| Clarification
Youth activism
Anal cancer
Prison tattoos
Clarification
The photos of Mo’Nique which appeared on pages 37–39 of the March/April issue were by Pierre R. Cameron. Positively Aware apologizes for the oversight.
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Youth activism
I’ve enjoyed reading Positively Aware for a few years now and have always enjoyed your publication’s coverage of issues relevant to HIV/AIDS. However, your editorial in the May/June 2008 [Editor’s Note: Four Minutes to Save the World] came as a slap in the face. As a young person, your depiction of young people as “too busy changing their MySpace page,” etc. to care about the HIV epidemic is unfair and simply not true. Many folks my age (26) and younger are out there doing what they can to fight this disease. From raising money for local organizations to, yes, doing Internet outreach to other youth using pages like MySpace. We’re out there beside the rest of you fighting. And given that about half of all new infections are in our age group, we realize that we’re fighting for the lives and health of our generation. Your publication should be encouraging youth involvement and organizing, not writing us off in a flip editorial.
Jesse Pack, Worcester, MA
I always enjoy your [Jeff Berry’s] articles in Positively Aware. Today after putting the finishing touches on a new blog entry. I was amazed to open the brown envelope that arrived from Chicago, read your editorial, and discover that we both had activism and a bit of nostalgia for the past on our minds. My entry deals with the admittedly lighter topic of activism and gay rights contrasted over 15 years. My belief is that activism for gay rights is less visible because good progress has been made. Though you point out several areas of society where there are tremendous problems related to HIV/AIDS, I suspect the explanation is similar. Good progress has been made and people are only motivated into action when the tipping point is reached. Despite 12 or 13 years of ART [antiviral therapy], I have lost three close friends. I know HIV/AIDS is still a giant problem. I think another explanation that I hint at in my blog is technology. You reference this in your editorial too. I think part of the answer is that we need to encourage and motivate people to feature HIV/AIDS in their online, social-networking world. I have read about the coming Fourth Tier of prescription insurance coverage that requires individuals to pay a percentage of cost for expensive medicines. I suspect many more individuals, including myself, will be very close to the tipping point when that day comes.
George Perry, via the Internet
I just read your Editor’s Note in the May/June issue. I’ve been working in the field of HIV since 2001. My first foray into the field was when I was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Southern Africa. When I returned Stateside, I lost my first HIV job due to funding and budget cuts. I moved on and became a case manager. I dealt with people on a personal level and got to understand their situation and their story. I now live in New York City and am employed as an HIV health educator. There seems to be a major component missing in this fight, the reinvention you mention in your article. The way we did prevention 15 years ago is not the same way that necessarily works today. We have become a society of gadgets and I believe that in order to reach the demographics of those being at increased risk of becoming infected, we need to reach them where they are at. That’s why I’ve taken the initiative to incorporate interactive education into my life. I host a show weekly on www.modmylife.com. It’s an interactive website where users enter a suggestion. It gets voted on and the winning vote is performed live using hidden cameras. While not all of these “Mods” are necessarily funny, tactful, or related to HIV education, some of them are. And while I’m not trying to make light of a serious situation, the group of people with the highest rate of becoming infected with HIV is 13 to 24 year olds. This group seems to respond best to such antics. It’s much like the cola advertisements at the beginning of a movie and the sight and smell of buttery popcorn, the kind of ads that make you want to leave your seat for that refreshing thirst quencher. This is the same group of people that didn’t know what it was like back in the 1980’s and 1990’s. These are the same types of interactive educational tools that I feel will make people stop reaching for that soda and reach for a condom. I wanted to share with you one of the ways I’ve been attempting to reinvent prevention education and I hope you enjoy.
Cheetos: http://www.modmylife.com/mod/2299
Santa: http://www.modmylife.com/mod/833
Jason Wilder Evans, via the Internet
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Anal cancer
Thanks, Matt [Sharp], for “The Papilloma Chronicles” [May/June 2008]. I have been going through some HPV situations and it is really good to get some real life perspectives on this. Thank you for your openness and honesty about your experiences. I am sure I am not the only one who truly appreciates your words.
Daniel Gebhardt, ACTU, Cleveland, Ohio
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Prison tattoos
I’ve been incarcerated since 1999 for robbery with a firearm and I am scheduled to be released in 2009. In January 2008 I was informed that I am infected with HIV. I never thought in my life I would test positive for HIV, because I didn’t engage in the most common activities to put myself at risk to catch the disease in prison, or at least I thought. I was born in 1972 in Baltimore, and moved to Florida with my parents and older brother in order to start a new life in 1996. My brother died at the end of ’96, and my new life turned back into my old life of gang warfare and excessive drug and alcohol abuse. I never used intravenous methods to get high and the only drug I used was marijuana, the normal anti-depressant in recreational circles. I never engaged in sexual activities with males in the penitentiary or in the free world.
When I first came into the prison system with a 10-year mandatory sentence to serve, I was still very angry and I got into fights, a gang, and tattoos. I mainly associated HIV and AIDS with homosexuals or the intravenous drug use scenarios because those are the most common ways I know of contracting the disease, but I can only suspect I contracted HIV through fighting or acquiring tattoos in a controlled environment. In just the last few years of my incarceration, I’ve been able to reform my mind to prepare for my future release back into society. I no longer associate with a gang, I no longer smoke marijuana, I haven’t drank alcohol since the night I was arrested in ’99, and I continue to educate myself. With the changes that I have made in my term of incarceration also comes the value of life and the desire to be a better person than what I used to be. I do have the support of my family, and the wonderful mother of my 15-year-old son; she’s been a very helpful friend. I received Positively Aware from Project Response Inc., an HIV organization based here in Florida. The organization also sent me a lot of reading material to educate myself on medical care, treatment, and living with being infected with HIV. The stories I’ve read in Positively Aware are very inspiring and encouraging, and provide me with a more in-depth perception on coping and living with HIV, and keeping optimistic and positive about the future. I may have committed a crime and I’m a convicted felon in prison, but I’m also a newly informed infected human being who is afraid of not being able to make it home to my family because the medical department isn’t concerned about my being infected with HIV. I receive psychological counseling at this facility, but they also seem to think that I have no reason to be concerned about the lack of medical attention. I have had no HIV follow-up. I don’t know my viral loads like I should, or my CD4 count. When will it eventually be too late?
Name withheld, Florida
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