Director of harm reduction centers wants to use love, not aggression, to address adversaries

Sam Rivera, executive director of OnPoint NYC—a nonprofit that runs the country’s first two overdose prevention centers—initially was reluctant to take the job.

When he realized his 30 years of working with social services, advocating for people with HIV/AIDS, harm reduction and mental health primed him for the job, he decided to go for the position. It was an opportunity to run facilities that provide supervised consumption for drug users.

“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” said Rivera, who will have been with the organization for two years in June.

The OnPoint centers, located in Harlem and Washington Heights, were backed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council.

In addition to supervision, counseling and medication-assisted treatment for drug users, the centers provide showers, laundry services and access to food and housing.

A strong start

Since the facilities’ launch Nov. 30, they have handled more than 1,000 visits, supervised 14,000 utilizations and reversed 250 overdoses through intervention, already exceeding initial projections of 130 reversals annually.

The staff, comprising people with lived experiences as drug users as well as medical professionals, have been instructed to treat individuals seeking help with empathy and dignity.

When Rivera was in his early 20s, he was convicted of a drug and gun charge. While in prison, he saw a room where several men were cooped up and looked like they were dying. He explored the room, reporting a broken window to the administration that might be unsafe for the men. In a whirlwind, he said, he was whisked to a quarantine room and made to sign a waiver that whatever might happen to him was not the fault of the facility, leaving him confused and scared.

Rivera’s mother, a nurse, told him the room was for people with HIV, and she said he didn’t have to worry that he might have contracted the virus from them.

Rivera was struck by his mother’s reassurance. “Those men who were in fact dying had no such comfort,” he said.

Rivera was freed from prison in 1990, and two years later he joined the Fortune Society, a nonprofit in Long Island City that provides re-entry services for the incarcerated.

Over the decades, no matter his stint, Rivera’s guiding principle has remained constant: Be a voice for the voiceless.

As he came to helm OnPoint—whose centers skirt a fine line running afoul of federal law— he had to figure out what the organization’s voice should be.

“In my whole life as an advocate, I’ve always had to fight,” he said. “But this time around, we’re not going to fight. We’re going to approach people [who fear] what we do with love and invite them to sit with us.”

Returning the anger from opponents with anger would do the organization little good, Rivera said, especially given its frail existence. Funding is constantly a worry, as the centers may not use public money to pay for services, due to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, commonly known as the “crack house statute.”

“There is no war on drugs. There’s a war on drug users,” Rivera said.

He hopes his approach will get critics to see people seeking help as simply those who fell astray. Rivera referenced the Disney movie Encanto and its popular song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” Like Bruno, drug users are often shunned for committing an act that society does not understand.

“Bring us Bruno,” he said, laughing. “Let us help bring that conversation with the fearful that there can be a way forward.”