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April 11, 2008
BREAKIN' DOWN THE BUDGET
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This demo paid off |
AIDS advocates will be watching the budget finalization process vigilantly to make sure that programs for poor people living with AIDS aren't given the last-minute shaft—but this year's state budget turned out better than anticipated. Thanks to the efforts of Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried, $1.6 million of the proposed $2.1 million cuts to the New York State AIDS Institute budget were restored. $575,000 in funds from the Education/Labor/Family Assistance budget for "HIV testing and prevention" will also lessen the blow. But these restorations aren't an unqualified victory: The AIDS Institute was originally slated to receive an actual $1 million increase in this year's executive and one-house budgets.
There was good news, too, in the Social Services budget. State legislators restored SSI invisibility to disabled children in homes affected by HIV/AIDS, and, because it's an entitlement program, funding for the restoration wasn't reduced. The restoration is a major victory for Housing Works, which spent years in court and in Albany lobbying for an end to a Dickensian Pataki-era policy that robbed poor families with disabled children of $573 a month in benefits. The Social Services budget also included $1.4 million for job training for low-income people with HIV/AIDS that Senate Republicans tried to ax. However, the program lost $28,000 thanks to the across-the-board two percent budget cut...
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WORDS OF WISDOM
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Meredith takes a stand against AIDS |
In 1966, James Meredith embarked alone on the March Against Fear, a 220-mile walk from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. The March was intended to encourage African-Americans to register to vote and make an impact on elections. Meredith was no stranger to courageous acts: He had already become the first black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi. On the first day of the March, Meredith was shot by a sniper. The next day, civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick, continued Meredith's journey. Between 2,500 and 3,000 black Mississippians were registered to vote along the route, which ended in rally of 15,000 people in Jackson.
Now, 42 years later, Meredith lives in Jackson and is lending his support to another Mississippi march, the Stand Against AIDS, organized by the Campaign to End AIDS. Hundreds of people living with HIV/AIDS and their supporters will walk from Jackson to Oxford for the September 26 presidential debate. They will be joined by hundreds of others from around the country who are coming in caravans. Together all these activists will remind the presidential candidates that they must make ending AIDS a priority.
When Meredith was contacted by AIDS Action in Mississippi field organizer Valencia Robinson (who found his number in the Jackson phone book) about the Stand Against AIDS, it didn't take long to convince him to endorse it.
"AIDS is to poverty what voting was to the civil rights movement," Meredith told the Update. "When you give somebody the right to vote, it means you're giving give them all these other rights. If you raise HIV to the level of full discussion, you raise it to the level where it is a public policy to deal with, as well as all other issues of poverty." In a conversation with the Update, Meredith shared extraordinary insights about AIDS, poverty, homophobia—and why he's not actually marching this time around:...
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THE LETTER AND THE LAW
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HRSA still needs to take control |
A letter from a high-level Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) official to Puerto Rican AIDS activist José Colón signifies HRSA's strongest language yet regarding San Juan and Puerto Rico's mismanagement of federal Ryan White dollars.
In response to Colón's letter detailing the failings of Puerto Rico's AIDS infrastructure to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt, Assistant Surgeon General Deborah Parham Hopson replied last week by outlining the steps that HRSA, a branch of HHS, is taking to address the crisis. Hopson told Colon that HRSA "understands and shares your deep concern and frustration with the challenges of the care and treatment systems" in Puerto Rico. But she stopped short of recognizing advocates' demands that HRSA appoint a third party intermediary to oversee Puerto Rico's $53 million a year in federal AIDS funds...
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GLORIA! GLORIA!
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González and her son Shaquille |
Although injection drug users accounted for a majority of new infections in Puerto Rico, the commonwealth has no needle exchange or other harm reduction programs, and no coherent or coordinated HIV prevention policies aimed at injection drug users. Gloria González, who will be honored on April 17 at the Times Center with a Keith D. Cylar Award (for more information and tickets go to cylarawards.com), says that in her hometown of Fajardo, the mayor has an agreement with an agency in Philadelphia: "The mayor believes that all is needed is detox," González said. "He thinks he has a done a great job by establishing an agreement with an agency in Philadelphia to which he ships injection drug users who are homeless. Let's think about it: Fajardo has an equestrian park, beautiful beaches, ferries which depart for Culebra and Vieques. So, he cleans the streets, he sends them to Philadelphia."
Instead of viewing drug addiction as an isolated problem that needs to be shipped off to another place, González, an HIV-positive former drug user who works with injection drug users in Fajardo, sees drug use as "one branch on an immense tree" that leads to HIV infection and other problems. These other branches include the lack of economic opportunities, illiteracy, employment, stigma, family and mental health...
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HOPE IN HAITI
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Cylar awardee Boucicault |
The biggest challenge to fighting AIDS in Haiti isn't poverty or the difficulty of delivering AIDS meds to people in rural areas or any other formidable practical problem. The biggest challenge, according to Housing Works Keith D. Cylar International AIDS Activist Award winner Esther Boucicault, is ignorance. "Many people in Haiti still believe that AIDS is a punishment from God and that opportunistic infections are the result of witchcraft " Boucicault said. "These beliefs keep them from adopting safe behaviors."
Boucicault, along with four other remarkable AIDS activists, will be honored at Housing Works' Keith D. Cylar Awards benefit gala at the Times Center on April 17. The other awardees are Gloria Gonzalez, Diane Williams, Asia Russell and Paul Davis. For tickets to the Cylar Awards, visit cylarawards.com...
Read the rest: "HOPE IN HAITI"