{"id":5133,"date":"2025-10-11T16:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T16:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/?p=5133"},"modified":"2026-03-12T16:12:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T16:12:03","slug":"support-dont-punish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/support-dont-punish\/","title":{"rendered":"Support. Don’t Punish!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MANIFEST 2025 SUPPORT DON\u2019T PUNISH<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Today, June 26, from the heart of the Raval, we join the global call of Support Don\u2019t Punish.<\/strong><\/em> We do not do so from a distance, but from home: because in Catalonia many of us use substances and continue resisting criminalization and systematic punishment. At a moment when we are becoming used to hearing almost daily announcements of the loss of rights, now more than ever it is our turn to be community and to care for one another.<\/p>\n

We are living in a context of the global rise of the far right, which trickles directly into our neighborhoods in the form of aporophobia, sexism, racism, classism, and the criminalization of difference. We see social networks normalizing hate speech that was once rejected. Now it is tolerated, applauded, and integrated into our daily lives. It is increasingly easy to point fingers, expel, and condemn. And it is increasingly difficult to live if you do not fit into the productive, patriarchal, consumerist, white, and normative model.<\/p>\n

In 2024, more than 600,000 people worldwide died from drug-related causes<\/strong>. In the United States, policies of hatred and repression promoted by Trump are estimated to lead to tens of thousands more deaths. Here, we continue to shout that living and sleeping on the street kills<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

These are not conditions we can continue to accept: 84 people died on the streets of Barcelona this year<\/strong>\u2014deaths that cannot be normalized, accepted, or negotiated. They are preventable deaths: they are not accidents, they are the result of political decisions.<\/p>\n

We are also feeling this impact here. The Plan Endre\u00e7a<\/strong> was presented to us as a plan for order, but what it actually organizes is expulsion. More police. More fines. More harassment. More control over our lives.<\/p>\n

A few days ago we witnessed the announcement of the closure of cannabis clubs<\/strong>\u2014an example of self-management and harm reduction\u2014which are facing a smear campaign by the City Council, despite being a model recognized around the world. And we already know whose bodies are at the front of the line of those they want to make invisible: undocumented people, sex workers, \u201cmad\u201d people, racialized people, migrants, trans people, survivors of violence, the silenced\u2026<\/p>\n

Barcelona was once a pioneer city in harm reduction<\/strong>. But what was born from activism, from the streets, from the struggle of those who could not wait any longer, has been domesticated by logics of control. Today we see how this institutionalization and professionalization empties our struggle of its political strength. And if we do not adapt, they shut us down. We saw this in Reus with the closure of La Illeta<\/strong>: a space that was not simply a social service, but a place where real bonds were woven, where the social and the health sectors joined hands for a common goal. A space created by and with people who use drugs, which today is being dismantled as if this model were no longer valid. The closure of La Illeta is not an exception; it is a warning: when harm reduction is instrumentalized without protecting its political and community roots, it too becomes disposable.<\/p>\n

How many more spaces will be shut down until none remain?<\/strong> Harm reduction means accompaniment; it means rights. But as long as punitivism, pathologization, and criminalization remain in place, harm reduction can only be a collective response<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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We are not \u201cusers\u201d: we are people whose rights are being violated. We have a voice. We have a history. We take care of each other when no one else does. We have buried our people. We have accompanied each other through the trip, the high, the I\u2019m not feeling well<\/em>, the I think I\u2019m getting in over my head<\/em>, the I don\u2019t know how to do this<\/em>, the can I stay at your place?<\/em>, the I don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening to me<\/em>, the I don\u2019t know who to tell\u2026<\/em>. We know what is needed. And it is not repression. It is community. It is neighborhood.<\/p>\n

But solidarity crosses borders, and we know that the prohibitionist framework goes beyond people who consume: growers, producers, transporters, and sellers of controlled substances suffer disproportionate criminalization.<\/p>\n

We do not want to be the friendly face of a system that kills us. We do not want containment: we want the rules of the game to change.<\/p>\n

So today we say:<\/p>\n

That the use of substances does not justify the denial of our rights. We affirm that we are creators and sustainers of communities from the margins, in the face of the touristified beauty of the city.<\/p>\n

That accompanying is not policing. That caring is not sanctioning. That harm reduction is not the administrative management of misery.<\/p>\n

That without us, there is no possible drug policy. Nothing about us without us.<\/p>\n

That the right to the city also belongs to us: we are here, we stay, and we decide.<\/p>\n

This is not about them, it is about us. The neighborhood takes care of the neighborhood.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can see a summary of Support. Don\u2019t Punish<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>AQU\u00cd<\/a><\/p>\n

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\nAmb el suport de:<\/span><\/p>\n

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MANIFEST 2025 SUPPORT DON\u2019T PUNISH Today, June 26, from the heart of the Raval, we join the global call of Support Don\u2019t Punish. We do not do so from a distance, but from home: because in Catalonia many of us use substances and continue resisting criminalization and systematic punishment. At a moment when we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sin-categorizar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5138,"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133\/revisions\/5138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}