Abolition Advent Calendar

The Days Are Surely Coming: Reducing Harm, Preparing the Way

The days are surely coming, says the Holy One, when I will fulfill the promise
I made to…execute justice and righteousness in the land. – Jeremiah 33:14-15

Welcome to the 2024 Abolition Advent Calendar. Since our first Abolition Advent Calendar, the UCC’s Join the Movement toward Racial Justice initiative has embraced the season of Advent as an invitation to hold together visions of the future for which we are waiting and preparing and the recognition of how deep our longing is for that future to be made flesh in our midst. In this way, our practices of Advent are practices of abolition, because abolition calls us to dismantle the enslaving paradigms of our day as we imagine and prepare the way for a future of freedom and flourishing for all.

In this crucial moment in our country and our world, we recognize that the marginalization, stigmatization, dehumanization, and criminalization of people who use drugs, along with the overdose crisis these systems have created, form one of the most intractable enslaving paradigms of our time. In this season we are called not only to recognize the strategies and tactics of enslavement as they manifest among us, but also to witness the way they call us anew to the sacred work of abolition. Investing our time, energy, imagination, and resources in the freedom-bringing work of harm reduction can prepare the way for the new day of love and justice that is surely coming.

Harm reduction is beloved community.
It is transformative anti-oppression. It is liberation.
It is reciprocity and reconciliation.
It is sanctuary. It is the gospel.
And it is our obligation to ensure that this gospel of dignity, compassion, of love,
that this gospel of harm reduction, is accessible to all. – Erica Poellot

So this Advent, as we await and prepare for the coming of transformational Love in flesh and bone, we want to invite your engagement with generative connection between scripture readings for the season and contemporary abolition movements, in particular this year, the harm reduction movement. Each week we will explore a one of the principles of harm reduction as the lens through which we are encountering the Advent scriptures and imagining abolition.

Week 1 – Harm reduction calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant harm
Week 2 – Harm reduction affirms people who use drugs (PWUD) themselves as the primary agents of reducing the harms of their drug use and seeks to empower PWUD to share information and support each other in strategies which meet their actual conditions of use
Week 3 – Harm reduction recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination, and other social inequalities affect both people’s vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm
Week 4 – Harm reduction ensures that people who use drugs and those with a history of drug use routinely have a real voice in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them

Each reflection will be posted below daily throughout the season. We hope you will make these reflections part of your waiting, hoping and preparing this Advent, as you deepen your understanding of abolition as part of the work of practicing antiracism.