My Feet Only Walk Forward

A New Kind of Blackness: Remarks at Tufts University's Black Solidarity Day

2012-11-05T17:11:00.000-05:00

This keynote was given today at Tuft's Pan African Alliance's annual Black Solidarity Day Rally. I was honored to be invited to keynote this amazing event.

Let me begin by thanking Tabias Wilson, Jameelah Morris and the rest of the Pan African Alliance and the Tufts community for inviting me to spend some time with you today. It's an honor and a pleasure.

I've spent a long time thinking about blackness. About, roughly, all of my 35 years walking around this planet. I guess that makes me some sort of an expert, but mostly it makes me confused, angry, celebratory, conflicted, colonized, dehumanized, aggrandized, powerful, vulnerable, righteous, and a whole host of other adjectives, some of which are pejoratives, most of which reflect the complex relationship to blackness that comes with living in this particular historical moment, in this particular body, at this particular arc in our development as black folks and as community. Let me not mince words, though, it is a beautiful day to be a person of African descent in this world.

Despite the struggles, despite Jim Crow being alive and well and feeding on our people, despite the KKKoch brothers, despite still pretending that military service is job training and a pathway to anything but more colonization of people that look like us, despite having lost enough collective monetary worth during the Recession that we now are looking at a community with the equivalent resources of our folks BEFORE the Civil Rights movement, it's a good damn day to be black.

Let me tell you why. And it has nothing to do with Barack Obama, though let my one overt partisan moment be to say this:

If you have the right to vote for President, unlike our immigrant brothers and sisters, folks living in our colonies, and the millions of mostly men of color that have lost the right due to felony convictions (Jim Crow is alive and happy as Hell)...and you do not vote because "voting doesn't matter," or "you are protesting the system," please take your selfish self-centered behind up and out of these here United States. Most likely someone died for you to have that right especially if you are a woman, person of color, non land owner. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE BLACK. Folks are still dying here and around the world because some folks decided to stay home in 2000 and 2004 and Bush got in the White House, lost his mind, and started two wars. Go vote. I hope you will vote for Obama, but not voting isn't a protest it is an abrogation of your most minimal democratic obligation.

I am proud of Barack Obama but that has nothing to do with why it is a good day to be black in America. It's a good day to be black in America because we are beautiful. Always have been. Always gonna be. But it's a good day to be black because we have a chance to grab ahold of our blackness and shake it out. It's time to pull it back out of the closet, air out the afro puffs and pin that blackness to a clothes line and take a good look at it.

You know it has some stains on it. You know there are some old patches and frayed edges. Well it's time to Shout it Out! The Tide I am here to talk about is a tidal wave of change that needs to start right here with each and every person of African descent, whether you were born in Africa and have decided to make the United States your home, a descendant of U.S. born slaves, a Black Latin@, or wherever that slave ship happened to land and drop off your ancestors. Bi-racial, or a racial smorgesbord that has the black experience in the mix. Blackness now, today, needs a radical redefinition.

Before I go into what needs to be done with that blackness on the clothesline, let me talk to the black men a little bit and about feminism. Feminism at its root means that both men and women get to express their full humanity without oppression, without prescribed ways of being that are rigidly policed and socially/politically/often physically punished when deviated from the norm, and allow both men and women the full range and expression of their vitality and spirit without taking away from the other. Indeed, feminism is, at its root, the negation of gender roles and the full expression of human experience as in a liberation framework---ie...you get to be all of you, and I get to be all of me, and together we are committed to building each other to our full potential.

For black men this becomes about survival. Black men are taught from the gate to be tough, hard, in control, "macho", independent, players, victims, and that our potential is circumscribed by history, circumstance, and ability--not to be punks, to be virile, the mandigo syndrome...and these ideals images and thoughts are reinforced through our own communities, often, media--too often--, and what we consume from mainstream dominant ideology. We resemble what we are presented by others as ourselves. We become charicatures because so many of those that would be our own role models are dead, absent, or in prison. We are socialized internally and externally, and unless someone or something intervenes to break the cycle of history, legacy, and socialization we often become what we were never born to be. We become angry, and turn that anger inwards and towards our own community. And as a wise woman once told me, there is a place for angry black men: jail.

The truth or untruth of these socializations are related to our relative position to power, history, presentation, and ability to conform or not (willingly or not, consciously or not) to a paradigm that requires us to set our skin aside and adopt a way of being that imitates the master consciousness. This too is an ultimate expression of sexism and must be rejected through conscious practice. Further, I would argue it is sexism and a lack of feminist ideals and thoughts that are at the root of the pandemic of the single parent home, which, in and of itself, keeps the community widely struggling with poverty and in cycles of poverty.

Black men. Your liberation is inimically tied to women. It is not an option for you to be feminist if you want to be free. It is for all of our survival that black men must move towards an articulated black feminism, accountable to black women, and responsible for ourselves.

Let me let you in on a wee little bitty secret. Whether you were born in the Motherland and recently moved here or grew up here anyway, the blackness you experience is only partially your own. You may feel empowered and a fully realized person of African descent, but I am here to tell you right now today that your blackness has been shaped, influenced, and molded by oppressive institutions that have anything but your best interest in mind. The media, education, prison industrial complex, the nonprofit industiral complex, and all the other systems that were, listen closely here, created and built to maintain hegemonic white power.

And do you know how whiteness was legally defined in this country, beginning in the late 17^th century and then systematically constructed through a series of colonial state and later federal laws? As the basic opposition of blackness. Or, to be more specific, who was white and who was black and what that meant, entailed, and carried was and has been a function of law in this nation for the better part of all of its existence as a free standing state and for a good 250 years before hand. From the first laws passed by the House of Burgesses in Virginia to establish race based slavery to anti-miscegenation and Jim Crow laws later, what it means to be black has been fundamentally been defined by the legal system for a good chunk of our history.

And the greatest victory of that legacy of racial legislation is that through the combination of the media, the police state, and our own complicitness, the legal apparatus of our blackness is largely no longer necessary. We no longer need laws to force us to segregate, we no longer need laws for us to adhere to an anti-intellecualism, we no longer need laws to tell us to stay in our place and keep our heads down or don't buck the system or divide ourselves from one another based on skin tone and class, we do all that by ourselves, most of the time without thinking about it. If a brother or sister's hair is natural or they spent a semester in Ghana or is taking West African dance or can whip up mean plate of collards and neckbones (which I can....my greens will change your life), or can recite Tupac's biography, or has been to prison, or is hood, or is hard, or is straight, ..then that brother or sister is downer, blacker than say a light skinned lesbian that graduated summa cum laude from Tufts.

Pardon me but I call bullshit. Don't get me wrong, we need to embrace with a fierceness our historical roots whether that be our immigrant selves from Nigeria or our slave ancestors from a mill in West Virginia, but the downer than thou, black than you mentality has done nothing but foment separation, pain, and kept our ability for revolution and liberation in shackles and chains. It's time to set our liberation free y'all and it starts with building with one another.

I am standing in front of you a black, white, Ojibwe, Afro-Boricua, HIV positive, queer man. And I am just as black as any of you. You are my community, you are my salvation. I am in community with my queer and trans black family and being queer or trans doesn't make you less black than anyone else. It's time for us to realize that HIV stopped being a white gay disease a long time ago, it's now a black and Latina straight women's disease (as the fastest growing populations of HIV infection) and it's time to hold up our positive brothers and sisters as our own. No more high yellow and midnight blue conversations when talking about skin unless its to talk about how that high yellow or midnight blue person rocked your socks last night after that party and you are about to take his or her last name. I could give a damn about the style you wearyour hair, fried died and laid to the side or afro-tastic, I am with Miss India.Arie, I am NOT my hair!

I have a great-uncle that some of you may have heard about. His name is Carter G. Woodson. He wrote a book called the Miseducation of the Negro. It is time that we stop miseducating ourselves. Hear me now, and hear me clear, that blackness on the clothes line needs to be washed clean of the things that we have let divide ourselves from ourselves. It needs to be ironed and beaded and treated with loving care and expanded to include all shades of blaqness and all the power that holds while letting go of the powerlessness. Ain't nobody in this world going to give us our liberation. We need to break those chains ourselves, and we have to start by holding each other close in a way that says clearly that I am you. You are me. And I will do the work to undo the legacy of oppression, racism, sexism, heterosexism, abelism, classism, immigration status, and skin privilege that keeps me from you and you from me and us from the mountaintop because I am climbing y'all, and I mean to take every one of you with me, if you'll just hold my hand. I need you, and we need each other.

Thank you all for having me here today with you to talk just a little bit. Be blessed.

Why Voting Matters: Barack Obama...I got you.

2012-11-05T10:06:00.000-05:00

I have written a number of blog posts about Barack Hussein Obama (30 mentions to be exact). Last May, I wrote a blog titled Why I Will Be Voting for Barack Obama, and I stand by all that I wrote in that blog as well. If you want to know why I am voting to support our president, please check out one of those two links above.

I am writing today to talk about the practice of voting itself. Yesterday, I posted this status on Facebook:

I know I should not have to say this, but I am. If you have the right to vote for President, unlike our immigrant brothers and sisters, folks living in our colonies, and the millions of mostly men of color that have lost the right due to felony convictions (Jim Crow is alive and happy as Hell)...and you do not vote because "voting doesn't matter," or "you are protesting the system," please take your selfish self-centered ass up and out of these here United States. Most likely someone died for you to have that right especially if you are a woman, person of color, non land owner. Folks are still dying because y'all decided to stay home in 2000 and 2004 here and around the world thanks to wars started by Bush. Go vote. I hope you will vote for Obama, but not voting isn't a protest it is an abrogation of your most minimal democratic obligation. Don't vote; relocate. Danke! Gracias! Merci! Obrigado! Salamat po! Grazie!

I stand by this Facebook status emphatically, but I want to explain a bit more about why I believe voting to be important even within this broken system, particularly after receiving some well thought out and meaningful push back from a former colleague and someone that I adore as a human and as a thinker, Patrick Barret from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can read Patrick's full discourse on my Facebook page by scrolling down a bit and clicking on the comment feed under the above status. But one of his comments struck me in response to my statement that we have an obligation to participate [in democracy via the minimal act of voting]:

"Yes of course we do, but not blindly. We are plenty smart enough, and we're morally obligated, not to just participate aimlessly, with no analysis of what works and what doesn't. The system's broken, and in my opinion, that obligates us to avoid fulfilling Einstein's definition of insanity."

I agree with Patrick. The system is broken. Democracy is limited more now than at anytime since the official dismantling of Jim Crow era poll taxes/lit tests/etc. Using the vehicle of the prison industrial complex and restrictive ID laws and court room shenanigans, the vote is either directly or effectively stripped from millions upon millions of mostly people of color and poor voters. That, of course, is not coincidental since a working poor/oppressed class of folks that see themselves as having a legitimate opportunity to use the electoral system to effect change would buck the two party system and create a much fairer (as fair as can be possible while still operating under capitalism). It would be a democracy that was at least multi-party if not explicitly socialist in its leanings. That's my belief and the trends of the 60s of radical social groups that were broad based holds this up as do the union organizing of previous decades, etc. So it is in the interest of power to limit the franchise as much as possible and to those that have some particular interest and investment in the current system. It is easier for the working poor to see themselves in cahoots with a struggling and shrinking middle class which identifies with American dream aspirations rather than having the working poor and middle class seeing themselves as fundamentally the same as the working poor and having the middle class risk what small privileges still exist for a chance at a revolutionary democratic movement that would pay out real liberation dividends via a time of struggle.

Yet even with that broken reality, I believe that our system is not yet so monolithic and gone that the two parties are one party from rhetoric to recent history WE KNOW THAT TO BE UNTRUE!

The system is broken. It needs to be fixed. But the reality is that who sits in the White House DOES matter. It matters to those of us living with HIV if the president in the White House is going to fund Ryan White and at what level, Medicaid and other social programs. It matters to working class people of color and poor whites if the president in the White House is going to rush to or manufacture a war for political and financial gain. It matters who is the White House when it comes to basic human rights protections for queer and trans folks. It matters for many reasons who sits in the White House.

HEAR ME CLEARLY! No person in the White House is going to give us our liberation, But I do not ascribe to the notion that who you vote for in this corporate democracy doesn't matter. Eight years of Bush and the Great Recession that followed proved, unequivocally, that, in fact, it does matter. It matters in a cost of lives. Mayhaps I am not as "down," as those that are willing to suggest that voting doesn't matter because the system is inherently flawed. Voting doesn't matter in the way that it should. I spent years working with Patrick Barret, David Cobb and others on just these issues. And I continue to advocate for real and meaningful democratic practice. And if I need to do so, I will continue to repeat that voting is only your most minimal obligation to democracy. But I will vote tomorrow. I will vote for Barack Obama. And I encourage every one of you to vote, attempt to vote, or raise Hell in one way or another if you find your right to vote denied while at the polling station...and then...no matter what the outcome of the election tomorrow night, get ready for the real work of democracy that comes each and every day afterwards.

Post-Sandy Support for LGBTSTGNC Community via ALP and Allies

2012-11-03T15:23:00.000-04:00

I am proud to serve as a member of the board of directors of the Audre Lorde Project. I received this email today from Cara Page, Executive Director, which is full of resources and tips for queer and trans folks of color impacted by Hurricane Sandy. ALP's Brooklyn Office is open with extended hours to serve our communities.

Greetings ALPers, Friends & Family,

Times like these remind us of how important it is to build collective power and safety no matter the conditions we are facing. Now is the time to come together and support each other even more. We know we are resilient! As New York rebuilds from the storm our communities are experiencing even more of the heightened policing and surveillance we have already been fighting against.

We want to open our doors for a place to chill and gather. We are fully operational at Brooklyn ALP Office (85 South Oxford St.) until our Manhattan offices are back up and accessible. At the Brooklyn office we will be providing extended hours for community to come on through for a little comfort and warmth. We have drinking water to fill up your water bottles, and power to reboot phones and computers. We have phone and internet to keep connected! Even if you have power but might not be able to reach family or community and you just want to come by for company by all means come on through! If you have cabin fever and want to come out and volunteer we also have some small projects. We will let you know when you get here. (SEE OFFICE HOURS BELOW)

We want to recognize the ways we have been building safety within our communities and the many grassroots efforts we are building. We have been in touch with our partnering organizations like FIERCE, QEJ, Sylvia Rivera Law Project and Streetwise & Safe and know they are doing alright and supporting their base. We know that CAAAV has been organizing for the safety and well being of Chinatown residents in lower Manhattan. They have put out a call for donations of flashlights, batteries, food (perishable and non-perishable), and bottled water. ALP has offered to be a drop off location for people to coordinate getting these things to CAAAV. If you have a vehicle and the time please let us know! Also Red Hook Initiative; a supportive space for LGBTQGNC located in the Red Hook Community is open and providing water, food, and electricity & clothing. They are located at 767 Hicks St., Brooklyn NY 11231. And Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn (380 Marlborough Road) will be holding a storm support event on Saturday, November 3rd, from 1-6 PM.

During this difficult time we want to also offer safety tips to our LGBTQTSGNC of Color communities on how to navigate trauma and negotiate safe spaces in the aftermath of the storm:

Shelters: If you or someone you know is experiencing violence or harassment in a shelter. See National Center for Transgender Equality attachment for strategies on how to ask for support specific to navigate shelter safety for Trans and Gender Non-Conforming folks or go to: http://www.gdnonline.org/resources/NCTE%20Trans%20Hurricane%20Preparedness.pdf.

Police: There is increased police presence in many neighborhoods, avoid traveling alone at night see know your rights information at the following link- http://changethenypd.org/content/know-your-rights-help-end-discriminatory-abusive-illegal-policing

Travel: With increased travel time and limited public transportation avoid traveling alone and always let at least one person know where you're going. Ask for a quote before taking a cab [Gas scarcity means many cabs are charging more than usual] Make an alternate plan for your route in case there are unexpected transportation changes.

Resources: Anti-Violence Project (AVP) 24 Hour Bilingual Hotline is up and running and can offer safety tips to intervene on interpersonal violence! 212-741-1141

Community: Please depend on each other and don't be afraid to ask and give help to each other. If you are throwing an event or gathering, consider collecting donations.
Please remember to take care of yourselves! Do not underestimate the impact this can have on our emotional & physical well being. Oftentimes our individual and collective bodies respond to incidences of trauma in many ways without even knowing it. You could be more tired, more restless, etc. Be mindful of your body and feelings and pace yourselves!

In Solidarity, ALP Staff

Please see our Brooklyn office hours below:

Friday, November 2nd (1- 7 PM)
Saturday, November 3rd (1- 7 PM)
Monday, November 5th (1- 7PM)
Tuesday, November 6th (1- 7 PM)
Wednesday, November 7th (1- 7 PM)
Thursday, November 8th (1-7 PM)

CITY WIDE FOOD & WATER DISTRIBUTION SITES:
There will be food and water distribution sites throughout the five boroughs. The details of these sites, including the exact locations and hours of operation, can be found here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/misc/html/2012/foodandwater.html

The locations are as follows:

Brooklyn
Coffey Park at Richards Street
West 25th Street and Surf Avenue

Manhattan
West 27th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues
East 10th Street between Avenues C & D
Catherine Street between Cherry and Monroe Streets
Pitt Street and East Houston Street
Central Plaza at Division Street
Stanton and Pitt Streets

Queens
Beach 51st Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard
Red Fern Avenue and Beach 12th Street
Beach 84th Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard

Staten Island
Mill Road and New Dorp Lane
Yetman Avenue and Hylan Blvd
The American Red Cross has also established feeding locations on Long Island.

The Audre Lorde Project is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit Trans and Gender Non-Conforming People of Color community organizing center focusing on the New York City area. 147 West 24th St. 3rd Floor, NY, New York 10011 Tel: 212-463-0342 * Fax: 212-463-0344 Web: www.alp.org

Hetrick Martin Institute Emery Awards After Party!!!!!

2012-10-20T17:12:00.001-04:00

Brandon Lacy Campos (HMI Young Professionals Council) and partner Nicolas Gérard invite you to join us for the Hetrick-Martin Institute's Emery Awards After Party. Each year, after the formal dinner, when the bow ties are loosened and award

s have been awarded, the real fun begins.

And talk about partying for a cause. The Emery Awards After Party is an amazing soiree featuring an open bar with the finest assortment of top shelf beverages, a rockin' gift bag, and featuring DJ Andy Bell of Erasure fame...and this year there will be a live performance by an artist sponsored by MTV...wanna know who? Lemme tell you how.

Not only will you get an amazing party out of the price of a ticket (that costs no more than a dinner out on the town), but also you will be supporting the Harvey Milk High School, which provides a comprehensive high school environment for at-risk queer, trans, and questioning youth. HMI and the Harvey Milk School serve more than 2,000 young people a year through a variety of social services, arts, education, and political organizing efforts.

Tickets are $125 each, but a portion of each ticket is tax deductible, and, though it is a significant sum of money for many folks, it is no more than the price of a good dinner and after dinner drinks on a Friday night in Manhattan...without the show, goodies, free booze and queer/trans gliteratti. On October 29th choose to spend that night out with us.

Buy your tickets at www.hmi.org/afterparty. Tell them Brandon and Nico sent you.

Poetry to Pay the Rent (and a new book project)

2012-10-19T11:16:00.000-04:00

So as folks know, I recently left my job at Queers for Economic Justice. The hope is that this is a step towards my dream of becoming a full time writer and performer at some point in the not so distant future, but most definitely, in the immediate future, it is time to finish the edits on my novel, Eden Lost, and send that along to my publisher and to start pulling together the poetry (and more art from David Berube) for my second poetry collection: Songs My Ancestors Sing To Me When I Am Dreaming.

Making the first (little) big steps towards sitting in a cabin somewhere in the woods (but not too far from the city) and writing full time (ish)...is realigning the work that I am doing in the world to bring that eventual reality to manifestation.

The immediate repercussions of being unemployed is that I am also unencumbered of income to work on this project and pay for pesky things like food and rent.

And please don't get me started on the IRS and what they just did to what little money I had left.

So I am turning to you, my community, to help me make Songs My Ancestors Sing To Me When I Am Dreaming by asking you to support my work on this project over the next two months.

Thanks to the good folks at Tufts University, Rutgers University, and Bethany College, I will have by the beginning of December enough funds to cover most of my expenses from October and November from invitations to speak at these institutions. It is my hope to use October and November, while I am in the hiring process for a new and exciting position, to write and really focus on this book project while the copy edits are being done on Eden Lost (and, a portion of the money I raise through this effort will go to support paying said copy editor, Kamal Fizazi). In order to really be able to focus on this work (and eat, have a phone and a place to sleep), I need to raise $3,000 from you, my readers and the folks that have, for so long, supported my work between now and December 1.

The benefit to you is this:

1. The good feeling of helping break the starving artist paradigm (its a myth, we love to eat).
2. For every donation of $25 or more, you will receive a personal haiku written for you!
3. For every donation of $50 or more, you will receive a signed copy of my book, It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt and a haiku!
4. For a donation of $100 or more you get all of the above as well as put on a list for an advanced signed copy of Eden Lost once it goes into publication!
5. And for a donation of $250 or more, you will receive all that, a bag of chips (really I will send you a bag of chips), PLUS your name listed as a funding partner in Songs My Ancestors Sing To Me When I Am Dreaming along with a signed copy once it too goes into publication.

Any support that you can provide from $5 to $500 will be greatly appreciated and valued. Investing in artists is good for the soul and it is also good for community. Poetry is part of our life blood but unfortunately poets are often spirit rich and dollar poor. If a poem of mine or anything else that I have written has spoken to you or your experience, please consider making a gift via PayPal today:

www.paypal.com and you can find me via my email address: brandonlacycampos at yahoo dot com.

Clean; You be Too aka FUCK YOU BIYOTCH!

2012-10-17T20:10:00.000-04:00

Pardon my French (I love saying that now that I have a Frenchy partner), but the next time you are posting an ad for a piece of ass or a dick for that ass and you post that you are clean and looking for clean, I sure hope you mean that you have washed your ass in bleach and are looking for someone that has done the same....because if you are using "clean" to refer to yourself as being HIV negative, then let me be so kind as to tell you that the connotative definition of your identity is that being HIV positive is dirty.

Considering that I take up to three showers a day, I dare you to prove that you are cleaner than I am. You are very likely to be much more ignorant (ignant in ghetto speak) than I am, but cleaner. I doubt it.

Confused? Every single motherfucker walking around this planet is carrying some sort of communicable virus. Nearly 20% of everyone walking around is positive for genital herpes and if you include canker sores and cold sores, which is the same herpes simplex (yes canker sores and the sore on your cock or anus are exactly the same virus)...then by your own definition you ain't clean. And, PS Chicken Pox is a form of herpes.

Need more clarity, 98% of humans have some type of herpes simplex one or two, 20% have genital herpes and 50-80% have oral herpes (chancer sores), which means, biyotch that you most likely do too.

But I digress.

Today, I reposted a great ad from Mr. Friendly, an amazing human being/ad campaign that is looking to fight HIV stigma. It was all about the word clean used to describe people that are HIV negative. I had a note in my phone to write a blog on the word clean, and I have for a month. That ad/meme today gave me the motivation I needed to do so.

I am clean. I am very damn clean. I just took a shower. And if my own God said that it isn't want you put IN your body that makes you unclean but what comes out of it (spiritually) then no virus can possibly make me unclean. But your willful, hurful and ugly ignorance sure can piss me off.

And don't get me started on this ads that are looking for bareback sex but only with "clean," individuals. Lord don't get me started. I have written extensively on the right of all people to engage in natural aka bareback sex...and I personally love it and have practiced it in an informed manner with harm reduction strategies, but HIV has nothing to do with whether or not a person is clean, nor does skin color, gender, religion or any other category that has been, over the ages, been described as or segregated as socially and culturally dirty.

You want an end to HIV, that starts with an end to stigma, and the smallest way you can do your part besides staying negative is by being an ally to folks living with HIV and eliminating word choices that reinforce ugly and hateful paradigms that scream OTHER, OUTCAST, UNCLEAN.

Seen those words before? Yeah, they have been used to refer to everyone from lepers to members of the Untouchable caste. Every person, from cradle to grave is clean and worthy of love and no one enjoys a monopoly on being pure or pristine. Your actions determine your spiritual health, not your HIV status and surely not any other diagnosis that carries stigma.

Clean? Yeah I am clean. Now if you want to talk about my bedroom or the mutant dust bunnies under my bed, then we can have a conversation.

Check yourself...or I promise you...I will.

Volttage: A Dating and Hook Up Site for POZitively Sexy People

2012-10-03T14:12:00.003-04:00

Back in late April-ish, my Facebook wall was bombarded by several of my loved ones that posted a call for HIV positive models to participate in a new project that Jack Mackenroth, the HIV positive gay man of Project Runway fame and with a boogina that makes me think of sin and putting on a bib. FIRE IN THE HOLE!

Oops sorry...that was my outside voice.

Anywho, several of my friends encouraged me to send Jack some of my pictures for this project. He was looking for HIV positive models, and my first response to my friends was....ummm 1) I am not a model, 2) You are asking me to send half naked pictures, sober, not on a sex site, with the possibility that I could end up half naked on a website for the entire world to see, 3) do you EVEN know me.

I love rejection just about as much as I love failure. Rejection, which is a main component of the impact of stigma on people living with HIV, becomes more than just a "shitty" moment for those of us living with the red rider. Rejection becomes the default for many of our interactions with folks in the community in whom we may have interest. Show me a poz man that hasn't experienced at at least half a dozen instances of shocking and hurtful ignorance when disclosing his status, and I will show you the magical leprechaun that I keep chained in my pantry making Lucky Charms whenever I have a hankering.

So, imagine, then submitting your pictures to a famous stud with no body fat and asking him to MAKE A judgment on your attractiveness.

Yeah...ummm...while I have a healthy and sometimes overly healthy ego, the one place that breaks down is around my body, but...BUT....I thought what the Hell, and I sent the pictures along. Nothing special, just some shots I took with Photo Booth on my Mac.

I don't think it even took five minutes for Jack to respond booking me for the shoot.

Besides my ego there was a very specific reason that I made the choice to submit my photos. The project Jack was working on was a well developed, sexy, fun dating and hook up site and app for HIV positive queer men. In the light of my personal and political work over the last year or so, and recalling the times when I failed to disclose and the shame, guilt, and holy Hell that created, I decided to put my own body image shit aside to be a part of this project.

A hook up site with financial backing that is aimed at eliminating stigma and supporting the HIV positive community...AND...here is the critical piece...holding up and recognizing that HIV positive people GET to be sexual beings, GET to be human, GET to be loved, GET to objects of desire, and GET to look in the mirror and feel wanted.

You see, it's a rare HIV positive person that doesn't get their diagnosis and spend a little time or the rest of their lives reduced to their disease. And...AND...unlike any other communicable and potential life threatening disease (HPV, Hepatitis C, and so many others) HIV is the ONLY one that is criminalized, and it is the only one where all of the public health strategies are aimed at one thing: stopping HIV positive people from having sex or putting so much fear and shame into positive folks that they have sex rarely and furtively. Well, we all know just how much that has worked out. All the scientific data has shown that FEAR is never an effective tool for prevention. And criminalizing a virus aka a basic identity of a person living with the virus is exactly the same as criminalizing religion, race, creed, etc. And before anyone out there opens their mouth to say, "HEY...but you can't infect someone with "blackness." Well, guess what...until 30 odd years ago, miscegenation laws existed EXACTLY because white folks viewed the mixing of the races as "infecting" white folks with blackness.

Yes, there is an obligation to disclose your HIV status. But an obligation to disclose does NOT absolve YOU from making a sexual choice that you later regret. Except the cases of rape or incest or maybe an intentionally needle stick, the transmission of HIV should play absolutely no factor in the criminal legal system. In fact, it is has been shown to keep people from getting tested.

Smooth move straight folks. Bigotry wins again.

But, again, I digress.

So, about a month later, I showed up to an apartment in Brooklyn where Jack asked me to strip down to my underwear (I wasn't wearing any), and then he said, "No problem," and pulled out a stack of maybe 60 pairs.

Fashion gays are out of control.

In the end, the photos turned out ABSOLUTELY amazing. And two days ago the site went live. On the first day 500 people signed up for it. This really will be a game changer. The first step to building power in any community is first claiming your own empowered space. Thank you to Jack for helping the community take it first steps at reclaiming our pozitively sexiness!

Much love. Check it out: www.vol++age.com.

Everyday Heroes: M'Bwende Anderson and Carlos Blanco

2012-09-27T12:08:00.002-04:00

Not only is it one of my supremely rare double blog days, but for the first time, I am giving my Everyday Hero recognition to two individuals: M'Bwende Anderson and Carlos Blanco.

From time to time, I recognize individuals that walk the walk and go way above and beyond in surprising and powerful ways. Both of these individuals, recently, as I have been working through some challenges have shown up to provide love, care, and support that was unlooked for, unasked for but so very much needed.

M'Bwende Anderson

To begin with, I have known M'Bwende Anderson for a very, very long time. I first met M'Bwende when I was a queer youth organizer in the late '90s. At the time, M'bwende was a staff member of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, which for roughly 15 years was the national voice for LGBTQ youth in Washington, DC. I loved M'Bwende from the gate. Their personality, charm, and caring spirit was evident in everything that they did. For the first year or so of our acquaintance, I only saw M'Bwende sporadically at Creating Change or at NYAC's Youth Summit, but then, for a brief time, I joined the board of NYAC as it was struggling to go through a process of confronting the structural racism that existed within the organization and the movement. It was a hard process made harder by an executive director that was truly struggling to confront his own white privilege in so many ways.

I didn't last very long on that board.

But over the years, M'Bwende and I have come into contact now and again, and though I don't know them deeply, there has always been a love there that I am so happy is reciprocated. I think that they are one of the most loving people that I have met. And this Summer I benefited from that love and support directly, and I know so many others that also have been lifted up by that fierce love...one of whom is another love of mine, Jaime Grant, M'Bwende's partner. That coupling makes me moist now and again. But I digress.

Carlos Blanco

I met Carlos about a year and a half ago when I walked into the office of QEJ as a part time contractor. Carlos was this fierce ghettois Columbia student with a helluvalot of swagger and a heart as big as ummm his...ummm...feet. (His feet are huge). From the gate, I recognized the power of this human being. He was gentle, fierce, sassy, committed, radical, and had a hunger to learn that I haven't seen in anyone for a very long time. He was ok with being wrong and because of it rarely found himself having to remove those size 14s from his mouth....while some of us (ahem me...) are constantly chewing on some size 11s.

If Carlos loves you, he lives that love. It is humbling. It is beautiful, and it is a way of being and living that belies his 22 odd years that he has been walking around this planet. Carlos is living proof that a mentor does not need to be someone that is older than you. A mentor is someone that has something that you want in your life and can show you, by living, how to acquire it. Carlos is one of those people in my life. And I am blessed that I get to watch and see just how fiercely he is going to change this world for the better.

Thank you to you both for all the love that you have given. I hope to repay it with abundance one day. You are my Everyday Heroes.

Moving Forward?

2012-09-27T09:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I resigned from QEJ. QEJ is a vital part of the queer movement, and I know that it will continue to do great work as it struggles through this particular moment. I believe that the leadership of the board is strong and holds a strong vision and is comprised of some truly amazing people. Much love and luck to you. The choice was best for me and for QEJ, and I am looking forward to figuring out the next steps in my life path including reconstituting my life to focus on maintaining a healthy mind, healthy body, healthy spirit and healthy heart.

After this Summer and all that it has conjured, good and ill, my coping mechanisms are frayed, and it is time to seriously refocus on what is really important and to put my feet to walking towards, and quickly, the things that will help me hold in place the lessons from the last few months while not allowing them to be greater or smaller than they need to be.

It's time to get off the roller coaster.

There are the personal issues that I need to address and keep under control. I won't rehash them all here, as I have done so in numerous blogs over the last several years.

But here are the broad outlines:

1) Recommit to doing something every day related to self-esteem, addiction, and other mental health factors that have a nasty way of finding new ways of popping up when you least want them. Even if it is pulling a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Phoning a Friend.

2) Gym. Enough said.

3) Meditation. With ADHD, this is going to be a slow development.

4) My relationship. Nico is coming home in a couple of weeks, and a lot has happened since he left, on both of our sides, reconnecting will be important, and I am deeply looking forward to that. Two months is a hell of a damn long time to be away from your boyfriend. With time differences, two different schedules, life moments, developing world technology reliability, and no ability to interact besides sound and occasionally sight, and the distance starts to feel like it is across the galaxy instead of across an ocean.

5) Maintain physical health, particularly related to HIV medication and mental health medication. As this transition unfolds, it will be important to make sure that these things are not casualties of finances or lack of structure. Time to revisit the good folks at ADAP.

6) Last but so not least, visioning clearly the work that I want to be doing as my job and the work I want to be doing as a volunteer or engaged in another way. It's time to do good work AND have financial stability. And centering my writing as core component of my daily work.

I am reaching out and asking folks for support in each of these areas. I want to make the best possible choices and that means tapping the brilliance (and straightforwardness) of my community.

There are no coincidences in life. None at all.

One Liner of the Week Award: Nicolas Gerard

2012-09-17T12:17:00.003-04:00

Bloggers Note: First of all, I know that there is an accent above the "e" in Nico's name but damn if I can figure out how to make my keyboard in blogger do it.

So, my boyfriend sometimes comes across to others as very elegant and reserved. Anyone that knows him knows that while he is indeed elegant, the reserve is just the way he lures you into a sense of safety before he unleashes his matter of fact, understated, yet over the top sass on you.

Now and again, though, he says something so matter-of-fact yet so true that it is both hilarious and has the ability to snap me right out of whatever dramatic writer emotional feedback look in which I have found myself.

Today was a perfect example of that. I have been dealing with a complicated situation that resulted in a minor moment of frustration, rage, and anger at the process and lack of accountability of a number of folks involved, and I reached a breaking point.

Then Nico called.

His rational no-nonsense mind is sometimes at odds with how I construct my world and community. The fact of the matter is that I am not now nor ever be wiling to do the brutally cold thing that would be absolutely in my best interest if it would impact the best interest of someone that I care about. No one would blame me, but I would blame myself and while I can sure as heck walk away from YOUR voice, I can't escape one that is in my head (though sometimes the voices keep my company at night...they are so kind).

So as we talked today and I cried and yelled, Nico listened, offered advice, and then finally said,

"Listen, I know this isn't going to sound exactly right but I really think that old bat is bonkers. Repeat after me...the old bat is bonkers! THE OLD BAT IS BONKERS!"

I laughed so hard that I had get up and go pee.

The old bat is bonkers indeed.

And that gals and gals with penises is the One Liner of the Week.

What A F!cking Summer...

2012-09-16T21:19:00.000-04:00

As we approach the official final day of Summer and the weather is starting to cool towards Fall, and the days are getting to be shorter even as the temperatures dip into a range when I don't feel like I would like to strip off the top layer of my skin to try and get just a little cooler (and on the best of days I look like Miss Whitney Houston on a crack binge when it the Sun starts to grill us Earthlings...anything above 73 degrees, and my head breaks into a full on deluge, and don't let me get started on the subway funk oven from June-September....walking down into the L train on 14th and 1st is like taking a flying leap into the Bog of Eternal Stench).

This Summer has been a whirlwind of life experiences, some of which have been amazing, and some of which have been entirely new and difficult, and, I discovered, that the lie I tell myself of being strong enough to handle whatever comes my way is a tall tell that I won't be telling myself anymore. From now on that statement will read: When something new and difficult or old and no longer serves comes along, first I have to not pretend, especially with myself, that I have the capacity to deal with it on my own---in the end I am the only person that CAN deal with the things that impact my life--but it no longer serves to say that something is going to be just fine and dandy when everything inside of me is screaming/crying/cussing/raging whilst also, at the same time, throwing a giant pity party...all wrapped up in some messed up male socialization crossed with a Minnesota upbringing where saying I love you is reserved for special holidays, everyone is expected to perfect or at least pretend to be in public, and anything spicier than ketchup is a sin.

There are many situations in my life that I can and do handle extremely well, and because I have intensely been working on my shit related to living with HIV (lord knows I have a long way to go still), when my doctor recommended that I start taking meds, I knew that it wasn't going to be easy and that I would probably have to deal with some emotionally hard days, but I also thought gosh golly, I it's been ten years, it's just a single pill a day, and you are as healthy as a horse, YOU GOT THIS! What I got was a month of ferocious side effects, spontaneous emotional and alcohol fueled break downs at the most awkward and unexpected times (a shout out to Natasha Johnson for being with me on one of those occasions), and finally having to face the final reality of what it means for most people that live with HIV to actually live with it, but it took me that many weeks to come to the realization that I was, indeed, falling apart on the inside, drinking way too much, and doing just about anything to actually face on this new part of my reality. I am still dealing with it, and some days I deal much better than others, but all those feelings of shame, issues with self-worth, and self-esteem came roaring back so fiercely that it has taken me months to beat those bitches back down. They still jump up and snap now and again, but at least now I am able to beat them back down in a few days instead of three months. And, by writing and sharing about my experience, I have had other folks starting their journey reach out and share with me a piece of their lives and their strength, Each one has been welcome and a reminder that no one walks any road completely alone.

One of the most spectacular and unexpected events of this Summer happened on June 23rd when I showed up to eat cheesecake and celebrate the birthday of one Nico Le Chou along with his parents and our mutual friend JT. I should have known that the night would be unexpected when upon meeting his mother and saying to her in French that I understand French and do not speak it well her response was, "It's because you are lazy, no?"

Now if I had been quicker on my feet that evening I would have said, "No, madame it's LACY not lazy." Instead, I shoved a piece of cheesecake in my mouth and thought of completely inappropriate Polish jokes in her direction. After finishing the cheeesecake and my evil thoughts (and I have to admit that any maman that is that sassy upon meeting wins my instant lifetime devotion), I ranged out into the night with JT and Nico. My intention was only to go out for a drink or two and then head back home, but Nico and JT both used friend guilt to maximum effect, and Nico got plenty of mileage out of the line: But it's my birthday! Well for anyone that is a Facebook friend, you know that night I gave Nico an innocent birthday kiss with lots of tongue and that turned out to be the beginning of something that has become something that I am willing to fight for tooth, nail, to hold on to....and anyone that gets in the way is going to make me take out my Vaseline and pass my hoops to one of my girls to hold while I prepare to put someone in the ground.

Nico is, very simply, a catalyst for my best self. When he is nearby, the gremlins that sometimes scream from inside my head or claw at my stomach, that read from a Satanic Gospel that was written for me based on lies this world told me when I was too young to not believe them and sometimes that I still hold on to even though I am no longer a child and the time for childish things has passed away, are quieted. They still speak, but when they do they no longer sound like the Metatron; they sound exactly like what they are: cold dead echoes of malevolent spirits most of which have haunted generations of my family because of race and poverty, abuse and struggle, colonization, capitalism, gender and sexual orientation--powerful spirits that are the source of the spiritual and often times mental and physical wounds that are manifested by the way this world treats those that are not the powerful of their generation.

These gremlins are the internal overseers that maintain the slavery that is at the core of how power and wealth are maintained and transferred from generation to generation. The enslaved can only be slaves if they agree to their bondage. Once, to enforce servitude, the enslaved needed the whip, the noose, and the burning cross, medical control over a woman's body, miscegenation laws and sodomy statutes enforced by daily violence in the lives of the controlled by those that felt entitled to own them. But the greatest triumph of slavery is that the external trappings of slavery are no longer necessary. We now are taught from the time we are born to enslave ourselves. We are taught that our lives and labor are not really our own despite what we believe, and so we know, without having to be taught by the daily presence of state sponsored fear and violence, to whom we owe our service, and for the 99% of us, even those that have inherited a history of struggle against slavery--whether it comes from a legacy of civil rights agitation or simply from having a single white mother that gave birth to mixed race children and without any language of justice but an understanding that she wanted more and better for her own children and fought to give them the tools and opportunities with the scarce working poor resources she had to do so. My Mother did so and all the while, for most of my childhood and into my early teen years, still suffering physical violence from many of the men she had chosen to offer her servitude, and though she also passed on to my brother and I some of the wounds that were her legacy, for those wounds that she was conscious of as being passed down because her Mother was never given the opportunity to know better or make deeper cracks in the cycle, she was vehement in the battle she did against those things she never wanted her children to suffer only because she did so.

This Summer, as I began my HIV medicine and started my relationship with Nico, I came to a new appreciation and understanding of my Mom and a deeper gratefulness for the sacrifices she made out of instinct and a simple desire to lessen the suffering of her children in the ways that she knew that she could. I remember her telling me once upon a time that she would never be able to tell me how to survive being a black man in this world, but she could give me other strengths. The greatest gifts that she gave to me were that I never doubted that she loved me even when our lives were harshest in so many ways. And she truly believed that I could do absolutely anything that I wanted in this life--she believed it when I didn't because despite what my Mother said the rest of the world from TV to my fourth grade teacher told me otherwise...taught me that I would most likely be dead by 25 at the hands of another man of color or if I managed to graduate from high school and even more unlikely college, my opportunities were limited not by my desire and imagination but what the world and power would allow. And though I was blessed to have other folks in my world that also believed in what they saw in me, and held up a mirror to help me see past the shame, fear, anger, hurt, loneliness to catch a glimpse of a human being that was intelligent, caring, and worthy of being loved, it was and is my Mother that still, despite the HIV, despite the addiction issues, despite the poor choices that I have made in my life, has never once done anything but love me fiercely, shed some tears because of some of the roads that I have to walk, and keep on believing that I could break free of my chains---that I could find a way to freedom. Her sometimes quiet and most of the times loud and insistent assertion that I can do anything and am worthy of love has been reflected back to me by so many others as well that on most days, I actually believe it.

But I digress, I was writing about Nico. There is something about him and about how we are when we are together that calms my natural drama, pulls a Tangina on the internal poltergeists, and leaves me feeling held up in a way that is steadying, confident and calm. I am the raging storm in our relationship, the lightning and the random tornadoes and water spouts, when his exact and rational nature leads him to doubt himself or what he can achieve in a given situation, I am the creative force that cajoles and pushes him to step a bit into my rainbow world of so many more hues and shades than grey, black and white, and he is the one that when the storm threatens to break free and hurls me into its wildness and chaos is my standing stone. He is the first man that I have ever dated that shuts me down when I need to be shut down, lets me rage when it is best for me to rage, knows when I need his arms around me and knows when to let me walk away just a little bit to be me in the world.

Plus he is French, sexy, a gold metal Olympiad in the boudoir and well...he does arms reduction policy for the United Nations. Brilliant and saves the world from itself every day. Basically a walking aphrodisiac. One day, when I write my tell all memoir, there will be at least one chapter in there about my French Diplomat when he sets the UN Declaration aside and takes off his suit and tie. Our children won't be allowed to read that chapter until they are in their late 40s. And the full color illustrations with bonus DVD will be missing from their copies.

And so I started dating this amazing human being and then a few weeks later, the Undersecretary General of the United Nations asked him to return to Togo, where he previously held a post for two years as Deputy Director of the Centre that is responsible for UN arms reduction work across the continent as the Interim Director of the Centre. When he called to tell me, I had just received my first hate mail in response to my writing, had just received some tough news at work, and was having some tough side effects from my meds. The news that he would be leaving three weeks from that day for two months in West Africa was exactly the last news that I wanted to hear. So, even though I wanted to kick and scream and throw a temper tantrum, and before the tears could escape my eyeballs, at which point if I try to talk I sound like a tranny Muppet on helium with a bad case of gonorrhea of the throat, I told him that it was out of the question for him not to take this opportunity and then I hung up the phone. As the day of his departure got closer, I began telling myself and him that it would be no problem, two months would be easy peasy, that I would miss him, but we would talk every day and thanks to Skype I would be able to see him and then he would be back home with me.

All that is great except for a few things: 1) Going from spending part of most of your days with the man you love and then have him leave and be absolutely unreachable for two months is not just tough it's evil...like locking a big girl that is trying desperately to lose weight in a room full of thin mints and putting them in a bullet proof glass box and making her stare at it while eating saltines. Every. Single. Day. Now for those wild and crazy UN folks that are used to spending months on end away from their partners and spouses, they have the skill set and experience to handle the absence. I had Pinot Grigio. Tasty but it was the saltine to my thin mint. Unfortunately, the storm started raging and the gremlins showed up riding a cadre of Jabberwocky's, and it took me several weeks and some difficult moments to realize that Nico isn't my Dad, he is going to come back when he says he is going to come back, and that just because he isn't physically present he isn't absent. Can you say Daddy and Abandonment issues? (Did I mention I am starting therapy this week?).

2) It hasn't been easy peasy but I think it has been very good for us. I am now very clear about why I want to be with Nico and what value he adds to my life. It isn't a relationship of convenience or proximity (clearly not proximity), and it has demonstrated that we can get through hard moments together. Now most couples have a honeymoon period of six months before they really have to dig into the baggage...we had to start unpacking right after buying a lovely matching set of Samsonite. Didn't get to break it in even. And lemme tell you, if you can worth through some shit when you are 6,000 miles apart and can only interact through Skype, then that is something real.

3) Speaking of Skype....Togolese Internet fucking sucks. That's all I have to say about that.

In the end, Nico's pragmatism and my optimism seem to have formed an unholy union that, against the odds, is beautiful. I would not have chosen to start out our relationship with an immediate two month absence, but the Universe has a nasty habit of not going along with my plans.

I have not by any means dealt with these hard moments well at all times. There have been times when I let the gremlins run the show. There have been times when I should have realized that putting on a Sambo face and doing the shuck and jive only to lose it much more spectacularly later is counterproductive. This Summer has taught me that you can still be strong AND let folks know that you are going to need to lean on them and that if you pretend that all is well that they have full permission to respond with "Girl, please."

Caveat to that statement: There are times that folks have offered me fierce support that I needed whether I really wanted it or not at the moment, and I have appreciated that.There has been more than one loved one in my life come to me and call bullshit and have done so in a way that was both direct but also about growth and building. Having said that, I have also had folks that don't know me but think that they do try to come at me and do it like they are Jesus himself. You come at me like you are Jesus, and there is a crucifixion on the horizon. I am all about accountability, though the Lord knows that its never fun when it comes around, but also if you aren't living my life but you think you can sit in judgment of it, and you haven't done the work to speak to me, then you need to take a look at some things about yourself. As someone wise told me once upon a time, ifin' you have a problem with me, you bring it to me with respect, if you don't, then it's not really my problem. I don't throw stones because I know my house is made out of glass. I built that mother and I have the nicks and cuts to prove it. You can keep your shaming, I have quite enough of my own. But if you show up with love and respect, then you will have my full attention. In this world, one of the ways folks love to exorcise and offload their own hurt is to focus on someone elses, I know, I've done it. But I have also survived it and I won't tolerate it from anyone ever again.

There have been some really amazing moments this Summer: Fire Island Black Out with my girls, time with Nico, invitations to speak at several universities this Fall, my work being turned into parts of two plays, one in West Virginia that premiers on World AIDS Day and another by a storyteller from the Midlands in Great Britain. There have been some really tough moments that still need some resolution

The summer is not over and there is plenty of more work to do. I am grateful for all that has taken place. This Summer has been about learning to hurt without taking on the mantle of victim, to fight as a warrior and not a soldier, to cry without thinking you are weak, to fuck up and take it for what it is and not validation of gremlinspeak, to appreciate the truly tremendous community that I have, and to know that despite what I've inherited, despite what I had no choice but to suffer and accept as a child, that I am not a child any longer, the people and things and situations that hurt me then do not have the same power over me now unless I let them. Then I couldn't choose. I can choose now. I am choosing. I am 35, and it's time to continue growing up--and accepting the love that I also deserve and sharing it back out.

Thank God we never stop growing up.

The 2012 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry

2012-09-10T16:19:00.004-04:00

The 2012 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry

Dear Friends:

I am happy to announce the call for submissions for the third year of the Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry.

The Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry will be awarded to a poet that demonstrates the power of spoken word to address issues of class, sexuality and race in a way that transcends rhetoric and creates movement.

The winner will receive $150, and the winning poem will be published at My Feet Only Walk Forward (www.myfeetonlywalkforward.blogspot.com). Two honorable mentions will also be named.

The winner of the 2010 Carey Prize was Saymoukda Vongsay and the winner of the 2011 Carey Prize was Roberto Santiago. Both Roberto and Mouks have agreed to serve as additional judges for this year's prize.

I welcome other donations in support of the prize. If donations come in that exceed the prize total, I will increase the prize amount. There are very very very few prizes that support the work of spoken word artists, and I hope you will consider making a contribution. Donations can be made at the address provided below. Please make checks payable to David Berube (this is so that ya'll don't think I am trying to keep the moola for myself!).

About the Prize:

Alfred C. Carey was a hard working man from Northern Minnesota. He worked in construction, specifically roofing, while raising a family of 8, including three children not biologically his own. He represented a series of beautiful and sometimes hard contradictions in race, class, and history. He also, without a vocabulary around race and sexuality, accepted all of his children and grandchildren for who they were without judgment. This award is named in the honor of my grandfather who died in 1997.

Rules:

You may submit up to three poems no longer than a combined total of six pages double spaced.

You may also submit audio recordings in CD format. The recordings should not exceed 9 minutes in length.

Along with your submission please include a cover page that states your: Name, Address, Telephone Number, Email Address, Website Address, and a brief biography of no more than 6 sentences.

ALL SUBMISSIONS MUST BE POSTMARKED BY NOVEMBER 1, 2012. WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED DECEMBER 15, 2012.

Please send THREE copies of each entry.

Authors retain all copyright to their works, and if you would like samples returned, please include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

Make submissions to:

Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry
c/o Brandon Lacy Campos
462 W. 52nd Street #3N
New York, NY 10019

Late Night Sex Talk

2012-08-28T09:27:00.001-04:00

Last night, I was hanging out with my old friend Insomnia, and I gave a shout out to Facebook and found that I was in abundant good company. A friend of mine popped up on my chat and asked me if he could ask a question. This young man is a HIV negative but an HIV scholar and knows his stuff. But as have almost all of us, positive and negative, he made a choice recently to have unprotected sex with a twink that said he was HIV negative. My friend topped him bareback, and decided that he was going to go in and get an HIV test. But he had a question about risk if, in fact, the individual turned out to have been HIV positive.

It's not an uncommon question though it is one that folks rarely ask. In fact, I know many men that always top without a condom whether or not their sex partner is negative or positive. Their is a misconception that tops can't get HIV by topping. And, unfortunately, the model for prevention in this country would have you believe that topping without a condom will not only instantly give you AIDS but your right nut will fall off. The answer to that particular question is that yes there is a risk. Period---but you won't get the dropsies just because you stuck it in without a rubber. But the level of risk involved depends on numerous factors. The internal health of the bottom, lube usage, the health of the penis of the top, the size of the top's urethra, the viral load of the bottom, and I am sure there are other variables that a doctor would be able to add into the mix.

I shared with my friend that in my adult relationships, I have mostly dated men that are negative and for those that were tops they rarely used a condom. This was an informed decision based on medical facts, and if, for example, one of the variables mentioned above happened to be off for a time, then we wrapped it up. The point was that based on the available scientific/medical data, personal preference and risk tolerance, the particular men I am talking about made a choice around the risk they wanted to take. And I kept them informed of any issue that would impact that risk choice. I have also, with one negative boyfriend in particular, topped without a condom with his consent, considering all the risk factors, eliminating internal ejaculation (and I am not a pre-cummer but if it happened to be one of those rare times when I was...then it was condom time), and again that was a mutual decision based on medical information.

And remember this number: 96%. A person with an undetectable viral load has less than a 4% chance of transmitting HIV. There have been NO DOCUMENTED CASES of a person with an undetectable viral load transmitting HIV. The fact is that there is a risk to a negative bottom, but again the science and medical data is way ahead of a prevention messaging that still puts the onus on poz folks and shames consensual sexual choices regarding condom usage between consenting adults.

But the part of the conversation that was most important was that my friend was taking responsibility for his own sexual health. Yes the twink said he was negative. Yes he could have lied. Yes that would have been wrong (and any poz person that has been living with HIV for any significant amount of time and says that they have a 100% disclosure rating is either a leprechaun or lying). But in the end, my friend realized that he made the ultimate choice for himself to top this kid without a condom.

The analogy that I used was that he could tell me that Jesus himself was slinging beers down at the local Irish Pub, but if I hauled my ass down to the pub and it turned out that Jesus wasn't there, my friend may have told me a story that got me to jump in my car....but I am in fact that one that climbed in, turned the key, and headed down to get some water-to-wine action. That does not absolve anyone from knowing their status and disclosing it when necessary, but HIV positive people are not responsible for anyone else's sex choices.

I commended my friend on doing what was best for him and taking care of his health. Based on actual facts and data, I was able to suggest that his risk factor in this situation was low. The more we can all engage with our sex choices, understand we are going to make mistakes, and try and remove the HIV related stigma from sex, we will move a long way forward into the fight to eliminate HIV.

Towards a Black Male Feminism

2012-08-23T13:53:00.000-04:00

There are any number of arguments why the practice of active feminism is an obligation of men. I have opined in the past that a woman, just as she has a choice whether or not to ever consider abortion or have one, also has a choice of whether or not to be a feminist. Her liberation or how she defines her liberation needs to be defined as she wills it and it may shift, change, and morph based on locale, history, religion, race, color, and belief. The debate on the necessity of an articulated feminism for women is a debate for women to hold and define. But let me be clear that feminism is not monolithic and white feminism and the racism its practice has sometimes entailed as practiced historically has caused some powerful harm, which is why the Combahee River Collective's statement on Black Feminism and Barbara Smith's essay Towards a Black Feminist Criticism are so critical.

But the debate on feminism and what that means from a female point of view is not for a man to decide. But the power of feminism is that contrary to how it is often presented it is not the same as sexism. Sexism is the practice of power plus privilege and its use to oppress women while holding up the institutions of male power and privilege. Feminism is the mindful deconstruction of that system for both men and women. In short, feminism is the key to the liberation of men as it is, in my opinion, the basis for the liberation of women. How feminism is practiced, though, and what it means for men and women and their path to liberation is, necessarily different. And what it means for black men in particular is very simply about survival.

To begin, 72% of all black households in the United States are led by single mothers. The reasons for this are plentiful including rates of teen pregnancy, school to prison pipeline, drug laws, poverty, and any other number of factors that are geared towards removing a particular type of black man, which happens to be the majority of us, from our homes and into the new articulations of modern slave labor or, as has happened during the recession, the removal of us and our labor from the economy completely to make room for the recovery of the white community. The unemployment rate of black men with college degrees is almost twice that of white men with college degrees, and while the overall unemployment rate for the black community is around 13%, 8.3% of black men over 25 with a college degree are unemployed. Though critical to understanding the ways in which power pushes black men out of the "legitimate" means earning system and into survival economies that make black men vulnerable to power and easily eliminated at the ease or pleasure of the state, particularly in a time of increased private prisons and the shifting of so much small manufacturing labor to prisons where fair wage laws and other Constitutional and legal guarantees do not apply, these are all symptoms that lead to towards a black male feminism and its necessity.

Feminism at its root means that both men and women get to express their full humanity without oppression, without prescribed ways of being that are rigidly policed and socially/politically/often physically punished when deviated from the norm, and allow both men and women the full range and expression of their vitality and spirit without taking away from the other. Indeed, feminism is, at its root, the negation of gender roles and the full expression of human experience as in a liberation framework---ie...you get to be all of you, and I get to be all of me, and together we are committed to building each other to our full potential.

For black men this becomes about survival. Black men are taught from the gate to be tough, hard, in control, "macho", independent, players, victims, and that our potential is circumscribed by history, circumstance, and ability--not to be punks, to be virile, the mandigo syndrome...and these ideals images and thoughts are reinforced through our own communities, often, media--too often--, and what we consume from mainstream dominant ideology. We resemble what we are presented by others as ourselves. We become charicatures because so many of those that would be our own role models are dead, absent, or in prison. We are socialized internally and externally, and unless somoene or something intervenes to break the cycle of history, legacy, and socialization we often become what we were never born to be. We become angry, and turn that anger inwards and towards our own community. And as a wise woman once told me, there is a place for angry black men: jail.

The truth or untruth of these socializations are related to our relativity to power, history, presentation, and ability to conform or not (willingly or not, consciously or not) to a paradigm that requires us to set our skin aside and adopt a way of being that imitates the master consciousness. This too is an ultimate expression of sexism and must be rejected through conscious practice. Further, I would argue it is sexism and a lack of feminist ideals and thoughts that are at the root of the pandemic of the single parent home, which, in and of itself, keeps the community widely struggling with poverty and in cycles of poverty.

To be clear, I grew up with a single white mother that, like most mothers, worked hard to give us a better opportunity than she had, but the fact remains that a loving two parent house hold would have afforded better opportunity, education, and emotional support. The key word being loving.

So what is the solution? The solution is for men in general, and black men in particular to adopt feminist ideals. To reject prescribed notions of masculinity and dominance, to reject heterosexism and homophobia, to see women and gender non conforming individuals are partners in liberation, to ask for help and support, to love our partners and to see each other as family instead of objects to be desired and dominated, to understand that materialism and consumerism as status are socializations again that have been offered up on a dish that we have swallowed whole by white folks that could care less about the strength of our community and only want the power our dollars give them. It means to love women and to use whatever power and privilege we have to open up the space so that they can be full and powerful partners with us, since it was a woman and most likely a single woman that raised us. It means investing in the power and strength of black women that have sacrificed to give us life and have loved us both in our own realities and broadly as a male community when we didn't deserve it.

There are structural reasons why black men often fail to survive or end up in cycles of poverty but while power owes us a Hell of a lot, the mentality that one is owed will do nothing but keep us in the same cycles of destruction, despair, and subjugation. By starting at the point of undoing our own sexism and claiming identities and practice as feminist, we heal the rift that has existed between black men and women and begin with a unity that power will not be able to undo. It is for all of our survival that black men must move towards an articulated black feminism, accountable to black women, and responsible for ourselves.

Queers for Economic Justice and the Forum Project Need Your Help!

2012-08-21T16:09:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends and Family,

My organization, Queers for Economic Justice, is currently fighting to win a $5000 grant and WE NEED YOUR VOTE!

The Forum Project (TFP) and Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ) are teaming up to develop a performance series with and by queer shelter residents of New York City using Theatre of the Oppressed. A disproportionate number of New York City's homeless identify as queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or gender-nonconforming, and yet many face overwhelming discrimination, neglect and abuse at the hands of the systems that claim to support homeless people. Queer homeless need effective resources to combat the oppression that impacts their lives. http://goodart.maker.good.is/projects/queerhomelessonstage

Our budgets are extremely lean, and so we really need this grant to be able to launch this program and support this underresourced community. And it's so easy to help.

VOTE! We're in the top ten but we need to be #1 to win. Please take a moment to vote.

SHARE! Please post the following on your Facebook page or Twitter!

Please VOTE NOW to help give $5000 to launch this program to develop theatre by homeless people in NYC! http://goodart.maker.good.is/projects/queerhomelessonstage

FORWARD! Please send this blog to your colleagues, friends and family to spread the word.

Help us spread the word and win!

Love,
Brandon and the QEJ and Forum Project Family!

PS VOTING ENDS IN TWO DAYS! VOTE NOW!

An American Pandemic: The Murder of Black Trans Women

2012-08-19T16:53:00.001-04:00

We all know that in this country, the value of a Black life as measured by the institutions that prop up and run this nation is measured only in meager labor. Slavery may have ended in 1865 (I use the date of Juneteenth to mark that ocassion), but we know that real wage slavery still exists even as the overt trappings of slavery and Jim Crow have been dismantled. We like our oppression to look neat and pretty, so Black folks that don't tow the line and keep in their place are placed in prison now. Much easier to lock them up than lynch us on a regular basis. And as my former boss and life mentor Paula Austin once told me, "You have to think and act smart. There is a place for angry black men in this world. It's called jail."

There is also a place for black bodies, over and over again, and that is six feet under at the hands of power, ignorance, and violence. And in no community of black folks is that threat and reality more present than amongst Black transgender and gender nonconforming women.

There are a number of lists that honor the murdered dead by remember their names and sharing them with the community. There is one such list on Wikipedia. The same article suggests that according to global statistics, a transgender person is murdered every three days just on the basis of their gender identity. And the European based Trans Murder Monitoring Project has tracked 800 transgender murders globally in the last four years. As of March 2012, the United States has the fourth highest rate of transgender murders in the world (52 in the last four years), only slightly behind Mexico and Columbia, though distantly behind Brazil, which has had more than 300 murders of trans individuals in the last four year.

Just a quick Google search of transgender murders in 2012 offered up the names of these black women that were either killed in 2012 or their killers were acquitted or got off without justice: Brandy Martell (Oakland, CA), Paige Clay (Chicago, IL), Victoria Carmen White (Newark, NJ), an identified yet unnamed black transwoman was found murdered in Detroit last Monday morning (the police refuse to offer up a name), and I am sure there are more. Today we add another name to that list: Tiffany Gooden, 19 years old, Chicago, found not two blocks from where Paige Clay was killed earlier this year. Tiffany was stabbed and left in an abandoned building on the Westside.

I didn't know Tiffany. Until this afternoon when the article concerning her death was posted on my Facebook wall, I didn't know she existed. I promise you, however, that I will never forget her. Or any of the faces and names of trans folks from my community in NYC or my community globally that have been brought to my attention. Nor will I forget CeCe McDonald, who is serving prison time for killing an attacker that would have gladly added the name of that innocent black woman to the list of those taken down by hate, racism, sexism, and transphobia.

And like every other non-white queer or trans person that is murdered, Tiffany's death will occupy precious little column space. She may get a quick mention on the evening news once or twice. But power doesn't care about black bodies. Power most certainly does not care about black transgender bodies that are often classed, raced, and gendered out of the workforce and so therefore have no value to the power structure. Tifany will be forgotten along with so many others, unless we make an effort to remember her. To speak her name in our holy places, in our gathering places, in our places of community, at Trans Day of Action, in the offices of Queers for Economic Justice, in the Miss Major-Jay Toole Building for Justice, which is named in part for a black trans woman elder and a gender non-conforming white super butch and houses the Audre Lorde Project, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, FIERCE, and QEJ.

We know from experience that most of our own national organizations could actually care less about these lives lost as well. Even the best of them, the Task Force, is preciously weak on issues related to trans people of color. Apathy and disinterest is as much a factor in creating an environment where these deaths are permissible as is the structural oppression and hate that results in the physical destruction of the lives of our trans brothers and sisters.

And so to is the silence of black mainstream organizations. The NAACP and other black institutions are culpable as well for ignoring, silencing and closeting these most vulnerable members of our family. Our silence has never protected us from anything.

So today, I am remembering Tiffany and holding up her name in light. I hope she has found in the next life what was denied to her in this one: justice, dignity, honor, love, and the right to grow up.

Rest in peace Tiffany, while the rest of us rage.

At Times Like These: A Love Blog for Nico

2012-08-17T18:40:00.001-04:00

It's at times like these, these moments when I am feeling full of love...those moments when it's been a decent week....when I have done what I set out to do (for the most part), did the best I could do on a given day....had the strength to ask for help and support and love from my family and community...had conflict and resolved it....had trouble and overcame it....dreamed a little bit...cried a little bit...said some goodbyes....made some new friends...and loved myself just a bit more....that I miss him the most.

You see...I fell in love with a man. Not just any man....but a Frenchman (ouhlala)....by the name of Nico.

Let me tell you something about Nico....unexpectedness....and the quirky twists of fate of a universe gone un poquito loco. He is the best friend of someone that I still love dearly and that I once dated.

I shall not name any names but there are some blogs (some good and some...ahem...rough)....on this blog about his best friend and the firestorm of emotions that existed/still exist/have been banked....between us. That was a crazy love...a conflagration that was explosive. I am sure there is some alien species somewhere that saw us meet for the first time and was like..."Fuck...I think the Earth just blew the Hell up!"

I met Nico through the other one. When I met him I thought he was a smooooooth operator. Tall. Fancy. French. Works for the UN. Suave.....very...umm....welll....ouhlala. He was a married man. Like...legally and stuff....and he spent most of his night talking to our friend Ben in Frenchy talk. He maintains to this day that I ignored him that night. I didn't ignore him. I was perfectly engaging....I just happened to have my attention focused elsewhere.

Proof that I am right and he was smoking that stuff is that shortly after meeting, we developed our own friendship that intensified as he and his former partner split up.

For two months, we spoke often, communicated often, and as the unnamed one and I went from a twin star galaxy to supernovae, Nico and my friendship deepened.

Then for reasons that were both valid (feelings wise) and super duper extra regrettable (actions wise), first the other one and then I were sent into Siberia as my chou (cabbage aka Nico) calls it.

Fast forward some six months later. The ex and I are again close and friends. We go out for Nico's birthday. I hadn't seen him (Nico) in almost seven months. By the end of the night, we were kissing, and I asked him out on a date.

When I went to bed that night and thought back on the evening, my eyes were as big as a lemur's and all I could do was blink and say..."what the fuc....."

And one date turned into nights spent together, laughing, talking, walking, singing, ummmm playing...uhhh twister, eating, cooking, and it was all and has been so easy. Not easy as in...no hard moments or no difficult times where he or I haven't had to say....No no Mischa...not tonight. And a couple of times, I've had to go all Ghost on him...."Molly...you in danger girl!" Of course, I have been a perfect angel full of Christ's love and have never made him raise his eyebrows and get all Franco-Germanic Valkyrie on me....no...not me...no way man!

He sees me and loves me and holds me...and the things I think of as flaws and detriments...the HIV....the slight tendency towards crazy (I have more than a little Madea in my soul)....the wounds that I carry and am trying to heal....he just kisses me and lets me be....and I like to believe that for those things that he carries...I have been able to do the same.

The man loves me in that slow, steady insistent way that you hear about sometimes in stories. Not the pyrotechnical oh shit we blew up the universe way and then burned down to a cinder...but in that slow, steady, warm, glowy, constant way that just keeps burning and sparking and warming without flickering.

Yeah it's only been a couple-o-months...but it's been something vastly different than this...ummm...very experienced human being has known. And what's even better is that everyone around us sees it. In pictures. In person. Folks comment on the light that is there when we are together.

Which is why I wanted to jump up and down on his forehead when my beloved man up and moved to Togo for two months.

Yes yes, I am cursed to have a successful man that works for the UN doing disarmament that was recently promoted to a fabulous post in NYC and asked to go back to Africa to be the Interim Director of the center in West Africa that runs the disarmament program for the entire damn continent. WOOOOOOEEEEEE IS ME.

At least he bought me some jewelry before he left. He knows what a lady likes.

In the end....I am so proud to be his man. I am proud of the work he is doing. The world of modern technology lets us see and talk to each other every day....but on nights like this...after days like this....Skype is lovely...but it doesn't replace his kiss, his skin, or my arms around him.

He'll be home soon. Until then.....it's love letters and a list of some acrobatic gymnastic twister games in a spreadsheet to be played that grows longer by the day.

Ungowa Queer Black (and Brown) Power!

2012-08-14T17:52:00.002-04:00

So, this last weekend, thanks in large part to the generosity of a lovely friend of mine, I was able to attend, for the first, time the Fire Island Black Out Party (FIBO). For all y'all that don't know, Fire Island is off the coast of Long Island and is a miles and miles long sand bar in the bay (or it might be the sound...lord if I know and I am too lazy to Google it). The island has been famous for nearly fifty years for being THE Mecca for the queer community. P-Town is Miss Congeniality but The Pines and Cherry Grove take first and second on that particular list. The Pines is generally where the boys hang out and has magnificent mansions and you can smell the ducats in the air. The Grove est une pue demurre in comparison but is still stunning with more than one dyke with dollars prancing about in this or that.

On one weekend each year, which up until this year coincided with Black Pride in NYC, FIBO takes place in Cherry Grove and quite literally thousands and thousands of largely black and Latin@ folks from all across the country descend on this little piece of sand in the water for three days of sun, sand, dancing and shenanigans.

The things I saw on the beach liked to make be howl. (for example...technically it was a nude beach but the one person that exercised the full nude option was this not-so-lovely white man that would then walk up to groups of black men and get an erection...I was like....if you can't control it...PUT IT AWAY!). Then there was the black twink that had a bathing suit with a mesh bubble in the crotch for his dick and balls while covering the rest of him...that was even worse than Le Nude Whitey.

But other than the now and again moments of utter insanity, the weekend was one of laughter with new and old friends, so much joy, and so much pride in the beauty, diversity, power, and love of the Black and Latin@ community, especially with all of us all together celebrating our sexuality, our cultural expressions, and our love for our fellow queer folks.

And like in many queer settings the men and women (and trans folks) were together. I can't remember, and so I won't attribute exactly the paraphrase but one of the black women elder lesbians said (might of been Barbara Smith, might have been Mandy Carter, but I can't remember at the moment), "we as women of color can't afford to leave men of color behind."

This weekend, to be with an entire group of stunning and powerful women of color (shout out to Jaael, Sondra, Selena, Arti, Sam, and Nadia (with a guest appearance by our token white girl Di), and to find so many other groups of friends, queer/trans men and women together, gave me some hope for our community---particularly as people of color doing the work and struggling together---that feminism is going to will out and the recognition of our survival is contingent on the dismantling of the barriers that sexism has created between our family. Women of color would have been justified in leaving their men behind and going on and being the bright candles that they are...but they chose to reach out and drag us along...sometimes by smacking us upside the head the entire way.

FIBO for me was not about the partying as much as it was about being in community, meeting the black neurosurgeon from Columbia Presbyterian, the chief legal advisor to the Detroit City Council--also a black man--the investment banker women, the British Indian actor (what what Arti), the school teacher, the dancer, a banker that finances public housing projects, and so on and so forth. We gonna be alright.

But not to dismiss the party; what better way to build community than butt shaking throw downs that bring folk together to share in the bright diversity of our music, language, and joy?

Thanks for the love and good times my FIBO crew and here's to next year!

POEM: A Very Sappy Love Poem aka The Chou

2012-08-07T15:17:00.000-04:00

The Chou

He is to me the stuff that dreams are made of

brilliant bursts of color that

throw shade at the rainbow

give side eye to a prisms glow

French diplomat freak in the sheets realness

the category is

Love
New Style

soft and gentle

smooth and subtle

it isn't the explosive passion that has moved my foundations

in the past

it was the Fourth of July and Krakatoa

but this......

this is a broad river

with a powerful undertow

slowly making its mark

through the stoic earth

inexorable it feels like truth

his distance feels like the reach

from river source to its delta

But I can feel him though he is not cerca

verdad the source and the delta are the same river

I meant to give him a lingering goodbye

but life got in the way (I had a grant due that day)

so it was a swift kiss and into a taxi

left me

wanting

that long goodbye

instead

it will be a Hell of a Hello

And anyone that says two months ain't a long time

hasn't been in love before

Two days is a long time when you crave waking up in his arms

despite the snores

that sound like a Silverback banging on its chest

somewhere deep in his neck

he growls in his sleep

keeps his arms around me

except when my arms are around him

sometimes he doesn't let me go

in that way he is just like his best friend

(Yes, I also dated him).

But if this is the beginning

there can only be a happy ending

because once upon a time I fell in love with a Frenchman

who was first my friend

and those are the types of bedtime stories

that never ever end.

-Brandon Lacy Campos

-New York, NY

-August 7, 2012

What Do Justice for People with HIV, the Working Poor, People of Color and Women Have to Do With Christine Quinn? Absolutely Nothing.

2012-08-06T19:43:00.001-04:00

Queers For Economic Justice Asks Quinn To Support Paid Sick Days Now!

By Amber Hollibaugh and Brandon Lacy Campos

While many in the LGBTQ community take paid sick days for granted, half of all workers in New York City — and two-thirds of low-wage workers — get no paid sick time. Many of these workers are LGBTQ. These workers don't have the luxury of putting their health first. When they get sick, instead of focusing on getting better, they are forced to choose between going to work sick to make rent at the end of the month or sacrificing their days’ wages and/or getting fired. No one should be forced to make this choice.

Last week, Queers for Economic Justice returned from the International AIDS Conference to New York City, where a debate over whether employers should be required to give their workers paid sick days has become a leading issue in City Hall and in the media. Lack of paid sick days is a significant problem for New Yorkers living and working with HIV/AIDS, who don’t have the privilege of taking sickness lightly, and must prioritize their health above all else when sick. This could mean staying home in bed to get needed rest or scheduling an emergency visit to the doctor’s office. Without the ability to take paid sick time, the health and economic security of people living with HIV/AIDS are jeopardized.

There is legislation pending in the NYC Council that would alleviate this problem by requiring most businesses to give a modest number of paid sick days to their workers to use for themselves or to care for a sick family member.

The legislation enjoys broad public support as well as a veto-proof majority of support in the City Council. If passed, the legislation would lift a serious burden off the nearly 1.5 million workers in NYC who currently don’t get a single paid sick day. This is especially true for immigrant workers, people of color, and people with low-wage jobs, who are among the least likely to get paid sick days.

Paid sick days also play an important public health role. When sick workers go to work, they increase the spread of illness. Nobody wants to be served by a sick waiter at a restaurant. For people living with HIV/AIDS, the risk of complications from influenza and other communicable illnesses make the public health importance of paid sick days particularly vital.

Considering how important this issue is to LGBTQ workers and our brothers and sisters living with HIV/AIDS, it’s disturbing that some of the most prominent and powerful opponents of the legislation come from within the LGBTQ community.

The openly gay Speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, is the single person standing in the way of the legislation’s passage. If she allowed the bill to the floor for a vote, it would fly through the City Council.

Backing Speaker Quinn is Tony Juliano, the general manager of the gay bar XES Lounge in Chelsea, who recently claimed that despite considering his workers to be family, he opposes giving them five paid sick days per year. Almost ninety percent of restaurant and bar workers don’t get paid sick days – most go to work sick for fear of losing their jobs, and many actually do lose their jobs when they call in sick.

At Queers for Economic Justice, we have an initiative called Poverty and HIV/AIDS Stop Together. Through this project, we are highlighting how issues like paid sick days connect anti-poverty work and HIV/AIDS Activism. We are also launching a Queer Survival Economics initiative, which seeks to make visible the impact of the recession on LGBTQ communities. In today’s economy, workers are struggling to stay employed and provide for those closest to them, and they need paid sick days more than ever.

It’s time for the LGBTQ community to come together to support this safe, sane, and sensible policy.

Amber Hollibaugh and Brandon Lacy Campos are Co-Directors of Queers for Economic Justice.

Forgotten Lesson: A Young Person’s Experience at the AIDS Memorial Quilt

2012-07-31T16:51:00.000-04:00

This is a guest blog written by my friend Daniel Pino, a sweetheart and a staff member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This blog originally appeared on the Task Force's blog at http://thetaskforceblog.org/2012/07/25/forgotten-lesson-a-young-persons-experience-at-the-aids-memorial-quilt/

Typically when escaping the dim-light of the Smithsonian metro station in Washington, D.C., in the middle of the sweltering summer humidity that D.C. is known so well for, you’re hit with sensory overload: groups of school children gleefully crowd museum entrances, tourist families stop every 10 feet to take group photos in their patriotic T-shirts, and locals play games of Ultimate Frisbee or soccer in between water breaks. All activities fearlessly displayed with little regard for on-looking stares and high enthusiasm for living in the moment. It’s a prime spot for people-watching and one of the special things about the District. But this past Monday morning, as I exited the cavernous station, I was taken aback to see a different site: almost nothing.

Rather than seeing a gaggle of laughing kids on a field trip or athletic bodies warding off the efforts of their opponents, the Mall was empty except for small pods of fabric strategically placed in four rows in the center of the greenery and suited crowds jostling to their office buildings. Realizing I was in the right place, I made my way toward the Capitol building where other volunteers for the display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt were preparing for the day’s events.

Up until this point, I had never seen the AIDS Memorial Quilt in its entirety. Sure, I had seen individual panels at various conferences and events and seen dozens of photographs in history books and queer-themed scholarly articles — but never in person. When the Quilt was first displayed on the National Mall in 1987, I was three months away from entering the world, whereas the second time it came to D.C. in 1996 I was learning long division. For me, the Quilt was never so much a real-time phenomenon as it was something that just had always been — like the Washington Monument or Niagara Falls. It possessed an almost “tourist-esque newness” but not a personal connection.

As I talked with friends about my eventual volunteering for the Quilt display over drinks the days beforehand, I encountered polite comments of “That’s gotta be so hard” and “Get a picture of _______ celebrity’s panel.” For my generation, that sense of the Quilt being less of a revolutionary memorial to a commodified attraction wasn’t just personalized to my own experience. Which had me reflecting during the walk on the gravel path of the National Mall: Why is that?
Thinking on this question I realized that I (and my generation) occupy a very privileged historical position. Privileged in that I was born into a world where AIDS was no longer known as GRID, where condoms were not just the expectation but the norm, and where fears of infection did not debilitate my conviction to come out of the closet. I could freely adopt lovers in self-protective and self-ecstatic means, I could march on the very same National Mall for marriage equality and military service while reading about ACT UP as a long-gone “historical development,” and I could maintain friendships with positive-bodied friends for months and years on end due to breakthroughs in medical technology.

AIDS never felt like an eventual monster so much as it did an invisible boogeyman that my elders used to keep me in line, and, in turn, the Quilt was just that: a quilt.

Something changed this week.

As fellow volunteers and I carefully unfolded the seemingly dull patches of fabric into a beautiful cacophony of colors, memories and emotions standing out vividly against the muddy green of the Mall’s landscape, each panel of a long past person made me feel something. I laughed at reminiscent quotes on panels of drag queens, I welled up at a panel with nothing more than a baby rattle and the text “her favorite thing” and I was overwhelmed by the ages, faces and names of thousands of people lost to something I’ve only really grown up dismissively acknowledging.

All morning long, we unfurled the panels. All morning long we were met with more panels that needed to be exposed. All morning long.

The tourist-ness of this old cloth attraction began fading and the true meaning of the Quilt began breathing life. It became something more than a patch of fabric. I saw each panel as a person, as a family, a lover and a friend celebrating and mourning a memory — each one beautiful and cherished in its own right. And that boogeyman that I only tipped my hat to scared the hell out of me.

Daniel Pino reading names at the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

After moving from nearly one end of the Mall to the next with a wake of swatches behind us and ahead of us, the team and I chose to participate in the reading of the names of those lost to AIDS. After a long, thoughtful walk I was standing on the main stage shoulder to shoulder with strong queer women, many of whom not only lost their loved ones to the disease but had constructed their own panels. They forged the families of necessity I’ve only read about and literally moved the movement. Hearing them read the names of friends with conviction and tears, I wondered how I could, in any way, contribute or stand on the same platform, honoring the same dead they had known and loved.
I tried, timidly and as reverently as I could, to speak each name aloud with clarity and respect. By doing so, I hoped that by pronouncing each name correctly and over enunciating each syllable precisely I could achieve some semblance of understanding. I made it through the first of two pages I was given to read. Until I finally reaching the third to last name: “Died Alone…But Not Forgotten.”
I paused, awash with the phrasing until unexpectedly tears started welling up larger and larger until I had to stop midway through the next name. I tried choking back the tears, hoping to regain my rhythm but I kept crying. I read the last three names through those tears, until I finished and turned to be hugged by those amazing women who were standing behind me. And it made sense. It all made sense.

I had started crying not just from being overwhelmed or because the experience was “so heavy,” but because I had forgotten…in fact, I had never known the reality of what AIDS had done to my community. Reading about it in scholarly articles and history books wasn’t enough. My friendships with HIV-positive people weren’t enough to inform my own privilege. All the book-smart and street-smart experiences in the world could not have prepared me for that realization that I had forgotten. It wasn’t just enough to know of my history, I needed to engage with it.

I needed to touch the memories, read the names and feel a fraction of the emotion of those who forged the panels and then placed them so willingly in my generations care.

So as I left the National Mall, now fuller with tourists on the carousel outside the Smithsonian Castle and the sun piercing through the city smog, I left with an appreciation and an unforgettable lesson, which I think the poet Robert Penn Warren sums up the best, “History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.” Here’s hoping more of my generation learns that lesson and there won’t be another forgotten person.

An Open Love Letter to My Community

2012-07-27T13:58:00.001-04:00

Dear Friends, Family, and Loved Ones:

I received a hateful and spiteful letter in the U.S. mail the other day from an anonymous writer that reads my FB and blog and lives in St. Louis. I sat with the letter for several days. At first it made me angry, and then it made me feel ashamed, and now I hold it for what it is: a sad, hurt, angry, self-loathing attempt by someone to offload their own feelings of inadequacy on others. The only thing I truly have to say to you is that I hope you find the love, healing, grace, and peace that you seem to not have in your life in this moment. You deserve it.

The one point in the letter, though, that truly made my eyebrows raise was when I was accused of, and I am paraphrasing, loving my friends, boyfriend, community too much (or as anonymous said...when I am in love the whole word has to hear about)....acting as if you are all superstars, phenomenal, the best people ever. Please note I was not accused of putting down the friends, family, and loves of others only that I loved you all too much and too publicly and without the appropriate amount of humility and self-effacement.

Guilty.

Let's start off with something simple. Nico, I love you. But you already knew that. And you know why. You are French and stoic, so I won't embarrass you by listing why exactly you have captured my heart. I love you. Now get back to saving the world from itself.

But that's not all, I love so many other people: David, Kenyon, Rodrigo, Jennifer, Nubia, Chad, Jenna, JT, Umberto, Pookie, Tasha, RJ, Bebe, Amber, Jay, Collette, Susan, Rocki, and so on and so forth and on and on and on and on. Guess what? There is no lack of love to be given or accepted. I love you all, my community, my friends, many of my former boyfriends, some folks that are no longer on this earth. I love you. Thank you for all that you have given me and for the times you have allowed me to be of service to you in friendship.

To my family, my brothers and sisters, my Dad, my Mom, my step-Mom, my nieces and nephews, my godson, cousins, family of choice, family of origin, I love you. Thank you for holding me, raising me, growing with me, and giving me the gift of your love.

To my political family, especially Paula Austin, thank you for building with me, checking my ass when it needed to be checked and DOING IT WITH love and compassion (shout out to Irma and Lolan), and to those that have helped me understand what it means to be a feminist, a radical, a man, privileged as well as oppressed, and the responsibilities that come with access. Thank you. I will continue to fuck up and I know that you will hold me down and hold me correct when need be. Thank you. I love you.

To the poets and writers of the world, I love you, keep sharing your stories and your truths....we all need them. To my ancestors: Black, White, Anishinaabe (LCO Band of Ojibwe where my Mother is an enrolled member as are all of my relatives of the last generation), and Puerto Rican...thank you....your work and breath made my life possible. I love you.

And to those that have offered up their less than loving critique, thank you for giving me a gift to see myself, my work, and my place in the world as distinct from how you live yours. I will continue to celebrate my life with love, my community with love, my work with love, my family with love, and even those that believe I am nothing more than the basest of their perceptions, I love you too.

Thank you to you all. One love.

Love,
Brandon

Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig

2012-07-20T15:28:00.001-04:00

So, I am sitting in the lovely home of Betty Tisel and Sarah Farley, in the Kingfield neighborhood of South Minneapolis. I love this home. It is so warm and welcoming. It's a beautiful structure, inhabited by a caring family, and the energy is bright and clear. Betty and Sarah, along with their children Owen and Nora, have welcomed me into their home a half dozen times in the last couple of years, and I am always cognizant of the gift.

I am in welcoming home, in a city I love, on a beautiful day that began with a love filled morning when I met my beloved Susan Raffo for coffee. Susan asked me a question this morning about home, and if I thought of New York as home now. I had a complicated emotional response, but the answer, for me, is clearly no.

I love New York. I do. I feel comfortable there. I have managed to learn her rhythms and seasons. I can navigate her with ease, and I understand the dangers and the gifts that she can offer. She is less of a Big Apple and more of a Big Onion. I am constantly peeling back her layers and discovering new, wonderful, and terrible things about her. I am beginning to understand her governance structure, and I am integrated into community there in a way that I have not been in any other place except for Minneapolis.

Except New York isn't home. Minneapolis is. Yesterday, I was driving around with my childhood friend, Dr. Dawn Anderson, and I was struck again and fell in love again with the beauty of Minneapolis. Tree lined boulevards framing beautiful and architecturally distinct homes. The Minneahaha Creek bisecting the southside of the city, graceful bridges spanning its breadth. The streets covered in emerald canopies, wildflowers and sculptured gardens in front yards and along the curbs. In a city of 22 lakes, the creek, the Mississippi River, and designed so that no resident lives more than a half a mile from a park, and you can imagine that in the summer, it is a gracious and gorgeous place to be.

We won't talk about the winter right now. But, I actually love Minneapolis in winter too....but I like to love it from inside a heated building.

From the people, to the way community is built here, the access to arts and performance, the education of the people, the diversity of the populace, the amazing food, and the more amazing friends, all combine to make this star of the north my home. It's in my blood and heart, and although it has been four years since I moved away from this place, coming back is like stepping into a favorite pair of pants, worn enough to be soft and to conform to my shape and shades, and it feels like love to be here.

Who knows if I will ever return to Minnesota as a full time resident. With the trajectory of my life as it is right now, that is seeming less likely. But Minnesota, and Minneapolis in particular, will always be a part of my heart, it will always be home, and it will always be a place where you will find me, from time to time, wandering its streets, dancing in its bars, and loving its people.

This is what home feels like. xoxoxo.

Shit Dumb Ass Straight Dudes Say: Which One Of You Is the Woman?

2012-07-19T11:37:00.000-04:00

Anyone that has grown up gay or been around gay men or have a gay friend or seen some bad 80s gay flick has heard the line, "So, which one of you is the women?" Usually spoken by some jackass of a straight man to a gay couple, and often times followed by a bashing of some sort.

Honestly, while I know that I have heard that question before, I believe the last time I heard someone ask that question, seriously, was sometime around 1996. In this post-Ellen, post-Will and Grace, Every-Show-Has-A-Gay-Sidekick era, I thought, maybe, perhaps, we'd at LEAST gotten far enough along that at LEAST any URBAN dwelling dumb-straight-man would know better.

Apparently not. Yesterday, there was a thread on my Facebook page that was started about an over the top hot Latino FedEx dude I passed on the street. As my Facebook page is wont to do, the topic quickly filled up with sexual innuendo (this time started by my boyfriend, ahem, Nicolas!). This kid with whom I attended high school, Jack, decides to chime in not really knowing what's going on. So I said, Jack, we are using gay sex innuendo.

Jack replies, "What happened to women?" And then he says, "So, which one of you is the woman, Brandon or Nicolas."

Did you hear that sound? Did you? It was the sound of the lock turning in the library door.

OPEN! READING IS FREE!

There were a couple of comments interspersed with his before I could get to chapter one, so I decided to make this a short story.

I said, "Jack, you should be lucky that I don't want women, because, frankly, I would take yours." And to his response asking which of us, Nico or I, happened to be the woman, I responded.

"Nico is all man. I am a man. If you are asking who is the bottom and who is top, why don't you come over and I'll show you. Make sure to be well lubed as I am not known for being gentle."

It was sometime after that when Jack de-friended me.

Child please.

Lets be clear for a minute, revisit some fundamentals, since we are reading, while I know some gay men that are in relationships with women....when two men that identify as men enter into a relationship with one another...neither of them is "the women." The connotation being which of you is submissive, passive, gives up power, submits, serves, etc....and not in the fierce S/M and B/D Leather Community empowered submission way but in that misogynist fucked up barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen sort of way.

Plus, I've said it once. I've said it twice. Bottoms have all the power. Lord knows I will do just about anything to get into some good booty. And an excellent bottom can get me to walk on water to get to that ass.

Though once I get a hold of said bottom.....it's ON!

There you have it, Jack. I am a man. I am fairly certain I outweigh and could drop you if necessary....and the next time you decide to show up in all your misogynistic, heterosexist, and homophobic glory in someone's life...please be sure 1) that they can't choke you out with little effort, 2) aren't fiercer than you are, and 3) don't have access to a blog with 60,000 readers a year and won't put you on blast.

The end.

PS An addendum I think power is shared, but I'm just saying a good bottom....will be worshiped...FILTER BRANDON FILTER!

My Feet Only Walk Forward

More ALP News Post Sandy and Free Acupuncture/Yoga

A New Kind of Blackness: Remarks at Tufts University's Black Solidarity Day

Why Voting Matters: Barack Obama...I got you.

Post-Sandy Support for LGBTSTGNC Community via ALP and Allies

Hetrick Martin Institute Emery Awards After Party!!!!!

Poetry to Pay the Rent (and a new book project)

Clean; You be Too aka FUCK YOU BIYOTCH!

Volttage: A Dating and Hook Up Site for POZitively Sexy People

Everyday Heroes: M'Bwende Anderson and Carlos Blanco

Moving Forward?

One Liner of the Week Award: Nicolas Gerard

What A F!cking Summer...

The 2012 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry

The 2012 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry

Late Night Sex Talk

Towards a Black Male Feminism

Queers for Economic Justice and the Forum Project Need Your Help!

An American Pandemic: The Murder of Black Trans Women

At Times Like These: A Love Blog for Nico

Ungowa Queer Black (and Brown) Power!

POEM: A Very Sappy Love Poem aka The Chou

What Do Justice for People with HIV, the Working Poor, People of Color and Women Have to Do With Christine Quinn? Absolutely Nothing.

Forgotten Lesson: A Young Person’s Experience at the AIDS Memorial Quilt

An Open Love Letter to My Community

Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig

Shit Dumb Ass Straight Dudes Say: Which One Of You Is the Woman?