This book tells a story about community activism in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES) that culmi-nated in a social justice movement to open the first official safe injection site. This story is unique: it is told from the point of view of drug users – those most affected by drug policy, political decisions and policing. It provides a montage of poetry, photos, early Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) meetings, journal entries from the Back Alley, the “unofficial” safe injection site, and excerpts from significant health and media reports. The harms of prohibition, and resistance, hope, kindness, awakening and collective action are chronicled in these pages.raise shitwe have become a community of prophets in the downtown eastsiderebuking the systemand speaking hope and possibility into situations of apparent impossibilityto raise shit is to actively resistand we resist with our presencewith our wordswith our love with our courageby Bud Osborn
