The Lincoln Hospital's acupuncture drug detoxification

Drug detoxification

Drug detoxification is a collective of interventions directed at controlling acute drug intoxication and drug withdrawal. It refers to a purging from the body of the substances to which a patient is addicted and acutely under the influence...

 clinic was founded in the South Bronx

South Bronx

The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of The Bronx. The neighborhoods of Tremont, University Heights, Highbridge, Morrisania, Soundview, Hunts Point, and Castle Hill are sometimes considered part of the South Bronx....

 by activists involved with The Black Panther Party, The Republic of New Afrika

Republic of New Afrika

The Republic of New Afrika , was a social movement that proposed three objectives. First, the creation of an independent African-American-majority country situated in the southeastern United States. A similar claim is made for all the black-majority counties and cities throughout the United States...

, the Young Lords

Young Lords

The Young Lords, later Young Lords Organization and in New York , Young Lords Party, was a Puerto Rican nationalist group in several United States cities, notably New York City and Chicago.-Founding:...

, and Students for a Democratic Society

Students for a Democratic Society

Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...

. The clinic offered drug rehabilitation

Drug rehabilitation

Drug rehabilitation is a term for the processes of medical or psychotherapeutic treatment, for dependency on psychoactive substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, and so-called street drugs such as cocaine, heroin or amphetamines...

 with a holistic approach, employing acupuncture

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is a type of alternative medicine that treats patients by insertion and manipulation of solid, generally thin needles in the body....

, political education classes and community service.

In the courses, participants learned about their addiction in a political context, exploring how their addiction harmed themselves, their community and family. It also explored the role of governmental institutions such as the CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 in drug trafficking and profiteering as well as how drug addiction has worked against progressive and revolutionary change.

Community work was also politicized: doing work such as helping an evicted tenant find housing, welfare rights work, helping a family with transportation to go see an imprisoned relative, or attending a trial showing support for one of the many political prisoners who were being railroaded into prisons for their political work.

Eventually the center was targeted by the FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

 under COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...

. FBI agents would attempt to turn drug addicts involved in the center into informants, often successfully. The tension came to a head when over 200 members of the New York Police Department and their SWAT teams used excessive force to close it down. The government claimed that clinic workers were mismanaging funds, but others claim it was an excuse to close the clinic because of its revolutionary politics.

Sources

• Churchill, Ward Vander Wall. The COINTELPRO Papers: documents from the FBI's secret wars against dissent. 2002. p. 309.
• Nehanda's Story at Columbia University
  Columbia University
  Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
  
  's Social Justice Wiki