Other Faces of AIDS

In the next five years, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to die. There are too many dying, more than 50,000 already. Some of the names have been used to form this quilt, but it's a cover that cannot protect us from the chill of their disease. AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome. So far, everyone who gets it dies. But who gets it? Is it primarily white homosexual males? For years, that's what many believed. As a black gay man, man, who's actually been involved for a long time, I have to be honest, when the epidemic first hit in my gut, what I said to myself was, thank God is them, that

thank God for a change is not us, it's always us. But now we know that's not true. This disease does not discriminate. There are other faces of AIDS. AIDS has always been a disease of them. Not us, those homosexuals, those drug addicts, not people like you and me. Whole communities turn their back on the epidemic and said that it just couldn't happen to them. Just among those that denied the possibility, where America's black and Hispanic communities, but as you will see in the next 60 minutes, that denial has already cost thousands of lives, threatens thousands more, and should serve as a warning to the rest of America. I just woke up one day and the muscles hit at their feet and it's such a way that I couldn't

stand. I said, well, it's time to go to the hospital. When I got here, they said that I was in really bad shape. I thought that I was so clean, so unique and different from everyone else, and it goes to show that you're not, that disease have no particular person. But you don't have to be a 30 person, have AIDS. And not be the advocate, it's clinic 95% of our children are black. I learned in 1985 when the antibody, AIDS antibody test was developed that I was positive, knowing about AIDS and having many friends who had become mysteriously, or it didn't, at that time, even have the same names that it has now, much, much less, was known. Such as the death of Rock Hudson brought home the tragedy of this disease to small town

America. The death of Max Robinson made blacks sit up and realize that AIDS is not just a disease of whites and homosexuals. As the first black anchor of a weekday network evening news program, Max was a symbol and role model for a generation of black men and women. Out of a million people, I had to be evacuated after one of the derailed cars started leaking deadly liquid chlorine. Always a very private person, Max spent his last years preparing his public for his death. I never recommended my way, I did the best I could, but try to keep your integrity. Because you're going to find out in life right at the end, that's all you got. And when Max was certain that he had the AIDS virus, we had a talk at his bedside. Really a year before he died, when he thought he was going to die the first time.

And so I had never known Max to be homosexual. And so the AIDS virus he had suggested that he said no, in my case, it's a matter of promiscuity. Max did the best he could with his death. It was his explicit wish that his death be used to alert an African-American community to the danger of AIDS. Max was famous, the most famous black wherever died of AIDS and therefore the message went all over the country but all over the world. Max's death not only made it clear that blacks were a part of the AIDS epidemic, but it focused attention on the extent to which AIDS has spread in the black community. It's something that cannot be ignored.

I don't accept the notion that one is racist. If one points out the fact that there's a disproportionate amount of AIDS cases among minorities in this nation, that is a fact. Almost one out of three AIDS victims is black. In some cities, the AIDS infection rate in blacks is six times higher than in whites. The minority situation in America is particularly telling for blacks, 12% of the population, 27% of the AIDS patients, for Hispanics, it's 6% of the population, 15%. If I had to give a score to the things that most sorely affect this community, AIDS would rank 95 out of 100. This is the human face of those cold statistics, babies.

Of the almost 1,500 children with AIDS, 70% are black and Hispanic. In large urban areas like Baltimore, it's even higher. Here, 9 out of 10 babies born infected with the AIDS virus or HIV are black. These babies acquired their infection from their infected mothers. They're basically poor women. They have little identity of their own. Their identity is found at either in the relationship with men who may move around in the community, who may be drug users and who are spreading HIV. So far, this four-year-old boy seems safe. His mother, Leverin Hodges, is a recovering drug addict. She became infected with the AIDS virus by sharing needles. I tested HIV positive a year ago, and that means that I have a disease with so far there's no known cure for it, but it could be arrested if you do the right things that you need to

do and one for me is to stop using drugs, first of all, and take care of myself, rest, sleep, not a lot of stress. If God's help, maybe I won't become full-blown and die. I'm 34 years old. I'm a recovering addict, and I have two children. I have an 18-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son. What concerns me about that disease that I hope my son don't have it, because I use drugs when I was pregnant with him. I also had him test it, and thank God so far he doesn't have it. And I don't think that there are very, very many people saying to minority women, you're at risk, and you're at risk for this, and this disease, and that it's going to cause problems in your infants. If you don't recognize and be tested for it, that this behavior that we've sort of dismissed is a part of your life now, and you need to understand how it's going to affect your

children. That's not happening. Sometimes, when you caught up in the drug world, you don't hear those things. It's like, we just live for danger. When I was well, I wasn't educated about it. So when a woman finds out she's infected, why would she continue to child there? One of the major factors in this is the fact that HIV is only transmitted to roughly 40 percent of the babies born to infected women, so that every woman can believe she has only a 50-50 chance of transmitting this. And again, human nature is to believe it won't happen to me. I don't think I should have anymore because of the disease that I have, and it wouldn't make sense to try to bear another child. I'll just be grateful for the two I have. How is it that AIDS has become such a problem for minorities? How did it get so bad?

Well, there are a lot of reasons. One is the cultural denial that the kind of sexual practices that put one at risk are prevalent in the black and Hispanic communities. People still have problems with homosexuality. I mean, even though you're educated or even though you're clergymen or whatever, that didn't mean that you're sensitive to that particular community. I'm an openly gay black man, and in a lot of ways, that's really difficult because, like you said, there's like a stereotypical image of black man as a, you know, being really macho, and I don't adhere to that. I've been attacked many times, I mean, and it is difficult. There's a lot of homophobia in the black community, and I have sat in barbershops all over this country, all my life, and have heard some of the most homophobic conversations. Real men don't, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And they both homophobic and anti-white, they do it, you know, that's what they do. We don't do stuff like that, so there's a giant kind of denial. There are a number of us who, in fact, identify ourselves as black gay men. There are others who don't identify ourselves in that fashion at all, that's not a part of our language, that's not even part of our conscience, that's simply a part of our sexual expression, which is different. Bisexual and homosexual black men, many of them are still in the closet, whereas it's a lot easier to come out of the closet if you are white bisexual and homosexual. It's easier because there's a greater support mechanism. We don't have the kind of support mechanisms that white gay men have. Well, a lot of the reasons why there's denial in the Hispanic community, boil down to the fact that the disease was first described as homosexual disease, or a disease of ivy drug users, the taboos that came along with those connotations, I mean, there are people in the

Hispanic community that are HIV infected, they would rather say that they've shot up drugs for a number of years and say that they're gay or bisexual. I never thought that the disease would happen to me. Roberto is 40, a homosexual, and his AIDS. This is what he looked like when he came here 10 years ago from Cuba on the Mariel boat lift. It may seem peculiar, but many Latin men are so macho that they don't even want to be around homosexuals. They feel threatened by them, and this sense Latin is still somewhat backward. Roberto uses what little energy he has left to comfort others who also have aaves. There are many times in this community when parents have turned their backs on themselves

who have been sick with AIDS, but I've always wanted to think that if my parents in Cuba knew I was sick, they'd be by my side and do whatever they could for me. I also have family here, at first, they turned away from me, but now I feel proud of them, because they are by my side, and I'm helping as much as they can. Fighting this denial has become as difficult as fighting the disease itself, but Tim offered is trying. We came into existence in 1985 to get the word out to the black community that AIDS is a very serious health threat to black people, that it wasn't a disease which was simply confined to white gay men or IV drug users. We also focus in on trying to provide education resources to black gay men who were not identifying themselves with efforts at AIDS education, which were being presented by the white gay

male organizations. We started doing safe or sex parties, both as a means of getting information out to these men, but also providing an environment where for the first time they could feel comfortable talking about what it meant to be a gay person or a bisexual person within my community. It would seem to me that if you put in lubrication on your day and then on the condom that it would slip off during intercourse, so why would you do that? It's a slippery substance. Lover case that should be used are not as slippery as things like baby oil. The possibility of the condom slipping off does exist. The Capone Network also operates a Shanti House in Chicago. It's a shelter for black men with AIDS. Listen to Arthur, a resident there, who chose to remain anonymous in order to protect his family.

Capone has been there because I needed a place to stay. I had nowhere to turn. Nothing. A lot of times you lose a lot of friends. The only one thing I gotta say if you lose a friend because of your illness or anything, then there wasn't your friend anyway, and that goes the same as a family member. Family member of Shans away from you don't want to be bothered with your talk to you. Always tell that family member. I will love you always until the end. Who really cares? Who's willing to try? Who is willing to try? If you talk to people within their community, they are aware. When I say talk to people, I mean talk to leaders, talk to opinion makers, and these opinion leaders know what's going on, but they're not willing to talk about it. They're not willing to be public about it, and that to me is a conspiracy. The reason for my perspective, and this is purely my own feeling about it, that they're not willing to be public about it or to talk about it, is the association that AIDS has

with homosexual and bisexual behavior. Denial is just one reason why AIDS has gotten so bad among minorities. Another is lifestyle, many who live here engage in practices which invite trouble. For instance, intravenous drug use is a much bigger problem in poor and minority communities in this country than in the white population. What you're watching is self-destruction of vacant house in New York City, home to a constant stream of addicts, a shooting gallery. In New York City, there are 250,000 junkies, people who use intravenous drugs.

At least half are infected with the AIDS virus, and they spread it by sex and sharing dirty needles. For many, the threat of eventually contracting AIDS is overwhelmed by the immediate need to get high. Their situation is so desperate because of their addiction that AIDS is secondary, when the minute in the second hand come together where the body says more dope, don't get between the addict and that fix, and they don't have time to listen to anything else, they're not interested in anything about AIDS, their priority is taking care of that craving. Sometimes if you're a drug addict, you sit, you hurt, you want that shot of drugs, and there's a needle there, you're going to use it. I can shoot noodles and bad dope that I live in March of last year, they told me I had a hepatitis, I went down to the prisonist out in Lyerson, and the lady down there, forgot

her name, Tony, I looked really bad, and I had a journalist, I had AIDS each week, I feel myself getting weaker and weaker and weaker. The average person right now, right here, out of us, that we go and take the AIDS test, we test positive AIDS, I would bet money on it, and I would say at least 80% of the people right here on this corner that use drugs, I would bet on it, and it's a shame, but it's a truth. We have a street outreach chain myself, the New York City Department of Health, and what they do is try to get the community involved, not just because I be drug users, live somewhere, so that it's not trying to just influence his behavior, but trying to influence the community behavior. AIDS and HIV infection, again, cannot be seen as something that's confined to particular

communities, so to the extent that you care about the black IV drug user, you also care about yourself, your children, your society. And we need to care, because AIDS infected addicts have become a threat to the community as a whole. They have helped to make AIDS a much more heterosexual disease in the minority community, than homosexual disease. That's especially true among Hispanics and Haitians, where sexual practices also play a significant role in the heterosexual spread of this disease. A lot of the cases, the majority of the cases tend to be heterosexual transmission, so it's a sexual transmission to the heterosexual route, which eventually will tend to be the norm in the nation, like it is in the other nations where AIDS has been around for a lot

longer. It's a kind of coincidence of AIDS and HIV infection, also in Miami, within our community. What is acceptable in our culture is the idea of the trend of having multiple partners. At least in my country, even here, the man is a macho. Everybody knows that one man is able or should have more than one woman, and it's not something they're doing because it's dirty, but it's part of our culture. And because we know the risk of transmission, the mode of transmission of the AIDS virus, having that it is an accepted behavior to have multiple partners, and it's very easy to understand why we have, it's a heterosexual transmitted virus, at least in my community. Dr. Trivia admits that anal sex between men and women is not uncommon here. I think it's a more accepted behavior in Latin countries, but of course in Haiti also, you might have some women do practice that behavior, but I don't think it's as popular as with Latin women in other, the third world countries, or mostly Spanish.

It's in fact, it's a way of preserving one's virginity. Virginity, of course, one's virginity, and some women like it, period. The risk of possibly becoming infected with the AIDS virus, especially concerns those who view sex as a business. Oh, it's a death situation, there's no life. But the only thing you can do is use condoms. Do you? Always. Do you have any condoms on you? Yes. I have two of them. Three. Okay. It's harder for me to get customers because of the fact that the AIDS need, but I use condoms. And it's not a disease because everybody don't like condoms. And I would never touch anybody without one. Before it was an old man's disease, now it's a man of women's disease.

Before it was a disease of specific sexuality, I think that eventually, since it is a sexually transmitted disease, it will cross barriers. Besides lifestyle and denial, there is one more crucial reason why AIDS is so rampant among minorities. Many blacks and Hispanics have little or no access to the kind of healthcare that could keep them well. And if you notice, George, the people who have AIDS have never been in the mainstream of healthcare in America. Homosexuals never have been. The blacks never have been. Hispanics never have been. We've got to change that. Healthcare, first of all, is a luxury in minority communities, especially the black community. It's something you get when you have enough money.

If you don't have enough money, healthcare is the last thing you worry about. Consequently, there isn't a long-term established relationship with a physician. You go to your local emergency unit at whatever hospital is nearby. You have whatever the issue is at this very moment taken care of. Even if you're given follow-up appointments, I feel better. I don't really need to go back there. Very often, the treatment is somewhat hostile because you're coming in with this green card and look, here's another one of them coming in to deliver care. So there's a lot of hostility just trying to get to the healthcare to begin with. When the red flag goes up with us, we don't heed that red flag quickly enough and go to the doctor and then get involved in some kind of treatment and become diagnosed. All diseases affect minorities disproportionately. It's not just AIDS. Yet there are fewer doctors and fewer hospital beds where people can receive care. Example. In Philadelphia, there are no public hospitals anymore. All of the medical facilities here are private, which means they don't have to take care

of the poor who come to them for help. In fact, the trend is to turn away those who have no money or insurance to pay for care. The access is not there because there's so much alarm about this disease. What I really would like to see happen is, in my meeting with the head of these medical schools in hospital, we'll be to talk with them about opening up their doors. And in partnership with us, even if we have to, in some ways, subsidize them in a small way to open up certain beds, certain wings, certain facilities within their health facilities, medical schools, hospitals for AIDS patients. It is sad to say that our evidence is that probably only about a third of our patients, whether they're children or adults, are eligible for medical assistance. That even those who pay and even those who are Medicaid eligible, only about half of

their hospital bulls are actually paid, so there's going to be one day an awakening of the enormous unmet bills. And hospitals that have been prepared to take care of these people may no longer want to do so. So what's been the response to the AIDS epidemic raging in the minority community? Precious little. For a very long time, no one has cared about the social conditions in these black and Hispanic communities. This is like year two of this epidemic, where it's really year eight in minority communities. As you can't count the first six years, no education and prevention directed to these communities ever took place before 1986. The federal government has the primary responsibility for getting the AIDS message out. Surgeon General Koofe has been praised for his honest efforts, but he's also been criticized

because that message has not been very effective. This is a behavioral disease, so the weapon, the educational weapon, the only one we have has to be different. We try to reach as many people as we can, with as many innovative messages as we can, and get as many people that could be role models and leaders talking, especially to young people. But the problem is bigger we've got to attack ignorance, illiteracy, and poverty. Thursday night. I night out with the boys, few beers, a little action, sometimes we score Thursday nights. That was the old me. It took AIDS to make me realize that I was putting myself and my family in danger. The most visible elements of the campaign have been the television public service announcements produced by the Centers for Disease Control. In theory, the television spots were supposed to use our most popular medium to communicate the AIDS message to millions of us at the same time.

In practice, however, it hasn't worked that well. If you need to know more about AIDS and AIDS prevention, information is available. Call your local AIDS online or 1-800-342-AIDS. But there are a tremendous number of broadcasters in our own experience that are very reluctant to address this issue head on. And I'm sure that with some of the messages that are out there, they're reluctant to share them in areas where they feel like they will offend the audience. Some of the materials have not shown that some of the networks still have problems with, say, the condom message, for example. It has not been one that they have been particularly willing to put on the air, and particularly not at prime time hours. If I told you I could save my life just by putting on my socks, you wouldn't take me seriously, because life is never that simple. But I can certainly see where a broadcast licensee who does not face that problem in his community who hasn't taken the time to understand the depth of the problem can make a decision that

I happen to think is wrong, but nonetheless, I can see why they make that decision. A recent congressional report slams the public health service and the Centers for Disease Control for producing ads that are so vague, they have no impact. And for not pushing broadcasters to air the message during prime viewing hours. We don't consider prime time to be necessary, the prime time for the audience as we need to reach. That's middle America time. And it could very well be that the late evening hours or some of the daytime hours even are more appropriate for getting some of our AIDS messages out. CDC is responsible, in my opinion, for not doing the best job possible. And the White House stopped this education program. I think they're guilty of murder in some ways, because if somebody has a fact that can save your life and they don't tell you that fact, I think they're responsible.

But the facts are so sensitive that neither the CDC nor many broadcasters felt comfortable airing them. The Centers for Disease Control is not about to put its theme on things that would be considered offensive by the audience that we're trying to reach, so that there are numerous compromises in terms of tone and texture and language and things of that sort. To make sure that what we say carries the appropriate message, but in a way that's not going to turn off a whole bunch of viewers at the same time. Well, I think it's absurd to say that the American people won't accept true facts. It's easy. I can't remember when you say to people, and you have a movie star say, I never thought I'd ever be talking to you about AIDS. And never in my life could I dream that I'd ever have to mention the word condom on television. So bear with me. It might save your life. You say that? People understand. They're not stupid.

Besides content, there are more basic problems with the messages directed to minority communities. And the public health service provides AIDS education, it gives out brochures. It doesn't have pictures. It doesn't accept that they're a huge portion of the black population who cannot read. That Ivy drug users don't pick up the New York Times, so putting in, you know, articles about AIDS and safe sex and needle cleaning, etc., just isn't reaching that population. So when we talk about cultural sensitivity, it's to recognize the differences, to accept and recognize the differences in the various cultures that make up the country. And saying, all right, here's the basic message, and then we'll modify that message to really reach the people that need to hear the message. I think that was an age of problem three or four years ago, the communications were getting out in English. A lot of the people that resorted to traditional media modes were getting the information in English if they understood English. And those that did not, we're not receiving anything, any information whatsoever, they didn't even know what AIDS was.

When you go out, you don't know what to do, you don't know what to do with your friends. Well, there it is, but I'm worried about AIDS and AIDS. So the information needed to get out in Spanish, in appropriate Spanish, so that it would be acceptable to the lay person, which had traditional Spanish cultural value. Por eso nos protegemos. Informe-se, llamé a lo uno de los cientos tres controguantros cida. The communications gap is not just the government's fault. Initially, Washington got little help from traditional sources like the Black Church. My old life as a surgeon in Philadelphia, when I had a deal with a problem or I wanted to reach the Black community, I went to the Black ministers, the Black clergymen, and they always responded.

They got up in church next Sunday and said, this is what you have to do. But I've talked to Black clergymen in Boston, in New York, in Philadelphia during the AIDS epidemic, and as soon as you get on, these two behavior problems, Ivy drug abuse and homosexuality, they look at their watch and say, have gotten an appointment. I've not seen the organized hierarchy of the church in this country, Black or White, Catholic, Protestant, give AIDS and the treatment of AIDS in our society, the sort of priority that perhaps it may have attached to the civil rights movement, or it may have attached in the early days to women's suffrage, or that it may attach today itself to things such as hunger and homelessness. When I started this work in 1985, there was little response if any to AIDS.

Since then, I have been traveling across America and the world to speak to the issue of AIDS in the Black community, or AIDS in the minority communities. Much of that has been to deal with AIDS and the church, and what the church's responsibility was to this disease. Today, almost everyone in that forum has had to deal with AIDS in their church on a personal level, with a member, or a family member, whether they called it AIDS or some other discancer or something, but they knew what it was, and sometimes they really didn't have answers, and really didn't know what to do, and they needed to hear from someone who was involved. So the Black church is more involved, and one thing I have to say in defense of the Black church is that the Black church is considered the center of the Black community, and what

we have to look at is the Black church, as in the Black community, was strapped with so many other things in this society that they have to deal with every day. So it has quite an agenda to deal with before AIDS, and when you look at that community, one must understand that a community strapped with problems is not out looking for a new problem. So if there's any barrier, they always ask me, if there's a barrier in my community, I say, there is no barrier, there is concern when it comes to how much more, Lord, can we bear? I don't believe that the Black church has been fairly recognized for the power and potential it has in responding to this epidemic, and many Black churches have responded. I think that the Black church is the most positive response, and it's the most productive

place for us to generate a discussion around values and behavior. But we, in the church, have got to be able to feel confident about the necessity to do that. But we aren't able to talk about sexuality and drug addiction. Twenty years from now, all the young people who we want to be, the congregation members of our churches, are going to be dead or so disaffected because they aren't ready for the condemnation and the moralizing that they're not going to be Black church anymore. The congregation in Reverend Beans Church in Los Angeles is primarily homosexual. So unity fellowship church was born out of the fact that there was all this pain, all of this brokenness in and among a people of faith that already had a faith, but a faith that they could not exercise, that they could not draw upon because they had heard that

somehow this God who made them who they are and as they are hated them for being who they are. No matter what is said from the pulpit and no matter what is said on television, some of the messages might never get through because of an intense cultural aversion to what's being preached. In our community, still, in the Hispanic community, at least in what I've been seeing lately is, that they still believe that the AIDS issue is mostly a gay disease. It doesn't happen to us, no I know Sotos, it's still a gay problem.

And it's hard to get through this message, especially to the Hispanic man, and make him realize that he's just as vulnerable as anyone else to get a disease. The second aspect of this is the woman, Hispanic woman. We must have made him realize that it's just as responsible as a man to try to prevent this disease. People are poor, people have problems, people are stressed out, they can't pay their mortgage or their electric bill, they're not going to be paying attention to the epidemic that's hitting the world, the pandemic that's hitting the world, the next bubonic plague, they don't want to hear that, they're trying to find money to put a chicken on their table, the next day. I have known several African-American people who called AIDS. And for a long time, of course, a family's wanted to either not admit it was AIDS or say it was acute pneumonia because of the social stigma attached to AIDS as it relates to homosexuality. The fact of the matter is, what the one is, it's heterosexual, homosexual, we're all human

beings, and it is a disease that is no respect to a person's agenda, and so let's move beyond the taboo. So far, the most effective messages have been spread by community-based messengers. Dr. Mimi Trivie is a physician born in Haiti. She takes safe sex messages to beauty parlors in Miami's Haitian community. We go to the beauty parlors because we're looking for the perfect environment, the relaxed environment to start the dissemination of AIDS information in the Haitian community, mostly targeting the Haitian women. And we have a high incidence of pediatric AIDS, which is a more reason why we have to get to them to tell them what's happening, what's going on.

I tell them it's a problem, it's everybody's problem. And the reason why I target women is because I think women have to be empowered to make decisions and say no to pressures, whether from their partners or what have you. Mimi's husband, Dr. Manuel Vega, takes a similar message to high schools. And we give them the term retrovirus. The reason why it's explained to them in this manner is so that they can start to forge an idea of a concrete element that we're going to fight against. As they go through their school years and they go through the AIDS education curriculum, they are going to receive the tools that they need in order to change their behaviors, which is our final outcome. That's what we want to achieve. We want them to change their behaviors by the time they become sexually active so that they don't put themselves at risk. Well, at this point in their education, which is when they're getting started, we need to pinpoint clearly who the enemy is. AIDS is also essentially transmitted in Haiti.

And you'll be surprised at the kids that really don't know about AIDS. And they have skill tasks and detectives that are being used about, you can get to AIDS from shaking hands, you can get to AIDS from sitting around somebody, if somebody coughs on you and gets AIDS. But we want to give them the real facts about AIDS, and we want to show them the things that they can do to prevent them from getting to AIDS themselves. Well, we're into approximately eight elementary schools, whole junior high and full senior high schools in our area. And what we're trying to do to give them a little education about it, and that is where our pamphlets, we do the testing with them, we show them films, and we play little roles with them about AIDS. On the streets of New York City, where Ivy Drug Abuse is the way AIDS is primarily spread, there is project adept. Well we are out there to do is to give a message of AIDS prevention, to tell them that you can survive with having an addiction you're not going to survive with AIDS. Basically we tell them how to protect themselves as far as using condoms, as far as practicing safer Ivy drug use, we give them bleach kids, which include a two-ounce bottle of water,

two-ounce bottle of bleach, cotton, a cooker where they use to cook their drugs. Because if you share the water, the cooker, the cotton is not only the needle, and the syringe you're at risk of getting AIDS. So the message that we give them is to learn how to sterilize all of those equipment. Because in view that there's no drug treatment programs available in view, that in 1972 was the last program that opened up here in New York City, we have to do something. We teach them harm reduction, how to safely shoot up, and how to safely find a right vein whenever possible. Again, we're not condoning drug abuse, we're seeing it as a way of teaching them how to not get infected and teaching them how to not spread this virus to their sexual partners because many of them do have sexual partners. Average person don't want to share needles. He only does it when there's no other choice. That's the only choice left to him. It's the shana that's the needle. That's why you're doing, you know, because average person keeps his own set, you know, and he won't let nobody else use his set, you know.

But sometimes a guy come up to you and he's sick and you ain't got no money and he needs a little money, you know, he'll give you a little money and you'll give him the news needle, you know, because he needed and you need the money. Right now we're dealing with an epidemic and we sort of even have to put aside drug use for now because what's happening is young people are dying and they're not dying along they're taking their sexual partners and their children. So yes, we say in a way it's seen as condoning drug abuse, but we don't see it like that. We see it as a way of preventing the further spread of HIV infection to their sexual partners and to their children. And talking about the kinds of things that the New York Public Health Department has done to fight this epidemic, you talk about the outreach programs, but you don't talk about needle exchanges. How come? You're right, it happened. I think one of the things that happens in New York City, particularly the controversial kind of things like the needle exchange program is it becomes either or so that they say that oh, we shouldn't have a needle exchange program, we should have just this.

And I think with AIDS, one of the things that I have grown to understand and accept that we've got to have in what I would call an eclectic approach and that is let's try a multitude of things and whatever works, let it works because it'll work for some people and won't work for others. But we've got to try a lot of things and we've got to try them quick. We need to begin outreach in the street, in the street outreach, we will identify the specific populations that need more even directed education, transsexuals. There might be teens that are involved in sex for money, prostitution behaviors that we need to get information to that are gay oriented. There's different segments of that population and street outreach will find no segments and be able to better define our outreach efforts. The street programs Curtis is referring to are sponsored by Philadelphia's Babashi organization, a group that focuses on sexual health issues affecting the black community. One of the most successful programs involves the distribution of condoms in gay neighborhoods. I think that you can reach a certain element of the population, the community, by giving

up brochures and by television programs and radio, but I think it's much more one-on-one it's much more personal when you can hand people condoms and talk to them why it's important to use condoms. So minorities are fighting hard against the scourge of age, even though they often get little credit. But to say that we haven't been doing this since day one of this epidemic really speaks less of the fact that there wasn't any activity as that there was this tremendous chasm that separated what the white community was doing from what people of color and especially in the black community had been doing. No one really thought that the black community was involved in anything productive like this and they didn't therefore look for it. I think in the last two years it's become much more clear that there have been many organizations that have been existence for some as long as five years now. And unfortunately, let's be real honest, black people largely are invisible in much of

this society no matter what we do unless we are on the five or six o'clock news is having shot some people or robbed a liquor store or something or unless we're one of the standouts and credits to our race kind of people, just the dry long sew activities of black people and their day-to-day activities to make life better for themselves, their families and their community gets ignored. Since white homosexuals have presented a solid political front and had a lot of success, there are now efforts to organize minority homosexuals. Recently a conference in Los Angeles brought together many of these groups from around the country.

And we are a part of this community and it belongs to us as much as it belongs to anyone else. There has been a black gay consciousness for probably 10 to 15 years for a few people. I think that that is changing in that in strategic places what I call miracles are happening. It's significant that the minority A's project has evolved out of a black gay consciousness. Even the black gay lesbian leadership forum is significant because the forum exists not because we're angry at non gay people and not because we're angry at non black people. The black gay lesbian leadership forum exists because we've decided that we can empower ourselves. It's developing those alliances with both non-black gay organizations and non-gay black organizations and politicians and decision makers and power brokers.

Our relationship with politicians and learning to lobby and understand what lobbying is about. Training our community on the importance and the psychology of giving and the fact that if you want an institution to thrive, you need to support that institution, you need to support it by being there and by paying the expenses that are required to support that institution. Good morning. Good morning. Larry Ellis heads a group called Lifelink. Lifelink is the people with AIDS Coalition in Washington DC. It was formed about 20 months ago by myself and four other people living with AIDS. We have lost one of our co-founders since. We came together, I think, out of anger. We saw racism, sexism, elitism, clikishism, clikishness, whatever, a selectiveness in who got help and we had to respond. We saw too many people going without particularly people who did not advocate well for themselves.

We saw that the biggest area of need is that many people were going without the know-how to get good medical care, to get social security benefits, to get Medicaid, to get food stamps. So we designed a service program mainly around social service benefits and then we kicked in a very strong AIDS education speaker's bureau component. As the AIDS epidemic continues to spread, there is a question whether leaders in the minority community are fighting AIDS with the same fervor as they have fought for civil rights. Almost five years ago, I began an effort with some other people across the nation to talk about this, to do public service announcements, to appear on television, to hold hearings

where it's possible. And I'll be quite honest with you, a lot of people did not understand why there was some utility in doing that, I mean, why are you doing this? We were slow in picking up the banner and beginning to waive it and talking to people about the impact that the virus had made in the black community, and it was just disbelieved by a number of people. The black community has not been forthcoming historically on dealing with issues of sexuality. And if we're not talking about the problems associated with heterosexual behavior, and if we're dealing with a disease which is being transmitted primarily in this country at least by homosexual behavior, we're certainly not going to talk about that. The whole society has gone on slow and that's time to lift everybody up to a full level of full clutches.

I'm glad, for example, to President Bush next steps this crisis as being as broad-based as it is, as willing to invest money in age research. The old myths about you can't throw money after it don't hold up in this case. This is a public health matter, and you cure it by throwing money at it, by making sure you've got the best people to do the best research to yield the best results. And today, community-based organizations among minorities are fighting for the dollars to provide programs for their own people. There's no question about there's been a huge change in the attitudes. Each group, whether they're gay, white men or black men or IV drug users and their advocates or community advocates such as myself, we're having to say you've got to take care of our group. And so what it does is pit one part of the community against another so that we're actually diverted from unity to face the federal government, to face our state and local governments to say, we, the community, are suffering from this illness.

They are literally pitting against one another based on how the money is going to be divided. Biggest lesson that I think has been learned from some of our past efforts is that if you're going to reach minority people, you need to involve the minority community in doing that. I think that our efforts now to fund more community-based organizations to do prevention activities is a reflection of that. Partnership is obviously going to be the key to making sure that minorities get all of the information as quickly as they can, but information without a commitment of long-term resources simply raises people's expectations. It's no longer just education and prevention. It's not how we're going to care for these people who are homeless, who are poor, who don't access Medicare and Medicaid appropriately.

There are a whole range of much broader issues. One of the greatest dangers we face in addition to the rejection of blacks and Hispanics with AIDS is to have societies say AIDS is its own industry. We cannot let it get out of the mainstream of public health. We should be concerned about blacks and Hispanics who have AIDS because they're blacks and Hispanics who are sick, not because they have AIDS. I'm in pain day and night. Morning, you know, morning to evening. I don't want to die with these disease. I really don't. Our greatest fear is that it will still be a detached disease in terms of the way we view it.

And that too many people will continue to say, well, I know it's there. I know it's devastating. And yes, it's terrible, but it's someone else's disease. It's America's disease. And it's cure will be an American cure. Every child who dies from this disease diminishes us a little bit more. Every adult who dies diminishes us a little bit more. And therefore, we have a mandate to address all these issues if we can. But we cannot work from the top down. We have to work from the bottom up. I'm convinced of that. Few people are very optimistic that the AIDS crisis in minority communities will ever be overcome. One reason is that AIDS is just another problem that's been heat onto this community. And it's not even the most pressing one. Homicide is the number one health problem here. And finding sufficient food, shelter, and health care are much more immediate concerns than AIDS. Since no one has ever found a way to solve those day-to-day problems, how could one expect any progress on something like AIDS?

Well, we've seen a number of community groups who are trying and having some success because they understand that solving the AIDS crisis first means solving the other human problems here like poverty, discrimination, and drug abuse. And wouldn't it be ironic if AIDS, this so-called modern-day plague, forced us to finally find solutions to those problems that have plagued America for decades?