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Dr. Orisha “Dr. O.” Bowers led the charge for many people in the Memphis area to become involved in HIV advocacy. Today, she teaches us how to center our harm reduction work on humanity.
Host Marvell Terry II engages in insightful conversations with activists, community leaders, stakeholders and elected government officials about their response to the HIV epidemic in their communities across the South. This podcast is intended to communicate with decision makers on how to realign, redevelop and reimagine the South’s approach to address the HIV epidemic. This podcast is aimed at community stakeholders, funders, and those making a difference in their local community. Our listeners will hear from leaders what informs and sustains their work, and how they have responded to the HIV epidemic.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Dr. Orisha Bowers is the executive director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition. Moreover, she is a lifelong advocate and activist dedicated to the liberation of black people of all walks of life and their health and humanity. Dr. O, as she is affectionately known, is a mother of three and loving grandmother of one, as well as a spiritual mother to many nieces and nephews, sons and daughters in the community. Please help me welcome Dr. Bowers to reimagine the response podcast. How are you?
Dr Orisha Bowers (00:41):
I am blessed and highly favored.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yes, yes.
Dr Orisha Bowers (00:45):
It's a good old southern response.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
That is an amazing southern response. Talking about that southern response, what does being blessed and highly favored mean to you in the context of black liberation?
Dr Orisha Bowers (01:02):
When I say blessed and highly favored, honestly, I think about here I am a black girl from South Memphis who had many people to take out time to teach me stuff that I didn't know, to take a chance on me when they weren't sure, and they wouldn't quite know who can talk in the boardroom, who can talk on the corner in the crack house, who can speak to those who have more degrees than a thermometer and who can speak to those who don't have a degree at all. I'm blessed to be in a place and have a platform to do that, and I'm favored to be trusted to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Wow. When I looked at your bio and many of our listeners heard about your work, and at the end of the bio you mentioned many sons and daughters in the community, and I don't affectionately call myself one of your sons, but my initial work began around you in Memphis, Tennessee doing HIV testing, round white meetings, you taking me to the corners, you exposing me to a different context. You were able to show me how data lived. You read in textbooks around the impact of HIV and our community and we see presentations at conferences, but under your tutelage, I was able to go see community. Where does that drive come from in you? Where does that passion for community come from?
Dr Orisha Bowers (02:52):
Honestly, it comes from a long line of black women preachers. My great-grandmother was a missionary in the country in Somerville, Tennessee, and she was doing that work when women were not considered capable or even allowed to be in community, but she would go from house to house and preach, and she was very instrumental in helping my mother to find her ministry calling. And so I learned it, honestly learned how to do that from a very young age, from my mother and my grandmother about how to really, what we say, meet people where they are, but what they meant was go to where they are. Don't always expect people to come to you. Don't be afraid of people. Don't be afraid to embrace people and really try to meet them heart to heart. And so when I first stepped into HIV work, there was a person who was present at that time that was living with HIV, which I didn't know diddly squat really about HIV.
(04:05):
I just wanted to do something helpful and that person asked me, "Do you really want to learn about this stuff?" And from that moment to this moment, I still do my work according to their first teaching to me was, let me show you how people actually live with HIV. So they took me to get their food bags, they took me around. And so that is how I learned to embody that approach of take people to where they need to go and show them how to meet people heart to heart. So it's kind of those two things that I kind of live by. Those are my values on their feet, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I hear you talk about your grandmother and your mother, both proclaimers of the gospel in and out of the four walls. But who are your people when you think about where you come from and who you fight for, who would you say your people are?
Dr Orisha Bowers (05:11):
Honestly, my people are young people who want to learn. They are the people who we're doing activism and advocacy work before there was a plaque or an article in the paper. They are the people who were in the hospital rooms before there was a lot of access to Ryan White. They are people living with HIV back when I first started doing this work, they were the nameless people. And even though I have crossed over many different movements being reproductive justice, harm reduction, reproductive health, had reproductive rights, I've run the gamut. My people are always the people who are not in the conversation, but trust me to say what they can't say and go where they can't go. Those are my people. That's who I fight for.
(06:13):
And lastly, I mentioned I'm a mother and so I do this work because I will never see the world that I want them to have access to. I'm going to be dead and gone, but I want my granddaughter to have the things that she needs to be the kind of person that I am helping to raise her to be, somebody who has a voice, somebody who is unafraid, unapologetic, because they don't have to be, right. They can just live and just do wonderful things and have all of what they need to be able to do. So those are my people. That's who I do this for because why be alive if you not going to do nothing?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
You're the newly minted executive director of the National Heart Reduction Coalition. First, congratulations on that role. How will your personality influence how you will take this organization to the next level?
Dr Orisha Bowers (07:18):
Quite honestly, as you mentioned, I'm a southern girl all the way through and through. One of the things, one of my personal pet peeves about any work is centering humanity, right. So for me, one of the things that I noticed was absent in the work or that tends to be degraded in the work is southern charm, checking on people, asking somebody and really wanting to know how they're doing.
(07:52):
Sometimes in the south, people feel like we take a long time to get to the point, but I feel like in those sort of ebbs and flows and things like that, that's where you really get to know people. And so you have to take up time intentionally and on purpose. And I feel like because of my culture as a southern person, I got time today. I can take a walk through the lilies and through the tulips to hear about your life and your children, your grandchildren, and your knee hurts, and all of those things and it doesn't bother me because that's what I come from. How you doing? How you feeling, how your mama doing? And that's a thing that you find in the south. That's what I think I bring to movement building is that ability to slow down and listen.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
What is harm reduction and what is a living working definition for harm reduction?
Dr Orisha Bowers (08:55):
The short version of a long story is harm reduction is meeting people where they are, but it's not leaving them there. It is finding ways to bring people alone with you on the path to liberation. So it is finding out from them what it is that they are, what it is that's their priority, what their need is, and really slowing down to help coach people, not tell them what the answer is, they have the answer. Believing that people have the answers to their solutions, to their own needs within them and being a coach, a mentor, somebody, their wing woman, whatever it is to them to help them find those things for themselves.
(09:51):
And so for me, harm reduction is about helping people unearth what's already in them. They know the answers. It might take us a minute to get there. We might get off the expressway to stop for gas, but it's getting back, how do I help you get back on the pathway to your own liberation? And knowing that you have that expertise, not thinking it, believing it, but knowing you'll find the answer. It's already there. I just have to give you a little support and a little accountability partnership to keep on digging.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So oftentimes when we hear about harm reduction, it is a very limited conversation around substance use or sex. Could you give us some insight on the many, I believe areas when we talk about harm reduction, what areas would that cover in our lives when we talk about harm reduction?
Dr Orisha Bowers (10:58):
So I love this question by the way. I think that when we think about the principles of harm reduction, it allows us to see it as a harm reduction or a human rights frame. So if we think of these things, these principles as human rights, then we relieve ourselves of the baggage of focusing on an area, right. If I believe that drug use is complex, it is a spectrum, drug use is a spectrum, and I can be anywhere on that spectrum on any given day, then that means that I can embrace abstinence, I can embrace treatment, I can embrace managed use, I can embrace all of those things, right. So for me, I think of harm reduction as a way of life, as the principles of harm reduction, as sort of the key that unlocks the gate for us to walk through harm reduction in every area of our life, right.
(12:08):
So if I take that very simple phrase of meet people where they are, and now I apply that to working at the grocery store, then that means I can understand the person that's got to count pennies at the counter, and I can understand the person that's got the black card that is not checking the price tags because I'm available for both folks without judgment. So for me, harm reduction, if we look at it as a philosophy and a way of life, then it can be applied to any area of our life. If I'm thinking about reducing the harm in somebody's life or harms that may come to them, it's not limited to their usage or their sex or their anything. It's put your seatbelt on, it's wear your glasses because you know you can't see without them, you can think outside of this sort of cage that we put harm reduction. And it becomes a toolbox for real as opposed to just these strategies.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
One of the things that I wanted to, in my experience, I worked in Atlanta for a coalition around harm reduction. And one thing we would do was set up at this abandoned house to give out clean needles. And one thing I observed was I was fascinated because sometimes working at HIV, you don't see the side around those who use needles, that's a totally different space. So right. For me, I was in a very new space and I saw not only those who were highly insecure, but I saw those drive up in limousines and got out in Louis Vuitton and Coach and everything was leveled in their moment. Everybody was there for Narcan and clean needles, and this particular organization had some bread and some snacks on the table and things like that. For me, that moment opened up my eyes and I really felt that there needed to be some cross movement training.
(14:31):
Because as a person who primarily had worked only in HIV condoms, how to put a condom or all that stuff, you taught me going into community, I saw a very different space and it opened my eyes. How do you feel about movements merging together or the need for multiple movements to begin to now focus on the whole person?
Dr Orisha Bowers (14:57):
Absolutely. I wholeheartedly support cross or intersectional movement building. And the reason for that, if Covid has not taught us anything else, besides the fact that we need to wash our hands, if Covid has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that we are vulnerable in ways that we may not be thinking about, right. And what you're describing is like, okay, this is the great equalizer. Everybody is here for safety, whatever that looks like. And so for me, it is about recognizing that people are multilayered, multifaceted, and they are intersectional in life. We don't have the luxury anymore of focusing on one issue because people are more complex than that. And so if you really break down, meet you where you are, you come up with a number of needs. So yes, it is time for the faith community to be there to talk about spirituality, not just doctrine.
(16:11):
What is it? Jesus fed the people first, then he was preaching, but at first he broke up the bread. You know what I'm saying? So we have to think in that same way, what is the need that is coming first? I can get to this other part, but before I get to that, I have to get to your immediate needs, that's how people work. We're complex in that we have a multitude of needs, but you got to get the basics first. And so having the food sandwiches on the table, having the toiletries, one thing I learned from working with grantees and the Help Connect program was that when Covid happened, rapid response wasn't just going to people who injected drugs, we were paying light bills for people, we were passing out toiletry bags to people. People needed groceries, people needed access to mental health.
(17:09):
People needed all kinds of things that, and they needed the condoms and they needed the syringe exchange supplies. They needed referrals for domestic violence. All of these different myriads of needs came up. And our responses, NHRC was you tell us what the needs are that people are coming to you with and we'll provide you with the resources, as opposed to trying to stay focused on only harm reduction supplies. We had to widen our definition of what rapid response meant, and again, put that back in the hands of the community to meet the needs of the people that were showing up at their program. So for me, what you're describing is we have to be more open to that. What are the people who are coming through that door saying that they need? And if you don't know, it's because you haven't asked.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Now let's take a break for today's policy note.
(18:14):
Today's policy note. From the very beginning of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s, black and brown folks experienced with HIV were diminished and under reported. Popular narratives that suggest that HIV was a white gay man's disease rapidly gained traction as the world learned of this novel and at this time, deadly disease. And the fact that black and brown experiences with the HIV epidemic was minimized is not by accident. The legacy of white supremacy and anti-blackness in the United States ensure that persons through accident of birth, benefit from white centric public policy responses to the epidemic and that black people will be left behind. This is why black and brown communities have been decimated by the HIV epidemic, and this legacy is unacceptable. We recognize that these policies affect effort. However, we recognize that these policy efforts have now been enough to end the epidemics disproportionate impact on black and brown communities.
(19:30):
In keeping with the legacy of HIV activism, the HIV field has been engaging conversations on how to organize and mobilize amongst ourselves and in concert with our policy stakeholders on how to thoroughly integrate racial justice into our nation's HIV response. In consultation with our nearly 60 member public policy council, Age United began the process of creating a racial justice index in 2020. This index is a tool to measure how responsive HIV organizations across the United States are in addressing racial justice in their respective work.
(20:12):
In the coming weeks, we will launch this index to our public policy council. This index is not designed to be the typical DEI assessment to measure if organizations hire and retain a diverse workforce. This index is designed to assess if organizational cultures are designed to support existing staff of color, determine if organizations support black and brown community leadership and meaningful engage and partnerships with black and brown LED community based organizations. There have been notable public policy efforts to address the racial disparities that exist in HIV care and treatment. In 1998, the Minority Aid Initiative was created to strengthen organizational and grass root responses to end the HIV epidemic and to account to allocate funding specifically for HIV services and communities of color. Furthermore, the most recent iteration of the national HIV and AIDS strategy plans identified the need for expanding specific funding opportunities to black and brown communities.
(21:35):
Welcome back to today's episode. There is a film I saw a couple years ago called Party Boy Black Diamonds and Ice Castles by colleague of mine, Michael Rice. And when we looked at this film, we saw, I believe, based out of New York, how black gay men, I like to say, use and abused, and I don't think that they're the same person. They can be the same person, but I don't think because I use, that I am abusing. And so I like to approach these conversations, one, acknowledging that I know that my brothers and my peers are using and I recognize coming out of COVID and the isolation that is happening, we need to increase our conversation around the use of substances. Not to demonize, not to criminalize, but to provide you with the resources that you need to live a healthy life. What work will HRC your organization and what work do you see that you all will develop or are developing around black gay men or black men who have sex with men as it relates to substances and harm reduction?
Dr Orisha Bowers (22:54):
It's a big question, but it's one that we get often. Our perspective is always going to be begin in community with the people who you want to have an impact on. And so we are constantly in a listening mode. We see ourselves as being a beacon of resources to folks in community to be able to again, have the resources, the training, the education that they need to be able to go back to their community and do the work that's necessary to reach and help the community.
(23:29):
And so our perspective is always going to be, what do you see in your community as the issue? And how can we help you to get in a position to be able to affect change, whether that be through our grant making work, we continue to make grants to low barrier grants to organizations, and we don't require [inaudible 00:23:53] if you can have a fiscal... We try to make things accessible from that space, to be able to put real money in the hands of people in the community who are already doing this, right, because we don't assume that people are not doing this work. They may be paying for it out of their own wallets and purses.
(24:13):
And so we try to do that for folks in community. We also try to provide information and resources around developing trainings and learning materials for folks who want to continue to learn best practices around harm reduction. So we are offering technical assistance. If your organization or you as an individual want to start a syringe exchange program, we are there to help teach you how to do that. If you need access to community partners that we know of who are already in your community, we try to make those linkages. We are very well connected to other funding partners like AGE United, like Homer Foundation, like Compass, all of the other collective groups of folks who are also working in the grant making space in a technical assistance space, NASDA, all of these different entities to make sure that if we are not the right person to get you the information you need, we can connect you to the right people to get the information you need.
(25:18):
And so that is how we continue to strive to be responsive. As people come to us with different needs, we often try to direct people to support. We try to convene spaces like the conferences and the convenings, the virtual office hours. All of those efforts are our way of trying to meet people at their place of need. Because of Covid is very difficult to get to all of the communities and to get in real time with people. So we try to use technology to make ourselves available. And so those are ways that we see ourselves continuing to support community, specifically the black gay community.
(26:08):
We have folks on our staff who are a part of the community, but we try to tap in where it's appropriate, right, for us to work in community and work in community with people in community, if that's a way of expressing it, so that we're not taking up space where we don't need to be because there's a difference between a national organization and a local organization. So we try not to take up space where we're not supposed to. We try to empower, use our resources to empower, but also influence folks in the community to support local efforts so that we are leveraging where we can, but also stepping back when we need to.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Good. In that response, you talked about conferences and trainings, and I know that you have a national conference coming up in Puerto Rico, the National Harm Reduction Conference. I know that you're freshly new in your position, but is there anything exciting to look forward to? Or is there anything that you put Dr. Os flare on it at the conference, right? What did you put your stamp on when it comes to that space?
Dr Orisha Bowers (27:27):
So the good thing about this question is prior to becoming the executive director, I was the national conference director. So when I think about, what did I put my stamp on, I have to say my stamp is on the conference itself. We have a model that we use when we are organizing our conference that is longstanding. This is our 13th conference. However, my Doctor O Stamp is really about collaborations and partnerships, which are really a strong suit for me. I consider myself to be a relationship architect. So I reached out to people across movements to break in our reproductive justice friends to do some lunch and learn with folks around harm reduction and reproductive justice. I reached out to the academic community to be able to provide CEU credits for our academics and our professionals and our clinicians and those folks. However, we also have what's called good old fashioned professional development where folks will be able to just count the conference as a part of their professional development.
(28:38):
We really centered black and brown folks in the conference in a way that we've done in the past, but sort of amping it up a little bit more to really get the voices of community on the program. And if you go to the conference website, you will see the agenda is posted and we try to curate something for everybody, for our academics, our researchers, our grassroots folks, we have the federal partners, SAMSA, CDC, the VA, for those folks to come and listen, but also for them to be heard. We have the philanthropy community come in to talk about funding and how to access funding and all of those things. We have the young people coming to do the youth and harm reduction kickback. We have members of the local community coming in to bring in local challenges. We're talking about the south and the deep south.
(29:42):
We have the harm reduction international and folks like that. So we try to do what we normally do, but enhance it for, like you said, your stamp. I wanted to enhance it to include that intersectional movement. One thing I want to point out in relationship to the United States Conference on HIV and AIDS is we did a bilateral exchange. So I'll be doing a harm reduction institute at the USCHA and they'll be doing technical assistance institute for our conference. So we really try to intermingle with all of our constituents. We try to integrate local community. We have a healing space that has everything from a squirt out class to a labyrinth and a silent grief circle, just all of the things and all of the ways to have as much as we could pour into people, because we haven't been together in four years in person.
(30:47):
But this is a pivotal moment for us as the harm reduction movement and the HIV movement. We are realizing that there is a lot of cross ties in our work, and as we continue to see new infections and overdoses continuing to go up, we got to do something different. We got to reimagine our response to that and we can't do it separately, got to do it together.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
My last two questions, Dr. O is, one, if you could reimagine the response to HIV, if you had this magic wand, how would you reimagine how we are responding to HIV in the south? And the second question is, your gift of dance and the dance of celebration that you have, how will that heal healers going forward?
Dr Orisha Bowers (31:43):
Ooh, two really good questions. So I will start with the latter. The gifts of dance or dance and movement, I should say more so than dance, movement is something that we start doing on a cellular level, right. From the moment that we are released from glory into glory, use your imagination, we are moving in the cellular state, we are energy in the cellular state. And so that is something that we are all born with. Even a person that's paralyzed can move without... There's still movement. There's still movement happening. Their heart is pumping, their lungs are moving, even though their limbs may not be moving. And so I always invite people from that space to think about movement as a form of liberation. Even if you are locked up in jail and in solitary confinement where there's nothing but you and air and opportunity in that space, you can be free.
(32:53):
And for me, I liken that to harm reduction that you may be on anywhere on that spectrum of use, but with the right resources and the right tools and the right mind frame, you can be free. Whether you're using for pleasure or whether you're using chaotically, you can still be free. It's just about having the resources that you need. In terms of how would I reimagine, and I tried to write this down because I believe the Lord gave it to me, but when you sent me this title, I started thinking about the words reimagine our response. Well, what is re? Re is a prefix meaning it comes before, right. So it's a prefix with the meaning again.
(33:47):
Or it indicates some kind of repetition, meaning we got to do something over and over again. So re imagine means for me, to do over again our mental image of what it means to be a person who uses drugs, a person who is living with HIV, a person, a person, a person, a person, a person. No matter how they come, they're still a person. And we have to see over again, every person that comes to us, not whatever happened before or whatever we think or whatever we got going on, but who do you see? You got re see every person that comes to you. Then also I thought about response. What in the world does response mean? It's the act of reacting. So not only do I need to re see each person anew, but I have to react anew every time. It's a different person. So my reaction can't be the same identical.
(34:57):
Just like my thumb has a fingerprint and yours has one, they not the same. So I can put my thumb on that device all day on your phone and it's not going to open. We can't do that with people either. We have to close your eyes and reopen them again and see that each individual. But lastly, it made me think about some additional words like reevaluate. Evaluate means it's a systematic determination or an assessment. How are we reassessing? How are we redetermining what we're going to do or how we're going to do it? Vision. Vision means the state of being able to see. So how are you re-seeing the problem, the challenge, how are we seeing substance use today in 2022, not 25 years ago? That prefix says it all. What comes before you start doing stuff, that's where the work is.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
That's good. That's good. Each episode we like to dedicate it to a community or a group of individuals, and I feel like today's episode will be dedicated to survivors of substance use and abuse survivors who are trying to change their own space and their own community. And so we uplift survivors, but we also don't want to leave out those who are actively struggling and own that, because sometimes in acknowledging the mountain, we forget about the valley. And so right now we dedicate this episode to those who are surviving and we dedicate this to those who are actively working through whatever they need to work through. For those that are working through steel, Dr. O, could you close us out with any resource or one particular resource for someone to call if they're working through substance abuse?
Dr Orisha Bowers (37:07):
Absolutely. Any person who is working through something, I encourage you to give NHIC A call. Reach out to us through our social media. We're on Twitter, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram. Reach out to us. We have more degrees than a thermometer. All of us have some form of lived experience or a connection to lived experience. Many of the folks who are a part of our coalition, many our community partners have resources. All we need to know is where you are so that we can help connect you to the people in your local area who can assist you. But the first thing is reach out to us. Those of us who understand and who value the act of taking a step, we want to make sure we start in the right place because referrals can get real dicey. So that's why I'm saying reach out to us and we can definitely help you to navigate and find what it is that you may need or someone who can help you navigate to find what you need in your moment of me.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Dr. O, thank you so much for your time today.
Dr Orisha Bowers (38:25):
Thank you for having me. And it's good to see your face.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Good to see you too. Thank you for listening to Reimagine the Response podcast. Please listen and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast.