Angels on the Head of a Needle: Constructing Socially Meaningful Space in a Syringe Services Progra

People who inject drugs, people experiencing homelessness, people living with HIV and others converge daily within Change Point, Nevada's first syringe services program in Reno, Nevada. Although Change Point has an official designation to provide sterile injection supplies, safe sex supplies, education, and HIV and hepatitis C testing, it also provides a radically inclusive social space for various individuals existing on the margins of Reno life. This project focuses on the ways in which staff, volunteers, and consumers create and maintain a socially inclusive space while drawing upon harm reduction discourse. Drawing upon the work of Michel de Certeau, as well as literature on spatial justice and third space (Oldenburg 1989, Soja 1996), I argue that various actors construct, maintain, and (re)define a meaningful space beyond the public health discursive framework of harm reduction and provide social support to one another while contesting notions of stigmatized identities.