Inter-chapter Collaborative Committee Working Group Update
Greetings from the Inter-Chapter Collaboration Committee (ICC)! ICC exists to connect chapter members, alumni, staff, and board members to collaborate on large projects. Any member or alumnus is welcome to join the committee by joining our Slack and then completing this form to join working groups!
You can find updates about our active working groups below. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any thoughts or questions!
People for Sensible Drug Culture (PSDC) Working Group
PSDC seeks to meet our non-student peers where they’re at by entering community cultural spaces to connect individuals interested in drug culture to policy reform, harm reduction, and psychedelic research to SSDP and related ally organizations.
You can find most of the content of the PSDC section of our call in the SSDP Be Interactive blog. SSDP also got a shoutout in Be Interactive’s blog about the Nashville show!
We can’t wait to let everyone know what we’re planning, and we will be writing a blog and creating outreach materials about the PSDC x Be Interactive campaign soon. Be Interactive is Bassnectar’s social change nonprofit. The nonprofit selects four grant themes per year, and each theme is chosen by popular vote. The money from these grants can be used however the applicant chooses, including donating to other nonprofits. We are encouraging everyone to vote for “addiction,” a theme which most directly relates to the grant application we are developing for Be Interactive. If this theme is chosen and our proposal is accepted, we will donate 50% of the grant directly to SSDP, and use the other half to increase PSDC’s outreach capacity and bring harm reduction directly to impacted communities.
PSDC has started a newsletter (sign up here!) which will go out once a month. We plan to announce the grant theme campaign using the newsletter, along with outreach emails to chapter leaders. DanceSafe confirmed that their chapters can opt-in to participate in the PSDC campaign. Participation is as simple as a flyer and a signup sheet (if tabling). We look forward to sharing our progress with the community as PSDC evolves.
2020 US Elections Working Group
The 2020 US Elections Working Group seeks to bring drug policy and harm reduction into political conversations amongst presidential candidates. Currently, the 2020 US Elections Working Group is focused on the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.
The first wave of emails were sent out to candidate campaigns on June 28. About 25% of the campaigns responded, and we are hopeful that this will increase once we have a specific event organized. Outreach emails were sent to university faculty in early July, but there was no response from any faculty members. Efforts to contact student organizations and professors in target states will resume in August once the semester begins.
Following unsuccessful SSDP chapter (we have very few chapters in early primary states – recruit your friends!), presidential candidate, and university faculty outreach, allied organizations including South Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, Southern Nevada Harm Reduction Alliance, and Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition were contacted via email. So far, IHRC is the only organization to respond.
As it turns out, the organization was already planning a candidate forum, sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance, Harm Reduction Coalition, and AIDS United. Following an initial outreach email in early July, IHRC invited 5 SSDPeople to participate in their four-day annual Summit. We will table at the Summit events on Friday and attend the candidate forum on Saturday, with the intention of representing the youth voice to the best of our ability. Further details will be shared as they become available.
RAMCOT (Resource Assessment and Manual/Community Organizing Toolkit) Working Group
Throughout the past few months, SSDPers have shown a great interest in taking an active role in updating, streamlining, and creating resources to support their peers in organizing and activism. Beyond understanding, improving, and expanding the existing resources, this group aims to centralize access to these resources for chapters to utilize and connect them to their Chapter Activity Tracker (CAT Points). The group would also research ways to appeal to as many learning styles as possible in this development of the resources. RAMCOT was formally adopted by the committee on August 1.
