Needle Exchange
Is harm reduction a form of memorial? In a 2013 essay in which he provides a people’s history of Clean Needles Now—a needle exchange program that grew out of overlapping activist and artistic communities in LA in the 1990s—AIDS activist and artist Dont Rhine makes the case that needle exchange is as foundational to the stories we need to tell about AIDS as Freddie Mercury, red ribbons and ACT UP. With this in mind, then, as life-giving institutions, birthed in the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, can’t we think of needle exchange programs and supervised injection sites as memorial sites? After all, every clean needle is a torch passed, a tactic shared, a monument to caring. In the face of an ongoing AIDS crisis, memorials need to do more than help us remember, because not forgetting is not enough; action is needed.
