Opioid overdose is a byproduct of institutionalized racial violence. In 2018, CRA launched an aggressive opioid overdose expansion initiative. It addresses institutional racism and structural violence by focusing on community care and resilience and preventing the trauma of avoidable overdose deaths.
No one in the history of the world has done more to prevent opioid overdose death than Dan Bigg. At CRA’s event on on International Overdose Awareness Day 2018, several attendees stopped by our “video voice booth” to share their remembrances of history’s greatest overdose warrior.
Dear Friends, Colleagues, Collaborators, Funders, and Community Partners:
With a mixture of sadness and optimism, I’d like to let you know that the Chicago Recovery Alliance has established an interim leadership team. Greg Scott will serve as the Interim Executive Director with considerable support from Associate Directors Karen Stanczykiewicz and Suzanne Carlberg-Racich. I (Maya Doe-Simkins) will be temporarily stepping into Greg’s former role of Director of Media & Communications.
Dan Bigg, activist, visionary, and harm reduction pioneer, died on Tuesday, August 21, 2018. In this episode of the Narcotica podcast Zach Siegel interviews journalist Max Blau, who has been researching the history of naloxone, about Bigg’s radical legacy.
Tessie Castillo: When I think of Dan Bigg, I think of Santa Claus — not a jolly, red-suited figure of lore who delivers tricycles and wooden horse rockers to children, but an edgy, swearing, fingers-in-the-air Santa Claus whose gifts were the gifts of life.
Steve Kamenicky, known on the street as “Ponytail Steve,” is fully aware of the harsh truths about the opioid epidemic having been a heroin addict for four decades. Now that he’s kicked the habit, he helps addicts gain access to a drug called naloxone.
For those addicted to heroin or other opiates, naloxone can mean the difference between life and death.
