On this week's Truth To Power, we bring you the next installment of a new program on Forward Radio called "Sacrifice Zones" hosted by Stretch. On this week's show, Stretch is in conversation with Pony Morris from VOCAL Kentucky (https://vocal-ky.org/). Voices of Community Activists and Leaders (VOCAL) is a statewide grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people. VOCAL-KY is building a movement of low-income people dedicated to ending the AIDS epidemic, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and homelessness across the country. We fight for systemic change rooted in justice, compassion, and love. We approach this work with a firm belief in reducing harm and ending stigma, and the knowledge that the issues impacting our communities are driven by institutional oppression, not personal failings.

This week's conversation focuses on Harm Reduction at SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) (https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/harm-reduction). Harm reduction is a practical and transformative approach that incorporates community-driven public health strategies — including prevention, risk reduction, and health promotion — to empower people who use drugs (and their families) with the choice to live healthy, self-directed, and purpose-filled lives. Harm reduction centers the lived and living experience of people who use drugs, especially those in under-served communities, in these strategies and the practices that flow from them.

Harm reduction emphasizes engaging directly with people who use drugs to prevent overdose and infectious disease transmission; improve physical, mental, and social wellbeing; and offer low barrier options for accessing health care services, including substance use and mental health disorder treatment.

Harm reduction is an important part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s comprehensive approach to addressing substance use disorders through prevention, treatment, and recovery — and empowering people to reach their own goals, through incremental change.

Organizations who practice harm reduction incorporate a spectrum of strategies that meet people where they are ― on their own terms and may serve as a pathway to additional health and social services, including additional prevention, treatment, and recovery services.

Harm reduction works by addressing broader health and social issues through improved policies, programs, and practices.

Contact VOCAL KY at info@vocal-ky.org

See also:
https://www.vera.org/publications/the-criminalization-of-poverty-in-kentucky
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/you-dont-get-to-vote-on-any-of-your

On Truth to Power each week, we gather people from around the community to discuss the state of the world, the nation, the state, and the city! It's a community conversation like you won't hear anywhere else!

Truth to Power airs every Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 11am, and Sunday at 4pm on Louisville's grassroots, community radio station, Forward Radio 106.5fm WFMP and live streams at http://forwardradio.org