HIPS in the News

Opioid Overdose Prevention Act of 2019 Passes: Drug paraphernalia decriminalization bill becomes law in District (ABC 7 - WJLA)

12/24/2020

Queen Adesuyi is a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance’s National Affairs office in Washington, D.C., where she works to advance several of DPA’s legislative priorities on the federal level, including marijuana legalization with a racial justice focus, drug decriminalization, and eliminating collateral consequences for drug use and previous convictions. She also advocates for equity/racial justice in plans for the District of Columbia’s emerging marijuana industry, in addition to advancing overdose prevention measures and harm reduction in the District.

Following the District's deadliest year of overdose fatalities in 2017, the D.C. Council unanimously voted to allow for the distribution of fentanyl test strips for personal use, and then passed legislation to decriminalize the life-saving strips a year later. While the decriminalization of fentanyl test strips was a step in the right direction, the Drug Policy Alliance says they worked tirelessly with HIPS, a DC-based harm-reduction organization, to get DC Council to take bigger steps towards reducing overdose deaths by decriminalizing drug paraphernalia more broadly.

"It's a huge step forward for the health and livelihood of people who use drugs," Adesuyi said.

HIPS was on the ground educating community members about harm reduction through street outreach and a virtually leading a series of community conversations on harm reduction and drug use. Queen Adesuyi, the Policy Manager for the Office of National Affairs and the team at The Drug Policy Alliance worked tirelessly to show how harm reduction impacts public health and saves lives. At the end of December 2020, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed the Opioid Overdose Prevention Act of 2019 (B23-0054) to become law. This bill removes the criminal penalties for possession of drug paraphernalia for personal use. The bill will allow organizations like HIPS to distribute harm reduction supplies such as safer smoking kits, safer snorting kits, and other infectious disease prevention harm reduction materials previously criminalized under DC law. [Read Article]

Excluded Workers Direct Action leaders Makia Green (Black Lives Matter DC) and Tamika Spellman (HIPS) are honored by DC Jobs with Justice at the I'll Be There Awards

11/17/2020

To learn more about HIPS Advocacy team and the work Tamika Spellman has been a part of, check out her HIPS staff biography here.

I’ll Be There Awards 2020 - Virtual Event
Wednesday, November 18th, 6:00 – 8:00 PM EST

Every year DC Jobs with Justice hosts the "I’ll Be There" awards, They are a chance to come together, honor some of the outstanding leaders in our work, and remind ourselves of our values as a community. It is their single largest event of the year, and their most important community gathering. This year, HIPS Advocacy Coordinator, Tamika Spellman, and will recognize powerful community leaders and campaigns that fight for justice in Washington, DC. Makia Green is a queer non-binary fat Black liberation organizer with Black Lives Matter DC and the DC Working Families Party. They are also a trainer for Momentum. Makia fights to abolish the prison state and end intra-community violence and wealth inequality by facilitating community dialogues, leading direct actions, and building coalitions.

Attend Virtual I'll Be There Awards

*this link will take you directly to the event zoom which will open on Wednesday at 5:50 PM

Drug Policy Alliance COVID Discussion Series: New Frontiers: Drug Use, Harm Reduction, and Essential Services in the Time of COVID-19 featuring HIPS Board Member, Dr. Andrea Lopez

6/25/2020

HIPS Board Member, Dr. Andrea Lopez joins Drug Policy Alliance for a discuss on harm reduction and essential activities during a pandemic. The COVID-19 environment complicates access to harm reduction services, but also provides new opportunities for innovation and advocacy at a time when these services are needed more than ever. Join advocates and allies in the drug policy reform and harm reduction movements to explore how COVID has impacted harm reduction services and practices in the community, examine novel models that could be replicated, discussing harm reduction in the context of mutual aid, and strategies to improve, and expand access in this moment. Join Zoom here.

Decriminalizing Sex Work and Drugs Central to Trans and LGBTQ+ Rights (Filter)

6/8/2020

Article by Jessica Martinez, HIPS Methamphetamine Services Specialist

The fight for sex workers’ rights has always been an inseparable part of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Similarly, the movement to end the War on Drugs and repair its harms is intimately tied to the economic and health prospects of sex workers, especially those of color and those of trans experience. During this unprecedented Pride Month, the first ever occurring during one of the worst global pandemics in history, it’s vital to acknowledge the ways that trans sex workers of color have led and continue to lead important campaigns to save our own lives in places like New York and the District of Columbia. [Read More]

How to Decarcerate DC Effectively (Medium)

5/7/2020

Article by:
Tamika Spellman, HIPS Advocacy & Policy Associate

This is a good way for DC to be a shining example for the country to aspire to if they get ahead of what could be a disaster in the making. Or we can continue doing the same thing policing the hell outta marginalized communities expecting different results. [Read Article]

"We have an opportunity to not only save lives by not allowing traumatic experiences to tarnish lives during and following this pandemic, but to change them for the better in the long run. Instead of policing the people to death, we can be proactive and give them a hand up during the pandemic that can last beyond the crisis."

A Call to Action: Establish DC’s First Safe Consumption Space (Medium)

4/6/2020

"Shane Sullivan, HIPS Community Outreach Specialist, wrote a piece on Medium about the need for Washington, DC's first safe consumption space. [Read More]

"Highlighting naloxone access within the past couple of years has forced us to acknowledge the painful reality that we’ve already lost so many DC residents to preventable overdoses. We need to name that for what it is: a systematic failure of people who use drugs, particularly those most vulnerable due to racism, poverty, disability, and related social factors."

D.C. clears longtime homeless encampment near Union Station (Washington Post)

1/16/2020

(Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Two blocks from the razed encampment, Jessica Kiaraliza Martinez, a homeless advocate with D.C.-based nonprofit HIPS, stood across the street from Kittie Kagona’s tent at its new M Street location. Kagona, who has lived along K Street for about two years, is hoping her days along NoMa’s underpasses are numbered. "We’re trying to make sure homeless people’s property isn’t destroyed,” Martinez said. “When you’ve lost everything, you deserve to have something. I feel like this is the city saying homeless people don’t deserve anything.” [Read Article]

Trans Women of Color Organizers Are Building a Movement to Decriminalize Sex Work in D.C. (Autostraddle)

12/13/2019

Article By:
NEESHA POWELL-TWAGIRUMUKIZA

Imagine you’ve grinded for years as a member of a community coalition to get a hearing for a historic bill that will drastically improve your life if passed. A hearing is finally granted, and when the big day arrives, you scramble to get your John Hancock at the top of the list to give testimony. Once the hearing begins, hours go by without your name being called. Although you signed up before them, representatives of organizations from other parts of the country and from other countries get their time at the mic before you. Worse, their speeches are denouncing the bill that you and other local grassroots organizers have put your blood, sweat, and tears into, labeling it harmful instead of helpful. This was our reality on October 17th's hearing date. [Read Article]

“A lot of the groups that worked with this movement were put at the trailing end of the hearing, and it was a 14-hour-plus hearing. Those voices should have been heard well ahead of them, and if anything, those that were from out-of-state should have been put at the end. Accommodating them because they’re from out-of-state made absolutely no sense to a movement that is local."

Tamika Spellman, HIPS Policy & Advocacy Associate

Tamika Spellman, Policy & Advocacy Associate at HIPS is interviewed (Black Women Radicals)

12/9/2019

FULL DECRIMINALIZATION IS FULL FREEDOM: TAMIKA SPELLMAN ON BELONGING AND TOWARDS BLACK SEX WORKER LIBERATION By Jamiee A. Swift

Tamika Spellman’s interview is a part of ‘Voices in Movement’ December 2019 theme, ‘On Belonging.’ To read the descriptor of ‘On Belonging’, please click here.
Trigger Words: Police violence, violence against women.

A pioneering activist and advocate, Tamika Spellman (she/her/hers) is leading a movement so that present and future Black and Brown sex workers in Washington, D.C., can truly know what full freedom and Belonging is and means in a world that tries to criminalize and control their bodily and political autonomy and agency. [Read Article]

Police Reports Raise Questions about MPD’s Tactics During Undercover Prostitution Stings (Washington City Paper)

10/17/2019

“Nefarious people look for the weakest link,” says Tamika Spellman, who is a policy and advocacy associate at the harm-reduction nonprofit HIPS and has been a sex worker by choice for more than 35 years. “And they know there’s a lack of concern for sex workers.” She analogizes the situation to mobsters killing people during Prohibition, or gun crime associated with marijuana—two industries that were very violent so long as they were illegal. “The root cause [of violence] is not the sex worker. It’s the crime that surrounds the sex worker. I’m not a violent person, but I’ve had a lot of violence happen to me,” Spellman says. “People are going to do what they’re going to do. So we can try to at least make them safe when they’re doing it.” [Read Article]

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