Yours In The Struggle

ramblings and other thoughts from Paul Kawata (pkawata@nmac.org)

Monday, March 29

Job Openings @ NMAC Health Policy Writer & Senior Policy Analyst

The National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) has two job openings: 1) Health Policy Writer & 2) Senior Policy Analyst. We are looking to hire individuals with a strong knowledge of health policy and HIV/AIDS and a commitment to progressive social change. You must have the passion to change the world and the skills to make it happen.

Health Policy Writer
National Minority AIDS Council
Washington, D.C.

The National Minority AIDS Council is seeking an outstanding writer for print and online projects ranging from speeches, columns and op-eds to blog posts and policy reports. The Health Policy Writer will be able to craft compelling material that will move the audience to action, basing the writing on policy positions, polling and other data and message templates. You must have the passion to change the world and the skills to make it happen.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES:

Technical Skills
  • Translate complicated subject matter into compelling and interesting presentations.
  • Locate obscure information/details to support facts in speeches and talking points.
  • Articulate goals, programs and direction of the National Minority AIDS Council in clear and concise manner.
  • Write a variety of advocacy and policy materials, for print and online use, that move the audience to take action.
  • Rewrite or over-write additional materials as assigned.
  • Use social media tools and contacts with progressive social media community to extend message reach.
  • Contribute creatively to message framing, audience targeting, campaign planning, etc. and execute print and online products.
  • Keep the director fully informed on a regular basis on issues affecting all project work.
  • Prepare and submit regular and ad hoc reports on activities as required.

QUALIFICATIONS
  • Bachelor’s degree in English or related field
  • Strong knowledge of health policy and HIV/AIDS and the movement for progressive social change.
  • Minimum of 4 years writing for social advocacy group.
  • Demonstrated experience integrating messaging in social media outreach such as Twitter and Facebook.
  • Involvement in the social media community.
  • Ability to exercise excellent political judgment and discretion.
  • Dependability and experience working in a team-oriented environment.
  • Excellent research, reporting and writing skills and engaging writing style.
  • Demonstrated success in writing a range of advocacy materials including op-eds, speeches, etc.
  • Ability to cultivate sources and understand and translate nuances.
  • Strong organizational and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple competing and urgent responsibilities efficiently and effectively.
  • Ability to adjust tones and capture different voices.

Three (3) Writing Samples Required - Must include a speech and an op-ed.

People of color and women are encouraged to apply.

Please send a cover letter describing your interest and qualifications for the position, a resume, and the requested writing samples to the contact listed below:

Human Resources
National Minority AIDS Council
1931 13th St NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
FAX: (202)202-483-1135
EMAIL: info@nmac.org

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Senior Policy Analyst (Federal)
National Minority AIDS Council
1931 13th St NW
Washington DC 20009

The National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) is seeking an outstanding policy analyst to work on federal affairs. The Senior Policy Analyst will work to develop and implement NMAC’s federal policy positions and strategies on a range of issues; represent NMAC in meetings with federal policymakers and administration staff; develop a variety of written materials; track relevant federal legislation; organize hill briefings and other events; and contribute to the overall work of the Policy Division. You must have the passion to change the world and the skills to make it happen.

Description of Duties

Technical Skills
  • Translate complicated subject matter into effective policies
  • Develop strategies to achieve these policies
  • Articulate policy goals for NMAC in a clear and concise manner
  • Represent NMAC in meetings with hill and Administration staff
  • Provide technical assistance to federal policymakers and staff
  • Represent NMAC at select coalition meetings
  • Cultivate relationships with federal policy staff, researchers, other experts, and coalition partners
  • Draft federal policy briefs, testimony, report language, and other written materials
  • Track relevant federal legislation, activities of federal agencies, and projects and initiatives of other national organizations
  • Organize hill briefings and other events
  • Prepare responses to time sensitive media opportunities and write content for the NMAC website
  • Garner visibility for NMAC’s policy issues through presentations at conferences and meetings
  • Contribute to grant proposals and reports to funders
  • Contribute creatively to message framing, audience targeting, campaign planning, etc.
  • Keep the director fully informed on a regular basis on issues affecting all project work

Qualifications
  • Bachelor’s degree in public policy or related field preferred
  • Understanding of health policy and HIV/AIDS and the movement for progressive social change
  • Demonstrated success working on passage of federal legislation
  • Knowledge of the Administration
  • Minimum of 4 years working for social justice at the federal level
  • Ability to exercise excellent political judgment and discretion
  • Dependability and experience working in a team-oriented environment.
  • Strong organizational and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple competing and urgent responsibilities efficiently and effectively
  • Ability to understand and translate nuances
  • Demonstrated ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables
  • Ability to travel, including overnight stays

Three (3) Writing Samples Required - Must include a policy briefing and an op-ed.

People of color and women are encouraged to apply.

Please send a cover letter describing your interest and qualifications for the position, a resume, and the requested writing samples to the contact listed below:

Human Resources
National Minority AIDS Council
1931 13th St NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
FAX: (202)202-483-1135
EMAIL: info@nmac.org


Saturday, March 20

Negative Responses To NMAC's Statement On The Disproportionate Impact of HIV and Syphilis on MSM

Last week NMAC put out a statement (see below) about CDC’s data on the disproportionate impact of HIV and Syphilis on men who have sex with men (MSM), I want to share some of the negative responses we got to our statement. I think they speak for themselves. What was most troubling is that the statements were sent to us by organizations that do HIV/AIDS work. Since I don’t have their permission, I won’t release their names at this time.

Can we ever turn the tide of this epidemic in an environment where MSM face such hatred and discrimination? I am convinced that you cannot look at HIV within the MSM community and not address stigma, homophobia and fear.

Testing in and of itself is not the solution because we have to send our clients back into a world filled with fear and hate. It may change a person’s behavior in the short term, but I question it’s validity in the long term when people have to go back and live in the real world.

Below are some of the statements and attached is one of the documents that we received:
“I’m sorry, but it is hard to be sympathetic in the midst of blatant disregard to truth. AIDS has killed more men in the US than six Vietnam wars combined and 83% of all cases in the US are white homosexual men.

“The evidence [of health hazards of homosexuality] is so overwhelming that even if all moral judgments and religious biases are set aside, homosexuality—by its very nature—cannot play a part in a healthy society” (National Association for Search and Therapy of Homosexuality, September 24, 2002).

To learn more about how the Catholic Church really looks upon people with homosexual tendencies, please go to: http://couragerc.net/

Don’t these results tell you that sex between men “ain’t supposed to be?” I’m sorry, but open your eyes. THE TRUTH IS THE TRUTH EVEN IF NO ONE BELIEVES IT A LIE IS A LIE EVEN IF EVERYONE BELIEVES IT.”

Christ's peace and blessings,
I hope we can discuss both short and long term solutions. If not, we will be back in the exact same place 10 years from now wondering where we sent wrong. Only this time we will only have ourselves to blame.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Circe J. Gray Le Compte, Director of Communications
National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) * 1931 13th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009
Telephone: (202) 483-6622 ext. 309 * E-mail: communications@nmac.org * Web: http://www.nmac.org

NMAC Call to Action: Disproportionate Impact of HIV and Syphilis on MSM Demands Increased Funding, Research and Community Support

A new data analysis released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows a stark disparity in rates of HIV and syphilis among men who have sex with men (MSM) relative to the rest of the U.S. population. The rate of HIV diagnoses among MSM is more than 44 times that of other men, and more than 40 times that of women. MSM syphilis infection rates are high as well; 46 times that of other men and more than 71 times that of women.

Unfortunately, these disparate rates of HIV and syphilis infection are not surprising. The AIDS community was unable to adequately educate the public about HIV/AIDS during the eight years of the Bush Administration, which emphasized abstinence-only approaches to health education, which research has demonstrated do not to work, and limited discussion of condom use in federally-funded forums. These situations, compounded with existing social and cultural stigmas around sexuality – and homosexuality in particular – helped fuel the increase in HIV and syphilis incidence in the MSM community.

To adequately address the situation, the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) recommends the following:

  • Realistic Funding Levels: Reducing the impact of HIV/syphilis among MSM and stopping new infections will require increased funding. We support the recommendation from the CDC’s professional judgment budget, and ask for an increase of $877 million for federal HIV/AIDS prevention programs.
  • Additional Research: The study released by the CDC addresses MSM, as identified based on behavior – whether a man surveyed engaged in sexual activity with another men within a certain time period. The study shows the need for more comprehensive research specifically on people who identify themselves as gay, bisexual and transgender, and needs to discern whether age, race, sexual practices and regional variances are factors in HIV and syphilis transmission.
  • Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Community Voices Needs to Be Included: As the federal government moves forward to address HIV in the MSM community, it is critical that they include the diverse voices of the LGBT community. We need to be at the table as an active partner to review the research, programs and prioritizing of challenges.
  • Everyone Needs to Prioritize Gay Men: Everyone committed to addressing HIV/AIDS needs to prioritize gay men. This includes LGBT organizations, elected officials, social clubs, policymakers, businesses, social justice agencies, business and the general public. This is not just a problem impacting MSM; it is everyone’s problem.

About NMAC
The National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) builds leadership within communities of color to address challenges of HIV/AIDS. Since 1987, NMAC has advanced this mission through a variety of programs and services, including: a public policy education program, national and regional training conferences, a treatment and research program, numerous publications and a website: http://www.nmac.org/. Today, NMAC is an association of AIDS service organizations providing valuable information to community-based organizations, hospitals, clinics and other groups assisting individuals and families affected by the AIDS epidemic. NMAC's advocacy efforts are funded through private funders and donors only.

For more information, call NMAC directly at (202) 483-NMAC (6622) ext. 309 or communications@nmac.org. Visit the agency online at http://www.nmac.org/, as well as on http://www.facebook.com/ and on http://www.wikipedia.com/. Pictures and video clips from past NMAC events are available from MyPhotoAlbum.com (http://nmacpics.myphotoalbum.com/), and NMAC’s YouTube channel, commnmac (http://www.youtube.com/commnmac), respectively.

Friday, March 12

HIV Replication 3D Medical Animation

Great new animation

Tuesday, March 2

I'm Back


I want to thank National Minority AIDS Council's (NMAC) board and staff for the gift of my 20th Anniversary Sabbatical; hopefully you did not notice any difference with my absence. As I get ready to return, I want to update you on
• My Health
• My Thoughts On The Movement
• Future of NMAC

A special thanks goes to John Hill, chair of NMAC's board, who was the Acting Executive Director during my absence. He made it possible for me to take this break without worries.

My Health
To tell the truth, I am still tired. 20 years is a long time to stay at one job and I stayed 20 years at a job in the AIDS movement (so they count as dog years).

During my time off, I tired to uncover/understand my feelings of grief, loss and anger associated with this epidemic, particularly during those early years. Work can be a good way to ignore and/or avoid good mental health. For the first time since I started this job, I stopped to look back at the funerals, memorials and hospital visits I did over this period. I am part of a generation of gay men (between 45-65) who have lost more friends then they can remember.
Can anyone wrap their brains around this amount of loss? I use work and food as my mechanism to cope. Recently there was a series of articles about the AIDS doctors from the early years in New York and San Francisco. So many of them have gotten lost in drugs, depression and even suicide. Like many of the survivors of this pandemic, good mental health seems just out of my reach.

In 1993, less then one month after my friend passed, I had to return to work because NMAC had a big benefit at the Warner Theater. It was during the March on Washington and we sold over 1400 tickets. Somehow I had to smile and thank all the guests. I remember pushing down so much anger and rage as I walked up on stage. The event was Divas Simply Singing with Sheryl Lee Ralph. As Sheryl held my hand, in front of 1400 people, I sobbed. It was the first time since Paul had died that I cried, I mean really cried. There is nothing more attractive then a person crying so hard that snot is running out of their nose.

The next month I had 5 funerals, over 30 hospital visits and I spoke at 2 memorials. That was my life in the 80’s and early 90’s in the AIDS epidemic. My life was not unique, this was the reality for many folks fighting the epidemic in those early years. It is a lot to ask for one sabbatical to heal all that loss.

It’s going to take time, maybe the rest of my life, to understand and put into perspective the enormity of the grief and loss so many of us experienced. This sabbatical was the first time I stopped to examine those horrible years and the friends I lost along the way.

My Thoughts On Our Movement
Being away gave me time to think about our movement, and to try and put the last 20 years into perspective. Our movement started because the larger society did not care that we were dying and we were dying in the thousands. We were a movement that had nothing to lose, so getting arrested at the White House was considered a badge of honor. We were a movement that created organizations, systems of care and HIV prevention programs out of nothing.

In 1987 I was arrested in front of the White House. The formal charge was civil disobedience. I was part of a group of national leaders who were chained to the gates of the White House to protest the lack of response from the Reagan administration to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This is actually the second time I was arrested; the first time was to protest apartheid in South Africa.

In order for us to be arrested at the White House, we had to sit on the ground. Well I was wearing a brand new black cashmere jacket and I was not going to sit on the ground. So the Capitol Police got me a blanket so I could sit on the ground and they could arrest me.

It was all very orchestrated until we got handcuffed in buses and had to wait for hours to be processed. At that time, AZT had just been released and compliance to the treatment regimen was still very new. We were all so concerned about missing a dose, yet with your hands cuffed, how do you take your medication? So we worked in teams to split open AZT capsules and folks had to lick their meds off the bus seat because we did not have water. Boy those were good times…

On top of this indifference, add homophobia, racism and sexism and its no wonder there is so much dysfunction in our movement. I think we should embrace our dysfunction. For it is through this dysfunction that we created the organizations that continue to fight this epidemic.

We are not the American Red Cross, we are not Citibank and I hope we never will be. It is our rage, anger and loss that gave us the strength to change the world. Now 28 years later, we should not become that which we rebelled against. Can our movement professionalize itself and still stay true to the rage, anger and loss? Yet without systems and structure, is anger or loss enough to sustain an organization?

We are in the middle of the Darwinization of AIDS service organizations. Survival of the fittest. As funding continues to be flat or reduced, federal, state, and local government funders, corporations and foundations, and a limited number of individual donors will be deciding the future of our movement. The new reality means that either you get the grant and stay open or you close your doors. There are very few new funding options. Small and rural cities will have at most one AIDS service organization. This organization will coordinate with their local health department and other nonprofits to provide HIV/AIDS care and services to their community.

Every year this CBO’s budget will be slightly reduced as their local or state government reduces or flat funds its HIV commitments. For some communities, the services will move to the local health department as AIDS service organizations close their doors.

In larger urban settings, you will find more then one AIDS service organization. Even in these environments, you are seeing a culling of the field. As we look to this future, we have several difficult questions:

  • Which CBOs Should Survive?
  • What is NMAC’s Role/Responsibility To These Agencies?
  • Strategically, What Is Best For The Movement?


However, everything is not bleak. In 2009 we saw the election of America’s first Black President. For the HIV/AIDS community, we were able to

  • Reauthorize the Ryan White Care Act
  • Remove the ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs,
  • Remove from the federal budget, funding for abstinence only programs
  • Remove the travel ban on HIV positive individuals
  • Appropriate new federal funding for HIV prevention programs


When I say “we”, I don’t mean NMAC, I mean the AIDS community. I’ve learned over my 20 years at NMAC that no single agency does it alone. It is through our partnership and working together that we are a stronger community.

Unfortunately, we still have many challenges. Foremost from my perspective is the state HIV/AIDS budget cuts. California alone cut $87 million state dollars over a 2-year period from their budget. International HIV activists are very concerned about the Obama administration’s commitment to global funding. And Gay Men, particularly Black Gay Men, continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS.

Future of NMAC
I am not coming back to NMAC with an agenda to change everything. I have some new ideas; however, I also want to hear from staff. I am very curious to see how the agency functioned without me.

If I learned anything on this break, I learned how much I like to plan. During my break, I traveled across Asia (Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Singapore). My travels were planned at a level of detail that even surprised me. I am the person who reviews all the web sites and travel blogs to make sure I make the most of my limited time. I am not the person who likes to arrive in a city without a hotel reservation. I am the person who likes to visit/stay/experience the newest, coolest most cutting edge hotels, shopping, and restaurants.

As I return to NMAC, I will continue my obsession with planning. I will also continue my commitment to new and cutting edge ideas. For me, it is important that NMAC be in the front of the curve and not following the trends. It also means that if someone else is doing it better, we should support their work and stay out of their way

I want NMAC to do what we do best, to not duplicate programs that are being done better by others, and to fill any gaps in services. In order to get this right, we need to go back to strategic planning. However, let me be very clear about what is and what is not on the table. I don’t want to spend a lot of time looking our mission. I don’t want to spend a lot of time looking at the abstract. For strategic planning to work for me it was do the following:

  • Create an ongoing system of planning and evaluation
  • Programs must be cutting edge and new (not duplicative)
  • Change will be the only constant at NMAC.


Thank you for your support and understanding. I truly believe that I am a better leader because I took this time off. I continue to see my future at NMAC. At this time I do not have any plans to change jobs. The dream has always been to “be here for the cure”. It is still the dream I dream.

Yours in the struggle,

Paul Kawata
Executive Director
National Minority AIDS Council
1931 13th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009-4432
Tel: 202.483.6622; Fax: 202.483.1135; Website: http://www.nmac.org

Please support AIDS Programs of the National Minority AIDS Council CFC #10557 (new number)

2010 United States Conference on AIDS
Orlando, FL, September 12-15
http://www.2010USCA.org, http://www.twitter.com/2010usca