A Pound of Prevention
CHAMP
champnetwork.org
The NYC-based Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) is outfitting a new generation of AIDS activists. Through linking a cross-section of individuals, groups and campaigns, the organization bridges the human rights and social-justice issues at the heart of the epidemic: racism, homophobia, poverty, the prison-industrial complex.
Julie Davids, CHAMP's founder and executive director, is a longtime AIDS activist and veteran of Philadelphia ACT UP, whose strategies and techniques have been replicated by AIDS organizations around the world.
How has the landscape changed for AIDS work in this country in the past five years? One thing is that we have 40,000 people in the U.S. getting infected each year and 15,000 dying. That means more people with HIV. We need more care, more information, more tools for protecting others. Instead of getting increases in funding and commensurate responses to the need, there's flat funding, no new dollars, or cuts. Even flat funding is a cut. In NYC, though to a lesser extent than elsewhere where there aren't significant city and state funds added to the mix, we've seen organizations doing a lot of running around trying to insulate people from the harm of these cuts. They're taking limited resources and stretching them thinner and thinner. It's like a rubber band: You can stretch it and stretch it, but sooner or later, it's going to snap.
We've [also] seen outright attacks. A swell in audits of organizations for men who have sex with men, for example. Those organizations are often located in communities of color. There's the chill effect, where people are afraid to speak out, to speak explicitly about drug use. When groups have to deal with the audits and fight to keep their constituency engaging in services, it takes time away from doing the actual work. Then there are the abstinence programs, popularized under Bush but started under Clinton, in which several funding streams require that those who take the money refrain from discussing sexual activity. You can't say, "Abstinence is great, but if you're going to be sexually active, here's how to be safe." You're only allowed to talk about sexual activity as something harmful.
How does NYC differ from other major cities dealing with AIDS? NYC is much better. But it has to be much better. It is still an epicenter of the disease and will remain so. In addition to the strength of the many NYC organizations in the forefront, the city's government has been forced to care.
Has the disease itself changed? There's never been a new face of AIDS, just a new face of a society dealing with it. The highest rates of infection are among African-American and Latino men who have sex with men, and that's only recognized with a stigma attached. There's been plateau in infection rates: The peak was in the late 80s, and then it started coming down. But it's creeping back up again, mostly in young people, in women, and in men who have sex with men. AIDS has always been an epidemic of young people. People tend to get diagnosed in their 30s and 40s, but the incubation period means they got it when they were young.
What are CHAMP's goals? At this time in history, neither campaigning nor training alone will make a viable AIDS movement. CHAMP has four components: training and workshops; a grassroots group called HPOP-HIV Prevention Organization Project; a strategy laboratory developing the first community consensus document to improve research on prevention; and working on national coalitions in AIDS policy.
CHAMP focuses on prevention. Over the years, when I've asked people with HIV why they want to do AIDS activism, the two most common responses are, because I don't want teens to get HIV, and I want to know, where is the cure, usually meaning a vaccine. Those are prevention questions. We work with peer educators, people in research, community activists, reproductive health activists, students, people living with HIV to answer questions such as, what research do we have, how can we improve it and do more of what works?
CHAMP's job is to make it as straightforward as possible for the constituencies involved with AIDS organizations to be part of the larger struggle of AIDS and still do their work. We work with people to ask what will work for them. As the movement enters its third decade, after having won an infrastructure of care and housing, if we merely take on the task of running that infrastructure without an active community engaging with the political and social realities of the crisis, the infrastructure will be under attack and unable to deal with all aspects of that crisis. It would be a disservice to our potential as change agents. You can't give services for civil rights. We get civil rights through struggle.