Joy Rucker
Joy Rucker
Interviewed on September 19, 2022 over Zoom
Recorded by Corinne Beaugard
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Summary:
Joy was sitting outside on a deck at her house in Florida. She wore tinted glasses and smoked while we spoke. She was relaxed and matter of fact in her tone. At times she smiled and her love for this work was clear.
Joy did community outreach in Mission Hill from approximately 1985-1990 before moving to California to continue work there. At the time she got involved, there was no “harm reduction” movement. People were dying from AIDS and medical providers refused to treat people who used drugs. The stigma and fear associated with HIV/AIDS and IV drug use kept this group of people isolated from care. During this period, the only folks who were able to get funding and support were white gay men. Organizations like Ryan White and the AIDS Action Group would not help IV drug users, except when they happened to also be white gay men. These men did not share their resources. People of color who were IV drug users and also dying from AIDS were left to fend for themselves, especially the women.
This is where Joy and her peers stepped in to fill in the structural gaps. They got to work in the community sharing information about HIV/AIDS prevention and safe injection practices. At the time, there was no access to sterile syringes, so they showed people how to use bleach. They handed out fliers about AIDS and went to shooting galleries to give out bleach kits and demonstrate how to flush syringes.
Joy was able to connect with active IV drug users in Mission Hill because she was part of the community, she did not come with the unknown threat of an outsider. And by part of the community, she means both Black and someone who has used drugs. Throughout the conversation she came back to this, that drug users and people of color need to be involved in organizing harm reduction. As the experts, they cannot be sidelined from planning/ designing supports intended for them. She remarked that if an organization has all Black street outreach workers but no Black leadership, it is just another non-profit and not harm reduction. Her current mission is to increase racial equity in harm reduction organizations, a much-needed reckoning.
I asked her how she has sustained herself in the work for so long. I already had some sense, as she spoke so naturally about the need for the work and that she was able to fill that need, it was a matter of being a good fit. She also shared that she lost her three best friends and that she works for them. Working for the dead is a strong motivator in the harm reduction community. She said, “I love drug users, I don’t care if they are using drugs or not.”
Interviewer: Corinne Beaugard
Interview language: English
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