In 1997, Ruth Rollins gave up heroin. Growing up in an abusive household, the drug fit into cycles of trauma she experienced through generations. Now, she was getting better, and could be with her sons. But the cycle of trauma she experienced was still unbroken. “Even though we got better, the children didn’t get better,” she said in a recent interview.
Her son Danny was shot and killed 10 years later in a still unsolved murder. In 2012, Rollins helped start Operation Lipstick, which stands for Ladies Involved In Putting a Stop to Inner-City Killing, and in 2017 founded We Are Better Together Warren Daniel Hairston Project, named for her son, bringing community support to Roxbury and beyond.
In 2021, McKinsey & Company, a massive consulting firm, paid up for its role in the opioid epidemic. Misleading doctors into believing their clients’ drug, Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin, was safer than it was, and “turbocharging” sales, McKinsey exacerbated a crisis that took hundreds of thousands of lives across the country. The firm still receives millions of dollars in health-related contracts from Massachusetts, but in 2021 agreed to pay Mass a $13.2 million settlement for its role in the crisis.
Of that eight-figure sum, $1.5 million went to the state’s Attorney General’s Office to “assist Massachusetts health care consumers and programs.” The AGO spent nearly $1.3 million of that by this April, with about $960,000 going to gun violence prevention grants of between $65,000 and $100,000 for 10 nonprofits including We Are Better Together. Another $340,000 went to a summer youth jobs program grant that granted between $4,000 and $12,000 to 35 nonprofits including Groundwork Somerville and Bikes Not Bombs, according to comptroller data.
Interconnected crisis: trauma, opioids, and gun violence
Some of the money that McKinsey had to pay for its responsibility in worsening a scourge that caused Rollins personal distress made its way to her nonprofit and her impacted community. We Are Better Together used the money to revive its youth program, which provides stipends for struggling young women.
Rollins’ struggle, especially as a Black woman, wasn’t as recognized, she said. “We forget about the caregivers,” she said. “We can make a difference, and we can interrupt that cycle. Because a lot of that is generational trauma.” Rollins said the cycles of abuse which she experienced still inform her work; that includes stigma for suffering, something she seeks to help others unlearn.
“It wasn’t until my son was murdered that I realized that it happened on my watch,” she said. “It didn’t make me a bad parent, but I gave him what was given to me.”
The link between gun violence prevention and opioid use is well-documented—those who have suffered with opioid use disorder are far more likely to carry a gun, be threatened with one, and have shot at someone else. Those convicted of gun crimes may also be incarcerated in the state’s Department of Correction, where drug abuse is rampant; one Department of Public Health study showed that the opioid overdose death rate was “120 times higher for those recently released from incarceration compared to the rest of the adult population.”
“It’s all connected,” Rollins said, “and we have to treat it as such.”
Finding (and funding) community and healing
In July 2015, Anibella Reeves’ father was prescribed opioids after a car accident left him in serious pain. After developing an addiction to the drug, his doctor cut him off. This was common for doctors at the time; prescriptions dropped following a recognition of the unsafe nature of pharmaceutical opiates. Reeves’ father turned to illicit opioids, and in 2019, died from an overdose.
After experiencing homelessness and trauma as a result, Reeves, a Holyoke native, turned to Pa’lante Transformative Justice, a local youth-led nonprofit focused on community work, group therapy, and youth advocacy, where she now serves as one of its youngest youth coordinators. “I did anything to be there,” she said, even when living in a homeless shelter that required permission slips for her to attend Pa’lante meetings.
Pa’lante also received about $100,000 from the gun violence prevention grant, using the money to hire a counselor, who started in September. Reeves’ father’s death was part of a crisis McKinsey helped fuel, and now more young people like her can receive support from Pa’lante, the program she credits with helping her heal.
“I tell people to lean on each other, know we got your back,” Reeves said. “It helps to know you have a community.”
Administrative costs and policing: controversial spending of opioid funds
Massachusetts will receive more than $1 billion dollars from settlements related to the opioid crisis by 2038, including the McKinsey settlement and settlements with Purdue and the company’s owners, the Sackler family. But according to the most recent data available, most of the money that has been disbursed to municipalities so far has gone unspent.
A significant amount of funding to cities and towns that has been spent has gone to administrative costs, with some funds also going to policing and clearing homeless encampments. The City of Brockton, which received $99,000 from the gun violence prevention grant, described its use of the funds as being “in collaboration with” the Brockton Police Department in the grant announcement. Luke Midnight-Woodward, the director of Pa’lante, said that such expenditures are unfortunate: “We know these systems harm the people that are most affected.”
Holyoke, where Pa’lante is located, appears to not have spent the $921,000 allotment it received from opioid settlements, according to Fiscal Year 2024 data and up-to-date comptroller data (municipal expenditures for FY25 have not been published yet). The city recently held events at the Holyoke public library seeking public input into how to spend the funds, and is currently seeking resident volunteers for a Citizens Opioid Advisory Committee “to review grant applications and make funding recommendations to the Mayor.”
Local nonprofits scramble for grants amid federal cuts
Pa’lante and We Are Better Together are run by community members, often individuals most affected by opioid use and gun violence.
“We depend on ourselves,” Reeves said, “because we don’t know that people will help us.”
Two years ago, the Holyoke native testified at the State House in favor of safe consumption sites, which reduce overdoses and crime. The legislation she advocated for has yet to pass, though the state did spend a significant amount on comparable programs in FY25, according to data obtained by BINJ.
The summer youth jobs spending portion of the McKinsey largesse has also gone to some adjacent service providers. Groundwork Somerville, an urban farming and food access nonprofit, received nearly $12,000. Its Co-Director Em Plotkin said it helped fund preventative measures for young people who might otherwise turn to drugs, noting that the nonprofit’s work isn’t necessarily directly tied to the opioid crisis.
With federal funding cuts in countless areas threatening the community work these nonprofits do while exacerbating problems they’re addressing, Plotkin noted that there has been increased competition for non-federal grants.
According to Rollins, We Are Better Together lost $1 million in federal grant money because of the Trump administration. Recalling the $200 budget she started with, she said, “This grant was huge. … If nothing else, it was about prestige. Because we’re gonna do the work regardless.”
