Fighting for Space

the long version

"While deaths across the continent soar, Travis Lupick's Fighting for Space explains the concept of harm reduction as a crucial component of a city's response to the crisis. It tells the story of a grassroots group of addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside who waged a political street fight for two decades to transform how the city treats its most marginalized citizens. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, this group of residents from Canada's poorest neighbourhood organized themselves in response to a growing number of overdose deaths and demanded that addicts be given the same rights as any other citizen; against all odds, they eventually won." --Front flap.