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About National Survivors Union (Formerly Urban Survivors Union (USU))

NSU started from the need of citizens to have control over their own bodies and to make their own decisions involving their safety and drug treatment. Our dedicated leadership team works hard to fight for drug user rights and challenges the harmful War on Drugs that destroys both lives and communities. We recognize that with compassion, support, and harm reduction strategies, people can make the best decisions for themselves and life their best lives.

Leadership Team

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Shilo Jama

Board Member at Large, he is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Peoples Harm Reduction Alliance and the founder of Urban Survivors Union both locally in Seattle and Nationally in the United States; two of the most daring and innovative Harm Reduction organizations in the country. He successfully implemented both a crack and methamphetamine pipe exchange in Seattle, Washington and is working to open the first Drug Consumption Room in the United States.
shilo@urbansurvivorsunion.org

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Isaac Jackson, PhD

Isaac Jackson is a community organizer and cultural worker. In the 1980’s, he was a founding member of "Blackheart: A Journal of Writing and Graphics" by black gay men. Joesph Beam, Assotto
Saint and other writers were published for the first time in Blackheart.
info@urbansurvivorsunion.org

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Louise Vincent, MPH

Leadership team member of National Survivors Union (NSU), founder and executive director of North Carolina Survivors Union (the first drug user union in the US south and a key USU chapter), and a Harm Reduction Consultant for North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition. Louise is a dedicated harm reductionist who intimately understands the consequences of ineffective drug prevention and treatment programs.
louise@urbansurvivorsunion.org

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Robert Suarez

Robert Suarez is the National Coordinator for NSU and an Anti-Racism Consultant with NCSU. He acted as facilitator for the West Virginia action, leading both the candlelight vigil and the die in with his powerful and captivating vocal direction.
robert@urbansurvivorsunion.org

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Dinah Ortiz

Dinah dedicates most of her time advocating to end the stigma faced by drug users. For over ten years, she has advocated for marginalized parents in a variety of contexts. She has appeared on dozens of panels nationwide to discuss the racial disparities in the child welfare system as well as educate doctors, lawyers, and social workers on Harm reduction methods to better serve and save lives.
ortizdinah@gmail.com

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Caty Simon

Caty Simon is the Sex Worker Liaison for Urban Survivors Union. She is a small town activist, writer, escort, and dilettante in Western Massachusetts who has long worked on the intersection between sex work and drug use. Since 2013, she's been the co-editor of Tits and Sass, a national media site by and for sex workers, and is co-organizer of "Whose Corner Is It Anyway," a Western Massachusetts harm reduction, mutual aid, and political education organizing group by and for low-income, street-based, and survival sex workers who inject drugs.
caty@urbansurvivorsunion.org

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Aaron Ferguson

Aaron is on the Leadership team of the National Survivors Union and is its Methadone Liaison. Aaron co-produces Narcotica, a show about drugs and the people who use them, and Naturally Noncompliant, a show about people who stand in line and fight for safe supply. Much of what Aaron knows about drug use and Harm Reduction was learned during 15 years of growing up on the streets of Northern  California after he escaped the “Children of God”, a child sex trafficking cult that his parents cofounded and led. Aaron went through Navy SEAL training and is a post 911 military veteran. Traveling to over 30 countries and living in several European ones as a dual citizen showed Aaron that the US has a particularly barbaric way of dealing with people who use drugs. Having received a Bachelors degree in Social Work—and after spending two decades interpreting and participating in research—Aaron believes that the best way to combat the stigma he sees as the cause of millions of drug deaths, is for drug users to organize and fight for human rights. 

 

Aaron’s work is published in several academic journals and publications and his podcast is available on all good platforms. Aaron wants be part of a revolution toward seeing people who use drugs as humans seeking everyday happiness, rather than immoral or diseased subjects, and he thinks that doing this will require letting go of traditional ideas about addiction and recovery. 2Aaron is a happily married father of 3 who encourages skepticism, reason and science as the paths to enlightenment. When Aaron is not working, he enjoys running marathons, producing music, responsible drug use, scuba diving, attending popping battles, reading everything in sight, and most of all spending quality time with his wife and kids.   

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Mark Kinzly

Mark Kinzly was the recipient of the 2017 Drug Policy Alliance Dr. Andrew Weil Award for Achievement in the Field of Drug Education. He was on the Board of Directors for the National Harm Reduction Coalition. Mr. Kinzly was co-founder of the Texas Overdose Naloxone Initiative (TONI). He was on the
advisory board for content of the online overdose training site GETNALOXONENOW.ORG. He also served on the Community
Advisory Committee and Executive Committee at Yale’s Center for

Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS.
 

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TerL Gleason

TerL Gleason is part of the LGBTQ+ community, has lived with HIV for almost thirty years, was cured of Hepatitis C in 2015 after living with the virus for twenty-seven years, and is a drug user. Through
education, training, and solidarity with community members, TerL has managed to created positive change in his home state of NC for those who have less and are discriminated against. TerL is the founding member and executive director of Advocacy House Services located in his hometown of Greensboro, NC.

terlpgleason@yahoo.com

About Us: Team Members
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