Bay Windows - Local News, January 27, 2000
Scott A. Giordano, Bay Windows staff

Based on an examination of U.S. AIDS cases in the last decade, the CDC study found that the proportion of AIDS cases among men of color who have sex with other men rose from 31 percent in 1989 to 52 percent in 1998. But local black AIDS activists say the latest statistics only confirm what they have known for years.

ôWeÆve all known for years that HIV [infection] has been rising in the black community, particularly among gay men of color. What the CDC is reporting is what people have known for awhile: that AIDS has had a devastating impact on the [black gay] community,ö said Gary Daffin, executive director of the Black HIV/AIDS Coalition in Boston. ôI know a lot of black gay men who died of AIDS. I generally find there seems to be a missing generation of black gay men. I donÆt find a lot of people who are black and gay who are my age. There seems to be fewer than I would expect.ö

In the new CDC report, researchers outlined possible factors for the growing number of AIDS cases among gay men of color. Among them are economic factors, including high rates of poverty, unemployment and lack of access to health care. They also predict that cultural factors, such as a stigma on homosexuality, may be playing a role.

ôThis is a very real and sensitive issue requiring increased dialogue and attention from leaders in communities of color,ö said Helene D. Gayle, director of the CDCÆs National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention. ôThe stigma associated with homosexuality in African-American and Latino communities only compounds the traditional factors associated with rates of disease in our communities. To truly win the battle against HIV, we must be willing to acknowledge and wrestle with the difficult issues.ö

The local response

Daffin believes the high rates of HIV infection among gay men of color partially stems to the lack of openly gay and lesbian leaders within that community, although that is now beginning to change. He recalls the setbacks faced by himself and another man named Michael Richmond when they began to form what was then Men Of Color Against AIDS (MOCAA).

ôWhen I met Michael in 1989, he had been trying for a few years to launch a program to target men who have sex with men in the black community and had a very difficult time getting the [Massachusetts Department of Public Health] to support the idea. We got together and spent a year or two trying to get this program started until we did,ö Daffin recalls. ôI have to say that some of the conversations we had at DPH were difficult; there was some real hesitance to acknowledge that African-American men have sex with men. I remember having these initial conversations, and it was probably the first time these state officials had identified African-American gay people who were trying to do something about AIDS. Michael spent years getting the issue on the map until MOCAA was funded in 1993.ö

The battle was a personal one for Richmond; his life ended due to AIDS-related complications in 1994. But the work that he began continues today.

ôHe developed a lot of social gatherings and marketed them to the community to create a venue where HIV/AIDS information could be disseminated. I think that was a really important thing in Boston. It was the first opportunity for a large cross section of people of color to come together. Those events became fundamental meeting places. It brought out people in the community,ö Daffin said. ôI think a lot of gay men of color died because they never even told people they had HIV. Many didnÆt come out to their families and had a sense that they had no power to navigate the medical world.ö

MOCAA initially was affiliated with BostonÆs Fenway Community Health Center before its second executive director, Matthew Florence, helped create its independent status. Today, the group has its own office space at 100 Warrenton St. in Roxbury. It provided some form of service to nearly 6,000 people last year, according to its current executive director, Pam Johnson, a lesbian of color.

ôThe CDC statistics [are] not new information to communities of color, so our organization has truly been doing everything we can for years now to try to keep focused interventions with those who are HIV-positive and HIV prevention among those who are HIV-negative,ö Johnson said.

She added that many lesbians were involved in the early efforts to get MOCAA started, and that the organization works hard to support all people in the community.

Creating an identity

Johnson believes black gay and lesbian individuals need to establish strong and positive self identities to curb the HIV/AIDS epidemic in their community, and that is why MOCAA places so much emphasis on helping people to do so.

ôI think that there is a lack of access to broader community messages that [black] people can incorporate as being for themselves. I think that we are still struggling with issues of feeling we donÆt have a voice around accessing certain levels of financial benefits, and I think that there is still a high level of feeling as though we have not traditionally been heard, so why bother to speak now. So MOCAA works real hard to mobilize the community in such a way to have the support, tools and resources people need to have their voices heard in order to have a huge impact on this epidemic,ö she said.

February marks MOCAAÆs second anniversary hosting its dance night at the Boston gay nightclub Chaps, at 100 Warrenton St, under the theme ôThe Music Factory.ö MOCAA also conducts regular workshops, focus groups and seminars for HIV-positive individuals and their friends and family.

ôThose are to create a safe environment to normalize people who are impacted by the epidemic and share information about treatments and resources,ö Johnson said. ôIn general, a lot of the work we have been doing is around primary prevention and moving towards secondary prevention and wanting to do more assessments and individual assessments with folks who are impacted by the disease.ö

MOCAA also has specific components that target black youth, including jailed youth and street workers, and the group offers a mentor program to teach youth administrative and outreach skills to talk about the impact HIV has on the mind, body and spirit.

Meanwhile, Daffin played a key role in establishing another new organization to curb the spread of AIDS in the black community. Years ago, the local Multi-Cultural AIDS Coalition had convened a small group of people to focus on HIV/AIDS and to drive a response within the black community. Daffin was one of those people who began to craft the groupÆs mission. Now called the Black HIV/AIDS Coalition, it received its first CDC funds last year.

ôWe wrote a proposal to the CDC and got a two-year grant to build the organization and build a network in the community, so I became the director and I am now running it. ... There is a real interest now in figuring out what we are going to do about HIV/AIDS in our community,ö Daffin said.

Breaking the silence

Yet most of those activists who spoke with Bay Windows still believe the talk about HIV/AIDS issues is nearly deafening, and claim the silence becomes deadly.

ôMy concern about AIDS is not just with the African-American gay male population but with all people of African descent. The AIDS virus is ravaging populations of people of African descent both here in the United States and in Africa. One of the biggest factors contributing to the spread of the AIDS epidemic, at least among African Americans, are the black churches,ö said the Rev. Irene Monroe, a lesbian doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School and a Ford Foundation Fellow.

ôThe black churches now understand there is a problem. However, because of their discomfort in addressing issues related to sexuality, the black churchÆs outstretched hand, when extended, is passively toward helping people who contracted the virus through intravenous drug use and not those who contracted it sexually,ö Monroe added. ôAt present, there is $156 million in federally funded money that has been made available for civic and religious organizations nationwide that work on AIDS/HIV education and prevention in African-American communities. The concern among health care agencies, politicians and the African-American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) population is whether black churches will step up to the plate to aggressively help to educate and to heal its communities, and will that help extend itself to its [GLBT] population.ö

Perhaps one of the black communityÆs most successful events is the annual Bayard Rustin Community Breakfast, a fund-raising, educational and networking event for the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, which is the stateÆs largest AIDS-service organization. Now in its 11th year, the event helps people of color to come together and celebrate their identities while breaking the silence on HIV/AIDS as well. This year, Johnson will be a co-chair of that event, to be held this spring.

ôThis will be our 11th year, and that event is truly an inspirational and moving experience for the upwards of 500 people who attend. It brings people of color together and gives us an opportunity to both provide uplifting messages and to inform and educate people on things like the CDC statistics and how AIDS is impacting our community not just in the United States but internationally as well,ö Johnson said.

And Monroe continues to be an outspoken AIDS advocate within the black churches throughout the country. Like so many others, the matter is a personal one for her, because she knows what is at stake.

ôNot only have I lost friends and know of individual friends struggling with the virus, but the epidemic has spiritually devastated the black community, and meö she said. ôIn the face of death or impending death, it is hard to envision a future generation of children not only as leaders in this country but, more importantly, as being alive.ö

(For more information on MOCAA, call 617-442-8020. For information on the Multi-Cultural AIDS Coalition or the Black HIV/AIDS Coalition, call 617-442-1622.)
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