continued to slave away because fear is strong and sometimes it is easier to do what you know than to break out into a new life. Especially if you’re afraid of those who used to be called your “master”.

Hell, if it wasn’t until the Supreme Court decision in 1967 that, in America a Black person and a white person could join hand in marriage legally, and yet still be harassed and attacked; imagine what it would have been like in the 1920s? If a white person even accused a Black man of looking at a white woman, he could/would likely be killed.

Black Wall Street goes back further than 1920, I encourage you all to either read about it or watch the video below; for though it is a tragic, tragic truth that we can see starting to happen again in America; it also has a wonderfully positive aspect to it. Their pride, hard work, sense of community and self empowerment is inspiring. We need that now.

But, for the purpose of this blog I will stay in the 1920s…

During a time of great struggle in America over something as pointless as color and race, there was a place called Black Wall Street. Located in Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Black Wall Street was one of the most wealthiest and prominent Black communities in early 20th Century America. With a prosperous and healthy population of approximately 10,000 people in the Greenwood area of Tulsa, it was home not only to well off families, but also being the home to several multimillionaire businessmen, black businessmen.

Black Wall Street was called many derogatory names by whites. During what we now call the The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, bombs, death and mass destruction caused the collapse of this thriving area. The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 successfully demolished this thriving business community. It can easily be called one of the most devastating racial riots in history.

There are government records that make it clear they do not want the Black community to flourish. Look into the FBI files back during Hoover’s days. As I always say- we need to wake up, look at history and realize it could and is happening again but in a more subtle way.

The amazing Nelson Mandela said he didn’t fear those who were honest about their racism and hate; but rather those who kept it hidden for they are the most dangerous.

We need to remember that… Mandela is a soul whose judgment I know I feel is easy to trust. We must be smart and unify -everyone- against the real problem. If you don’t see the signs of something horrific coming (well, even more horrible than now) you truly should rethink your views…

Don’t let Black Wall Street happen again….. If you would like to get involved, activists have posted the following information on who to call and talk to about this matter- flood their phones. Let them know we will not tolerate this! We can’t.

A great point was made that, had he not had cameras, he would STILL be in JAIL…

Shorter Version of Black Wall Street –

84 Yr Old Man Viciously Beaten for Jaywalking and Not Speaking English in NYC…

This story is all over the news, as it should be, however I can’t stress enough that this is sadly not the first 84-year-old man to be beaten by the police over nothing. However, I’ll keep this post focused, for once.

On the Upper East Side in NYC Kang Wong, 84, jaywalked across an intersection. Who does he think he is!? (Sarcasm.) According to witness reports, the man apparently struggled to understand -or perhaps didn’t understand at all- the cops demands to stop. I’d like to take this opportunity to say, Mr. Wong apparently does not speak English. Which is all well and good but not when the cops are involved; they don’t care if you are mentally ill, mentally disabled, blind, deaf (scroll through my posts)… to them, you are fair game.

NYC is my home, I’ve jaywalked, who hasn’t? We live

Bullying: A Father’s Heart-Felt Plea

No matter what your beliefs, bullying is not acceptable. This is a powerful plea from a father, please read and share.

The Abuse Expose' with Secret Angel

This was a response that I received from my posting yesterday, entitled  Bullying… Not so Cute., and I felt that I should share with my readers. This plea is from a father named Jeff…

Jeff says:
“My son is an A student in advanced education in NC. He has been bullied to the point where he came home crying and didn’t want to go back to school. Of course my heart sunk; my son whom loves to go to school, came home and walked into the room, head hung low and his face covered.This is not how my son is, so I knew something was wrong. I asked him “son what’s the matter” he lowered his head even further and covered his face completely and began to cry. He was so humiliated and hurt,he could barely tell me what was wrong. My son whom I have been raising alone…

View original post 222 more words

Attention #Newark , NJ & #NYC ! Let’s End the Violence – Events

If you are in the Newark, NJ or NYC area, please check this out- If not, please spread the word. Though NYC is my home, I lived in Newark for a few years and the killing is, I believe, even more horrific there. A teacher spoke in an article today about how many of his students had been murdered… No one cares… It’s time to start caring. Please share this!