March 06, 2024
Provided Image/Savage Sisters
Savage Sisters founder Sarah Laurel, center, and other members of the harm reduction group protest pushback to their efforts. The nonprofit offers drug overdose reversal trainings, street medicine and outreach services to those in addiction throughout Philadelphia.
Outreach workers who offer wound care, clean syringes and other services to drug users in Kensington are under fire by a faction in City Council – and those in favor of maintaining these harm reduction measures are rallying in protest.
Councilmember Quetcy Lozada spearheaded the formation of the "Kensington Caucus," a group of councilmembers who are taking aim at the addiction crisis in the neighborhood. The caucus has said it will create "triage centers" that would funnel people with substance use disorders from Kensington's streets into treatment or incarceration.
Mayor Cherelle Parker issued an executive order upon taking office in January, declaring a public safety emergency and appointing a deputy police commissioner to address Kensington's open-air drug market – one of the largest in the country. Parker also has praised a series of Lozada's resolutions passed recently by City Council as addressing the kind of "social ills" that "erode quality of life in neighborhoods across our city," including "illegal drug activity."
However, staff and volunteers at some of Philadelphia's harm reduction organizations and people who favor the public health method of meeting people with substance use disorders "where they are" – treating them with respect and offering them safe supplies and practical strategies to help reduce "negative consequences associated with drug use" – worry that a law and order approach to dealing with the city's addiction crisis will only make it worse. They are rallying at City Hall from 8-11 a.m. Thursday.
Philadelphia had a record 1,413 drug overdose deaths in 2022, according to the city's department of public health. Nationwide, deaths from drug overdoses reached an all-time high of 112,000 for a 12-month period in 2023, statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
Last month, Lozada posted a widely circulated reel on social media with Kensington Caucus members – also including Jim Harrity, Mike Driscoll and Mark Squilla – wearing baseball jackets emblazoned with their "team" name. Lozada and the caucus also urged a landlord to yank the Kensington Avenue lease on its nonprofit harm-reduction tenant, Savage Sisters, saying in a statement that "this neighborhood can no longer be the home of an open-air drug market nor organizations that encourage that market to thrive."
Savage Sisters runs a group of trauma-informed recovery houses in South Philadelphia, conducts outreach and overdose reversal training across the city and uses its storefront in part to keep supplies, offer wound care and let people experiencing homelessness use the bathroom and shower.
Savage Sisters also connects drug users to treatment, founder Sarah Laurel said, adding that cutting back on harm reduction services in Kensington "will have huge financial consequences and public health consequences to the community" through a spike in infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, which can spread through shared needle use and are costly to treat. Laurel said it also would cause a rise in fatal overdoses.
"The two illegal markets down here are the drug trade and the sex trade and the people who patronize these markets are not from Kensington," said Laurel, who lives in the neighborhood. "This ecosystem of drug sales takes place alongside the community, so you cannot demonize one subset of this drug market."
By claiming that the people that Savage Sisters and other harm reduction groups serve is causing most of the problems in the area, "you're not focusing on the hundreds per day, at minimum, of people who come from outside to 'cop and roll' – and they're soliciting the drug trade and the sex trade," Laurel said.
Increasing arrests of low-level drug offenders "puts an extreme burden on the police system and the prison system," she added.
"It is true that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem or any problem for that matter," Lozada said in an email. "But it seems that since we came to this conclusion, we've also begun to ignore the problems that exist and because of that they have gotten worse.
"... To be clear, arresting and enforcing the law is not the tool that will solve everything on its own, but it is a tool that we will need to use."
Lozada wrote that she supported the "practice of harm reduction and the providers. However, organizations who are providing these services need to be respectful and conscious neighbors to the other businesses and people who call Kensington home. I believe that this work can be done without causing additional trauma to others."
Lozada did not immediately clarify what she meant by "trauma."
The mayor's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Jose Castillo, who is in recovery and who knows what it is like to be homeless in Kensington, said access to a shower and bathroom – such as the ones Savage Sisters will keep providing at its storefront until its lease is up – offers people a bit of normalcy and "hope," giving them back some of the dignity that life on the street and stigma so often takes away.
"It makes them think a little bit, like, 'Hey, maybe I don't want to be here anymore,'" said Castillo, who now works for Savage Sisters.
Castillo said interacting with people from the nonprofit and other outreach groups, "gave me hope. Knowing that there was a big recovery community, and seeing people with a kind heart – that definitely opened my eyes" – and inspired him to seek treatment.
Laurel said Savage Sisters will continue its harm reduction work across the city out of mobile vans. It already has outfitted at least one RV with a bathroom and shower.
"At the end of the day, our work is not going to stop," Castillo said.
Despite the push-back from the new administration, Rosalind Pichardo, who was born and raised in Kensington, will offer people with substance use disorders, who may also be living on the neighborhood's streets, the chance to received messages and call loved ones at the "Sunshine House" that she is in the process of opening on Kensington Avenue. Pichardo also will conduct gun violence prevention and overdose reversal training there.
Pichardo is a survivor of an attempted homicide who also has lost loved ones to gun violence. She has made a career of doing trauma-informed work with families of homicide victims and people with substance use disorders through her nonprofit Operation Save Our City, her advocacy at Temple University Hospital and her street outreach.
People know Pichardo as "Mama Sunshine," a nickname she earned years ago after witnessing a public overdose death and praying, "I hope you're at peace now, sunshine."
Calling people sunshine "kind of stuck," Pichardo said.
She said she is attending the rally because she wants people to "understand that you can't arrest people for being sick.
"We need to all sit at the table and learn from each other … to see what we can do so we can combat this altogether," Pichardo said. "I want to keep people alive long enough so that they can return to their families."
Lozada said she has a meeting scheduled with Prevention Point Philadelphia, the city's oldest syringe exchange – a nonprofit on Kensington Avenue that also offers medical and other services to people in addiction. Prevention Point officials declined to comment.
"We are open to meeting with anyone who feels they have viable solutions that will lead to improving quality of life for all," Lozada said.
