This book tells a story about community activism in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES) that culmi-nated in a social justice movement to open the first official safe injection site. This story is unique: it is told from the point of view of drug users – those most affected by drug policy, political decisions and policing. It provides a montage of poetry, photos, early Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) meetings, journal entries from the Back Alley, the “unofficial” safe injection site, and excerpts from significant health and media reports. The harms of prohibition, and resistance, hope, kindness, awakening and collective action are chronicled in these pages.

raise shit

we have become a community of prophets in the downtown eastside
rebuking the system
and speaking hope and possibility into situations
of apparent impossibility

to raise shit is to actively resist
and we resist with our presence
with our words
with our love
with our courage

by Bud Osborn