Lighthouse Learning Series: Care as Movement: Reimagining Organizing through Harm Reduction & Collective Support
Starting in February 2025 and running until May 2025, we will be covering a series of queer harm reduction topics with the goal of creating a more inclusive movement.
Priority is given to those living and working in New York due to program scope. However, the series will be held virtually and is open to all those who would like to build on their harm reduction knowledge to provide better services to LGB/TGNC+ folks!
Session description: In many organizing spaces, we often focus on the outcomes of our movements, losing sight of the care, community-building, and rest needed to sustain our efforts. This session re-imagines movement organizing by integrating harm reduction principles, self-determination, and collective care. Participants will explore their personal relationships to movements through movement mapping exercises, orienting themselves to the subcultures and communities they engage with. Through breakout rooms, attendees will choose spaces for reflection, encouragement, and sharing challenges, while considering how to create organizing environments that nurture rather than exhaust. This dynamic, participatory session will provide tangible strategies for more sustainable and inclusive movement work, with opportunities for deep listening, sharing, and co-creation.
Facilitators:
Nze Okoronta is an advocate, writer and community organizer currently residing in Madison, WI. They are known for work surrounding mental health crisis services, peer run respites, warmlines, harm reduction and peer support supervision. Nze has been involved in and provided direct support to organizations doing work around alternative responses to policing, civil rights protections, disability justice, housing + houselessness, and intersectional liberation struggles specifically within Black and LGBTQ+ identified peoples. Nze has past work experience in racial equity, racial justice, housing, public health, disability advocacy, clinical substance use counseling, and population-specific substance use program development for Black and Brown communities. Nze is currently the Co-Executive Director of a peer-led organization, overseeing a non-carceral crisis alternative program (Solstice House Peer Respite & Warmline) and advocating for alternatives to policing in crisis services.
Dana Fleetham is a fierce and unapologetic harm reductionist with a diverse and multifaceted skill set. As a founding member of both the Drug Spotters Support Union and the Devastation Born Writing Collective, she is deeply committed to community support and advocacy. Currently, she serves as the co-chair of the Montgomery County Community Overdose Action Team Harm Reduction Branch and actively participates in numerous working committees, initiatives, and projects across Ohio and the United States, including Lighthouse Learning Collective, Ohio Harm Reduction Policy Table, and Ohio Police Reform Policy Table, and she is a member of the editorial board for Folklore zine. Her research interests span harm reduction, overdose detection technologies, liberation theology, radical pedagogy, resistance movements, and artificial intelligence.
You can read more about her current projects and get in touch here: https://dot.cards/danafleetham.
Jose Martinez is a passionate Harm Reduction and Recovery Advocate dedicated to empowering underserved communities. As the Capacity Building and Hepatitis C Coordinator at the National Harm Reduction Coalition, he draws on years of experience in community health, outreach, peer support and personal experience.
Jose began his career at St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction in the Bronx, where he worked as a Hepatitis C Navigator and Young Injection Use Health Coordinator. These roles allowed him to support syringe service programs and engage directly with individuals impacted by drug use and societal expectations. He later became a certified New York State peer worker, expanding his efforts to strengthen outreach programs and shelters across New York.
Currently, Jose leads PeerUp, a program designed to uplift and unify peers from marginalized backgrounds, and delivers training on various harm reduction topics and principles to ensure safer, more compassionate community engagement. His personal journey from lived/living experience to advocacy highlights the transformative power of harm reduction and the importance of holistic, nonjudgmental approaches in recovery.
Jose’s work exemplifies the belief that dignity, empowerment, and community connection are at the heart of recovery and healing.
