Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) Fundraiser + Panel Discussion
On June 26, 2025, over a hundred attendees gathered in McGill’s SSMU Ballroom to discuss equity, access, and solidarity. This was part of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) lecture tour across Canada, and the Montréal stop was nothing short of memorable. Thanks to the DULF team, meaningful discourse unraveled, bringing this issue into a localized context—words that will resound past the event’s three-hour runtime.
For one year, DULF sold pure cocaine, heroine, and methamphetamine to drug users on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and no one died. Now, the founders are facing life in prison, and they need your help.
Based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, DULF is a grassroots harm reduction organization. It pioneers a radical compassion club model to intervene in the toxic drug supply crisis. Over the past decades, unmediated access to these substances has had an insurmountable impact on unhoused and low-income groups. Despite the organization’s benevolent efforts to break the taboo on this conversation, the local police had other plans. The compassion club founders were promptly arrested, and are now facing criminal charges including the possibility of life in prison.
The presentation was led by DULF co-founder and trans femme harm-reduction activist Eris Nyx. The tour is a way for her to voice her perspective and collect funds for her upcoming criminal case. She speaks about DULF’s history and findings, as well as about her plan to advocate for and secure drug user rights in court and beyond.
At the event, Nyx takes the stage with a demeanor of remarkable resilience. The dexterity through which she speaks about the real-life situation of the drug crisis in Vancouver’s downtown east-side is resounding. She tactfully acknowledges that this work can be applied to communities nationwide facing the same struggle with dependence on bad supply. Her slideshow moves audiences from facts to funny –comparing legitimate findings and charts, to memes that somehow make this reality more palatable. Her stage presence and air of speaking expertly on the subject matter, almost makes audience members forget that they’re watching someone who faces the threat of life in prison, with an impending court date.
Nyx reminded us of the organization’s practical, solutions-based response. “DULF emphasizes material action over symbolic performance, and we should serve as a reminder that direct aid and organizing often achieve more-than-idealistic [results]. Go and do something!”
Beyond Nyx, Indigenous panelist Lynn Black detailed the implications of the current court case put against DULF and Nyx. The case, they suggested, can have severe ramifications on Vancouver’s Indigenous and First Nations communities, and this affects parallel communities in cities like Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. “There is a barrier [in] healthcare, legal support, housing, or substance use safety. That is a…severance of our right as Indigenous people. For me, our work is about confronting that aspect of colonization…on a structural level,” Black expressed during the event.
Take a listen to the event recording down below.
CKUT 90.3FM · Eris Nyx on the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF)The event was co-presented by the Indigenous Support Workers Project and CKUT 90.3 FM, and the SSMU Ballroom was secured with the generous assistance of Reform and Resettle, a McGill Student Group.
Our CKUT production team offered DULF a space to host the event and broadcast it to our listeners. With exposure and time, DULF hopes to continue spreading its message of compassion and urgency to as many people willing to listen, engage and take action.
Read more about DULF’s evidence-based intervention and the campaign to support their legal plight here.
Donate to the legal defense fund here.
