Fighting AIDS in the Time of Trump

This June marked 36 years since the first cases of AIDS were recorded in the medical literature. As a result of the work of medical professionals, researchers, public heath officials, and brave and dedicated activists who fought for treatment and against stigmatization, life-saving drugs have been developed, and HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence. (HIV is the name of the virus that causes AIDS.) In fact, there is no reason that AIDS could not be eliminated—except for the obscene social and economic conditions in the United States and worldwide. Trump and his administration will greatly expand the already devastating toll that HIV/AIDS is having both in the U.S. and worldwide, perhaps causing over one million additional deaths and untold suffering.

A Genocidal Epidemic
While there has been progress in AIDS treatment and prevention in the U.S., HIV/AIDS is taking a devastating toll among certain sections of the population, especially Black gay and bi-sexual men and those who live in states in the deep South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas).

Rates of HIV Diagnosis per 100,000 people

Credit: Twitter/ @DCReportMedia

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicted that if current rates continue, one in two African-American gay and bisexual men will be infected with the virus. Commenting on this, an article in the New York Times Magazine noted, “To offer more perspective: Swaziland, a tiny African nation, has the world’s highest rate of H.I.V., at 28.8 percent of the population. If gay and bisexual African-American men made up a country, its rate would surpass that of this impoverished African nation—and all other nations.” (“America’s Hidden HIV Epidemic” by Linda Villarosa, June 6, 2017)

In Jackson, Mississippi, 40 percent of all gay and bisexual men are living with the HIV virus, according to the Times article. In a time where there are life-saving drugs that can prevent almost all AIDS-related deaths, 2,952 people in the Deep South died with HIV as an underlying cause in 2014, according to an analysis from Duke University. Among Black men in this region, the HIV-related death rate was seven times as high as that of the U.S. population at large.

Greg Millett, a senior scientist for the CDC for 14 years, now vice president and director of public policy at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, described to the New York Times how the actions of the U.S. government, especially during the administration of George W. Bush, contributed to this new stage of the epidemic: “It is no coincidence that new rates of HIV infection among gay men, especially gay black men, began to spike sharply from 2000 on, because of an anti-science campaign that allowed for little or nothing to be done for a maligned community simply due to ideology and bigotry.”

Millett told the Times that he is not optimistic about the prospects for Black men who are living with HIV/AIDS: “We are going to eventually end AIDS in the United States, but I fear it’s not going to happen for black M.S.M.,” he said, referring to men who have sex with men. “We have waited too long. With so many black gay men already infected, the horse is already out of the barn.”

On June 16, six members of the President’s Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS publicly resigned from the committee and published an op-ed in Newsweek titled, “Trump Doesn’t Care About HIV. We’re Outta Here.” They said in their article, “The Trump Administration has no strategy to address the on-going HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, and—most concerning—pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease.”

Citing the fact that 60 percent of people living with HIV in the United States are still unable to access the life-saving medications that have been available for more than 20 years, the former officials pointed to several of Trump’s actions as a huge step backward in fighting the epidemic:
During his campaign for President, Trump refused to meet with HIV advocates.
Trump took down the Office of National AIDS Policy website the day he took office, and there has been no replacement for this website.

Trump has not appointed anyone to lead the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. This means no one is tasked with regularly bringing issues related to the HIV/AIDS crisis to the attention of the government.

Making the Epidemic Exponentially Worse

In fact, it isn’t just that Trump and his administration don’t care. By fanning racism, anti-gay, and anti-scientific attitudes, by cutting funds for research and treatment, the epidemic is being made exponentially worse.

• Stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS and the LGBT community as a whole is already widespread and is viciously promoted by Trump and others. This stigma contributes to people not being tested for HIV. This has real implications. More than 20 percent of Black gay men infected with HIV have AIDS (meaning that they are very sick) by the time they receive their diagnosis. Early diagnosis is a key factor in effective treatment, which reduces viral loads thereby reducing HIV transmission.
• Trump and Pence have called for legal and legislative actions that allow discrimination against LGBT people in the name of “protecting religious liberty.” Before becoming vice president, Pence was known as the most anti-LGBT senator. In 2006 he said that banning gay marriage is enforcing “god’s idea.” Pence is also a supporter of conversion therapy, dangerous and discredited practices aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
• In 2002, Pence, backing the abstinence-only educational policies of the Bush administration, promoted the lie that condoms were not effective in preventing transmission of HIV and that he considers condoms “too modern, liberal.” 
• Intravenous drug use (shooting up) is one of the ways that HIV spreads. Trump seems to favor a “war on drugs” approach, which has proven to be cruel, racist, and ineffective. In May, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price spoke against opioid replacement therapy, such as methadone and buprenorphine, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that these are among the most effective treatments.
• Trump’s proposed budget includes a $186 million cut in the CDC’s funding for HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and support services. Speaking of these cuts, Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute said,”We would have probably a million fewer HIV tests because of that and we don’t know how many more people will become [HIV] positive and not get the messages.” 
• As part of huge cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the Trump regime aims to slash research in HIV and AIDS by $550 million.
• The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program provides a comprehensive system of care that includes primary medical care and essential support services for people living with HIV who are uninsured or underinsured. Trump’s budget proposes a $59 million cut to the program
• Cuts to Medicaid proposed by Trump would deny services to many of the most in need: 40 percent of HIV-positive people rely on Medicaid. The AIDS Drug Assistance Program reported more than 9,000 people in the U.S. on a waiting list to get medication to treat HIV, primarily Black and gay men in the Deep South, where Medicaid expansion was blocked. As one AIDS activist in Mississippi said of the situation if the Medicaid expansion is phased out, “The entire country becomes Mississippi.”

Phill Wilson, chief executive and president of the Black AIDS Institute, told the New York Times, “For the most vulnerable, do we end up back in a time when people had only emergency care or no care and were literally dying on the streets? We don’t know yet, but we have to think about it.”
Can all of this be described as anything other than genocide (defined by Webster as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”)?

The Global Pandemic

HIV/AIDS is a global nightmare, and the failure to address this is a major crime of the capitalist-imperialist system worldwide; 35 million people have died since the start of the epidemic. According to an article in the British medical journal Lancet (7/19/16), as of 2015, 38.8 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide (and this number is steadily increasing), there are 2.6 million new infections annually, and 1.2 million people died in that year.

Of the people infected with HIV, 69 percent live in the poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and 91 percent of HIV-positive children are in Africa. Only about half of those infected with HIV worldwide receive life-saving drugs.

These are the conditions BEFORE Trump. “At least one million people will die in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, researchers and advocates said on Tuesday, if funding cuts proposed by the Trump administration to global public health programs are enacted,” the New York Times recently reported (5/23/17).

Trump has proposed cutting $800 million from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), programs that address the AIDS pandemic. According to data compiled by amfAR, among the effects these cuts in 2018 will be:

• 62,057 new sexual transmission of HIV
• 836,038 treatment interruptions among adults leading to 131,388 deaths and 258,742 children becoming orphans
• 57,639 interruptions to treatments to prevent mother-to-child transmission leading to 7,730 children being born with HIV and 3,865 children dying before the age of two
• 164,649 children experiencing treatment interruptions leading to 10,5611 deaths

Cuts to international aid are not the only way that Trump will deepen the worldwide AIDS crisis. One of Trump’s first actions on taking office was to re-institute and make even stricter the Global Gag Rule, which denies U.S. funding to any organization that even mentions abortion to women seeking health services. This means that clinics that treat women with HIV would lose any funding if they discussed abortion as an option, even though almost all physicians would consider such a discussion necessary to inform a woman of her choices.

What Are YOU Going to Do?

Think about what all this means. Up to one million deaths worldwide. In the U.S., up to 50 percent of Black gay men becoming HIV positive, and many being denied treatment. This is not acceptable! We cannot remain silent in the face of these horrors. We need to drive out the Trump/Pence regime!

New Orleans mayor denounces 'false narrative of our history' in speech defending Confederate monument removal

The last of four major Confederate monuments in New Orleans came down on Friday, the final step of a campaign launched in 2015 by Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

While construction workers were taking down the enormous statue of Robert E. Lee, Landrieu delivered a powerful speech about Confederate monuments, the reason they were erected —and why they must come down.

The SPLC joined a number of grassroots organizers including Take 'Em Down NOLA and filed an amicus brief supporting the removal of the monuments. The SPLC has also catalogued the number of publicly supported symbols of the Confederacy around the country and the number of symbols removed since the Charleston massacre. 

Landrieu's speech is, as David Menschel said, "one of the most honest speeches given by a Southern politician." We've printed it in full below:

Watch Mayor Mitch Landrieu deliver his speech here. 

Thank you for coming.

The soul of our beloved city is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way—for both good and for ill. It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans—the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando de Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Colorix, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese, and so many more.

You see, New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures. There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum: out of many we are one. But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront. New Orleans was America’s largest slave market, a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were bought, sold, and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor, of misery, of rape, of torture. America was the place where nearly 4000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined “separate but equal”; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp. So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well, what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.

And it immediately begs the questions, why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans. So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission. There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth. As President George W. Bush said at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.” So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each other. So, let's start with the facts.

The historic record is clear: The Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This “cult” had one goal—through monuments and through other means—to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America. They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement and the terror that it actually stood for.

After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city. Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy. He said in his now famous “corner-stone speech” that the Confederacy's “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Now, with these shocking words still ringing in your ears, I want to try to gently peel from your hands the grip on a false narrative of our history that I think weakens us, and make straight a wrong turn we made many years ago. We can more closely connect with integrity to the founding principles of our nation and forge a clearer and straighter path toward a better city and a more perfect union.

Last year, President Barack Obama echoed these sentiments about the need to contextualize and remember all our history. He recalled a piece of stone, a slave auction block engraved with a marker commemorating a single moment in 1830 when Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay stood and spoke from it. President Obama said, “Consider what this artifact tells us about history. … On a stone where day after day for years, men and women … bound and bought and sold and bid like cattle on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over a thousand bare feet. For a long time the only thing we considered important, the singular thing we once chose to commemorate as history with a plaque, were the unmemorable speeches of two powerful men.”

A piece of stone—one stone. Both stories were history. One story told. One story forgotten or maybe even purposefully ignored. As clear as it is for me today … for a long time, even though I grew up in one of New Orleans’ most diverse neighborhoods, even with my family's long proud history of fighting for civil rights … I must have passed by those monuments a million times without giving them a second thought. So I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race.

I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth. He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes. Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth-grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it? Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too? We all know the answer to these very simple questions. When you look into this child's eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can't walk away from this truth.

And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics. This is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naive quest to solve all our problems at once.

This is, however, about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile and most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves, making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong. Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division and, yes, with violence.

To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past. It is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future. History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it. Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong.

And in the second decade of the 21st century, asking African Americans—or anyone else—to drive by property that they own; occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person’s humanity seems perverse and absurd. Centuries-old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place. Here is the essential truth: We are better together than we are apart.

Indivisibility is our essence. Isn’t this the gift that the people of New Orleans have given to the world? We radiate beauty and grace in our food, in our music, in our architecture, in our joy of life, in our celebration of death; in everything that we do. We gave the world this funky thing called jazz, the most uniquely American art form that is developed across the ages from different cultures. Think about second lines, think about Mardi Gras, think about muffaletta, think about the Saints, gumbo, red beans and rice. By God, just think.

All we hold dear is created by throwing everything in the pot; creating, producing something better; everything a product of our historic diversity. We are proof that out of many we are one—and better for it! Out of many we are one—and we really do love it! And yet, we still seem to find so many excuses for not doing the right thing. Again, remember President Bush’s words. “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”

We forget, we deny how much we really depend on each other, how much we need each other. We justify our silence and inaction by manufacturing noble causes that marinate in historical denial. We still find a way to say, “Wait, not so fast.” But like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Wait has almost always meant never.” We can’t wait any longer. We need to change. And we need to change now.

No more waiting. This is not just about statues, this is about our attitudes and behavior as well. If we take these statues down and don’t change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain. While some have driven by these monuments every day and either revered their beauty or failed to see them at all, many of our neighbors and fellow Americans see them very clearly. Many are painfully aware of the long shadows their presence casts; not only literally but figuratively. And they clearly receive the message that the Confederacy and the cult of the lost cause intended to deliver.

Earlier this week, as the cult of the lost cause statue of P.G.T Beauregard came down, world renowned musician Terence Blanchard stood watch, his wife Robin and their two beautiful daughters at their side. Terence went to a high school on the edge of City Park named after one of America’s greatest heroes and patriots, John F. Kennedy. But to get there he had to pass by this monument to a man who fought to deny him his humanity.

He said, “I’ve never looked at them as a source of pride … it’s always made me feel as if they were put there by people who don't respect us. This is something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It’s a sign that the world is changing.” Yes, Terence, it is. And it is long overdue. Now is the time to send a new message to the next generation of New Orleanians who can follow in Terence and Robin’s remarkable footsteps.

A message about the future, about the next 300 years and beyond: Let us not miss this opportunity, New Orleans, and let us help the rest of the country do the same. Because now is the time for choosing. Now is the time to actually make this the City we always should have been, had we gotten it right in the first place.

We should stop for a moment and ask ourselves: At this point in our history—after Katrina, after Rita, after Ike, after Gustav, after the national recession, after the BP oil catastrophe and after the tornado—if presented with the opportunity to build monuments that told our story or to curate these particular spaces, would these monuments be what we want the world to see? Is this really our story?

We have not erased history; we are becoming part of the city’s history by righting the wrong image these monuments represent and crafting a better, more complete future for all our children and for future generations. And unlike when these Confederate monuments were first erected as symbols of white supremacy, we now have a chance to create not only new symbols, but to do it together, as one people. In our blessed land we all come to the table of democracy as equals. We have to reaffirm our commitment to a future where each citizen is guaranteed the uniquely American gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That is what really makes America great and today it is more important than ever to hold fast to these values and together say a self-evident truth that out of many we are one. That is why today we reclaim these spaces for the United States of America. Because we are one nation, not two; indivisible with liberty and justice for all, not some. We all are part of one nation, all pledging allegiance to one flag, the flag of the United States of America. And New Orleanians are in … all of the way. It is in this union and in this truth that real patriotism is rooted and flourishes. Instead of revering a 4-year brief historical aberration that was called the Confederacy, we can celebrate all 300 years of our rich, diverse history as a place named New Orleans, and set the tone for the next 300 years.

After decades of public debate, of anger, of anxiety, of anticipation, of humiliation and of frustration. After public hearings and approvals from three separate community led commissions. After two robust public hearings and a 6–1 vote by the duly elected New Orleans City Council. After review by 13 different federal and state judges. The full weight of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government has been brought to bear and the monuments, in accordance with the law, have been removed. So now is the time to come together and heal and focus on our larger task. Not only building new symbols, but making this city a beautiful manifestation of what is possible and what we as a people can become.

Let us remember what the once exiled, imprisoned, and now universally loved Nelson Mandela and what he said after the fall of apartheid. “If the pain has often been unbearable and the revelations shocking to all of us, it is because they indeed bring us the beginnings of a common understanding of what happened and a steady restoration of the nation’s humanity.” So before we part let us again state the truth clearly.

The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered. As a community, we must recognize the significance of removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments. It is our acknowledgment that now is the time to take stock of, and then move past, a painful part of our history.

Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul-searching a truly lost cause. Anything less would fall short of the immortal words of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, who with an open heart and clarity of purpose calls on us today to unite as one people when he said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”