Advertise on podcast: ODs Are Political Hamilton by Kayla Hagerty

Episode 1 Guest: Ann Livingston. Ann Livingston is one of the most influential harm reduction organizers in Canada and a lifelong advocate for people who use drugs. Based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Ann has spent decades fighting criminalization, preventable overdose deaths, and state neglect through unapologetically peer-led, community-driven action. She is the co-founder of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), one of the most powerful and enduring drug user unions in the world, and a key force behind the creation of Canada’s first sanctioned supervised consumption site, Insite. Her work helped force harm reduction into public health policy — while never losing sight of the people most impacted by those policies. In Episode 1 of ODs Are Political Hamilton, this conversation delves into the complex and often challenging world of harm reduction and drug policy. Ann and host Kayla Hagerty explore the historical and ongoing struggles faced by people who use drugs, the deep impacts of colonialism on drug policy, and the grassroots organizing required to keep people alive when governments refuse to act. Ann shares firsthand experiences from decades of organizing, including building and leading VANDU, and explains why peer-led movements are essential to real harm reduction, dignity, and political power. The episode also confronts broader societal failures — including criminalization, systemic stigma, and the role of government and healthcare systems in producing preventable harm — while making a clear case for community-driven solutions rooted in lived experience. This is not a feel-good conversation. It’s history, resistance, and strategy — told by someone who helped build the movement.

Episode 0 introduces ODs Are Political Hamilton and its host, Kayla Hagerty. This is not a neutral podcast—and this is not a neutral crisis. In this opening episode, Kayla shares the personal, political, and lived experiences that led her to create ODs Are Political Hamilton. She speaks as a frontline and harm reduction worker, a former drug user, the daughter of a Hamiltonian who died of an overdose during the pandemic, and a researcher with a Master’s degree in Sociology focused on drug policy and structural violence. Kayla reflects on growing up in the shadow of criminalization, stigma, and silence—and how those same forces later shaped her own experiences with substance use. She unpacks how grief, trauma, poverty, and punishment are not side effects of the overdose crisis, but core features of it. This episode also introduces Kayla’s work as the founder of the Solidarity Alliance of People Who Use Drugs (SAPWUD), a 24/7/365 peer-led harm reduction outreach group operating outside of traditional systems to support people who are unhoused, criminalized, barred from services, or left behind by public policy. Episode 0 sets the foundation for the series: overdose deaths are not inevitable, accidental, or apolitical. They are the predictable result of prohibition, neglect, and policy choices that decide whose lives are worth saving. This episode is a declaration of intent—for the podcast, and for the fight ahead. Because overdoses are political. And Hamilton is no exception.