One thing I have learned as Conservative politicians ignorant of the facts surrounding harm reduction scare up fear of drug users, overdose prevention sites, safer supply and people who need compassion and mental health support; some people want to learn more about what harm reduction means and how it can help their loved ones before they become another overdose statistic.
The friendships that pulled the Yeastie Girlz together in the 1980s have stood the test of time. Although Cammie Toloui, Joyce Jimenez, Jane Guskin, and Kate (Rosenberger) Razo now live in four cities, making it tough to pull together gatherings in person, recent events brought them together online regularly.
The Yeastie Girlz have accomplished much in their life experiences over the past 35 years. In this episode, they talk about the group’s legacy – how the songs and ideas have aged, connecting to new fans via social media and old-fashioned postal mail, books, bookshops, bands, and the possibility of new raps.
Many bands were formed from friendships at the Gilman Street Project in Berkeley, California. The Yeastie Girlz was one of them that stood out from the crowd. Performing what they called vaginacore a cappella rap.
Most bands in the Gilman scene were made up of young men, with a smattering of women. So, although one of the club’s stated missions was to combat sexism, there was still much of it. During some shows, there were pits of aggressive males shoving and circling in front of the stage, and many women found themselves in the back of the club, excluded from the fun of the mosh pit due to overly aggressive behaviour.
In this episode, all four Yeastie Girlz speak about the impetus for getting up on the Gilman stage to start rapping, the elation and the terror of performing, and standing up to the violent misogyny of bands like The Mentors.
On episode three of the Woodstein Media Podcast, Eris Nyx, co-founder of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), talks about the episodic compassion club actions being done in Vancouver to make sure drug users have a safe, clean supply of drugs to prevent overdoses, changes she would like to see implemented regarding public education surrounding drug use, and the aesthetics of DULF.
In episode two of the Woodstein Media Podcast, Raymond “Wendego” King speaks of using Hip Hop as an outlet for sobriety, #fuckfentanyl, and losing friends to overdoses.
Joe Amero, a social worker in the Toronto shelter system, discusses his history of drug use and harm reduction. Joe discusses how his brother Harry’s overdose affected his family and how he dealt with his feeling through a one-person show he wrote titled Blood, the Drug User Liberation Front’s compassion club actions where they distribute a clean supply of drugs to help stop overdoses due to drugs contaminated with Fentanyl, Drugs! The Musical, the Telethon! and songs by Hobo Banditos, the Hip Hop band he and Harry were in.
This is the second feature in a three-part series diving into aspects of the opioid pandemic, the overdose crisis, whatever you wish to call it. It is a public health crisis which became exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Canada’s Public Health database, there was a 95 percent increase in apparent opioid toxicity deaths from April 2020 to March 2021, with a total of 7,224 deaths, compared to 3,711 deaths from April 2019 to March 2020. Since then, deaths have remained high.
These statistics were published in March 2022 and only went as far as September 2021, but by that point, 5,368 apparent opioid toxicity deaths had occurred. This is approximately 20 deaths per day. For a similar timeframe in the years before the pandemic, there were between 7 in 2016 and 12 in 2018 deaths per day.
This is the first feature in a three-part series diving into aspects of the opioid pandemic, the overdose crisis, whatever you wish to call it. It is a public health crisis which became exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Canada’s Public Health database, there was a 95 percent increase in apparent opioid toxicity deaths from April 2020 to March 2021, with a total of 7,224 deaths, compared to 3,711 deaths from April 2019 to March 2020. Since then, deaths have remained high.
These statistics were published in March 2022 and only went as far as September 2021, but by that point, 5,368 apparent opioid toxicity deaths had occurred. This is approximately 20 deaths per day. For a similar timeframe in the years before the pandemic, there were between 7 in 2016 and 12 in 2018 deaths per day.
Barrie’s Beaver Slap was one of Ontario’s most exciting punk bands to emerge over the past decade, as far as Woodstein Media is concerned, but they went quiet just before the pandemic. What happened, and what are the band members doing now?
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