Why Economic Security is the Priority Issue of Our Times
Community organizers must adapt their vision as their work evolves, focusing on the issues that matter most among their base of supporters
NEWSCULTUREPSYCHEDELICSDRUG POLICYDECRIMINALIZATION
James Davis
7/15/20264 min read
We love mushrooms. And they will always be core to what we do.
Our organization began as a group of volunteers who came together to email our stories of hope with plant medicine to our city councilors, sharing how we had overcome conditions like opioid addiction, cluster headaches, and depression with psilocybin.
At the time, the addiction and mental health crises were overwhelming. Being confined to our homes as the world came unglued over coronavirus had made people crazy, to say the least.
But now, we have noticed many of our volunteers and community members are facing near total displacement because of the outrageous cost of housing and groceries. What is the purpose of decriminalizing mushrooms if most people cannot even afford to stay here and use them?
As a community group, our official mission has always been "to improve the holistic physical and financial health of regional communities,” recognizing that this question is multi-dimensional in its relationship to plant medicine. We always knew that, in large part, we would eventually accomplish the goal of plant medicine access in Massachusetts so we always left ourselves the space to innovate on other questions of community and policy education.
And let’s face it: housing security is mental health.
A study published in Preventative Medicine found that facing the risk of eviction, and by extension the displacement that high rents can cause, is associated with a "two-fold increase in the odds of depression and anxiety .” Merely alleviating that anxiety with psychedelic substances, which can give people the space and closure to explore the source of their mental health woes, does not make those root sources go away.
That root source is ultimately an oligarchic economic system where nearly every industry gets cornered by major corporations. Our system prioritizes short-term profits over the long-term stability of our workforce (the consumer base for companies), the environment (which offers our economy trillions in free services), and our collective well-being (what an economy is supposed to be).
Rather than offering a strict ideological remedy to this system, we as a community look to where we can build consensus across identities, so-called right and left. Some solutions, like closing Boston’s loophole that allows billionaires to dodge property taxes on their second homes, can be quite obvious and unifying.
This shift in our campaigns also reflects that the world of psychedelic policy has shifted.
For starters, there are now very few arrests for psilocybin mushrooms in Massachusetts because our organizing has raised significant awareness and created material pressure on police departments to no longer enforce these antiquated laws.
The politics of Massachusetts are not ripe for meaningful state change either.
An out of state super PAC put forward a 29-page confusing ballot question in 2024 and fumbled its campaign by spending more time attacking us for asking for changes than talking to voters. As you may recall, this ballot question lost spectacularly (43-57) despite spending over $7 million because our criticism that it was a corporate takeover by the same interests groups who corrupted cannabis resonated with the public (see FAQ "Why Did Bay Staters Oppose Question Four?”).
A bill that could move forward this year, H4200, is inspired by our legislation to create accessible licensing for affordable plant medicine without corporatization, H3605. It clearly reflects the values we have been pumping into our more than eight community decriminalization measures, our major news hits, and tens of thousands of conversations with the public and lawmakers for six years, which is heartening.
Among the legislative supporters of H4200 are a whose-who of people our coalition mobilized hundreds if not thousands of testimonies to over the last four years, demonstrating even as we refocused on community education and events there is staying power from the sheer amount of organizing we had done before.
Yet this legislation is more of a political signal than a real fix.
It would create a pilot program for only three nonprofit centers that would likely take three years or more to get off the ground (because of bureaucracy). Then, those centers would only offer restricted services to a select few. We already offer that service, since providing guidance, mentorship, and harm reduction education is already legal, as we explain here.
The bill amounts to a way to placate voters who care about this issue. Politicians act like they have done something with pilot programs, holding plant medicine to an impossible evidentiary standard because their conservative colleagues are simply skeptical no matter how much evidence exists. After all, we have known since the 1950’s that psychedelics are relatively safe with education and extremely helpful for many people.
So what can a group dedicated to creative well-being do for economic security?
Expect another community to decriminalize plant medicine with our help soon. AND watch carefully as we bring together a coalition to secure $100 million for affordable housing funding in Boston. We recently noted that one of our sister plant medicine organizers in Australia pivoted to affordable tiny home advocacy as well, funny enough.
Social movements cannot exist in isolation of the material barriers of our oligarchic economy, where billionaires are quite happy to watch us fight over social issues as we are looted out of a sustainable, prosperous future.
Ultimately, we aim to be an accelerator of ideas. Get people excited and involved to heighten the contradictions as our elected lawmakers, who are notorious for being ineffective and uncaring in Massachusetts, lie and ignore us.
The only way we will afford housing and build a better world is if the greedy give up their power by fear or public shame.
It will be a long walk ahead, but the first step is to get groovy people together, talking, having fun, and educating.
That’s a scary thing to institutions who rely on us being left in the dark, divided, and miserable.
