YOU TALK, WE DIE: Community members organise for a safe injection facility

In Think Again we regularly illustrate how society’s  and the community’s response to matters of addiction, of poverty or disadvantage is too often one of blaming and stigmatising those who have fallen victim to these influences and of the systems that have caused them. Just think about Robodebt for a moment which is in the news right now...One addiction we have often talked about is gambling and we have shown how governments allow pokies and on-line gambling corporations, hotels and clubs to continue their harmful practices and make billions out of the victims… Just a few weeks ago, Melbourne-based publishers Scribe came out with another example of the ambiguous ways in which addictions are dealt with … this time, drug addiction, its consequences for those who depend on them and for the communities in which drug taking occurs and indeed, for the whole of society. The book You Talk We Die: the battle for Victoria’s first Safe Injecting Facility has just been publsihed by melbourne publisher Scribe; it's written by Judy Ryan who has been central to the community action process in Richmond to get this facility up and running and she has been talking with me in the studio...A community development process that is really examplary and combines many features of the approach and should be required reading in all community development and social welfare and social work courses...