Act-Up's 20th Anniversary

AIDES Ad 2006 AIDS Awareness. SIDA

Not Safe For Office, but very cute

Team America Aids Song

Are you offended?

Bus Tours During HPLS

As part of this year's HPLS, we will have bus tours for attendees to see the devastation first hand.

Katrina Devastation Bus Tours of New Orleans Communities
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Katrina Devastation Tours of the New Orleans Metropolitan Area will be offered to participants of the HPLS Conference. This tour will take you on an approximately two hour journey of the city. This tour will give you a first hand view of the vast expanse of destruction the City of New Orleans suffered. You will also appreciate the recovery that is taking place. We will start from the Hilton Riverside Hotel and visit the Hospital District where you will see the Medical Center of Louisiana - New Orleans Charity Hospital - closed since Katrina devastated New Orleans on August 29, 2005. We will go up Carrollton Avenue, visiting some of the old neighborhoods that were flooded, through City Park and on to the 17th Street Canal where one of the breaches of the levee system occurred - flooding the Lakeview neighborhood. From there, we will head east - visiting the second breach of the levee system at the London Street Canal, through the Gentilly neighborhood and then south toward the upper and lower Ninth Ward, where the levee breach on the Industrial Canal flooded and destroyed the area. We will then return to the Hilton Riverside Hotel, finalizing our journey. If you signed up for the Bus Tour Institute (below) do not sign up for this tour as they will be almost identical.

Host Committee New Orleans Bus Tour Institute
Monday, May 21, 2007 2:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
The Host Committee Institute will take place on a tour bus that will travel to areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina and recent tornadoes. This session will include discussions on how agencies and outreach staff have reintroduced themselves to the changing communities; reprioritized populations and outreach areas; adjusted outreach protocols to address community changes; and developed a collaborative to coordinate outreach and counseling and testing activities in New Orleans. Participants will be asked to share decisions they would use in the areas explored; review how the local community made decisions; and then apply them to their own areas. The institute will be offered in English and Spanish. If you signed up for the Devastation Bus Tour (above) do not sign up for this Institute as they will be almost identical.

Please go to to register for these tours. Space is limited. You must register in advance. There will be a tour bus in Spanish.

Rebuild New Orleans

As part of this year’s HIV Prevention Leadership Summit (HPLS), the Louisiana State AIDS Office has developed several opportunities for folks to help rebuild New Orleans.

You can help rebuild Belle Reve New Orleans

“The mission of Belle Reve is to provide permanent and transitional housing along with full support services to adults and families living with AIDS or HIV-related infections. Concern for quality of life and equal availability of services are the founding principles of this agency. Therefore, service delivery is not influenced by race, gender, religion, age, or sexual orientation.”

You could help rebuild Second Zion Baptist Church No. 1

“Second Zion Baptist is a mission driven, education oriented, evangelistic faith based community. Run by Rev. Gary L. Curtis & Pastor Emeritus Rev. Matthews McGary Senior, the church is approaching its 94th year of existence. Though affected by Hurricane Katrina, the congregation continues weekly worship services, outreach witnessing, revival services & community cookouts while rebuilding their sanctuary.”

There are many other volunteer opportunities, please go to check them out. You must register in advance in order to participate in these project. I plan on helping to rebuild Belle Reve

The test of who we are is our ability to be there for our friends during the difficult time. These are definitely difficult times for the citizens of New Orleans and of the entire Katrina impacted Gulf Region. I hope you will join us. Please email me if you have any questions.

Pictures from 2002 USCA

I hope you enjoy

Courage

I am in big believer in the trans-
formative power of courage. The courage to speak truth to power, the courage to stand up and be counted, the courage to come out and be who you really are.

The last 6 years have been a true test of our community. We were/are under siege. It was not a matter of advancing an agenda, so much as it was about surviving the onslaught of a new agenda that did not include us. So we hunkered down as a way to carry on. This bunker mentality was about survival.

The challenge is to under stand when is it safe to come out of the bunker? Sometimes even though the forces have changed, we continue to live in a bunker. It becomes about safety. Yet when was anything, particularly in the AIDS movement, accomplished because we played it safe?

We are a movement that is built on courage, not safety. We did what we did to survive, but it is a new day and we need a new vision. Part of why I like Obama is because he talks about the audacity of hope. For me, hope leads to dreams, dreams lead to vision, and vision gives us to the courage to fight.

At a recent CDC meeting on AIDS in the African American community, Phil Wilson got up and challenged the audience to end all new HIV infections in the Black Community within 5 years. At first I was very skeptical, this was not possible, we did not have the necessary resources or the research to give us the road map to complete such a task. But I loved his audacity, his vision gave me hope, the hope to dream about a world without AIDS.

For this vision to happen, we need to get out of our bunkers, we need to find the courage to speak truth to power, the courage to stand up and be counted, the courage to come out and be who you really are.

So I ask you, do we have what it takes to end all new HIV infections within ALL of our communities within 5 years. If not, why not? Maybe its a lack of resources, maybe it a lack of research into proven methodologies, maybe its because we are spending all of our time doing HIV testing at the expense of primary prevention. We can develop lists of reasons why this is not possible, but on the other side is the thousands of lives domestically and the millions of lives internationally that stand in the balance waiting for our leadership.

So what audacious thing are you going to do to end the AIDS epidemic?


Please Join Them

Bob Hattoy Has Passed

From Sean Strub

I just spoke with Bob Pelham, Bob Hattoy's close friend, and he asked me to share the sad news that Bob Hattoy died last night, March 3, in Sacramento.

Bob had been hospitalized for a couple of weeks with PCP, but had recently returned home from the hospital. The cause of death hasn't been determined, but Bob Pelham said they think it was cardiac arrest.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Bob Hattoy to people with AIDS and the AIDS activist movement, let alone the other movements in which he was active. When Bob spoke at the 1992 Democratic Convention with courage and conviction as a person with AIDS--and famously a friend of the Clintons--he galvanized the community and gave hope that our voice was going to be heard at the highest levels. Bob's integrity never wavered; he was thoroughly an activist, one who devoted his life to progressive social change. He was a friend and mentor who will be greatly missed.

Per Bob Hattoy's wishes, he will be cremated and there will be no memorial service. He left instructions requesting that celebrations of his life be held in the four cities he considered homes: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington and New York.

I'll be writing something about Bob for POZ and I would be interested in any stories you have that you could share. He was one of the greats of our movement and we ought honor his memory and legacy appropriately.

A detailed obituary will be forthcoming soon; for questions or information about the planned celebrations of Bob's life, please contact Bob Pelham at dishesbob@yahoo.com.