katal newsletter – august 31, 2017

In this issue:

today is international overdose awareness day

(photo by VOCAL-NY)

August 31 is International Overdose Awareness Day. In New York, overdose causes more deaths than traffic accidents and homicides combined – in 2016, 1,374 New York City residents died of overdose. Today we participated in a funeral procession march to the NYC Morgue with the Harm Reduction Coalition, VOCAL-NY, and others to remember the lives we’ve lost, but also to call for a public health response to decrease these preventable deaths. Despite President Trump’s recent public statement that he considered the opioid crisis to be “a national emergency,” his administration has not yet taken the legal steps to declare it officially.

At Katal, we continue to demand urgent action to ensure that people who use drugs have the tools and support they need to be safe without stigma or fear of arrest.

social innovation summit 2017

(photos by Social Innovation Summit 2017)

Earlier this month, Katal‘s Co-Founders Lorenzo Jones and gabriel sayegh participated in a program by Landmark Ventures called Social Innovation Summit 2017, in the famous Brooklyn Navy Yard. Lorenzo served as a group facilitator for a discussion about health and wellness, and gabriel moderated a panel on criminal justice reform with Refoundry, a non-profit dedicated to reducing the United States prison population by training formerly incarcerated people in entrepreneurship. To learn more about Refoundry, visit their website here. You can check out all the photos from the event here.

katal at afropunk

Katal’s community organizers tabled at Afropunk in Brooklyn this past weekend as part of their Activism Row to ask the question, “how could your community use the money it spends to incarcerate Black and Brown folks in NYC?” From mental healthcare to community land trusts, hundreds of festival goers let us know what they want to see in their communities instead of jails. Thank you to everyone who came by to speak with us!