HIV Prevention Justice Blog

United Nations Briefing session on HIV and Human Rights

Luis Diaz-Albertini — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:36:22 +0000

The "HIV and Human Rights" briefing on June 16, 2009 held at the United Nations in New York City sparked discussion about the central role of human rights in universal access to prevention, treatment care and support for HIV and AIDS. Michel Sidibé (Executive Director of UNAIDS), Sapana Pradhan Malla (Member of Parliament, Nepal), and Tembeni Fazo (African Services Committee, Zimbabwe) delivered remarks and dialoged with more than 100 UN staff, advocates and community members.

Realizing human rights includes both building protective measures and combating discriminatory and punitive laws that further marginalize vulnerable populations, including gay men and other men who have sex with men, drug users, and sex workers. This approach holds traditionally marginalized populations at the center of dialogue and participation and asks for active participation and dialogue between civil society and the state. Sapana Malla presented law as a powerful tool for demanding state accountability with an emphasis on maintaining a multi-sectoral approach. The briefing made clear that protective laws facilitate HIV prevention and care. Where the law is discriminatory or criminalizes populations most vulnerable to acquiring HIV, it creates exclusion and barriers to claiming and establishing rights with disasterous public health outcomes. Building a rights-based legal framework protects rather than criminalizes vulnerable populations and people living with HIV. Where universal access to prevention, treatment, care, and support is recognized as a human right, governments and society at large are expected to respect and promote the human rights of people living with HIV.

Mr. Sidibé emphasized that where punitive laws exist, vulnerability to HIV and prevalence of HIV is high. Punitive laws, like those criminalizing same-sex sexuality or drug addiction, further marginalize groups vulnerable to HIV and increase prevalence of HIV within those groups. Sidibé further explained that criminalization of HIV transmission perpetuates the epidemic, and that lack of equitable access to health information-reinforced by gender inequality and minority marginalization-builds barriers to HIV prevention among, particularly vulnerable communities.

Michel Sidibé made explicit that protection of human rights and establishment of gender equality are necessary for achieving universal access to prevention, treatment, care, and support services. And Mr. Sidibé placed prevention at the center of these efforts.

Addressing universal access through human rights requires us to challenge pervasive sociopolitical and economic structures of inequality, exclusion, and criminalization. This in turn demands sustained structural changes.

People's whose rights have already been violated suffer from increased vulnerability. Lack of access to education, socioeconomic inequality, and gender inequality increasingly marginalize vulnerable groups. It is necessary to protect all human rights in an effort to build an enabling environment that decreases people's vulnerability to HIV. These efforts should focus on preventive care, with sustainable approaches focusing on structural barriers to HIV prevention and care.

Comments from the floor added that for the realization of human rights people living with HIV/AIDS, young people and other vulnerable groups must be involved in HIV prevention and care. And we need cross-sectoral collaboration, research and analysis that tackles the drivers of HIV and empower communities. To make the necessary fundamental changes, we need long-term development and investment strategies, including increased and sustained funding in preventive initiatives.

To take action to realize these changes in HIV prevention in the US, join CHAMP, SisterLove and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago in the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance (HIV PJA). The HIV PJA is a US alliance of organizations working for a fundamental shift in domestic HIV prevention to address the poverty-related drivers of the epidemic that are also core human rights issues. For more information on our collective work so far or details about our next call, please visit http://www.champnetwork.org/HIV-Prevention-Justice-Alliance.

Untangling Health Care Reform in Time for ACTION!

Katie Crisona — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:12:12 +0000

Katie Crisona, CHAMP Reproductive Rights Activist Service Corps Fellow supported by the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program at Hampshire College

All the media coverage of health care reform may be confusing but it’s certainly warranted: legislation is moving fast and the issue will affect each of us in some way. All of this health insurance jargon is being thrown around, and there are a ton of new acronyms and unfamiliar systems. Why is this all so complicated? Can’t we just take a page out of the Canadian handbook and have universal health care? I’ve really had to take some time to sit down and understand it. I’m going to break down what I’ve learned for all of us in the CHAMP Network, so you can effectively take action before final decisions are made in Washington in July.

The House of Representatives and the Senate are each creating bills that will eventually be combined into legislation that will be put on President Obama’s desk in October (with luck). Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) is overseeing work on the bill in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, acting in place of Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-MA), which is leading the crafting of health care reform legislation in the Senate. He’s relying on his on-going relationship with ranking minority member Charles Grassley (R-IA) to move the bill. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) is Chairing the Finance Committee, which has a jurisdiction over the appropriations process around healthcare reform legislation in the Senate. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee is working with Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Chair of the Health subcommittee, to craft and pass legislation on the House side.

Members are working in Washington now but heading to their home districts June 29th for the 4^th of July recess. After they return, the goal is to have the bills on the floor before the August summer recess. Calls to members of Congress now and constituent visits to their district offices over the recess are vital.

The HIV and AIDS community can push and protect several issues central to the care and treatment of people living with HIV and AIDS and to HIV prevention justice:

1. Expand Medicaid to all low-income adults, in particular childless adults who account for a large number of uninsured people living with HIV. Expanding Medicaid would reach 45% of uninsured people living with HIV. To ensure states in economic crisis are not forced to cut Medicaid budgets and limit access to critical health services, the Senate bill grants 100% federal medical assistance percentage until 2015 for individuals who are newly eligible under the expansion.

2. Include the Early Treatment for HIV Act (ETHA), giving states the option to make Medicaid available to people living with HIV instead of being ineligible until an AIDS diagnosis as currently required. Inclusion of ETHA would reach more than 75% of uninsured people living with HIV. This is a very important part of HIV prevention because early treatment is an integral part of promoting the overall wellness of someone living with HIV and lowering community viral load.

3. Include LGBTQ people in data collection and language defining health disparities. Current proposals make no mention of the disparities suffered by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and offer this community no place in the nation’s blueprint for a healthier future.

4. Increase eligibility for individuals with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty level. In 2008, the poverty line was $14,000 for person with no children and $21,000 for a family of four with two children under the age of 18. This legislated measure of poverty was developed in the 1950s and has not been fundamentally revised to reflect today’s economic realities. Though it has been indexed for inflation, it is essentially the same poverty line developed 40 years ago. The current Senate version only extends benefits to people at 150% of the poverty level. Too many vulnerable people will remain without coverage unless the eligibility level is raised.

5. Create a strong public insurance option. This would offer a national standard for coverage and greater dependability, consistency and security for people with HIV than private plans, which can charge higher prices and/or close, merge or change benefits at will. The poorest among us are most vulnerable to HIV infection and need access to comprehensive health care as part of the full spectrum of prevention, treatment, care and support.

It remains unclear what public plans will actually cover, and all of this potential progress is at risk. Republicans believe in small government and having federal health care kind of flies right in the face of that. The whole thing is really pissing off the private insurance companies, and, apparently, the American Medical Association isn’t big fans of the idea either.

President Obama has defended the public plan. Accoring to the NY Times, in a conference addressing the issue, he said, “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government — which they say can’t run anything — suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical." However, he has more or less stepped back from the actual legislation. He put forth guiding principles to set expectations for comprehensive health care reform, which include investing prevention and wellness and assuring affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans. In order to live up to this lofty framework, Congress has to work out the details and only grassroots pressure can make them do the right thing.

Policy-makers in Washington must find a way to ensure every person in this country has access to health care. Not only is it an essential human right but also the only way we’ll all be healthy enough to care for our families and communities and be the ready-to-work nation Obama called us in his inaugural address.

If you are interested in planning a visit to your members of Congress over the 4^th of July recess to ensure healthcare reform promotes HIV prevention justice, please email Katie Crisona, CHAMP Fellow, at katie@champnetwork.org or call us at 718-926-5332.

To call your members of Congress about healthcare reform today, please visit Project Inform at http://www.projectinform.org/advo/hc/061809.shtml.

Go to www.taepusa.org for background information and analyses of various health care reform proposals and the impact on people with HIV/AIDS.

Better Late Than Never: HIV Prevention Among Young Women & Girls - NEW REPORT from HIV Law Project

Vanessa Brocato — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:12:36 +0000

HIV Law Project’s Center for Women & HIV Advocacy has released its latest report: “Better Late Than Never: HIV Prevention Among Young Women & Girls." The report catalogues the myriad biological, cultural, and socioeconomic factors that have caused steadily rising rates of HIV among young women and girls, particularly young women of color. The report then offers an expansive series of recommendations to promote effective prevention efforts among this population. Recommendations are based in interventions with proven efficacy, and are premised in the importance of integrating HIV prevention with sexual and reproductive health care. As the Obama administration moves forward on a National AIDS Strategy, this report offers timely background and important recommendations for halting the rise of HIV among young women and girls.

The report can be found at:
http://hivlawproject.org/resources/cwha/Better-Late-Than-Never-05072009.pdf

Congratulations to Stephanie Morain, Alison Yager and the others at the Center for this helpful new analysis.

Labor group takes on CVS over locked-up condoms - from the Nashville TN

Mark H — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:57:02 +0000

http://dailyreports.kff.org/Daily-Reports/2009/June/17/HIV-061709-CVS2.aspx

In Search of Justice: Bail Granted for HIV+ Pregnant Woman

Laura McTighe — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:17:20 +0000

This blog originally appeared on RH Reality Check.

Many of you have been following the case of Ms. T, a 28 year-old HIV-positive pregnant woman from Cameroon who was recently sentenced to 238 days in prison by a judge trying to protect her unborn child from being born with HIV. Ms. T has spent nearly six months in the Cumberland County Jail in Maine. It is with much relief that I tell you—Ms. T was released yesterday released on bail, perhaps ironically, for the same reason that the judge originally imprisoned her

In January 2009, Ms. T was arrested for allegedly having false immigration documents. Only shortly after her arrest, she learned that she was both HIV-positive and pregnant. Under current federal sentencing guidelines, Ms. T’s charge should have carried a sentence of zero to six months. So it would have been reasonable for her to expect that she would be given “time served” when she appeared before her sentencing judge on May 14th, and released to continue her care with the team at Maine’s Frannie Peabody Center she had already started working with while she was in custody.

But United States District Court Judge John Woodcock did not give Ms. T “time served.” He instead calculated her sentence to ensure that she would remain in prison through her August 29th due date, stating that Ms. T was more likely to receive medical treatment and follow an HIV treatment regimen in federal prison than out on her own or in the custody of immigration officials. Judge Woodcock also acknowledged that his sentence was based entirely on her decision to continue her pregnancy while being HIV-positive: if Ms. T were pregnant but not living with HIV, he would have sentenced her to “time served.”

For more background on Ms. T’s case, please see Margo Kaplan’s RHRC post ‘Behind Bars for Being Pregnant and HIV-Positive.’

The precedent set by Judge Woodcock’s decision is disturbing. His sentence falls not only at a time of increased criminalization of HIV transmission, but also within a long history of government regulation of women’s reproductive health, most blatantly in the coerced sterilization of women of color, which was at its peak in the 1970s. By mandating Ms. T to prison based solely on his concern for her unborn child, Judge Woodcock implicitly questions Ms. T’s ability, if not desire, to protect her baby and to promote her own health throughout and beyond her pregnancy.

Since the first public news of Ms. T’s sentence, there has been a tremendous outpouring of support, uniting advocates in HIV/AIDS, detention and imprisonment, reproductive health, and racial justice movements. With the support of this broad-based coalition of individuals and organizations, National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Center for HIV Law and Policy filed an emergency amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief challenging the imprisonment of an HIV positive pregnant woman in order to protect her “innocent” “unborn child.” The brief was timed to reach Judge Woodcock before Ms. T’s bail hearing yesterday, providing him with a picture of the hurdles to meeting necessary care for HIV-positive women in even the best of prison health care systems.

For a copy of the amicus brief and supporting materials, please see the National Advocates for Pregnant Women’s post, ‘Bail granted for imprisoned HIV-positive pregnant woman.’

For many people with HIV, the pervasiveness of HIV stigma in prison, which carries with it an additional onslaught of emotional harassment within an already traumatizing system, can be reason enough to not seek needed medical care or treatment. And for those who do seek treatment, the variability of HIV care in U.S. prisons and jails can mean poor health outcomes in the short and long term. Because of issues like cumbersome intake procedures and unpredictable lockdowns for security concerns, irregularities in HIV medication schedules can be common occurrences in prison settings nationwide, putting people at risk for developing drug resistance and HIV-related illnesses. Additional barriers for ensuring standard of care treatment arise in small or remote prisons, where specialty care is handled predominantly through outside referrals, not medical staff on-site. The expansion of for-profit prison health care systems has brought further challenges to routine and emergency medical care, as was extensively documented in a 2005 New York Times feature, ‘As Health Care in Jails Goes Private, 10 Days Can Be a Death Sentence.’

It was because of these concerns around the continuity and quality of health care, particularly while Ms. T would have been in transit from the county jail to a federal prison, that Judge Woodcock released her on bail Monday afternoon. Ms. T is now working closely with the team at the Frannie Peabody Center, her attorney, Zachary Heiden of the MCLU, and the legal team at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project.

But work to protect Ms.T’s access to in-community care and support is not over. And the disturbing logic undergirding Judge Woodcock’s 238-day sentence remains unchanged.

As efforts to appeal Ms. T’s sentence at the First District Court level proceed, we will continue to reach out to all of you. And as the immediate crisis of Ms. T’s case eases, we hope that this growing coalition of organizations will be a consistent advocacy presence. Ms. T’s case has shone a light on the issues that so many in our communities are moving through daily; her story cuts deep through the intersections of HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, immigration and racial justice that are at the heart our work together. A dear friend of mine once said, “Half of your rights haven’t been written yet because you haven’t been here to demand them.” If we can, in concert, find some lasting transformation to the structures that allowed Ms. T to be imprisoned in the first place, then, perhaps, we can say that justice will be done.

To receive updates about this case and other HIV and imprisonment related issues, please feel free to contact me at lmctighe@champnetwork.org.

AIDS Walk NY 2009 - CHAMPified!

Vanessa Brocato — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:19:19 +0000

CHAMP New York was up early today for AIDS Walk 2009!

Although we were bright, the early morning was not- rain drizzled over Central Park as we searched for our community partner table. The balloons and the crowd were cheerful too. And we expanded our team by hundreds, who slapped on CHAMP stickers as they walked by, wearing our slogan:

HIV is not just a disease- it's proof positive of injustice!

If you are one of the dozens who picked up copies of the HIV Prevention Jusitce Principles, visit us at www.champnetwork.org to endorse the principles or for your organization to join the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance (HIV PJA). The HIV PJA is hosting its next call on Wednesday, May 27 with guest speakers explaining the relationship between poverty and HIV.

Thanks to CHAMP supporters, our team raised more than $5,000! With help like this from people in our network, we're able to sustain our independent work to build a community-based movement that links the fight for HIV/AIDS with human rights and social and economic justice.

And thanks to Victor Bernhardtz, we have some great photos!

Viva La France: My Reflections of the "Summit of Self Help Networks" to the International Arena

Waheedah S — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:29:52 +0000

Recently I had the opportunity to represent the U.S. Positive Women’s Network and CHAMP as I traveled to France to participate in a strategy sharing summit of membership networks from all five continents. The three day summit held in Roumbouillet (44 Kilometers from Paris), was sponsored by the Paris-based Institute for Research and Debate on Governance, IRG and the Ford Foundation. The roll call spanned all five continents and assembled Ethnic Minorities, Grassroots Women, HIV/AIDS and Urban Issues Networks.

I returned to the U.S. with a mature level of awareness, new connections, and newfound networks of friends in global spaces. That is to say, having arrived in Europe with a limited perspective concerning the importance and the significance of the profound impact international decisions have on local issues and how those decisions impact the quality of life on all five continents. We explored sovereign decisions that are denying many communities their right to fundamental existence and the right to pass those legacies and truths on to their next generations. We looked at the denial of rights to dignity, safety and water; to dwell and to health care, economic growth & development.

Even though I arrived with my head held high, deep inside I carried a feeling of heaviness and some skepticism. What will it take to end AIDS? Must I work my entire life to that end? Does the US Positive Women’s Networ k have a role to play outside of the United States? Would they be interested in CHAMP projects like Prevention Justice or UNSHACKLE? What I got in touch with over the three days we spent together through the case studies, the materials, the participants, the presenters, and our sponsors was that if I were to hold my head just a little higher...that I would be able to see beyond the horizon and into trans global spaces, where a reservoir of resources lie, through alliances based on the values of fundamental human rights.

Trans Global Spaces is where we all can exercise our rights and our duties as civil citizens that reach out beyond all of our own borders.

Take Home Message: Operating in these Trans-global spaces give us the potential benefit of increasing our own democratic spaces at home. Because the global is in the local and the local is in the global, and we all benefit when we are able to integrate the two on multi-level scales.

The Challenge: How do we do this without losing our own identities? That very strongly depends on how we identify ourselves in global spaces. Through trans global networking we can focus on those areas where our causes intersect. We are able to draw collective power from one another through linkages that will benefit our own countries. Each network identified that HIV has a definite presence in their movements and the intersection was poverty, scarcity of resources and gender inequities.

The Conclusion: We all agreed that by working together to support the guiding principles of basic human rights, we can gain access to a wider audience (trans-scaling) that may result in a boomerang affect and create a way of gaining more local support upon our return to our own regions and provinces.

The Objectives: Using the analogy of a blazing forest fire that fails to consume every tree...because the trees are not touching. Through building up a concrete set of connections, when a message of human injustice comes along our connected network we can all respond with a civil chorus of disapproval. Mobilizing and gathering our networks at U.N. to discourage its support of sovereignty of governments and re-center its basic principles of the “We the People.”

Strengthening the US Positive Women’s Network: Through capacity building, move the more than 300,000 women living with HIV in the U.S. from being perceived as only beneficiaries of HIV services to being recognized and appreciated as experts who are capable of framing solutions through their experience of being the most impacted and at risk for HIV. Through common threads intensifying our connections with their networks of women throughout the world living with HIV.

Bonjoir: A departing agreement was that we would all relieve ourselves of blame, even as we may find ourselves fighting for the right to exist, living in scarcity, dwelling in slums, fighting for access to materials and being denied lakes abundant with fish; being Muslim Women who live under man made laws spawned in inequity....and those of us who have contracted HIV along the way. We are relieved of blame and leave with the realization that our conditions are positive proof of our government’s narrow approaches to the guiding principles of basic human rights. We find reprieve in Networking Tool Kits that contain a blue print for Prevention Justice and we find reinforcement on the launch pads of alliances..... through global space networking.

###

Martin and Me

Mark H — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:31:57 +0000

As the roll-out of expensive and potentially controversial biomedical HIV prevention tools looms, I wonder whether we too will insist on being heard. Will we urge authorities to understand that in a crisis, a higher tolerance of risk is sometimes warranted? Will we demand early access, fast access, and expanded access for those who need it most?

I spent last weekend in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, attending one of America’s best consumer-focused HIV treatment and prevention conferences, Positive Living. On Saturday, at the same time a San Francisco memorial was being held for Martin Delaney, we were holding our own on the east coast. Martin had been part of the conference since before its inception twelve years ago, delivering a treatment update every year but one. Various members of the conference faculty lit a candle, came to the podium, and shared their memories. Here are mine.

Before I knew Martin, I knew his work. Before daily wire stories about AIDS, before cable news networks, cell phones, the internet, and LOGO, there was Project Inform. Shortly after my 1987 diagnosis, someone at a support group handed me a dog-eared photocopy of a PI publication. I took it home, read it, and with the same trepidation I’d experienced as a southern suburban adolescent ordering the Milwaukee-based Gay People’s Union News, I subscribed. Like the GPU News, the sometimes sporadically published updates from San Francisco came in discrete plain wrappers. I came to depend on the discussion papers, fact sheets, PI Perspectives, and special alerts as my primary source of information about HIV and AIDS.

Read the rest at http://lifelube.blogspot.com/2009/03/martin-and-me.html

Acting Up in the 21st Century

Diana Scholl — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:08:17 +0000

During CHAMP's March community forum to create intergenerational dialogue within the AIDS movement around the ACT UP Oral History Projects, we watched an incredible video compilation of ACT UP protests from the early days of AIDS activism, put together by panelist and ACT UP Oral History Project co-creator Sarah Schulman. An opening scene showed people sitting in the very same room at the LGBT Center that we were sitting in. The room was hadn’t changed in 25 years. The crowd was even pretty similar-mostly white faces. The only difference was the most recent forum, while a good turnout for a 2009 event, didn't draw as much of a crowd as the standing-room only ACT UP meetings of yore.

This sort-of déjà vu seemed a metaphor for AIDS activism today. Watching the video, I was struck how some of the slogans-"AIDS Budgets Kill!"-and chants-"Act Up, fight back!" can be found in many of the rallies I've attended over the last two years. As a young person new to the movement, it was incredible seeing the uncanny similarities that I hadn't fully grasped until I saw it firsthand.

ACT UP Philadelphia member Pascal Emmer noticed the similarities too when he first became involved in queer activism. "Most of our works and rhetoric was borrowed from earlier movements, but it lacked a historical context,” Pascal said. Emmer and his friend Jessica Rodriguez joined ACT UP Philadelphia where they started the group's oral history project to highlight the stories of the movement and preserve them for memory so these stories aren't lost.

But another lesson I took from the history of ACT UP is that that the movement had incredible power and force because it happened organically as a response to crisis, death and powerlessness among people who were used to having some power. It also employed new methods of activism and empowerment that hadn't been seen before. This made would-be activists, the media and government take notice.

Intergenerational dialogue

Another interesting part of the evening was when Pascal mentioned that "tactics of civil disobediences carry different risk for different communities. When white people got crap beat out of them it brought a lot of media attention in a way it doesn't for people of color. It's a stark example of how white privilege affects tactic."

An audience member named Ryan challenged Pascal's claim that the early ACT UP members, most of whom were gay, had any such privilege. "We were very oppressed by mainstream society," he explained. Also, he stated AIDS is different now "because we have a whole roster of meds people aren't dying as much."

Moderator James Learned, a ACT UP New York veteran who has worked with CHAMP, politely thanked Ryan for his question and moved on. While that was probably smart in terms of civility (James earlier spoke of the "challenges, barriers and opportunities" of intergenerational dialogue), I would have liked to see the panelists from ACT UP Philly and New York respond to Ryan's claims, and tell him AIDS isn't over in the U.S. and overseas and that it just kills different people than it once did. And that just because medication exists, doesn't mean everyone has access to it. But Ryan also had a valid point that the fear and death that gripped the gay community in the 1980s no longer exists. I would have liked to see that discussion explored, since it alluded to a generational disconnect that was alluded to by the panelists..

The bottom line is AIDS has changed, and the "AIDS movement" has lost members and hasn't replenished its ranks. A member of the audience asked panelist and ACT UP Oral History Project co-creator Sarah Schulman, how to recreate the energy among today's youth, particularly those most affected among poor communities and people of color.

Sarah said there's not that much established movement movers and shakers can do to recreate this. "Vanguard movements can only do so much. No individual can make a mass movement." She said she expects the next movement will come from young people who will use today's technology to do things we've never dreamed of.

What's being done now

But just because AIDS rallies don't draw the same crowds or attention they did in the past, doesn't mean that there's not incredible work being done by activists on the ground.

Campaign to End AIDS is an activist network working to organize empower people with AIDS to fight for their rights, and has had some early successes, particularly in the South. The activism of global AIDS group Health GAP, an outgrowth of ACT UP Philadelphia, is a key reason for PEPFAR and more affordable medications in the developing world. And, of course, CHAMP is mobilizing and supporting activists organizing for HIV prevention justice. ACT UP NYC still meets on Mondays and is takling new campaigns around healthcare reform.

ACT UP Philadelphia is one of the groups at the forefront of confronting the epidemic as it exists now. With CHAMP's Project UNSHACKLE, they hosted a forum about families affected by prison. As one of the organizers Waheedah Shabazz-El noted, many people in poor communities don't want to talk about AIDS, but they'll come to organize around prisoners' rights, and then can be drawn into the discussion on AIDS, which they were reluctant to talk about.

And these are the roots of new movement that will hopefully grow even deeper roots and generate more power. In the Q&A, New York City AIDS Housing Network member David Golden concurred, saying ACT UP needs resurgence but, "I would not like to see an ACT UP of the 80s and 90. I want to see an ACT UP of the 21st century."

Jose de Marco, a panelist and longtime member of ACT UP Philadelphia, noted, "We have to think: Why aren't the people most affected in this room? We have to do more organizing with affected communities. If people have condoms and are still getting infected, we have to examine what's going on."

Diana Scholl is a Housing Works staff member and a writer of the Housing Works AIDS Issues Update.

Silence is Killing Black Gays As Much as HIV

Kenyon — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:48:14 +0000

From The Defenders Online (the blog of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund).

…28 years into the AIDS epidemic, that silence that once protected us, is now killing us. As we near Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on February 7th, all sorts of pronouncements will be made about the devastation HIV/AIDS is having on the community. And though we are disproportionately impacted by the epidemic, concern for black men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women will not likely come from most quarters of the community. If black leadership is at all concerned with ending this epidemic, we’re going to have to acknowledge and overcome the homophobia that is driving it in the community.

Read the entire op-ed here.