100 signatures reached
To: City of Boston & the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
ACT UP! To help our unhoused neighbors and people who use drugs.
HANDS OFF of the tent city in Newmarket!
Immediately provide sanitation, and hygiene resources. NO MORE SWEEPS!
HOMES! NOT shelters, NOT detentions, NO exceptions.
NO new police force, NO new security, NO mass surveillance.
Free science-backed treatment on demand for problematic relationships to any substances and behaviors, NOW!
Culturally responsive and expanded access to HIV medication and PrEP, and expanded HIV prevention education, NOW!
Supervised consumption spaces in Massachusetts, NOW!
Why is this important?
We, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power Boston Branch, unequivocally denounce the executive order released by the Janey administration which essentially reauthorizes and gives a progressive veneer to the same disproven clean-sweep methods carried out under the previous administration.
The order serves only to embolden the racist, sexist, ableist, and poor-hating Boston police department and Suffolk County sheriff to further their programs of harassment, rights violations, incarceration, and forced treatment.
The notion that the woefully inadequate city shelter system is a valid alternative to the encampments ignores the fact that many unhoused neighbors have chosen to risk scorching heat, freezing cold, and unsanitary conditions simply to avoid that system.
The increased police activity outlined in the order is in effect a declaration of war against people experiencing homelessness and people who use drugs. State violence and neglect is the root of this public health emergency; its increase will run antithetically to its resolution.
Further empowering police to forcibly detain people under the guise of sections is a gross misappropriation of power. Police are not medical professionals, and under no circumstances should be charged with making such decisions. Further, with the long history of people who use drugs meeting untimely ends under the "care" of law enforcement, or from fatal overdose after release, it is unconscionable to subject another single person to such a system.
We recognize the intersection between the experience of houselessness, the consumption of substances, and the rising count of new HIV cases in the Commonwealth.
We recognize that the same reactionary puritanical and paternalistic thought that stood between our Poz siblings and compassionate care in the 80s and 90s, is the same thought that keeps our shelters woefully inadequate and restrictive, and the same thought that stands between our siblings who use drugs and the services necessary to protect their health.
We call on all organizations and individuals to join us in demanding public health solutions and social-supports instead of further violence, neglect, and criminalization!
We issue the attached demands, and assure the powers that be that we will not be silent in the face of this crisis.
We will ACT UP!
We will FIGHT BACK!