Not So Harmless: Who, what is behind "RGV Harm Reduction"?
From vanishing like a thief in the night after LGBTQ home imploded, Sarah Chavez is creeping her way back into politics, by enabling drug use, pocketing dark money.
After years of living next to the university and going for walks on most evenings, I’d never once seen syringes around campus, and neither had the university officers I waved down to inform of the hazard. Littered syringes, a novel harm to Edinburg, are also a tell-tale sign of “harm reduction” coming into a city. I’d been working on this story well before stumbling upon this apparently used syringe last Thursday, during my constitutional evening walk, without anticipation. I’d actually just thought, only moments before, that I would have to visit Archer Park (known for its homeless population and being a distribution point for “harm reduction kits”) to find one in the wild. But no! All I needed to do was take a few steps outside my front door. This served to remind me that if there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing journalism the last ten years is that that you know you’re on the right track when reality begins conspiring with your thesis and hypotheses.
What on Earth is ‘Harm Reduction’? And Isn’t it Telling that it Needs to be Stated?
“Harm reduction”1 is one of liberal capitalism’s favorite new buzz words. It claims that providing (usually homeless) drug addicts with sanitized syringes and ‘anti-overdose’ medication “reduces harm.” Many (mostly unemployed activists) around the globe, today, deploy this paraphernalia, arguing it prevents overdose deaths and reduces the spread of HIV.
With a more honorable beginning as a response to AIDS deaths in the 1980s, resulting in needle-exchange programs which are no longer the focus, even some of the surviving anti-AIDS activists from the period have noted recently that their movement has evolved into something completely different, than from what it was back then.2 A sea of politicized “research”, by universities jumping on grants for studies favorable to so-called harm reduction, floods research databases, which in turn backs the foot-soldiers on the ground “citing the research.”3
While anti-overdose medications may “reverse” overdoses, when administered correctly and on time, and while sanitized needles may prevent HIV cases, such occurrences are anecdotal and statistically insignificant. They don’t factor-in, for example, the untold amounts of new users created by the free distribution of drug supplies, a concern often dismissed by “harm reduction” proponents, just as they dismiss the well-documented resulting crime waves4 and increased drug deaths.5 Another harm added to society is proliferation of littered syringes, as shown above.
Although some claim “harm reduction goes hand-in-hand with pathways to sobriety,” in theory, many discourage it as an option, in practice.6 Their preferred catchphrase is “use safely,” foregoing sobriety, inculcating defeatism. Although “neutrality” is claimed officially by harm reduction groups, they encourage drug use either way, much like how abortion is positively considered to be a ‘high virtue’ by these same elements, who in other arenas would angrily dismiss the “choice” of lovingly bearing children.7 It’s therefore no wonder that, much like “harm reduction,” the fundamental right of a woman to have an abortion is likewise treated by liberal capitalists and activists as an answer to economic family hardships, as it was in the Soviet Union under Stalin, rather than being just one of the choices women have, as it should be, and as it was under Lenin.8
Being that “scientific studies” on “harm reduction” are highly politicized, one has only to rely on good ole empiricism played out in the arena of democracy, in places where harm reduction policies get enacted. Like in Oregon, where in 2020 a successful ballot measure decriminalized the use of heroin and fentanyl, establishing addiction “treatment” centers to “help” users.9 By 2022, drug use in rural Eagle’s Pass had risen by 700%, while overdose deaths rose by 120%.10 Similar phenomena has been observed in metropolitan cities, like San Francisco.11
Above all, this approach to drug addiction (a serious issue that concerns us all) is reactionary. It fails to explain how drug-addiction is caused by the capitalist system’s social relations. Unable to ameliorate these inane conditions, liberal capitalists slap-on the “harm reduction” band aid, as a stand-in for real progress.
And while undoubtedly true that harm reduction “enables” drug use (something proponents vehemently object to), this is actually the least one can say about it. Enabling is when you give somebody money that you know will probably, in all likelihood, be used for addictive and deadly drugs, or gambling, as in the case of a family member or friend. Most have experienced something like this, at one point or another in their lives. ‘Harm reduction,’ however, goes much much further. It not only “enables” drug use, with its ideology of “non-judgement”; it also facilitates, and at times even officiates, the process with “drug consumption sites.”12
On top of failing to explain why drug addiction and homelessness is necessary to capitalist rule, so-called harm reduction offers no critique of the drug trade, itself a capitalist institution, as drug gangs operate like brutal for-profit businesses who value life not. From this perspective, harm reduction actually subsidizes the drug trade, cutting expenses that would’ve otherwise been used for paraphernalia, which can then be used to purchase more product. Criminal gangs themselves are essential to capitalism because employers contract them to intimidate and attack anti-capitalist workers forming unions and politically organizing.13
The truly revolutionary response to drug addiction lies in helping build a proletarian socialist movement that offers working people and the homeless something worth living and fighting for.
From One Harm to the Next
This harm induction scheme has now made its way down to the Rio Grande Valley, with the advent of “RGV Harm Reduction”, founded by Sarah Chavez,14 former director of the now defunct, ‘RGV Dream Home’ and ‘RGV Pride Home’.
The dual projects were supposedly intended to house homeless immigrant youth, here illegally, and homeless ‘queer’ youth. But the startups, launched around 2015, never really achieved lift-off, usually as a result of funding and legal issues, as there was the not-so-big hurdle of housing undocumented immigrants being a federal crime, especially if you want to operate as a ‘legal’ “nonprofit.”
This was during a time when, politically, the question of the Dream Act was much more central to politics. So, her defiant affectation didn’t seem absurd back then, as it does now, upon reflection. But there were also questions about finances and funding sources, which in the end served to bring down the enterprise, plunging the project into crisis around 2017.
At the time, my former publisher, Neta (now Trucha) RGV, published an essay15 about how members of the RGV “LGBTQ+ community” had questions about the home’s funding and safety, which had resulted in a few organizational false starts. It was authored by one of its founders and then-board President, my old smoking buddy,16 Josue “Raw” Ramirez. Josue still publishes Neta’s successor, Trucha.17 The article was published in June 2017, a year before investigative journalist, Debbie Nathan, and I, joined Neta, in June 2018.18
Although he called for more transparency, applauding and praising its “original mission” (more on this later), it was not long thereafter dead in the río grande. While he had perhaps too optimistically hoped to breathe new life into Pride Home, Josue only ended up driving the final nail into its coffin. Still, he was scathingly clear about what, and (more importantly) who, was at issue.
After a review of the film, Mosquito y Mari,19 and after a well-researched discussion on LGBTQ housing trends around the state and country, Ramirez finally got to the point:
“The Pride Home sparked efforts to recognize the urgent need for LGBTQ emergency housing in the RGV, although the project has run into several operational issues. A non-profit status was filed and the home was scheduled to open in May 2016, but it failed to take off for several reasons, including the lack of transparency in finances and funding sources, safety concerns with the home, and the lack of professional capacity to provide the support services needed. The endeavor to house LGBTQ+ youth in the RGV is noble and a definite need, but the Pride Home quickly found that a project of this magnitude requires careful planning, accountability, and the collaboration of various stakeholders including fair housing, LGBTQ+ youth advocates, and local service providers.”
(Italicization and boldening above are my own emphases.)
Summing up the issues Pride Home faced, Ramirez left no doubt at all in the next paragraph that the buck stopped with none other than Chavez:
“The opening of the Pride Home is currently on hold until the project has the adequate resources needed, and leadership has shifted, to help address the issues that has kept it from opening its doors. The group is working on a community needs and assessment survey to better understand what the needs [are] and how the organization can change its mission to serve them now and in the future. The new volunteer board members and board president have learned from previous setbacks and are developing a more comprehensive plan that will build a stronger base for such a large, but much needed, undertaking.”
Josue Ramirez, Neta RGV, July 2017
None of what Jose predicted would come to pass, as Pride Home, so to speak, committed suicide not long thereafter, or, as we can infer from Josue, wasn’t fully carried to term. As my old friend, former Henry Cuellar staffer, Allan Fisher-Garcia, put it at the time, when he explained to me what had happened, “Her own board voted her out.” Getting voted out by your own nonprofit board became colloquially known, for a while in some activist circles, as “getting Sarah-ed.”
I should add that after originally publishing this article, Allan contacted me (after having blocked me from social media and ignoring me for five years) and asked me not to quote him without permission. In response, I would say that this article is some sense a memoir about political events that shaped the landscape here in the Rio Grande Valley. I am only recalling them, as I remember, and will quote anyone who is a public figure and public political operative, as Allan is and always has been. Sorry, dear. You’re getting quoted.
Anyways. Josue had hoped a “shift in leadership,” as he so euphemistically yet no-less gashingly put it, would solve things. But Chavez’s removal also proved to be the end of the organization. The projects have long-since been forgotten, unfamiliar to most young RGV activists today, somewhat remembered by those over 30, if asked, unless they were somehow directly involved and want nothing but to forget the episode. As Yeats wrote, while lamenting Ireland’s dying revolutionary romantic literary and political traditions at the dawn of a new era, “It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”
During its implosion, word on the street was that Chavez had effectively robbed everybody and bounced, never to be seen again. “Oh, you didn’t hear? She screwed everybody over,” as the above-mentioned former ‘friend’ once frankly put it.20 It was also rumored she’d run off and married a federal prosecutor from Brownsville, which was partly true. She actually called off the wedding a few weeks into the engagement, which one might concede to poor old Sarah is a bit better than calling it off a few weeks before the wedding, in her defense. Whatever the case, Chavez was not politically active in the RGV from 2018-2022, acknowledging the period as a retreat from Valley activism and referring to this period of her life as, “putiando”, or as pop culture would have it, “a hoe phase.”
We had briefly dated in 2015 (well before the aforementioned ‘phase’) and began seeing each other again last year (well after it). She told me that during our interregnum, she was involved in assisting migrants camping near ports of entry, awaiting opportunity to cross the border from the Mexican side. This she did, as she showed me pictures of some of those experiences, which included seeing car factory workers walkout and go on strike near Matamoros.
Discussing Josue's Neta article in April 2023, upon our reconnection, Sarah maintained he was incorrect and that she was transparent throughout the process, adding she still possessed “documentation” that could back her up. She pointed to former Valley activist and Pride Home board member, Jackelin Trevino,21 who Chavez accused of being behind the “lack of transparency” criticism. The affair was a long time ago, and it’s probably impossible to straighten out now, as I actually believe it would have been impossible to have straightened out then, whatever Sarah’s claims about “documentation” that could supposedly prove otherwise. Of what there is little doubt is that whatever the situation, it was certainly messy.
Twas’ also through reconnecting last spring and summer that I had a front-row seat to RGV Harm Reduction's birth. I'd not heard much about the concept, so a lot of our early discussions revolved around it, as Sarah was just getting into the business. At first, it seemed like a philanthropic past-time, but it turned out to be much more complex. She tried to get me into it, emphasizing the easy financial gain, but I wasn’t really interested, as it seemed shady.
Sure enough, what happens is national networks send “harm reduction” supplies, in unmarked boxes, to the recipient (Chavez and her volunteers) who assemble the supplies into packets, “harm reduction kits.” The assembler(s) then sends them back, a return stamp being included in ‘shipment.’ They’re then distributed around the country. That’s the assembly line. The packager, of course, gets paid in the thousands for every “job.”
The financial incentive, driven of course by corruption, goes without saying or need of explanation. Its ideological and propagandistic elements, however, should be. Like unctuous merchants, Chavez and her counterparts make the following pitch to those curious or 'on the fence' about ‘harm reduction’:
“Look, let’s be honest; some drug addicts are just going to use drugs no matter what, right? Why not make sure that they, at least, do it safely?”
This temptation to suicide, or to assist in the suicide of another, dressed up as a humanitarian appeal to “keep people alive,” assumes a view of mankind that says people can’t really change. This is the opposite of the lessons taught by leaders like Malcolm X, who was a living negation of what Chavez and her gargoyles argue to be the case, having left a life of organized crime for disciplined political action, never to look back again. For innocent, unsuspecting people hearing about “harm reduction” for the first time, the above proposition might sound logical, though everyone can sense that there’s a hook somewhere inside that bait.
I actually sat-in on some of Sarah’s myriad Tik Tok calls (all of whose chat rooms, by the way, were riddled with antisemitism, which I’ll come to in a moment)22 where she tried selling “harm reduction” to activist circles, particularly Native Americans, in whose communities drug addiction and other kinds of substance abuse is a serious problem. I remember one woman, hesitating, but ultimately acquiescing to work with Sarah. She seemed conflicted, as if she was internally wrestling with the ethics of this innately evil practice. Those who’ve only met Sarah at recent events, while distributing materials, will recognize the sound of the above-paraphrased tune and identify with that feeling of moral weariness.
Without announcing herself publicly as the person behind it, Sarah has integrated the public menace of ‘harm reduction’ with the twin menace of Food Not Bombs RGV’s antisemitic street movement. FNBRGV started posting about Narcan distributions in late 2023 and continued through, and after, October 7. On October 11, upon announcing that they would be rallying in defense of Hamas, they also announced they would be distributing ‘harm reduction’ materials:
The Intersection of Addiction & Antisemitism
Distributing ‘harm reduction kits’ is now a regular staple to the monthly, homeless, food distributions hosted by FNBRGV in McAllen. Fundraisers for 'harm reduction' have been and are now regularly hosted under their auspices.
The convergence between antisemitic street movements, which El Haj23 and her co-thinkers have been heavily grooming and agitating since Oct. 7, with homelessness and the reactionary cynics profiteering from it, is worth noting because it’s a classic sign of pre-fascist movements as seen in pre-fascist Italy and pre-Nazi Germany. This was noted by Leon Trotsky in his textbook on fascism24 and can be seen in today’s fascist street movements in Beirut and Damascus.25
This convergence has been amply documented contemporarily by Vietnamese American journalist, Andy Ngo, who was physically beaten by black-clad Antifa thugs in Portland, while reporting on their “protests” in 2019. Resolved to not stop his reportage, the goons put out incitements to his murder, graffiti reading “Kill Andy Ngo” spraypainted across the city. Ngo knows what he’s talking about.
Ngo is the author of a 2021 book titled, Unmasked,2627 which details and chronicles the history and tactics of groups like Antifa, who use political violence to intimidate opponents. Ngo was recently on the Dr. Phil Show, where he discussed his latest publication. The journalist and talk show host delved, among other things during their hour-long chat, into the aspect of who makes up the Antifa riots, comparing them to current Islamist movements, post-October 7:
“You can think of Antifa as a gang, an informal gang that one can self-identify with,” Ngo said. “The danger of that is that it’s similar in a way to ISIS or some of these jihadist groups that have carried out terrorist attacks. You don’t have to have been somebody, for example, who has traveled to Syria or Iraq to become a “formal” ISIS member. You can follow the propaganda that’s online, watch their videos, read their materials and pledge allegiance to the ideology and carry out an attack either as an individual or connected to a local cell. Antifa’s ideology is similar in that type of way.”
“So, who are they,” Ngo continues. “Well, they actually span the full spectrum of society. There’s a misconception that—because if you look at some of the mug shots, some of them look dirty and some people assume they’re just crazy homeless people who’ve been drawn into violence. Well, there are people who are represented in white-collar professions, academics, university students, PhD students, people who work in healthcare—unfortunately. There were a lot of nurses and those who worked in medical settings who were arrested in 2020.
“And then, yes, you had those who were chronically unemployed, living on public assistance. And during 2020, rioting became a full-time hobby or profession for a lot of these people who were on public assistance, getting funds through the state and at night going out to riot.
“And then there were also homeless people. The role of the homeless people was that they were exploited at many of these encampments that became riots at night. Free food was being given out, so it attracted people who were homeless. Tents and shelter were provided. But it was used as a form of bribery against people who really had nothing to lose. So, homeless people were given weapons dispersed by Antifa, like projectile weapons, like frozen water bottles, cans of food, green powerful lasers that would be concentrated on law enforcement to hurt their eyes,” Ngo concluded.
Ngo’s description of Antifa is quite stunning. It’s as if he’s describing the coalescence between Foot Not Bombs and their homeless food distributions with Chavez’s drug-supplies-are-us. Several RGV Hamas rally attendees, who I used to know personally, are also on public assistance.
Notice also Ngo’s verification of the class-breakdown making up the riots: He mentions teachers, academics, graduate students—the petite bourgeoisie. Of course, they make up the vanguard of the pro-Hamas movement and encampments around the globe!
Outbreaks of antisemitism are not a working-class phenomenon; they’re a middle-class phenomenon. Semi-educated middle-classes who’ve been hit by capitalism’s crises throughout history, and have therefore lived resentful lives as debt slaves, have fallen and continue to fall for the scapegoating of Jews as the reason for their woes, or what Vladimir Lenin dubbed, “the socialism of fools,” today sublimated into hatred towards the “Zionist” state of Israel, just as Hitler and the Nazis always went on and on against the ‘Zionist conspiracy’ against Germany.28
Although they’ve integrated ‘harm reduction’ distributions with latent Jew hatred, they don’t reference Chavez in their public literature, of course done intentionally. A recently launched Instagram page, “RGV Harm Reduction”, lists no info about who runs it. But it does feature a photo of Chavez holding “anti-overdose” medication, cutting-out her face. However, “if you know,” as I do, and as the saying goes, then “you know.”
The Poverty Business
Chavez is cowering behind the scenes, trying to get by with as little publicity as possible (in stark contrast to her younger, more photogenic days as a local media darling in 2015)29 for two reasons: One, to avoid people bringing up and remembering the Dream and Pride Home scandals, and two, to avoid facing moral or political responsibility for the harm she’s currently causing.
She understands that the topic of drug use, especially harm reduction, is sensitive and that many find it abhorrent.30 She doesn't really believe the propaganda she deploys in arguing, for example, that “overdoses have been reversed because of Narcan,” or anything about “safe use”. It’s no more than the script recited by telephone scammers fishing for your credit card information. She would simply rather cash-in on this harm-inducing venture without the limelight it deserves, before disappearing into the night, once it’s time to cash-out and skip town again.
If you or I were launching a project we passionately believed in, wouldn't we put our name on it, even or especially if it was controversial? Isn't it a duty and obligation? Instead, Chavez creeps behind anonymity encouraged by these groups, who tell people to “mask up,” as they told attendees to conceal their faces at a recent anti-Israel rally and march at UTRGV, which Chavez attended and recruited at for her endeavor, obscuring her face. Here she is, behind a mask, at UTRGV Edinburg, May 16, at a “student” protest.31
(When first dating in 2015, Chavez had told people she graduated when she had not. I graduated on schedule that summer of 2015, last class of University of Texas — Pan American. Chavez returned to school in spring 2023 to try finishing, but appears in none of the recent graduation programs.)
Chavez used to plot about how to get local homeless addicts to help put kits together, compensating them with a simple meal or barbecue, pocketing the rest of the cash. “They’ll be glad to just help,” she’d say. I’m unaware if Sarah’s paying her volunteers or if they even know that she’s being compensated. But I most recently saw her May 25 at Bill Schupp Park, gathering with UTRGV Young Democratic Socialists of America and Muslim Students Association members and faculty, for an unpublicized gathering. I approached her and asked if she could please return some of my personal belongings I’ve been trying to retrieve for some time. She gave me a dismissive grimace and I just kept walking. Granted, I don’t know the facts about how exactly the ‘Pride Home’ scam fell apart, but from all this, I can perfectly imagine what people say took place.
If you hang out with or “date” Sarah Chavez, do not allow her to bring backpacks into your home, as she is a kleptomaniac. She took small memorabilia from my home, while spending time in my apartment, pretending to be interested in me in order to steal. Beware.
To Cull the Living Flower
Revolutionary, proletarian examples demonstrate how working people can strive to a higher purpose and put the revolution above the pursuit of drug use and other escapisms from the realities of capitalist society. What Chavez’s latest scam represents is the negation, the opposite, of revolutionary social progress, unlike what Karl Marx described in the introduction to his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, that of culling “the living flower” and yanking off “the chain.”32 Instead, harm reduction says, “Don’t break the chain; indulge your illusions; take more opium.” Much like the current “LGBTQ”33 movement.
In 2023 we debated a national issue dealing with a high school volleyball player who suffered a season-ending concussion injury, after being hit on the head with a volleyball that had been spiked by a male player, who was allowed to play on the women’s team thanks to trans ideology. Sarah took the side of the “trans” player, against the young lady, whose credibility she tried to tarnish. “I’d like to see the medical records and how fast the ball was traveling,” was one of Chavez’s objections to Payton McNabb’s testimony, and “lived experience,”34 discussed on the Megyn Kelly Show.35
This movement says it’s revolutionary, and tries giving the veneer of revolutionary action. In practice, however, they’re counterrevolutionary. They spit on the Constitution and dismiss it as “white settler colonial.” They spew contempt for the Bill of Rights, many of them also cheering the Trump prosecutions, and the prosecutions of his voters. They care nothing about the proletarian fights for civil rights, nor any amendment added to the Constitution as rewards for courage and conviction always at the conclusion of hard struggles.
For the ultra-left, they’d like to overturn the American Revolution, and replace it with a Stalinist system with no civil liberties and a Yugoslav/Chinese-style economy for all. Their “liberated” and “autonomous” zones36 are the ‘ideal’ models for this. What they plan on doing with the Islamists “the day after” their counterrevolution is unclear, although pamphlets calling for a fusion between “Anarchism” and Islam—in what would have to be ridiculously dubbed, “Anarcho-Islam”, or perhaps, “Muslim Anarchy”?—have been circulating online. Peradventure they’ll win Muslims to 21st century Maoism?, if you can imagine such an absurd proposition, without bursting into laughter, as I cannot. On the other hand, you don’t need to be a political scientist, or a “religious scholar,” to know exactly what the Muslims have in mind for the Maoists. (No Marxist current has led the working class to more mass graves and defeats than the Maoist movement, from China and Indonesia, to India and Cambodia.37)
Describing the harm reduction movement and how Chavez introduced me to it, to a friend who’s well-versed in Marxism and well-experienced in real social movements, he suggested the term “poverty pimp,” explaining how fighters in the struggle against Jim Crow segregation developed a word for Black preachers and demagogues who profited from perpetuating the plight of working-class African Americans. Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan of course, come to mind. We Latinos and Chicanos have our own examples, like Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and “Sister” Norma Pimentel38. For Indians, it would be “Mother Teresa,” after whom Pimentel is modeled, and the much-overrated Gandhi.
As Hitchens once said of the ghoulish ‘Teresa of Calcutta,’ Chavez is not a friend of the poor, she’s a friend of poverty. Thus, the conclusion of her as a poverty pimp holds, especially when considering the aforementioned “original purposes” of both RGV Harm Reduction and the Dream and Pride Home. In the two cases, Chavez claims that the impetus were friends who committed suicide, or “overdosed,”39 launching them in their honor. Many have and will continue to launch ventures in memory of friends lost to suicide and overdoses, to be sure. It’s just interesting to note how both of her main ventures, i.e. the two things for which she’s best known, involve friends who’ve offed themselves, things that, coincidentally, make for good sob-stories when soliciting funds and “volunteers.”
As I went to print, my buddy, Pedro Rodriguez, who runs Tropicasa40 in McAllen (check them out), informed me of his new coinage, “social justice grifting,” when I told him I was working on this piece. I’m sure it’s been thought of before by many worldwide, as such grifting is present everywhere, but Pete’s was the first time I’d heard the phrase. (He’s now coined the phrase, ‘cancel-core.’) Still, social justice grifting would cover the harm reduction racket.
In 2015, when Sarah was just launching Pride Home, she would regularly discuss how the organization was launched in honor of her friend, Duane, who took his life after coming out as gay and getting kicked out from his home, hence sheltering homeless queers.41 Likewise, the impetus for RGV Harm Reduction is (that’s right, you guessed it!) a friend who also took their lives or died in an “overdose.” I recall her summoning the crocodile tears when pitching groups to get in on the action. “If only so-and-so had just had Narcan, they would still be with us today.” How harrowing. Never mind the obvious corollary that if they had not been using drugs in the first place, they would also conceivably, “still be here.”
12-step programs, which are exactly one step too long,42 offer some promise, as it must be conceded to the religious. This is even conceded by harm reduction boosters, albeit grudgingly. As stated at the opening, revolutionary movements that offer something worth living and fighting for, like the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War Movements,43 are the best public inoculation against antisocial violence and activity.
But the harm induction group and the cadre of RGV antisemites, look down on the struggle against Jim Crow; they look down on Malcolm X and the Cuban revolution, in agreement with American capitalism. Chavez, in our last dealings, often belittled Malcolm and made “me too”-style slanders against him, which I won’t repeat, and would poopoo the Cuban Revolution, calling for its overthrow for ultra-left reasons she could never fully articulate, let alone explain.44 Opposition “from the left” against Cuba’s proletarian, communist leadership is customary of middle-class ultra-lefts.45 While radical sounding, it’s a reactionary and dangerous position to hold.46
As also said at the opening, the overall harm reduction movement is an attempt by the capitalist class, initiated through their middle-class dirty tricksters and hangers-on, to keep working people depressed and away from the class struggle. This is what’s also been behind recent drives by capitalist politicians to normalize marijuana dispensaries, even in southern states. Working Blacks in the Bronx district of New York, who showed their respect for democracy by welcoming Donald Trump May 23, repudiated this course. People held banners reading, “South Bronx for Donald Trump”, others proclaiming that, “Black Lives MAGA”. One woman resident from the Bronx, who was interviewed by Fox News, derided the opening of marijuana dispensaries in her neighborhood as an insulting handout from liberal Democrats. She’s right.
While drug-use arrests should be repealed—let’s be in no doubt about that!—class-conscious workers should also discourage their use, pointing our co-workers and families to something higher than getting high, something nobler than the hopeless and demoralizing voice that condemns the lost to “safe use.” Truly revolutionary movements bring people hope.
Harms: Past, Present & Future
In the past, Chavez also delved and traded in the conscious slandering of people, via salacious accusations, as a kind of precursor to the “me too” racket—an attack on civil liberties whose effects are still being combated, although it’s been recently defeated, with the landslide reelection of Donald Trump and the wholesale rejection of Kamala Harris and her woke politics.
Possibly the most egregious case was the deliberate spreading of a false rumor about the now deceased, Nathan Gower Schwarz. In 2015, Sarah and her friends began circulating the rumor that Schwarz was a rapist. Schwarz was openly gay and supported many gay causes. He was a campaign strategist and known for working with campaign data and personally campaigning against local corruption. I met him at the same time I was first introduced to Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, on whose first campaign I briefly worked in 2016. I recounted this story about my first introduction to Nathan at his funeral service in January.
Schwarz and I were also published side-by-side in The Monitor, in November of 2013, on the morning of the announcement of the “new university’s” name, which I forgot to mention in January and had forgotten to mention to Nathan when I first met him. Edited by Sandra Sanchez, our columns were counterposed as the opinion of he, an alumnus, and me, a current student in student government at the time. This was my first-ever published column.
One evening, in the summer of 2015, I'll always remember how Chavez said she deliberately added a particularly salacious detail into the rumor mill, just to test if the person she was telling this lie to, and had ‘sworn’ to secrecy, would repeat it. The person believed Chavez. Thus, so went her reasoning, if Sarah heard her untrue rumor repeated, then she would know for sure she couldn't “trust” the person whom she told. The twist on the rumor she spread was that he “targeted” undocumented gay men, so that they “wouldn't go to the police.”
Chavez was willing, without hesitation, to spread this horrific slander about Nathan, just to see if she could “trust” somebody. For her, someone's reputation was fit for raw material, in a cynical scheme to map-out alliances. She confirmed she did this, when we reconnected in 2023 and reminded her of the episode, exhibiting no remorse, and even finding it amusing, you might even say, showing “Pride”47 for what she did. Did the person Sarah tell end up repeating this? Duh. But hey, by weaponizing deceit, at least Sarah learned who she couldn’t “trust.”
Chavez also recently told me she was the originator of a now terminated secret Facebook group called, “Chisme Saves Lives,” or “Gossip Saves Lives,” in English, or (what would have been more accurate and less redundant) "Slander Harms.” The hen’s den was a grouping of women who spread allegations about “men in the Rio Grande Valley,” who were anywhere from creepy to “rape-y.” She defended this by referencing her “standards” that said “at least one person had to corroborate a similar experience of the person being named,” though she, “later changed it to three,” showing her arrogance in appointing herself as re-writer of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights which she would surely describe, as she would’ve then, as “white settler colonial.” RGV activist and writer, Allyson Duarte, contemporaneously described this grouping as a “Gestapo.” Chavez also said that our friend, Mariam El-Haj, was the most active contributor to the group, which is unsurprising, as being a freelance fink also tracks with her now-previous preoccupation as the RGV’s formerly-leading Hamasnik.48 Chavez said she deleted the group, after it was exposed on the radio station and people threatened to sue for slander and defamation.
Chavez's current harm induction Instagram page says the following, in its bio:
“Safer smoking, injection, sex, snorting, and boofing kits.”
If you’re fortunate enough to not know what boofing kits are, save yourself and close this article now, for I regret to inform those of you still reading that boofing kits are “harm reduction kits” with “safe use” products for drugs “ingested rectally,” and often include ‘lube.’ I wish I could un-know this, as I am sure you must as well, dear reader. Let me therefore surmise with the closing observation that RGV Harm Reduction's founder is also the person who’s done, by far, the most harm to solidarity and gender relations in the RGV, in my lifetime. If Sarah is authentically interested in reducing harm in the area, she’ll stop distributing free drug paraphernalia for a living, get a job, and quit offering aid and support to political currents who—armed with antisemitic propaganda—call for the destruction of the only Jewish state in history while it is under attack by fascist forces. (Same goes for anyone else in this grouping who hasn’t completely lost their minds to drugs, as many already have.)
Imagine how much harm could be reduced.
jonathansalinas@substack.com
One of the proponents of so-called harm reduction is the SAFE Project, which stands for Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic. https://safeproject.us
As discussed by gay, anti-AIDS activist, Jared Klickstein, writing for the New York Post on 20 May 2023, under the title, “Why ‘harm reduction’ policies are causing more harm than good”, the harm reduction movement had its origins in needle exchange programs in the 1980’s during the epidemic. https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/harm-reduction-policies-are-causing-more-harm-than-good/
As Klickstein notes above, President Joseph Biden’s administration authorized funding for harm reduction programs. Before this, harm reduction had not received government funds in the United States, as it’s received government support in European countries and Canada. Nevertheless, big donors funded research before Biden’s intervention. A cursory search on both general and scholarly search engines, for '“does harm reduction work” will yield a roughly fifteen-to-one ratio of favorable versus critical studies of the subject. Even then, the critical takes have been left to be taken up by investigative, dissident journalism, as the fix is in in academia. https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/harm-reduction-policies-are-causing-more-harm-than-good/
Klickstein notes how, “Amid towering, unoccupied office buildings, San Francisco’s open air drug markets allow cartel-backed dealers to roam free, while a billion dollar industry of nonprofits such as Drug Policy Alliance vocally reject treatment as a viable solution. It’s no surprise that residents at the front lines are fed up with the results. In fact, nearly a quarter million people have fled the Bay Area in the last three years. Governor Newsom finally took a stroll through the epicenter of San Francisco’s drug disaster late last month and was clearly distressed: just a few days later, he announced that the National Guard would be called in to help clean up the crisis. The issues facing San Francisco aren’t from a lack of funding. In 2021 alone, the city allocated $1.1 billion to its Department of Homelessness and its budget has risen 500% since 2016. The results: Homelessness actually increased 64% during the same period. Where does all this money go? Much of it is permanent housing ($423 million in 2022). But permanent housing will do little to mitigate addiction rates amongst the homeless without concurrent detox and treatment methods.” https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/harm-reduction-policies-are-causing-more-harm-than-good/
As Klickstein reported, “At the beginning of 2022, San Francisco opened its first supervised drug consumption site in the Tenderloin district, which operated for 11 months. During this period, overdose deaths dropped about 4% citywide compared to 2021. But after the site’s closure last December, overdose deaths skyrocketed by 40% during the first three months of this year. Many harm-reduction activists, of course, blame the rise on the site’s closure. But overdoses also increased during the site’s final three months, mostly due to the introduction of xylazine, the deadly “zombie drug” now being used to cut fentanyl. Since xylazine isn’t an opioid, life saving overdose-reversal treatments like Narcan are powerless against it.
“Local experts broadly agree that the consumption site prevented over 300 deaths, which is a miracle. But the most staggering figure is actually the number of people the facility knowingly failed to get into treatment. After all, the site was officially classified as a “linkage center” – with the goal of “linking” addicts to detox and treatment. As a former homeless addict now in recovery, this is a crucial objective. However, out of the estimated 50,000+ people that utilized the center, only 38 were “connected” to substance use treatment. Hardly surprising that the site dropped “linkage” from its name just months after opening. In fact, the only linkage that seemed to be occurring was between the drug users, drug dealers, and stolen merchandise rings that completely enveloped the compound. San Francisco Mayor London Breed shut down the program after the resulting mayhem – along with pressure from Treatment First advocacy groups like North America Recovers and local business owners – proved impossible to ignore.
“California Governor Gavin Newsom finally toured San Francisco’s drug- and crime-filled Downtown; he was so concerned by what he saw that he’s calling in the National Guard to help restore law and order.” https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/harm-reduction-policies-are-causing-more-harm-than-good/
As Klickstein writes: “The passing of California’s SB1380 in 2016 outlawed any sobriety or treatment requirements for homeless drug addicts receiving state-funded housing. As a result, nonprofits seeking access to the cash cow of public funding must push a Housing First ideology that rejects any form of abstinence-based treatment for homeless drug addicts.
“These zealots believe that addiction is generally a symptom of homelessness, whereas most formerly homeless addicts like myself say the opposite. Who do the politicians in San Francisco typically side with (and solely fund)? If you guessed the side with actual lived experience in both homelessness and addiction, you’d be wrong.
“Folks advocating for treatment first approaches have not merely been sidelined, but incorrectly labeled as “far-right” and “quasi-fascist” by influential progressive activist groups such as DSASF. San Francisco politicians, virtue-signaling behind a facade of false progressivism, almost inevitably echo such sentiments.” https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/harm-reduction-policies-are-causing-more-harm-than-good/
As has been observed by many before me, radical (often middle-class) feminists promote abortion as a positively good thing, which in the end ends up hurting the just struggle for abortion, as I argued in a 6 July 2022 essay, titled, Leftist Erasure of “Women” Hurts Abortion Fight: “I'm old enough to remember when the chant was, ‘Women must decide their fate!’ I refuse to omit "Women" for "People". https://jonathansalinas.substack.com/p/leftist-erasure-of-women-hurts-abortion
Socialist Workers Party leader, Cindy Jaquith, summarized the history of abortion in the Soviet Union, from Lenin to Stalin, quite well, in an 8 August 2011 Militant article, titled, “Bolsheviks were first to legalize right to choose”. https://www.themilitant.com/2011/7529/752958.html
According to the state of Oregon, “In November 2020, Oregon voters passed by referendum Measure 110, or the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act. When they passed the ballot measure, the people of Oregon recognized: Drug addiction and overdoses are a serious problem in Oregon. Oregon needs to expand access to drug treatment. A health-based approach to addiction and overdose is more effective, humane and cost-effective than criminal punishments. Making people criminals because they suffer from addiction is expensive, ruins lives and can make access to treatment and recovery more difficult.” https://www.oregon.gov/oha/hsd/amh/pages/measure110.aspx
According to the state of Oregon, 956 “unintentional opioid overdose deaths” were recorded for the year 2022, versus its 472 in 2020. In 2023, the number was even higher. https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/SUBSTANCEUSE/OPIOIDS/Documents/quarterly_opioid_overdose_related_data_report.pdf
See Klickstein for discussion on harm reduction’s effects on San Francisco. https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/harm-reduction-policies-are-causing-more-harm-than-good/
See Klickstein for discussion on drug-consumption sites.
Pretty much all books by Pathfinder Press explain, in their own way, how gangsterism is essential to capitalist rule. But for a brief article about it, see Dan Fein’s 24 September 2018, Vol. 82/No.35, article, titled, “Gangs, drugs and violence are built into capitalist rule”. https://themilitant.com/2018/09/15/gangs-drugs-and-violence-are-built-into-capitalist-rule/
In addition to Chavez personally telling me about her role in launching RGV Harm Reduction, her LinkedIn profile also verifies it. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rose-marie-ch%C3%A1vez-0581baa1/
Originally published 27 June 2017, shared 192 times, Josue Ramirez published an essay for Neta, discussing homeless within the “lgbtq+ community”, and how Chavez’s Pride Home attempt failed. https://web.archive.org/web/20170703101341/http://netargv.com/home/2017/06/27/addressing-lgbtq-homelessnes-in-the-rio-grande-valley/
Josue was kind enough to do a high Q&A with him on the eve of 4/20/2018, when an exhibit of his was to be showcased at a Neon Indian concert and the defunct but sorely missed Yerberia Cultura in McAllen, for the decommissioned Unete 956. https://unete956.wixsite.com/unete956/post/untitled
Neta was rebranded a couple of years back as Trucha. https://truchargv.com/
Investigative journalist extraordinaire, Debbie Nathan, who mentored me for a while, and I joined Neta in 2018. They were hiring two investigative reporters, so we both applied and got hired. Given Debbie’s experience, they made her the editor, and Lizette Vizcara and I were the two immigration reporters for the outlet for a while.
Mosquita y Mari is a 2012 coming-of-age film, written and directed by Aurora Guerrero and starring Fenessa Pineda and Venecia Troncoso. It premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
You could always count on Allan to put things as they were.
Trevino would later organize unsuccessful attempts to drive out Stefanie Herweck and other “white people” from environmental activism in the Valley, driving a major rift which hasn’t been mended and never will in Valley activism. I tried bringing both sides together at the time, as a strong coalition of organizations existed and depended on it, but the differences were irreconcilable. I ended up defending Herweck and those Trevino and co. tried race-baiting out of politics, concluding correctly that hers was the reactionary and corrupt side, as that faction went on to make up today’s antisemitic RGV street movement. I'm glad to report every person they tried pushing out of politics continued and continues to do great work, which spoke at the time and continues to speak for itself, while those who did the pushing out, including and most especially Trevino, have fallen so far into irrelevance. Of those who've maintained some relevance, it's only to the extent once again that they make up part of the reactionary, pro-Hamas movement in the RGV today.
Some of chat discussions I observed while sitting in on Sarah’s Tik Tok calls contained people saying antisemitic things, like paranoid stuff about “Hebrews”. I once pointed it out and she then spoke up about it in the chat. The discussion leader’s response was even worse, labeling the comment as “identity politics”, rather than, “antisemitism has no place at all in this chat”, which would’ve been the correct, and only, response.
Since the publishing of this piece, El Haj has stepped away from the organization and public spotlight, leaving it to other volunteers to continue running it.
See Leon Trotsky’s, “Fascism: What it is and how to fight it”, 1944.
For a superb discussion on the Islamic fascist movements in the sectarian republics of Lebanon and Syria, enabled by the Islamic Republic of Iran and which have only gotten stronger (and weaker) ever since, see Christopher Hitchens’ May 2009 Vanity Fair essay titled, “The Swastika and the Cedar”. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/05/christopher-hitchens200905
Buy Ngo’s book directly from the publisher at https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/andy-ngo/unmasked/9781546059578/.
And here is a good review from a fellow independent writer, Blaine Pardoe, for his book review site, Notes From The Bunker, published 20 March 2021, which was coincidentally my 30th birthday. https://blainepardoe.wordpress.com/2021/03/20/review-unmasked-inside-antifas-radical-plan-to-destroy-democracy-by-andy-ngo/.
A great, recent, timely book just published on the October 7 pogrom in Israel and the historic roots of antisemitism, which I just finished reading, see “The Fight Against Jew Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the international working class” published by Pathfinder Press, 2024, New York, Sydney, Montreal, London. As well as “On the Jewish Question: A Marxist interpretation” by the same publisher. https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/the-fight-against-jew-hatred-and-pogroms-in-the-imperialist-epoch-1; and https://www.pathfinderpress.com/collections/fascism-and-how-to-fight-it/products/jewish-question-a-marxist-interpretation_by-abram-leon_2.
See 26 September 2015 news covering of Pride Home, featuring Sarah and including a glimpse of your humble servant, by Valley Central’s Analise Ortiz or an interview she gave to UTRGV for a Pride in the Park event in April 2016. https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/sanctuary-home-for-lgbt-youth-to-open-in-edinburg/; and https://goutrgv.com/story.aspx?filename=baseball-utrgv-athletics-to-host-pride-in-the-ballpark-friday&file_date=4/13/2016.
Chavez revealed to me her understanding that there was strong opposition to the so-called “harm reduction” racket.
On May 16, a small march and rally was put on, on short notice, by the same groups who’ve been organizing Hamas rallies since October. See my report, “Pro-Israel, pro-Hamas, state forces face off at UTRGV: University allows anti-Jewish gang drills on campus without permit, clamps down, rejects event requests of Christian and Jewish organizations” at, https://jonathansalinas.substack.com/pro-israel-pro-hamas-state-forces
Search online for Marx’s, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, one of his major bodies of work regarding Hegelian criticism.
In view of the many backlashes against trans ideology, as more and more become fed up with it, is the saying, “The ‘LGB’ needs a divorce from the ‘TQ’.”
To the fools who use this dumb phrase, one must be alive to begin with, in order to experience. Thus, to specify that any experience is “lived” is redundant.
Megyn Kelly was joined by Payton McNabb, the high school volleyball player injured by a trans athlete, on 28 April 2023. They talked about the effects of her injury, what the trans player had recently said to McNabb, and what happened after she spoke out. See interview clip at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6mtx8qDdNw.
For a refresher on Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and how wonderful that worked out, check out Christopher F. Rufo’s 1 July 2020 City Journal article, titled, The End of Chaz. https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-end-of-chaz
For excellent historical articles, on the political history and record of Maoism during the 21st century, see Roy Landerson’s 1 November 2021 article in The Militant, vol.85 no. 40, titled, “Maoism: An anti-working-class record of defeats around the world”, as well as Raj Narain Arya’s, “Maoism and the Indian Revolution”, published in Continental Press, 12 May 1969, Vol. 7/No.18, Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, the Americas. https://themilitant.com/2021/10/23/maoism-an-anti-working-class-record-of-defeats-around-the-world-2/; and https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1969/IP0718.pdf.
For my polemics against the referenced figures see my archive or email me for articles on all three.
Indeed, many poisonings as in the cases of people unknowingly taking drugs like Fentanyl, are incorrectly labeled as overdoses, as many people have pointed out.
Consider giving (after you’ve become a paid subscriber to my newsletter of course) to Tropicasa, a great local arts venue in the heart of McAllen’s struggling and ever-more-suffocating art district. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-keep-tropicasa-alive
My Marxist friend joked, “Why not also house homeless youth who aren’t queer?”
The famous last step, of twelve-step programs, is “surrendering to a higher power.” I personally think it could do without this, as it often leads people in religious directions. Basic evolutionary and astronomical discoveries have put every single religion to rest, into their proper place of human mythology. Real discoveries about our origins, our ancestors, “our” cosmos—the study of reality—is the real meaning to life.
During campaigning in June of 2021, SWP leader, David Rosenfeld, described how anti-social crime fell by 75% during the sustained mobilizations against Jim Crow segregation in Cambridge, Maryland, in 1964 led by Gloria Richardson. “Strengthening working-class solidarity and organization in struggle is our answer to those who prey on other working people, as well as to cop violence, until we can make a revolution, take power into our own hands and begin to rebuild society based on our morals, not theirs,” Rosenfeld said. https://themilitant.com/2021/06/12/the-working-class-road-forward-in-tackling-crime-and-cop-violence/
It’s common for Stalinists and ultra-leftists to oppose the Cuban Revolution, which objectively puts them in the same camp with U.S. imperialism, just as their call for an arms embargo of Israel necessarily demands intervention from American imperialism, an irony which has not set in and which they couldn’t understand if it ever did.
In the late twentieth century, one of the great splits within the Marxist political movement worldwide was on the question of the Cuban Revolutionary leadership. Many who called themselves Trotskyists were of the view that, much like under Stalin in the Soviet Union, there should be a ‘left opposition’ to the Cuban Communist Party. Others, led by the American Socialist Workers Party, concluded that Cuba’s communist leadership was not a Stalinist leadership, that it was proletarian, and had established a workers and farmers government that expropriated Cuba’s capitalist class, many of whom reside in Florida, with their descendants. A classic Pathfinder Press publication discussing this question is Their Trotsky and Ours by Jack Barnes, republished in 2002. https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/their-trotsky-and-ours_by-jack-barnes#tab-1
Calling for the overthrow of Cuba’s socialist government, and with it its communist leadership, puts one in the same camp with American imperialism, being that the objective is the same. Many on the middle-class left who espouse this view don’t ever really offer what they have in mind to replace it, other than utopian democratic vagaries. Books published by the SWP’s Pathfinder Press convincingly make the case for why revolutionary-minded working people, small farmers included, should defend and learn from Cuba’s socialist revolution and communist government.
Pride means honoring yourself and others. It’s often confused with shamelessness, as with the current “LGBTQ” movement of today, who has imposed near-compulsory support for their reactionary “Pride Month”. They relish the shock, by polite society, to their exhibitionism and value dignity not. They are just shameless, which shouldn’t be confused with pride.
See my 28 October 2023 up-close look at Mariam El-Haj at, https://jonathansalinas.substack.com/p/in-reply-to-mariam-el-hajs-deceitful.