LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – A little known conference that was held by the Michigan Dept. of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) in May of this year included a panel with a porn star and another that denounced “whiteness.”
The “Michigan Harm Reduction Summit” welcomed over 400 attendee’s in person and virtually at the Lansing Center on May 16th and 17th and included a slide show and a workshop entitled “Decentering Whiteness.” In the MDHHS agenda, it describes the workshop, Decentering Whiteness: An Equity-Based Approach, as one that would “explore biases that Black and Non-Black People of Color participants encounter while accessing medical and social services. The workshop will also explore how these biases enter the employment space and create barriers for Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) individuals to achieve their highest potentials. The workshop will also explore bias, medical mistrust, generational trauma, white colonialist systems, and radical inclusion.”
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The workshop was moderated by Mary Miller, MSN, RN, Harm Reduction Analyst with the MDHHS and by Teresa Springer, MA, TTS – Director of Operations, Wellness Services, Inc.
The slide show warned the participants at the beginning of the workshop, “Be responsible for the energy YOU bring to this SPACE. Hard truths will be discussed. Embrace Equity.”
The presentation went on to claim that it is a “myth” that the “birth of a nation” began with Christopher Columbus discovering America. The presentation referred to North America as “Turtle Island” and claimed the nation was born from “violent land seizure, genocide of the indigenous populations” and “economic development through forced labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans.”
The presentation also asked its participants to “decolonize harm reduction,” and said organizations should fire any “overt racist/transphobic/homophobic staff,” and “hold dissenters accountable” citing systemic racism in wealth, employment, education, criminal justice, housing, surveillance and healthcare.
In the “white privilege” slide at the workshop they included a quote from Peggy McIntosh, an 88-year old White anti-racism activist, who said, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, Visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”
In addition to the Decentering Whiteness workshop, the conference also included a panel called “Sex Workers: Occupying the Front Lines of Harm Reduction” featuring porn star Lotus Lain, and emphasized “the need for sex workers on the front lines of harm reduction and social justice.” In the description of who Lain is, the agenda said she was a “Certified Intimacy Coordinator” with a sex worker-led advocacy group in California.
