Contemporary Authors

• Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2017

1. Fighting for space : how a group of drug users transformed one city's struggle with addiction LCCN 2017491732 Type of material Book Personal name Lupick, Travis, 1985- author. Main title Fighting for space : how a group of drug users transformed one city's struggle with addiction / Travis Lupick. Published/Produced Vancouver, BC : Arsenal Pulp Press, [2017] ©2017 Description 407 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm ISBN 9781551527123 (softcover) 9781551527130 (html) CALL NUMBER HV5840.C32 V337 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Fighting for Space Home Page - https://www.fightingforspace.com/

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Travis Lupick is an award-winning journalist based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the author of Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction. He works as a staff reporter for the Georgia Straight newspaper and has also written about drug addiction, harm reduction, and mental health for the Toronto Star and Al Jazeera English, among other outlets. For his reporting on Canada’s opioid crisis, Lupick received the Canadian Association of Journalists’ prestigious Don McGillivray award for best overall investigative report of 2016 and two 2017 Jack Webster awards for excellence in B.C. journalism. For Fighting for Space, he received the 2018 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. He has also worked as a journalist in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Malawi, Nepal, Bhutan, Peru, and Honduras. Follow him on Twitter: @tlupick.

• Los Angeles Review of Books - https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fighting-to-live-vancouvers-battle-for-safe-injection-sites/#!

  Fighting to Live: Vancouver’s Battle for Safe Injection Sites
  Eleanor J. Bader interviews Travis Lupick

  18 0 0

  JULY 11, 2018

  WHEN 25-YEAR-OLD Liz Evans took over management of the Portland Hotel in the Downtown Eastside area of Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1991, she was determined to treat residents with compassion and respect. Long dubbed a “home of last resort,” the single-room-occupancy hotel was a dumping ground for society’s least respected: drug addicts, sex workers, the mentally ill, and the physically disabled.

  “The entire hotel was hers to run as she saw fit,” writes journalist Travis Lupick in Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction (Arsenal Pulp Press); tasks ranged from fixing broken locks to caring for people in the throes of an overdose.

  “It was absolutely, completely overwhelming,” Evans told Lupick.

  Evans ended up leaving Vancouver after she and her husband were suspected of fiscal improprieties, and the book addresses how this unfolded in great detail. Nonetheless, Evans and her co-workers at the hotel got the safe-injection ball rolling, and her efforts are lauded throughout Fighting for Space.

  But the book is not just the story of one woman’s hard work and dogged persistence. It also addresses Vancouver’s burgeoning IV drug crisis and zeroes in on the evolution of harm reduction — the provision of clean needles, supervised injection sites, and material support for drug users — and chronicles the groundswell of activism that arose to support these efforts.

  Part social history and part community organizing manual, Fighting for Space details the decade-long fight to establish North America’s first medically managed site for injection drug users. It’s an amazing, inspiring, and sometimes-harrowing read.

  Lupick recently spoke to me about the book and the ongoing and worsening opioid crisis in the United States and Canada.

  ¤

  ELEANOR J. BADER: One of the things that struck me when reading Fighting for Space was the difference between Europe and North America in terms of how addicts and addiction are treated. Why do you think Europe is more willing to see addiction as an issue of public health rather than as a criminal matter?

  TRAVIS LUPICK: A lot of Europe’s success in responding to addiction has been a result of their willingness to base social policy on evidence. European lawmakers listen to their scientists, so when evidence says that prescription heroin and supervised injection sites save lives, they set policy and create social programs that follow these recommendations.

  If our actual goal is treatment and recovery — like we say it is — lawmakers need to look at evidence. Every study confirms that incarceration does not lead to recovery. It leads to relapse. There are literally piles of studies showing that punitive responses to addiction are actually more likely to increase drug use.

  Singer Justin Townes Earle, a recovering heroin addict, has said that we should not ask addicts why they use, but should ask why they hurt. Fighting for Space also talks about why people use drugs and addresses the underlying psychological issues that need to be addressed before sobriety can be achieved and maintained. Have treatment programs begun to address abuse and other “hurts”?

  Whenever we talk about drug use, we should take a step back and ask what caused this person to use drugs in the first place. Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is a neighborhood with a high concentration of victims: victims of child abuse, neglect, poverty, racism, sexual violence, colonialism. People use drugs because of this victimization, so responding by punishing them with arrest or incarceration only further victimizes them; it’s terrible public policy. We need to speak about compassion and treatment and recognize that treatment should never begin with the penal system.

  People like Liz Evans recognized that early and helped others see it as well. And although she and her husband were ultimately suspected of fiscal impropriety, it was her vision that got the ball rolling and helped people see drug addiction as a matter of public health. It was her vision that concluded that no one should ever lose their home because of drug use or risky behavior.

  The organizers you showcase were really strategic and were never co-opted, even when they served on government decision-making bodies. How did they maintain their political independence?

  The people I wrote about were extremely strategic and tactically conscious. If they were holding a demonstration they would be sure that the site had a visible staging area that the press could film. They did test runs. If they wanted to shout about the need for supervised injection sites, they made sure that their spokesperson was authoritative, someone people would listen to. A police chief from Europe, who understood how a supervised injection site reduced crime rates, would often be chosen over an activist from the Downtown Eastside, for example. Furthermore, they always made sure that their facts were accurate, not hyperbolic.

  Another factor was that the activists never fully trusted the government. Even when Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site, opened in September 2003, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and the others who had pushed for it for more than a decade, never completely trusted that the government wouldn’t shut it down.

  In addition, the risks the activists took were very real and while Vancouver now pats itself on the back for its enlightened policies on addiction, in the 1990s, when these folks were organizing campaign after campaign, they never knew when or if they’d be arrested or thrown in jail. Vancouver’s regional health authority now tends to take credit for Canada’s wider adoption of harm reduction. They do deserve some credit, but we have to remember that they went along with the activists slowly and sometimes kicking and screaming.

  Now that Insite is open, and supervised injection sites are operating in other provinces, has the situation for IV drug users improved?

  No. Sadly, things are now worse than ever. The crisis today is over-and-above the previous crisis that Vancouver went through in the 1990s.

  In 1998, there were 400 fatal drug overdoses in British Columbia. By 2004, after the injection site had opened, the number went down by half, to about 200. It stayed at this level for nearly a decade. Then, in 2011, fentanyl arrived. Last year, there were 1,436 fatal overdoses in British Columbia, many in the Downtown Eastside.

  How has the government responded to this upsurge?

  For the first few years after fentanyl — and then the even more dangerous carfentanil — arrived in British Columbia, the government did little in response so activists set up illegal injection sites so that they could administer naloxone to revive people who overdosed.

  Finally, in the winter of 2016, the provincial government in British Columbia listened to the activists and decided not to wait for Canada’s federal government to act. In just five days, they set up 15 overdose prevention sites throughout Vancouver, demonstrating that such facilities can be deployed quickly and cheaply. The sites provide people with clean needles and naloxone is on hand. About 15 additional injection sites are now scattered in other parts of the country.

  Of course, it’s sad that it took fentanyl reaching past the Downtown Eastside and into the wealthier suburbs for the government to become proactive, but at least they finally did respond.

  What else do you think the government should be doing?

  Vancouver began a small prescription heroin program in 2014, with between 90 and 100 people enrolled. British Columbia’s government has recognized its success, but the program has hit a wall because it is illegal to produce heroin in Canada. There is now one clinic that imports heroin from Europe and the process is cumbersome and bureaucratic. Although the government is looking to change the law to make heroin easier to procure, it takes a long time for legislative change to happen.

  But there may be a solution. Hydromorphone, better known as Dilaudid, is an opioid that is readily available in both the United States and Canada, and many users say that its effect is indistinguishable from heroin. Now, doctors in Canada are beginning to prescribe the drug in an off-label capacity for the management of addiction. In addition to the fact that the drug is clean, access provides security. People who use it no longer have to spend 60 hours a week panhandling or shoplifting for necessities. On a set dose, taken three times a day, I’ve witnessed people’s lives transform. Some people even reentered the workforce after just a few weeks on Dilaudid, which is remarkable.

  Do you think negative public attitudes toward addiction have begun to change?

  Canadians and Americans tend to view drug users in ways that are stigmatizing and often racist. We demonize drug users. During the crack epidemic when most users were African American, government officials introduced mandatory minimums and called dealers “super predators.” Now that the crisis has extended into white, middle-class communities, we’ve started talking about compassionate treatment for people who use, so it’s a problematic change that’s tangled in racism. At the same time, it’s great that the public has recognized that users are not just hanging out on street corners, but are bankers, lawyers, and corporate executives. I’m hopeful that we can we use this opening to discuss the futility of the War on Drugs and create policies that are humane, just, and effective. We clearly still have a long way to go.

  ¤

  Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, New York­–based teacher at Kingsborough Community College and freelance journalist. Bader’s work frequently appears in Truthout.com, Lilith Magazine and blog, Theasy.com, Kirkus Reviews, and Rewire.News.

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Print Marked Items
Lupick, Travis: FIGHTING FOR SPACE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Lupick, Travis FIGHTING FOR SPACE Arsenal Pulp Press (Adult Nonfiction) $21.95 6, 5 ISBN: 978-1-
55152-712-3
A chilling update on the most drug-ravaged sectors of North America.
Once journalist Lupick details the dire state of drug addiction across the country, the main focus of the book
becomes one of motivation, humanitarianism, and perseverance on the part of a group of inner-city activists
in Vancouver's skid row section, Downtown Eastside. The author describes this area as destitute and rife
with single room-occupancy hotels and countless drug pushers and addicts. In moving profiles, he
chronicles the area's downslide since the early 1990s. The drug epidemic's stronghold on this particular
Vancouver sector is intensified but also humanized by the stories of the well-organized efforts of the many
activists who have provided counseling, compassionate assistance, and radical solutions through the
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which was founded in 1998. The roadblocks were monumental,
including political invisibility, controversies surrounding supervised injection sites and overdose prevention
programs, and efforts to destigmatize the addicts and their behaviors. Most inspiring are the stories of those
rallying for the rights of users and advocating for interventional drug and harm reduction programs with
adequate follow-up measures. Lupick also checks in with several other major American cities--Boston,
Seattle, Miami, San Francisco, Toledo--to show their progress on combating the drug-abuse epidemics. The
author highlights many unconventional approaches to fighting the onslaught of drug deaths, how these
singular techniques are working, and what needs refinement to improve the odds. In addition to chronicling
the desperation of addicts and how entire neighborhoods can buckle beneath the weight of drug dependency,
Lupick also provides significant insight into the movement to destigmatize the opioid abuse epidemic with
efforts to reclassify it as a health problem and to combat it with methods of harm reduction rather than
criminal policing. He brings the reality of the perennial war on drugs into vivid focus and introduces an
impressive group of activists confronting this "ongoing struggle" with steely determination and compassion.
An intense, riveting report on a public health crisis and a network of heroes on the front lines.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Lupick, Travis: FIGHTING FOR SPACE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375119/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bff47424.
Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375119
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Fighting for Space: How A Group of Drug
Users Transformed One City's Struggle
with Addiction
Nicholas Olson
Briarpatch.
47.3 (May-June 2018): p32+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Briarpatch, Inc.
http://briarpatchmagazine.com
Full Text:
Fighting for Space: How A Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction
By Travis Lupick
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017
The history of the harm reduction movement is one of direct action and protest--an "act first, ask second"
attitude that was the only reasonable response to an outbreak of preventable disease and a crisis of
premature deaths.
In 2002, a group of residents and advocates met at the intersection of Main and Hastings in Vancouver
holding a ioo-footlong hypodermic needle made out of a giant cardboard tube, stopping traffic. They were
protesting the forced closing of a needle exchange on the corner of Main and Hastings in the Downtown
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Eastside. Earlier, in 2001, front-line workers had distributed clean needles in a trailer outfitted with
washrooms, and ensured those using in bathroom stalls didn't overdose. Affectionately known as "the
Thunder Box," the trailer became one of North America's first unsanctioned supervised injection sites.
These stories are among countless actions detailed in Travis Lupick's Fighting for Space, which tells of the
straggle that led to the implementation of Canada's first official safe-injection site in Vancouver in 2003.
The history of the harm reduction movement is one of direct action and protest--an "act first, ask second"
attitude that was the only reasonable response to an outbreak of preventable disease and a crisis of
premature deaths. Lupick focuses on the Portland Hotel Society (PHS), the groundbrealdng housing nonprofit
that offered low-barrier housing to the city's most vulnerable, and the Vancouver Area Network of
Drug Users (VANDU), the advocacy group that pushed for accessible health care and decriminalization of
drag use. The two worked in tandem, with VANDU often willingly taking the heat for direct actions to
protect the more diplomatic and funding-restricted Portland Hotel Society.
The 1990s saw a dramatic spike in overdose deaths and high rates of HIV diagnoses in Vancouver--not
unlike the current fentanyl crisis playing out across Canada. But this time the human cost is much higher,
with 2017 being the deadliest year on record for overdose deaths in B.C. The strategies used by advocates
on the West Coast, honed over decades of persistent work, can provide guidance for similar struggles being
newly waged in neighbouring Prairie provinces like Saskatchewan, where fentanyl has killed over 40
people since 2015.
While revealing the staggering numbers of diagnoses and deaths is key to understanding the scope of the
problem, it is the stories of the people who've lived through the harm reduction movement that makes this
history real. By telling the accounts of people struggling for dignity against politicians and a public
determined to dehumanize them, Lupick reinforces two basic claims of the harm reduction movement:
people who use drugs are human, and all people deserve safety and health.
In one of their first organized meetings, members of the newly formed VANDU agreed that they wanted
somewhere safe and healthy to spend time, a space that was free of police harassment. The Portland Hotel
Society's first residence was known as the "Hotel of Last Resort." Simplifying their message to one of
"health and safety"--one that politicians and the public couldn't reasonably reject--has grounded all of their
actions and successes in the harm reduction movement. Lupick concludes the book with an epilogue about a
family--Mary, Molly, and Mikel--in a quietly triumphant story of three generations living in the Portland
Hotel Society, all experiencing stability in their health and housing.
Lupick does not deify Vancouver's advocates or their process --rather, he shows them to be people offering
the simple necessities of safety and support, while working toward inclusive public health policy. He
demonstrates a proven way to effectively build low-barrier health care and housing systems: through
persistent action coupled with advocacy, and building partnerships with sympathetic policy-makers.
Without this infrastructure, the number of overdose deaths in B.C. last year would have been much higher.
The current situation on the Prairies is nearly as dire as the one Vancouver faced in the 1990s.
Saskatchewan's HIV-AIDS rates are the highest in the country, and with 79 per cent of the people newly
diagnosed as HIV-positive self-identifying as Indigenous, programming must prioritize consultation with
Indigenous communities. Meanwhile, harm reduction programs have been heavily stigmatized by a
predominantly conservative public and openly scrutinized by political leaders. In 2009, former premier
Brad Wall said his government would limit the number of clean needles handed out, despite a Saskatchewan
Ministry of Health report proving the success of needle exchange programs. In 2017, The Sask. Party
threatened community based organizations with a 10 per cent funding cut that would hit operations deemed
not to be "core services," like needle exchanges. Though the party eventually opted against the funding cut,
when harm reduction programs are routinely among the first to be threatened, the work being done by those
of the front lines is delegitimized and destabilized.
For years, doctors, front-line workers, and advocates in Saskatchewan have been pushing for the province to
declare a state of emergency regarding rising HIV rates. But if we continue to wait for a provincial
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government to take necessary action--especially as two newly elected party leaders wade in slowly, in a
province where the health of First Nations people is systematically neglected--it may never happen. Prairie
activists and front-line workers struggling through those bureaucracies must instead act upon their values
and conscience to build systems of equitable health care and human services, regardless of whether they
have been granted permission by the state.
NICHOLAS OLSON is the author of A Love Hat Relationship, a photobook of collectable prairie hats; and
a series of illustrated zines with accompanying audiobook narrations. More can be found at ballsofrice.com.
He lives in Treaty 4 Territory.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Olson, Nicholas. "Fighting for Space: How A Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with
Addiction." Briarpatch, May-June 2018, p. 32+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539035834/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e5f569fc.
Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A539035834

"Lupick, Travis: FIGHTING FOR SPACE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375119/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 14 July 2018. Olson, Nicholas. "Fighting for Space: How A Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction." Briarpatch, May-June 2018, p. 32+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539035834/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 14 July 2018.

• Quill & Quire
  https://quillandquire.com/review/fighting-for-space-how-a-group-of-drug-users-transformed-one-citys-struggle-with-addiction/
  Word count: 465

  Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction
  by Travis Lupick

  Vancouver’s Downtown eastside might qualify as ground zero for drug addiction in Canada – the locus for everything from heroin and crack cocaine to crystal meth, Oxycontin, and fentanyl. Travis Lupick, a journalist with experience writing about issues surrounding addiction and mental health, also lives in Vancouver’s troubled neighbourhood, and so has a vested interest in its welfare and the well-being of its denizens. Lupick’s new book tells the gripping story of how a small group representing the most marginalized and desperate Downtown Eastsiders banded together during the 1990s and 2000s to change hearts, minds, and laws by advocating for safe injection sites for intravenous drug users.

  Lupick charts the experiences of the Portland Hotel Society, the Vancouver Network of Drug Users, and other activist groups as they are repeatedly ignored by politicians, harassed and beaten by police, and defeated in court. Setbacks and the glacial pace of progress notwithstanding, these various groups persevere and finally convince the machinery of the state to view drug addiction in Vancouver as a public health emergency rather than a criminal justice problem.

  Today, a safe injection site offering addicts clean rigs, needles, and other paraphernalia seems like an obvious benefit for society – reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C and resulting in fewer overdose deaths. But for politicians, police, and NIMBYish taxpayers in 1990s Vancouver, it appeared counterintuitive at best and an abomination at worst.

  Enter activists Ann Livingston, Bud Osborn, Liz Evans, Mark Townsend, Dean Wilson, and Dan Small. By fighting to establish Insite, North America’s first legal supervised injection program, what this group of rebels was actually doing was getting all levels of society – healthcare professionals, law enforcement, courts, average people – to acknowledge the humanity of deeply marginalized addicts and to demand they be respected as citizens with health-care problems, not garbage to be discarded.

  Lupick’s book does not shy away from the negative: many people die, and PHS comes to a sordid end. But the lingering feeling the reader is left with is one of hope. Fighting for Space demonstrates that a rag-tag but passionate group, with the help of some well-placed political allies, media-savvy protest techniques, a researcher, and a lawyer or two, can change the world – or at least make it a little more bearable.

  Reviewer: Stephen Knight

  Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press

  DETAILS
  Price: $24.95

  Page Count: 408 pp

  Format: Paper

  ISBN: 978-1-55152-712-3

  Released: Oct.

  Issue Date: January 2018

  Categories: History, Politics & Current Affairs

Word Count