Madness Radio

How do decriminalizing drug use and sex work advance mad liberation? What lessons can psychiatric survivors learn from the harm reduction movement? Caty Simon’s activist leadership spans the low-income rights, psychiatric survivors, sex worker, and drug users union movements, and she was a key organizer at Freedom Center in Western Massachusetts. Caty is on the leadership team of National Survivors Union (NSU), the US drug users union; is a founding co-organizer of Whose Corner Is It Anyway, a mutual aid group by and for low-income, street, and survival sex workers who use opioids and/or stimulants and/or experience housing insecurity; and leads Narcofeminism Storyshare, a collaborative autobiographical story development and key publics training stigma reduction project at NC Survivors Union, the flagship affiliate group of NSU. Caty is currently a research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine, and in 2023 received the International Drug Policy Reform Conference’s Alfred R. Lindesmith Award. C