AIDS TREATMENT NEWS #134, September 6, 1991
John S. James

One organization, the San Francisco-based Mobilization Against AIDS (Mobilization), delivered 40,000 postcards opposing the travel/immigration ban. We interviewed Ken McPherson, special projects coordinator for Mobilization, who ran the postcard project and is now beginning the new campaign on healthcare workers.

"Much of the success of this campaign was from its linkage with AB101 (a gay rights bill in California for equal employment and public accommodation). There was no additional cost to print the AB101 cards, since the postcards were printed as a set. Mobilization raised $10,000 from other AIDS organizations to cover costs, and the AB101 staff coordinated the volunteers. They trained them and did the phone banking. The combination of Gay Pride day, Pink Saturday (a street celebration in San Francisco's Castro district), and Mobilization's street table on weekends, brought us the 40,000 cards. The linkage worked because we both were doing a postcard campaign.

"We photocopied all the postcards, so in the future, we can approach these people again. That's one of the reasons for doing a postcard campaign, to find your constituents. We will not need to re-invent the wheel each time; we are building a machine, an army, to take care of future AIDS needs.

"We found it harder to get people to respond to AIDS; lesbian and gay issues are easier to sell on the street. One generation has been to so many funerals that there is a numbing effect. And that same generation is thinking, 'AIDS will go on for many years of my life; am I going to focus only on it, or on other things also? ' Meanwhile, the new generation has not been to the funerals yet. And since adolescence, they have grown up with AIDS, so the shock effect is gone.

"Much of the press, when the Bush Administration gave its "No" on travel and immigration, only reported the 30,000 to 40,000 letters and postcards in the earlier comment period against the travel/immigration reform [proposed by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services and effectively vetoed by the Justice Department and the White House -- ed.], without mentioning the 100,000 letters and postcards on our side in the comment period which ended August 2. That says we need to do a better job of public relations. The reason the PR didn't occur after the postcards were sent is that this whole campaign was done for $10,000, with two staff people working on it and the rest volunteer. You cannot do all that is necessary to nurture the media with such little funding and such a small staff.

"Our community has never pushed letterwriting, at least on this coast. Yet it does a great deal of good. We need to start letting politicians know that not just once but every time they screw us over, they're going to hear from us. And not just from street demonstrations. ACT UP is an important component, and the AIDS service organizations are important components. But we cannot ignore the power of the constituency base (of voters writing to their political representatives), and that's something we are not yet up to speed on.

The Senator Seymour Healthcare-Worker Campaign

"Mobilization is now launching a new postcard campaign on amendments by Senator Jesse Helms, now going through Congress, which will in effect require mandatory HIV testing of healthcare workers and patients if they become law. These amendments are opposed by the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, and the U. S. Centers for Disease Control. California Senator John Seymour twice supported Jesse Helms on these amendments. He will be voting on this issue again, so we want him to hear from the AIDS community.

"The right way to address this issue is through enforcement of the OSHA (U. S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standard for universal precautions to prevent transmission of all bloodborne diseases. 'Universal precautions' means that all patients are treated as though they are potentially infectious. The OSHA standard will cover 4.5 million healthcare workers, and OSHA has teeth; for example, it can impose fines of $7,000 a day for violation, and it can enforce its standard in doctors' and dentists' offices as well as in hospitals. Legislation is being developed to expand OSHA's authority to impose criminal penalties for willful violations.

"These precautions, including proper sterilization of equipment, repair of defective equipment, and proper gloves and gowns, have been in use at leading institutions since 1987; the problem is they have not always been applied. OSHA issued a proposed rule in May 1989; over two years later it has still not been made final. It should be applied and enforced immediately. Universal precautions are far more effective than mandatory HIV testing to protect both doctors and patients, because they prevent transmission of all bloodborne diseases, not only HIV, and they prevent patient-to-patient transmission [a far greater risk than doctor-to-patient transmission, as it's usually the patient's blood, not the doctor's blood, that gets on the instruments -- ed.]. Also, HIV tests are falsely negative for weeks or months after infection, so mandatory testing gives false assurance of safety. We want the public and the politicians to understand that there is a right way to prevent infection -- the universal precautions which need to be applied and enforced in all health-care settings."

Ken explained that there were three ways to work with Mobilization Against AIDS:

* Anyone can join by contributing $30 per year or more.

* You can join Mobilization's "Lobby Team." You will be called several times a year to write letters to your representatives, and will receive an extensive information packet on each issue. Mobilization asks those who can afford it to contribute $10 a year to pay for the materials. You do not need to be a member of Mobilization to join the Lobby Team.

Ken noted that "The lobby team is still the most effective means of changing peoples' minds. A handwritten letter is the most powerful tool for a Senator or Congressperson to receive in their mailbox. But if we can't get enough letters, then postcards are fine."

* Anyone can request printed postcards from Mobilization, to circulate and return for the Senator Seymour campaign described above. There is no charge for the postcards.

"We also want to contact agencies and others who can contribute financially. The whole budget for the Seymour campaign is $3400. If we could increase that to $10,000, then we could print banners and start advertising in the gay papers, to turn out tens of thousands instead of hundreds of cards. And advertising is what begins teaching the community that constituent pressure on political representatives is something we must make part of our lives. We must all become regular letter and card writers. We must consider this as normal and natural as the right-wing fundamentalists do."

To contact Mobilization Against AIDS, call 415/863-4676, or write to 1540 Market Street, #160, San Francisco, CA 94102. Contributions are not tax deductible, because the organization is political.

Comment

The fact that the Bush Administration ignored over 100,000 pieces of mail (as well as the virtually unanimous consensus of the medical community) on the HIV travel/immigration issue, favoring instead a political hobbyhorse of right-wing bigots, does not mean that letterwriting does not work. No political means will work every time.

We believe that there are four essential components of AIDS political action:

* Consensus-building among AIDS organizations and the medical community;

* Street demonstrations and other media work, e.g. by ACT UP;

* Letterwriting and other forms of communication to politicians from the voters; and

* Building coalitions, especially with groups working on other diseases.

The first two have long been done well by the AIDS community. On the last two, we have only begun.

All of us should support the activists who work year after year to defend our community, and defend medically rational AIDS policies developed by health experts. Without their continuing work, none of us is safe.

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