Ivan Nelson knows the streets — not only as a counselor but as someone who once walked them in pain. “I struggled with opioid addiction in the ’80s and ’90s,” Nelson said. “In 2003, after several treatment episodes in Illinois, I entered my 14th treatment here in Minneapolis.”
Today, Nelson is the executive director and co-founder of African American Survivor Services (AASS), a grassroots nonprofit that provides culturally relevant recovery support for African Americans facing addiction, reentry, homelessness, and systemic neglect. His approach is rooted in both lived experience and professional expertise.
“We started AASS because we saw the system wasn’t working for us,” Nelson said. “We wanted to stand in the gap — especially for Western-born Black people who are falling through the cracks.”
Years before founding AASS, Nelson was staying at the Harbor Light Center on 1010 Currie Ave. while battling addiction. After finding sobriety, he returned to the same shelter — not as a client, but as a caseworker, offering support to people experiencing extreme conditions.
“I mentored people who were coming in at night, in all kinds of conditions, encouraging them about change,” he said. “A number of them went on to join the deacon program that operated at that same site.”
Nelson went on to earn a degree in addiction counseling from Minneapolis Community and Technical College and Metropolitan State University. He is now a licensed alcohol and drug counselor. Over the past two decades, he has worked across shelters, outpatient clinics, and harm-reduction programs, including Minnesota’s first harm-reduction-based housing initiative, which reduced emergency service use by over 50% in its first year.
His work is centered around the belief that recovery is not one-size-fits-all — particularly not for the Black community.
At AASS, services include peer-to-peer mentoring, trauma-informed care, community outreach, and support for people transitioning from incarceration. Many of their clients face fentanyl exposure for the first time upon release.
Bridget Stansbury, a volunteer with AASS who is in long-term recovery, understands that struggle. “I made the decision to surrender because of the lifestyle I was living,” she said. “I couldn’t stand to look in the mirror.”
Encouraged by her daughters to start over in Minnesota, Stansbury arrived while still using drugs. “I told them, ‘I’m gonna get sick — take me to the hospital,’” she recalled.
After being discharged without a treatment bed, she insisted she couldn’t be left on the street. She eventually secured a place at Geneva Women’s Residential Northside Treatment Center in Oakdale. Today, she celebrates over four years of sobriety and works at Boston Scientific, assembling pacemakers.
Her husband, Raphael Stansbury, is also in recovery and volunteers with AASS as a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist.
“I’m not gonna say I was a functional crackhead — I was a crackhead,” Raphael said. “I lived on the bus line, so I’d go home, eat, change clothes, and head right back to the block.”
Now, he distributes Narcan on the Green Line and provides harm-reduction resources at local encampments like Camp Nenookasi.
Karen Markey, the organization’s newest volunteer, came to recovery work after years in assisted living case management. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she began working in women’s residential treatment.
“I was stigmatized like everybody else,” she said. “Two weeks in, I fell in love with the work. It changed me.”
Markey now serves as a mentor navigator, helping clients with everything from notarizing IDs to finding joy in small moments — like attending a Minnesota Twins game.
“Recovery is learning to live your life fully,” she said.
Nelson emphasized that AASS’s outreach is consistent and personal — even when clients are incarcerated. “We do street outreach year-round, even in the winter,” he said. “We stay in touch with folks while they’re inside — through letters, phone calls — so when they get out, they know who to call.”
The organization works closely with parole officers, probation departments, shelters, and treatment centers to help build individualized recovery plans — especially for those pushed out of traditional programs due to systemic gaps.
“A lot of these folks aren’t unwilling — they’ve just been misassessed or overlooked,” Nelson said. “We’re here to meet them where they are.”
In addition, AASS offers housing resources, mental and chemical health assessments, a 24-hour crisis hotline, crisis intervention, and recovery meetings.
For more information on AASS, visit aasurvivorservices.org.
Clint Combs welcomes reader responses at ccombs@spokesman-recorder.com.
