This chapter explores the history of harm reduction activism within black queer and trans communities in Toronto considered through the work of Blackness Yes!, an activist collective that produces three day-long annual festivals, Blockorama, Back to Our Roots, and Blockobana to support the work of culturally specific AIDS service organizations like the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention. Each program uses political content and praxis: arts-based education and information dissemination teams, chill out spaces and harm reduction support, education, and activism to support black community spaces that are intersectional in their framing. These spaces have left an indelible mark on the geographies of the city, and have helped foster an intersectional conversation about harm reduction, racialization, and black communities in the city. Using a community roundtable format, black LGBTQ activists discuss what is unique about racialized experiences of harm, and how harm reduction strategies can be shaped to meet these needs. Rooted in standpoint theory, intersectionality, and critical race theory, the roundtable discussion format reflects the collective process and commitment to community accessibility. Focused primarily on the art/activism of Blockorama, a black and African diasporic arts festival that runs alongside the Toronto Pride Festival, the authors want to reflect on mobilizing black and African diasporic communities around issues of harm, sexual health, substance use, and resistance to systems that interlock (targeted policing, anti-black racism, the prison industrial complex, the war on drugs and its particular targeting of black and otherwise marginalized communities, and ongoing colonialism and imperialism and its effects on black and Indigenous communities on Turtle Island) through grassroots arts-based programming. Reflecting on over 30 years of collective organizing and 18 years of collaboration on Blockorama, the authors suggest that harm reducing actions addressing targeted policing, systemic racism and white supremacy, and the erasure of racialized voices from historical narratives of activism and movement building are essential to ensure that more traditional forms of harm reduction can be accessible to black and African diasporic people.
