Aaron Ferguson, Dinah Ortiz & Caty Simon

Aaron is on the leadership team of the Urban Survivors Union, a national group of advocates for drug-user health. Aaron is also a regional impact manager with Community Medical
Services, a national harm reduction-informed provider of medications for people with opioid use disorder. Aaron works to advocate for and implement methadone and buprenorphine treatments in jails, prisons, inpatient rehab settings and communities in general.

Dinah is on the leadership team of the Urban Survivors Union. She is a writer and activist who has dedicated her time to advocating to end the stigma surrounding PWUD and PWID. She has spent over eight years advocating for marginalized parents in a variety of contexts, and contributing to Rise magazine, The Chronicle for Social Change and other publications. She has appeared on dozens of panels nationwide to discuss the racial disparities in the child welfare system.

Caty is on the leadership team of the Urban Survivors Union. She is the co-editor of Tits and Sass, a long-running media site by and for sex workers. Her writing has appeared in The Forward, AlterNet, Vice, Refinery29, the Raw Story, make/shift magazine and HTMLGiant. She is a small-town activist with history working in drug users’ unions, harm reduction, low-income rights and mad movement campaigns.