Limited edition tote bag featuring an iconic graphic produced by the Santa Cruz Needle Exchange, from the archive of Heather Edney. Produced on the occasion of our exhibition Love Rules: The Harm Reduction Archives of Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz at MoMA PS1, on view through October 6, 2025. Printed by Come on Strong.
In 1989, Heather Edney co-founded the Santa Cruz Needle Exchange, producing a seismic shift from male-dominated AIDS activism. With a dedicated team of volunteers, she engineered a DIY, grassroots organization that centered queer and femme voices, utilized punk aesthetics, and created cutting-edge needle exchange programs to educate and support the needs of drug users. Edney produced the acclaimed zine junkphood (1995) with Brooke Lober, a creative platform for sharing safer drug use practices in an accessible manner, and co-authored Getting Off Right: A Safety Manual for Injection Drug Users with Rod Sorge and Synn Stern (1998), published by the National Harm Reduction Coalition. These landmark publications connect the lived experiences of drug users with medical expertise, an evergreen resource that resonates to this day.
Love Rules features materials from the archives of writers and activists Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz—photography, DIY publications, and other ephemera—detailing the creation of safe sex guidelines and safer injection practices. Centering the expertise of sex workers and drug users, the presentation highlights how harm reduction strategies used by social services today are informed by the work of those most directly impacted by the AIDS epidemic and drug-related overdoses.