Editor’s note: California Governor Gavin Newsom recently announced his intention to develop special courts throughout California which could force people into court-ordered treatment. Cecelia Echo works with the group UTACH (Unhoused Tenants Against Carceral Housing), which along with many other groups is opposing this attack on people’s rights.
Photo/ Hillary Barker
There is a town hall happening today about Newsom’s proposal to take state conservatorship of the unhoused with co-occurring mental health and substance use. This I believe is an end game – to incarcerate the unhoused who have experienced the violence of being stigmatized for mental health and substance use, both of which are results of state-inflicted violence on poor communities of color.
State hospitals are places of violence operated by paramilitary security forces, including G4S agents who practice state torture tactics on unhoused people. Imagine the trauma of being trans in one of those places. State security had a hiring surge during the pandemic.
People have experienced overdoses on prescription medications due to lack of harm reduction. We need harm reduction in our hands today. We need to decriminalize mental health and substance issues, to recover from the state-inflicted trauma of sweeps.
This is what the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services) model says about achieving recovery (rather than what I see as shame tactics and colonial methods of 12 step programs!):
We need permanent safe housing
We need our communities
We need purpose
We need health
I believe this path starts with safe use sites and harm reduction to build trust in community and each other as community members who are now all survivors of the pandemic.
None of that can happen in state hospitalization and criminalized treatment programs. We need people with lived experience with houselessness who are in recovery to have opportunities to train and provide mental health services. We need crisis intervention and conflict de-escalation services by and for us, not police.
NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US!
