There’s a non-profit organization in Washington DC that directly assists sex workers in harm reduction.  Volunteers work with a client-centered approach determined entirely by the client’s needs as assessed by the clients themselves.  Among the options are condoms, clean needles, support groups, and showers.  Volunteers ride in a van providing assistance to people who work in the streets–they call it “strolling”–and answer calls to a 24/7 hotline.  The connections HIPS makes with the community plays a vital role in these volunteers’ ability to get their job done, so the agency asks for a minimum year-long commitment from each volunteer.

This is about 10% of the information I received today at the first, of six, HIPS volunteer training sessions.  Next, I will have an interview with a current volunteer to determine my ability to participate.  If that goes well, there are five weeks of Sundays to devote to this training, then eight (or more) hours per month of volunteering.

Today our HIPS meeting was at Planned Parenthood, where out front were standing six escorts in fluorescent vests and three anti-choice demons spouting bullshit rhetoric and handing out pamphlets.  Those six volunteers ushered in no fewer than 65 HIPS volunteers and organizers as they arrived, past the demons, to the safety of our workshop.  They did this without even acknowledging the presence of those hurting people and their rotting souls.  It was the safest I have felt among strangers in a long time.

Once inside, I had a team ready-made.  Everyone arrived for the right reasons, we created a space to count on each other, and went from there.  We got serious, spoke up, listened hard, laughed a good amount, and some of us (I) definitely learned a lot.

I learned that “THIGHS” protect HIPS.  “This Hotline, It Gets Hard Sometimes” and that’s how volunteers care for each other, how they become a family.  The van seems even more difficult, but both necessitate community.  Are necessarily of community.  Every volunteer is vital to the assistance of others.  And isn’t it always just so?

What I learned today, for real, is that there are more of us than there are of them.  I learned that the time for complacency, in any form, is over.  The volunteers outside were mostly male (presenting, at least).  The volunteers in our workshop were almost all women under 30 (! I felt so grown, and so very admiring of the upcoming generation).  These aren’t gendered issues–everyone is affected.  It is the people who go out and do something about the problems they see who will finally win the day.  It is those who are willing to stand up, and hold each other up, against demons.

Every single one of these people was hoping that on a Saturday morning they could do, or begin to do, good for others.

Today I saw hope.  I saw potential.  I learned about our future.

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If you feel so inclined, you can donate to HIPS or Planned Parenthood.