On the corner of 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, Harlem community leaders and residents gathered on Friday to chant, wave signs, and march in protest of the construction of a new Mount Sinai Hospital methadone clinic. The clinic, which stands on 125th Street, is the eighth such drug treatment facility within a five-block radius, and residents say it is proof that Harlem has become oversaturated with methadone clinics.

Though the rally was incited by the most recent methadone clinic on 125th Street, rally organizers and speakers in community advocacy groups such as Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association and Greater Harlem Coalition explained this protest is just one of many efforts to address the worsening state of substance abuse in Harlem and, they say, the role methadone clinics play in intensifying the issue. MMPCIA President Madlyn Stokely said she hoped the event would unite the community around common goals.

“This is a people’s rally,” Stokely said. “We really hope this is an opportunity for people to talk about their experiences because if you walk around the streets you see people who need help, and they’re just not getting the help they need. Politicians and lawmakers need to listen to us, and now is the time to speak up.”

The march began at 126th Street and Lenox Avenue with a stop at 290 Lenox Ave in recognition of substance abuse disorder victims. It concluded with a series of speeches in Marcus Garvey Park that reflected on the condition of substance abuse in Harlem and condemned the oversaturation of drug treatment facilities in the neighborhood.

According to a GHC study, although Harlem only makes up 4.3 percent of New York City’s total population, it holds 19.1 percent of the city’s drug treatment facilities. However, only 24.5 percent of those who use Harlem facilities are Harlem residents; the other 75.5 percent of patients commute from other boroughs and even areas outside of New York City. Despite the high rate of commuting patients, 80 percent of zip codes in the New York City area remain without any clinics and 65 percent of people in opioid treatment have no local opioid program. Harlem resident and GHC member Hudson Roditi described this inequity of treatment availability as burdensome both to commuting patients and residents of oversaturated neighborhoods.

“How can it be helpful for a person who's struggling with drug addiction to have to travel because these facilities are not distributed throughout the region?” Roditi said. “So people have to travel to get to a facility from Long Island or Westchester, and they waste a big part of their day. When they get here, and they're around all of these bad influences, it flies in the face of common sense. If you look at the fact that this neighborhood is largely African American and it's largely lower-income. It feels like it's an issue of racism.”

Groups of elementary and middle school students attended the rally to protest the proximity of treatment clinics to Harlem schools. Several students spoke during the rally’s conclusion at Marcus Garvey Park, sharing how rising drug abuse had impacted them growing up in Harlem and commuting to school. Nathan Smith, chief of diversity, equity, inclusion, and culturally responsive education at Harlem Village Academies, further elaborated on community concern for children attending schools in the area.

“It just doesn’t seem to be that these people are getting help, and it’s actually creating more harm in the community,” Smith said. “Our position at HVA is that we are part of the community; we’re deeply concerned about what is happening. We’re deeply concerned about our kids that have to witness these things.”

Local residents at the rally also cited concerns of safety as a result of clinics, with some residents claiming they have observed an influx of drug dealers that target patients as they leave treatment clinics––effectively nullifying the intended positive impact. Small business owners have also shared concerns about how the oversaturation of drug clinics impacts businesses.

“The restaurant business is a tough business, it works with very thin margins,” Anita Trehan, the owner of small business Chaiwali on Lenox Avenue and 124th Street, said. “Add this kind of dynamic in the neighborhood, it’s dangerous for my customers; it’s dangerous for my staff. We certainly want to help our neighbors, but we also live in this community. There has to be balance.”

Throughout the rally’s many speeches, organizers asserted that the imbalance of drug treatment clinics between neighborhoods stood as a prime example of “medical redlining,” defined as a systematic denial of medical services by federal government agencies, local governments, and the private sector to residents of specific neighborhoods.

“It doesn’t make sense why the Upper West Side does not have one clinic, but they’re all concentrated here in Harlem. It’s a manufactured crisis,” Cordell Cleare, a District 30 New York State Senate candidate, said. “The powers that are here have allowed it to be a root cause in this community for violence by allowing easy access to drugs for decades by concentrating clinics in the district, by criminalizing addiction, and by refusing to actually deal with the rapid drug dealing. We can and must be creative because the decisions made by politicians for the past five years have done nothing for us. Let's be honest.”

As the rally concluded, residents displayed a sense of optimism for the future, speaking in support of efforts for more equitable distribution of drug treatment clinics. The GHS, the MMPCIA, and other community organizations plan to continue advocating for this issue in the form of petitions, protests, and awareness campaigns. Despite the discussion of the negative impacts of the influx of patients, Stokely emphasized the necessity for empathy for those struggling with addiction in the neighborhood’s improvement work.

“I recognized I couldn’t continue to struggle with the bureaucracies and not address the people who are suffering on the street. That could be my brother, that could be my sister, that could be my child, and, of course, that could’ve been me,” Stokely said. “So that’s why we demand this rally be inclusive, we have to have compassion for the people who are the victims on the street.”