Saving Our Own Lives

Shira Hassan is the former executive director of the Young Women's Empowerment Project, an organizing and grassroots-movement building project led by and for young people of color that have current or former experience in the sex trade and street economies. A lifelong harm reductionist and prison abolitionist, Shira has been working on community accountability for nearly 25 years and has helped young people of color start their own organizing projects across the country. Shira's work has been discussed on National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Nation, In These Times, Bill Moyers, Scarleteen, Everyday Feminism, Bitch Media, TruthOut and Colorlines.

“Saving Our Own Lives is rooted in Shira Hassan's extensive experience and commitment to harm reduction as a liberatory practice. This is a book grounded in deep love for those who are most marginalized in our society and respectfully documents their stories and emancipatory analyses. This open-hearted book is illuminating, informative and inspiring. It will have a forever place on my bookshelf.” —Mariame Kaba, author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us“This vital book is a spark, a balm, an agitation, a blessing, a celebration. Through narrative and research and conversation and reflection, Saving Our Own Lives tears down the myths perpetuated by the medical-industrial complex and prison-industrial complex, and shows us how communities have been building ways to survive and heal in spite of--and against--these systems. Shira Hassan's book is at once expansive and personal, far-reaching and like coming home. I'm going to return to it again and again, and you will too.”—Maya Schenwar, co-author of Prison by Any Other Name and editor-in-chief, Truthout“Grounded, brilliant, and generous - Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction offers key tools, histories, testimony and analysis to deepen our everyday work to support ourselves and our beloved communities. As always, deep gratitude to the visionary Shira Hassan for this luminescent collection, resplendent with the power to shift hearts and minds. A must read for organizers, educators and all of us working to do more than struggle and survive.”—Erica R. Meiners, co-author of Abolition. Feminism. Now.“This brilliantly moving book - at once a generous love letter to our freedom movements and an urgent demand for radical transformative work - will inspire readers not only to think about harm reduction differently, but to actually live in ways that reflect a commitment to its liberatory potential. Shira Hassan has brought together an amazing chorus of voices that includes freedom fighters, political educators, cultural workers, BIPOC leaders and disability justice activists whose analyses and reflections offer exactly the kind of collective wisdom and encouragement that we need right now. Indeed, the possibility of a radical queer abolitionist future is closer because of Shira Hassan has so beautifully helped us understand the potential for freedom when we engage in a process of saving our own lives.” —Beth Richie, co-author of Abolition. Feminism. Now.