Category Archives: youth
Highlights from the US Social Forum: Anti-Prison People’s Movement Assembly
The problem: The United States is a prison empire, founded on the legacy of slavery, which uses racist mass incarceration, widespread criminalization, torture and the targeting of political dissidents to try to solve its fundamental economic and social problems. It locks up more people than any other country on the planet. The prison system is a central node in an apparatus of state repression; it destroys our communities and weakens our resistance and movements for justice. Repression is a tool used to maintain state power, and the prison population represents the most oppressed sectors of society: people of color, the poor, First Nations communities, immigrant communities, working class women, queer and transgender people, and radical organizers from many communities. Continue reading
Filed under African Americans, criminalization of HIV, economic justice, immigration/migration, Latina/o communities in the United States, Native Americans/Indigenous peoples, police repression, prison, revolutionary strategies, stigma, trans and gender non-conforming, transformative justice, women, youth
The Politics of Impatience: An open letter from anarchists to the anarchist movement
The Politics of Impatience: An open letter from anarchists to the anarchist movement Dear friends, As anarchists from a variety of different projects and political perspectives, mostly in the U.S., we are inspired by the courage of students fighting for … Continue reading
Cultural Healing: Native American Activists Say Boarding School Abuses Harmed the Health of Generations
“Many of the problems of alcoholism and drug abuse now prevalent in Indian country can be traced back to the physical, emotional and sexual abuse suffered at the hands of our keepers in the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] and mission boarding schools,” Lakota journalist and boarding school survivor Tim Giago wrote in the Huffington Post. Government-sponsored boarding schools have created a legacy of trauma among Native American peoples in the United States. The Boarding School Healing Project documents the abuse and demonstrates how it has led to high rates of childhood sexual abuse, family violence, violence against women, alcoholism, and drug use in Native communities. In addition to the homophobia the schools enforced in children from cultures traditionally welcoming of gay and gender-nonconforming people, most of these symptoms of trauma are the same factors that make Native communities vulnerable to HIV. A look at the brutal history of these boarding schools can teach us a lot about the ways that social injustice fuels the epidemic – and how to fight back. Continue reading
New York City’s HASA For ALL Campaign: Advocating for Homeless People With and At Risk for HIV
According to Sean Barry, co-director of NYCAHN, the problem is that “people who didn’t have an AIDS diagnosis and didn’t qualify for HASA because of that are dying because the bad conditions in the shelters worsen their health so quickly – before they can go through the bureaucratic process to get HASA benefits once they do get sick.” Housing Works estimates that 7,000 low-income people living with HIV would benefit from HASA For ALL, including an estimated 800 individuals in the shelter system.
“It took me two years to get on HASA,” Alan Perez, coordinator of the Legislative Action Group at GMHC, says. “I had to stop taking my meds just to get on it. A lot of people are doing something to get sick, especially people who are in the shelter system. They should be in permanent housing.” Continue reading
New York State Black Gay Network: Mark McLaurin
One 2004 study of MSM ages 15 to 22 found Blacks to be nine times as likely to have HIV as whites, and Latinos twice as likely, despite more unprotected sex among young white MSM. Across all studies, Millett found that white MSM were more likely to use drugs that can increase the possibility of HIV infection, including crack. One study found that white MSM were more than twice as likely to use crack than Black MSM. Continue reading
TAKE ACTION — WHAT YOU CAN DO
If you’re part of a sex worker activist project and would like to learn from others doing this work, contact the following groups for insight and inspiration: Continue reading
Top Ten Positive Changes for Agency Staff
This document was created by YWEP, a group of girls and young women in Chicago, aged 12 to 23, with experience in the sex trade and street economies. Based on their firsthand knowledge of what has worked – or not worked – for them both as young girls looking for help and youth organizers offering help, these guidelines can help adult activists and social service providers make their efforts more respectful and effective. Continue reading
AIDS As a Moral Disease, Once Again: How Government Policies on Abstinence Promotion Teach Old-School HIV Stigma in the U.S. and Uganda
Governments can infuse HIV stigma deeply into a nation, with cold, hard cash to back it up—operating at levels of power far above the misinformed family that sets a paper plate and plastic ware at the HIV+ person’s place-setting at holiday visits. As we arm individuals to fight stigma at the family and community level, we also need to demand that governments stop spreading stigma and start addressing its consequences. Continue reading
Take Action: Stop U.S. Government-Funded HIV Stigma Worldwide
DECEMBER 2006 • Issue 2 The PATHWAY (Protection Against Transmission of HIV for Women and Youth Act of 2006) Act was introduced by Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) in the House. It would help fix Bush’s global AIDS initiative, known as … Continue reading
Something I Never Want To Hear Again… A Listening Exercise from CHAMP Academy
DECEMBER 2006 • Issue 2 Stigma exists not just in the world outside our organizations but within them as well. Our assumptions or lack of information about the incredibly diverse range of people and communities affected by HIV, paired with … Continue reading
