For the better part of 25 years, Paul Harkin has spent most of his days “in the mosh pit” of the Tenderloin, working with homeless drug users on HIV prevention, testing and treatment, as well as harm-reduction services.
“I’ve always been about support, not punishment; compassion, not coercion,” he says. “I have a great belief that when we treat people right, we get the best outcomes.”
To say Harkin has strong feelings about Proposition F is an understatement. Mayor London Breed’s ballot measure requires single adults who receive cash assistance to undergo screening and enroll in treatment if they are found to be drug users.
Harkin writes off Prop. F in four quick words: “That shit doesn’t work.” Compelling people into treatment who are not ready for it and do not want to do it, he says, will lead to “horrible outcomes.”
And yet, Harkin was recently jolted when he watched video ads for Proposition F and saw … himself. Harkin is on screen for three seconds — in a commercial that only lasts 15 seconds. On camera, he is squatting on his haunches in a Tenderloin gutter in order to be eye-level while talking with a disheveled homeless person, who is also squatting on the sidewalk amid his scattered possessions.
The words “Cash assistance requires enrolling in treatment” are superimposed over Harkin’s image while a narrator delivers the same message.
The identical photograph can be found here, captioned “Paul Harkin, director of harm reduction at GLIDE, hands out Narcan, fentanyl detection packets and tinfoil to drug users in an alley in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood on Feb. 3, 2020. (Nick Otto for the Washington Post via Getty Images).” Harkin now works for HealthRight 360.
“I felt violated, you know?” Harkin says “I didn’t want to make this about me, but they brought me into it. Of all the shots of the Tenderloin, which is Ground Zero for drug-user pornography, you pick the one with the guy who is part of the organized No on F movement? How did I end up in the wrong fucking movie?”
Proposition F campaign spokesperson Joe Arrellano has an answer.
“Our campaign mistakenly used a Getty Images still image from a Washington Post article. Getty Images products cannot be used for political purposes,” he wrote “When this was brought to our attention … we immediately removed the ad from circulation in video, print, and online and replaced it with a different image.”
Rather than the approach of Prop. F, which Harkin says is doomed to failure, he advocates that drug users need to be “treated as human beings, so you can open their eyes to the benefits of treatment — the level of treatment they are able to receive. You can’t scare them away. There can’t be coercion and stigma.”
Proposition F, the Scotland-born Harkin continues, “is putting people at a high risk of overdose. If you mandate treatment and they slip out of that and go back to using, what used to get them high will now kill them. You’re not doing anyone a great fucking favor there by putting their overdose risk higher.”
A 152-year old law
While fair-use photos and videos in the public domain are used in oppositional political ads all the time — grainy, unflattering photos of an opposing office-seeker are par for the course in campaign commercials — it’s a different matter to claim or imply that an individual supports a proposition or candidate that they oppose.
“You can’t use someone’s photo, if it implies they are on one side or another of a candidate campaign or issue if they are not,” says Jim Sutton, the dean of San Francisco campaign lawyers. The relevant statute, he says, is California Civil Code 45.
Dating back to 1872, this code states that “Libel is a false and unprivileged publication by writing, printing, picture, effigy, or other fixed representation to the eye, which exposes any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his occupation.”
Harkin said that his reputation could be damaged by the inference that he supports Proposition F: “The work I do with a marginalized population requires me to draw upon the good graces and social capital I have built up,” he says.
“If people are looking at me more suspiciously because I was part of an attempt to withdraw their benefits and force them into treatment, it would make my work much more challenging.”
Harkin says he’s keeping his legal options open, but isn’t likely to make waves if this was, indeed, an honest mistake.
“If there was cynicism involved, I’d like that to be swatted,” he says. “If it was purely accidental, a cease and desist is proper, and I’d let it go at that.”
Just saw this image in an online ad on Hulu around 8:30pm on Feb 7, 2024. Prop F is bad enough – worse that the campaign is using Paul’s image to erroneously suggest he supports AND lying that they have already removed it from circulation after they were made aware of their misuse of the Getty Image photo.
He felt violated because he was violated. It really doesn’t matter how you feel about this ballot measure. What matters is his image was used without his consent. This practice needs to stop.
Thank you for this! Paul was a neighbor of ours for years, and a more passionate and dedicated advocate for harm reduction would be hard to find. So glad he’s speaking out against this misguided MAGA-inspired initiative that’s nothing more than a campaign ploy by London Breed to prop up her fading re-election prospects.
This picture definitely hasn’t been taken down. I just saw the exact screenshot during an ad spot on a Hulu show this evening.
Why are we providing monetary assistance and no resource assistance such as food, shelter, and medical care? I agree that we need to approach this compassionately but giving addict free money doesn’t seem to be wise.
Stupid delusional “compassion” has ruined both Oakland and San Francisco. Treating drug addled vagrants nicely, just massively increases the vagrant population. Vagrants congregate where they are treated nicely and avoid where they are treated poorly. The red carpet is out for the lowest, most toxic members of society and the results are death and societal destruction on an undeniable scale. Retro compassion is as deadly as retro viruses.
You don’t exactly strike me as an expert on homelessness. Especially if “compassion” is a dirty word to you. Did you forget that the War on Drugs was famously a massive failure?
Yet you reveal the reactionary mean-spiritedness behind the measure, which is why I’m voting against both E and F.
Still playing on Hulu, 7:17 pm Sat Feb 10. I got a photo. Any update on the story as it seems they have not taken the ad down or the image out of it?
Getty Images is pretty aggressive about misuse of their images. Probably writing the demand letter right now.