Get Used to It: Ep. 112, "HIV/AIDS 2005"

(typewriter keys clicking) (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used to It". I'm Sheila Kuehl, and I guide you professionally through these shows so that you'll know what the heck is going on in America. I think that's always a good thing to know. We spend a lot of our shows talking about issues of interest or about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community. But occasionally we have to look at issues that are much broader than just our community, but touch on our community. And one of those issues has been, and continues to be HIV/AIDS. It's my pleasure today to have, as my guest, Phill Wilson, who's the executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, and longtime activist, and knows everything about everything. And today we're gonna talk about AIDS in America, some of the demographics about AIDS. If people need reminding or have some new information, talk about how we got where we are, and maybe, hopefully, where we can go with it. So welcome, Phill. - Thank you for having me. It's always a joy and a pleasure to spend an hour with you. - It's my pleasure. Well, let's talk a little bit about sort of the state of the nation about AIDS. Tell us, bring us up to date on what's going on and how communities are affected. - Well, you know, it's funny, depending on where you're looking and who you're talking to you could think that the AIDS epidemic was over in America and nothing could be further from the truth now, especially in some communities. HIV/AIDS in America in the year 2005 has become nearly a Black disease. And no matter what lens you use, whether you use the lens of age or the lens of geography or the lens of gender or sexual orientation, African Americans are disproportionately impacted among women with AIDS, African American women represent 72%. Now among men with AIDS, African American men represent 40%. Among gay men with AIDS, AIDS is generally perceived to be a White gay disease, but African Americans represent 30%. Among adolescents, 18 to 24, 80%. So no matter how you look at it, every day, the disease gets darker and darker and darker. That's not to say that AIDS does not continue to be a problem among White gay men. It does. It does not suggest that, you know, other minorities are not impacted by the epidemic. They are. But over the last few years, you know, there's been kind of a shift away from the domestic epidemic toward the global epidemic, as if we couldn't do both. - Well, and as if everything is just getting much better here, right, I mean, I think most of us remember the presidential debate, where a question was given to both of our candidates, President Bush and Senator Carey, about AIDS and Black women. And they both knew nothing, but to talk about Africa, right? Well, you know, I mean a little bit. - It was amazing watching the scene. There's Gwen Ifill, this African American journalist, asking Vice President Cheney and Senator ... God, I can't believe I just hit a blank on ... - [Sheila] Edwards. - Senator Edwards. And specifically asking them about AIDS and African American women and adding the caveat: I'm not talking about the global epidemic, and they just blew the question off. Vice President Cheney said he didn't know that African American women were disproportionately impacted by AIDS and watching that, my heart just sank. I immediately got on the phone and began to call the Black women that I know. And it was like, are you watching the debates? Are you watching the debates? And it's just a really sad state of affairs, but it does kind of speak volumes about where we are with this epidemic. And it actually speaks volumes about why the epidemic is growing in some communities. - Well, it's interesting because I think primarily what we see, when we see anything in the press or in the news, or talking about the epidemic, having lessened among White gay men, although what they say is gay men. - [Phill] Right. - And then a report that it's beginning to grow again, is that the case? - Well, it is. One of the things that happens when, particularly over the last four years, where we've had flat funding for prevention efforts by the federal government, flat funding for treatment efforts by the federal government, a kind of changing of focus from the domestic epidemic to the global epidemic, the media kind of has put it on the back burners, and people are in fact living longer. And that's a good thing. As a result, though, people do not see it as the pressing issue that it continues to be. And that's true, whether we're talking about gay men or whether we're talking about young folks, or whether we're talking about African Americans or other people of color. In the gay community, we see people who think that they are people who are feeling better, they're living longer, they're starting to get back active in all sorts of ways, including sexually. We see rises in the use of crystal meth in the gay community. We see rise in cases of unsafe sex in that community. We see not the kind of aggressive HIV prevention efforts that were there. In fact, we see changes happening at the CDC that suggest that the CDC is going to prioritize simply testing and partner notification, to the detriment, maybe, of comprehensive prevention messages. - So well, it seems as though the current government and the CDC has been reluctant to do appropriate messages because messages often that get to people seem a little racey for this government, I think. And yet, what do you attribute the use of crystal meth and the concomitant sort of ignoring safe sex too? - I think part of it is fatigue within the community, but to be completely honest, I think that people forget that the gay community today is a different community than it was five years ago and a different community than it will be five years from now. People discover coming to their sexuality every day. So the men who we were teaching safe sex messages to five years ago are five years older. And there's a whole new group of young gay men out there who weren't in the room when we were having those conversations. And as a result, we think that we've done that, we've said that, done that when the truth of the matter is there's a whole group of folks that we've not spoken to. - As a Black gay man, I know that you've often been kind of, not torn, but facing both communities, sometimes to your own detriment in each of them, it's kind of like telling the gay community, you gotta pay attention to this stuff about racism and telling the Black community, you gotta pay attention to this stuff about homophobia, but it's interesting coming together in a sense in the problem in the epidemic, and in the AIDS Holocaust. - [Phill] Absolutely. - What is the attitude, and what are the demographics in the country around AIDS? You said the Black community is disproportionately affected, but it's the straight people in the Black community? - Well, across the sexual diversity of Black communities, quite frankly, it is estimated that up to a third of young Black gay men may already be infected. Black women are 23 times more likely to have HIV, and 13 times more likely to die from AIDS than White women. Every day, 16 Black men die from AIDS in America. So no matter how you look at it, you know, the Black community is being devastated by this disease. And one of the driving forces of that really is the fact that we still have not invested in the capacity and infrastructure to fight this disease in Black communities. And unless, and until, we develop a national coordinated mobilization in Black communities, we're not gonna solve this problem. We've made advances, but they've not been enough and they've not come fast enough. - So talk a little bit about what the attitude is in the Black community or communities about AIDS. Are we talking a lot of denial? Are we talking desperation or just despair? What's it feel like in the community? - It's interesting because I think that when you do these surveys, these knowledge, attitudes, and belief surveys, what you find is that African Americans are concerned about AIDS. They think it's a big problem. They're fatalistic about AIDS. They don't think that we're winning the battle. They don't think our government is doing enough. The RAND Corporation just released a study that shows that a huge percentage of African Americans believe that HIV/AIDS is a conspiracy. That the government is out to get us. And folks who believe that it's a conspiracy, those conspiracy thoughts hinder prevention efforts. So that's a major barrier that we have to deal with. - Let's talk more about that, because I think this is not the only area and the only community where what you already believe and think can be very harmful because it keeps you from taking appropriate action to protect yourself and how these things kind of affect you. You said that the RAND study indicated that an usually large percentage of people in the Black community believe that the United States government has infected the Black community with AIDS. - [Phill] That's right. - That's right, that's what you said? - [Phill] Right. - How does this notion, how does it occur? How does it spread through the community and people believe it? I mean, I don't mean to sound too naive. I understand why any community wouldn't trust the federal government, but, you know, say more about this. - Well, you know, conspiracy theories aren't new, and they're not unique to the Black community, but one of the problems as we deal with conspiracy theories is, first of all, in an environment where there are conspiracy theories, people are disempowered to take action, people feel fatalistic. If the government is out to get me, and I believe they're gonna get me no matter what I do, then why should I use a condom? Why should I try to protect myself? But the other thing is that people who believe in conspiracies are often just dismissed out of hand. And in the experience of Black Americans, that's a huge mistake. Slavery was real, and it was a matter of governmental policy. Jim Crow was real. The Tuskegee syphilis trials were real and they were government clinical trials. The bait and switch on the war in Iraq, it was real, Rodney King was real, police brutality is real. So our experiences, our real experiences that make us particularly suspicious of governmental actions, and you have to acknowledge that. But at the same time, I think that African Americans in general, we have to ask ourselves, are we developing maladaptive behaviors because of these experiences or are we developing adaptive behaviors? The truth of the matter is that whether or not, whether it's a conspiracy theory or not, African Americans are dying from AIDS, and we have to do something to save our lives, regardless of where the virus came from, we have to do something to save our lives and we have to empower ourselves to take action. And we have to demand that all of our institutions take action to fight this disease. - You referred to the Tuskegee medical trials and there may be people watching the show that don't know what that was, because as that was proven to be true, seems to me, one of the reasons why the community would think, well, you know, they did it then, they could have done it now, in a way, so that makes it more difficult to dismiss it in the community. Will you tell about those experiments? - Well, the Tuskegee syphilis trials were a natural history clinical trial to see what happens if syphilis went untreated. And what was unethical about it is they continued the trial long after penicillin was discovered, and there was treatment for syphilis. And part of what feeds into the conspiracy theory is that people don't really understand what really happened at Tuskegee. People think that people were given syphilis. They actually weren't given syphilis, that wasn't the unethical point, but they were denied treatment. Fast forward to HIV and AIDS. One of the common beliefs in African American communities is that there is a cure for AIDS that they're holding back from us. It's kind of deja vu, if you will. And that's why it is so important for us to keep the issue out front. And most importantly, that is why it's important for there to be more credible Black voices that are speaking out about HIV and AIDS. One of the things I'm really happy about is that now there is a national Black HIV/AIDS awareness day, it's February 7th. That's the day where African Americans are encouraged to think about this disease, to talk about this disease, to take action, to get informed. What you don't know can kill you. To get tested. Knowing your HIV status can save your life. To get treated. If you're HIV positive, there are treatments that are available that can extend your life, and to get involved. - Now, in terms of, you know, it's interesting because when we first started seeing the epidemic and before it even was called AIDS. - [Phill] When it was called GRID. - When it was the gay ... - [Phill] Gay Related Immune Deficiency. - Immune Deficiency, right. Because the community, the gay community was considered so despicable, a lot of people said, well, this must be God's wrath on them. And then we saw that it was drug users who were getting HIV/AIDS and people said, well, that's, God's judgment on them, but it can't be God's judgment on Black people. I mean, there's just not that attitude in this country. But it's interesting to me how we hear so little about the fact that it is the Black community that is disproportionately affected in this country in a way that kind of blows the theory about God's judgment. But also it's just another way you either treat a community as despicable openly, or you treat them as invisible, both of which have occurred, I think, to the Black community and the gay community. - [Phill] Absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of sort of uniformity there, but it still seems to me that the federal government and probably all the state governments as well, have not participated as much in AIDS education. I wanna talk about education for a minute. And then I want to talk about treatment. What do you see as the state, in the country, of AIDS education, of funding, of how it's being accomplished, of how successful it might be? - I don't think that we're in a good place. I think that nearly 25 years into the epidemic, we certainly need to retool our messages. I think that the fact that we're not investing new dollars to create new HIV prevention messages contribute to the epidemic we're now seeing in different communities, particularly in Black America. I think that there's been a rollback kind of a conservative rollback against messages that work. We now have scenarios where it is difficult to create messages that resonate with young Black folks who live in urban America because those messages offend the sensibilities of old White men in Washington, DC. And I think that that's a huge problem. I think that we should look at HIV and AIDS as the health disaster that it is. We should figure out messages that work and we should use them, and we should find out what works from those target populations that we're trying to reach. - Well, it also seems a kind of an anti-youth bias because we are saying it's a lot of young people who are becoming infected. It's a lot of young people who are not getting the messages. We're not shaping the messages, maybe, so that they can hear them or, you know, whatever. But it's also, I wonder if, do you think there's a kind of dismissive attitude about young people too? - I think there's a dismissive attitude about young people, but I also think that it's broader than that. I think that sadly America has become a "them and us" as a country. We talk about red states and blue states. We talk about conservatives and liberals. We talk about straights and gays. We talk about old people and young people, it's all about them and us, and the tragedy about it is that in many ways in America, when we are strong, there is no them, there's only us. And when we are honest, there's only us because the truth of the matter is what happens to you impacts the quality of my life. And the more we understand that, the better off we all are. - But there's also the need for information. I mean, it's interesting to me. I've lived long enough to see new technologies and new information technologies start up. And we have more overload, information overload now than we've ever had. We have 237 channels and we've got radio coming down from the sky. You can subscribe to this and subscribe to that and read as much as you can. And then you've got your email and online, and all this stuff. Still, it seems like one of the most potent weapons in order to maintain a them and us attitude is to suppress information about when it's happening to us. And just only talk about when it's happening to them. Or it's happening to them, and therefore it's not important. So when you look at the overall- - Because they're not important, and that's the important thing to understand, and if you kind of connect the dots of how dangerous it is for America to develop attitudes where they're not important. There's this poem from the World War II and the Holocaust where they talk about when they came for the Jews, I did not speak up cause I wasn't Jewish. And when they came for the anarchists, I did not speak up. And it gets to the point where the end line is, "And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak." And if you kind of follow the dots on HIV and AIDS, we're walking down that line. If in fact we had responded in an appropriate way when we thought that HIV and AIDS only impacted White gay men and responded to a health emergency, we would've been able to stop this disease. And then when we perceived that it was drug users or Haitians or whatever, every step of the way, it was another them and every step of the way the disease grew and grew and grew to where we are today. - So in the treatment arena, what's the state of AIDS in America now? I think people imagine that there are wonder drugs, not a cure, but you know, wonder drugs. A lot of people living with HIV/AIDS and living longer, which we're very happy about. - Absolutely. Some of us particularly so. - Some of us particularly so, and those of us who are your friends, particularly so, too, but what is the state generally, because we seem to be pretty sanguine about it and think everything's kind of cool. - It's kind of a good news, bad news scenario. The good news is that there are drugs available. People are living longer. The bad news is that those drugs aren't perfect. You know, they're strong, powerful, often very toxic drugs. There are horrible side effects. Sometimes we don't know how long people can live on these very strong chemical therapies. The other kind of quasi-bad news is that people can forget now how deadly this disease is. And finally, the bad news is people are often not able to access the drugs because we've not been expanding the resources to keep up with a number of people who need the drugs. A huge percentage of people who are living with HIV depend on public support for their medications, either Medicare or Medicaid or the Ryan White CARE Act, and all of those programs are being shattered. - Well, it's the state of healthcare in the country. Now we have the issue of insured and non-insured. In California, about 80% of our people are insured and that's supposed to be good news. But in a state of 35 million people, that means that 7 million people have no insurance at all. And another huge percentage are underinsured, which for the most part, because they're not covered for pharmaceuticals, or dental or vision, or mental health or a lot of other things. And when your life depends on treatment, which is pharmaceuticals, of course that's gonna be the case. So that all plays in, I think, to the larger healthcare crisis that we have. Because I think people are also assuming you get HIV and AIDS, you're gonna be taken care of, somehow you're gonna be taken care of, but that's just not- - It's not true. And it's becoming less and less true every day. When there is flat funding for treatment and you have people getting newly infected every day and you have people living longer, it's simple math that, sooner or later, you have more month left at the end of the money. In this state, we're having discussions about waiting lists for coverage, for drugs. We're talking about rearranging the formulas for all sorts of public health benefits. And it creates a further fraying of the health delivery system that is already overburdened. - You know, another aspect of education, too, is whether you can reach every young person in every school with information about it in California. And I think in a number of other states, but not all of them, we're required to teach a unit in middle school and high school about HIV and AIDS, required. Not required to teach sex education, but schools can do it if they wish. And the curriculum has to be medically accurate, a lot of other things, there's enormous pushback from the conservative population about even giving information about HIV/AIDS. Do you have experience in terms of that aspect of education? - Well, you know, I'm often shocked when there is a deadly disease like HIV out there and we want to withhold information that can save young people's lives. I just get absolutely baffled how that works, how people kind of twist their brains to think that is a good idea. I'm of the opinion that we need to make sure that our young people have to have every single tool out there to protect themselves. That means they need to know about abstinence. That means they need to know about sexual responsibility. They need to know about delayed gratification. They need to know about condoms and dental dams and oral sex and all of those things because that kind of knowledge, the full spectrum of comprehensive prevention, is what's going to save people's lives, and while we can play the game that it's not going to happen to me or it's not going to happen to my child, it will, you know, it happened to me, it can happen to you. It can happen to anyone. And the only way that we can prevent that is to make sure that people have minimally, the information they need to protect themselves and the wherewithal to use that information. - You talked a little bit about how one community is affected and we say, well, I mean, I know when Reagan was president, we couldn't even get the attention of the federal government in terms of the fact that this was a gay disease, but a serious one. And then another community is affected and then another community and another, but let's expand a little bit on that and talk about how we got to where we are, both in the overall sort of American scene and especially I think in focus on the Black community, because that's the latest information. And also it seems like the most widely spread now. - Well, you know, it's kind of the coming together of two forces that kind of got us to where we are. Now, on the one hand, nobody wanted to talk about AIDS and the Black community certainly did not want to talk about AIDS. The Black community didn't want to take on yet another burden around this thing, the gay community was working understandably to make sure that people were focusing and the way to keep people focused, you know, was kind of to mobilize the community. And so you have this one group of folks who were being impacted by the disease that were in denial and kind of running away from the facts. Then the face of the disease was really all about this other group of folks, so that kind of supported the two things. And so we saw the caseloads rise in Black communities when people weren't looking, and so now we have a huge epidemic in Black communities at a time when we really do not have the kind of focus that we once had on the disease. The Black AIDS Institute has recently released a report called "Now is the time: "The state of AIDS and Black America" where we talk about what is happening in Black communities all over this country and how HIV and AIDS is devastating our communities and what are the policy and political implications. And finally, and most importantly, in my eye, what do we need to do about it? - Well, Phill, one of the things a couple years ago, when we looked at this issue of AIDS, one of the guests on the show, I can't even remember now who it was talking about the infection of women in communities of color, partly because men who were bisexual, but didn't identify as bisexual, wouldn't face that and were infecting women. I mean, I don't wanna do this us and them either, but can you talk a little about whether that was sort of mythology or how women began to be infected? - Well, I think, I mean, in the Black community, the phenomenon is called men on the down low, and what's interesting about that phenomenon is that people were led to believe that it was a uniquely Black phenomenon. And you know, obviously it wasn't. Can anyone say Governor McGreevey, for example. (both laughing) But separate from that, the way the discussion was handled, I think, was harmful. Because in that discussion is one of those places where sexual orientation and race kind of conspire to do overall harm. People are not talking about why it might be difficult for young Black men who discover that they're attracted to other men to disclose that in their communities, when you have hostile communities. At the same time, nobody wants to talk about why Black women who, when you poll, when you do surveys, show that most Black women, particularly in the age range that we're talking about, the 24 to 34, 24 to 44, know that HIV and AIDS is out there. They know that it's sexually transmitted, and why aren't they able to kind of protect themselves, to the same degree as other communities? There are all these factors that kind of go into play there. On the one hand, homophobia is an issue that makes it difficult for young Black men to disclose their same gender attraction. And so they go through these processes that do harm to themselves and potential harm to their partners, whether they're partners are male or female. At the same time, nobody was talking about AIDS and Black women at all, it's kind of, the damage was done because of the invisibility. And we have issues where the self-esteem of Black women was being attacked, and all of these issues that create kind of a perfect environment for HIV transmission. From my point of view, I think that the discussion should really be about figuring out how to protect yourself without regard to the gender of your partner or the gender of your partner's partners. Because when people, particularly as we look at this down-low phenomenon, when it was like, you see all these stories about how to tell if your man is sleeping with another man, as if the virus cares. The virus is as deadly if your partner gets it from heterosexual transmission or homosexual transmission, or through drug use. And so we need to figure out how to protect ourselves no matter what our partner is doing. - But if it's sexually transmitted, it seemed like I remember when Ruth Slaughter who was working with women and around domestic violence issues was really upset that there was no conversation about how rape or marital rape or partner rape figured into the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Because what choice do women have? Let's say they will insist. They have to insist that their partner use a condom. It's like, I wish there was some way for women to make the choice. And then you wouldn't have to worry about what the guy was doing. But so far, that's what we seem to have. So it all seemed, not just in the Black community, but it all seemed to kind of fit in together so that people were having trouble standing up for themselves to protect themselves and even thinking about the need to protect themselves. - No, I think that, again, it goes back to our earlier conversation about the them and us and that we are all better if we all in fact are encouraged to protect ourselves, when we're all told that, to use a cliche, if you will, we're all God's children. That God that was wreaking vengeance on gay people nearly 20 some years ago with HIV and AIDS is not the God I worship. My God thinks that all human beings have value. And so if that's so, then gay men need to have the tools they need to protect themselves. Black women need to have the tools they need to protect themselves. Prisoners need to have the tools they need to protect themselves. Young folks need to have the tools that they need to protect themselves. - So sort of started to have that conversation, but sort of where do we go from here? What would you see as the elements of, and some of them we may have touched on, but I think it's good to have 'em all in one package. What do you see as the elements of where we go from here, how we impact people's lack of knowledge, people's lack of education, even lack of treatment? - Well, I think on the macro, we really need to go back to some of the basics to remind people that this is your problem. You have to deal with it. One of the things that we're doing is mobilizing traditional Black institutions to say to folks, in some ways, just like it happened in the gay community, that if you are a Black institution, you have to deal with AIDS. If you're a Black organization, you have to deal with AIDS, because AIDS is a Black problem, you know? And so whether we're talking about Black media or Black elected officials, or Black civil rights organizations, or Black fraternities or sororities or community groups, everybody has got to deal with this issue. And it's through that kind of coordinated consciousness that we can bring about change. I do this thing in Black churches where I go and I ask folks, if you will, if you feel comfortable and you're living with HIV or AIDS, please stand up, and you get a few people stand up. And then I say, if you have something in your, someone in your immediate family, who's living with a disease or died from the disease. If you have a neighbor or a coworker or someone you went to school with, or your neighbor's child, your coworker's child. And I began to talk about folks, about the postman, and the mailman and the lawyer and the TV anchor person, and all of these people. And by the time I'm done, almost everyone in the church is standing up. The tragedy of that story is that we've gotten to the point that we all know someone who is either living with HIV/AIDS, who died from the disease. That breaks my heart, because it didn't have to be that way, but it's a powerful mobilizing tool, because it makes people understand that it is all of our problems. And the only way that we're gonna solve it is for all of us to participate in finding the solution. - Well in the gay community early on, it was a very radical thing to do to agitate about education and treatment for HIV/AIDS. It was the radicals, the progressives, who were doing it. In the Black community, are you viewed as that kind of a radical? I mean, are there people sitting in, are there people getting arrested? Are there people standing up for this or is it, is this a different time where the work is different? - I think it's a different time and the work is different. I think that it's a different community. And so we operate in different ways. My philosophy is that, and I didn't invent it or anything, but you meet people where they are. I mean, there's so much work that needs to be done, that we don't all need to do the same thing. And if you're not able to talk about condoms, I am, but maybe you can talk about treatment. Maybe you can talk about compassion. If you can't talk about treatment, I can. And so basically I view my job is to kind of get people engaged, because if we don't solve this problem, we are all in peril. It's really as simple as that, and the flip side of that is the lessons we learned in this struggle we can apply to so many other things. - Well, I know that your organization has done some PSAs about this. Tell a little about that, and then we're gonna show you one. - Well, I'm really excited that Black folks are stepping to the plate on this, around HIV and AIDS, particularly young hip hop artists and young Black Hollywood. So we've developed a PSA campaign that involves young Black celebrities from Hill Harper to Matthew St. Patrick, to Queen Latifah, to LL Cool J, to Snoop Dogg, to Missy Elliot, Alicia Keys, have all come together to participate in this AIDS awareness campaign beginning with encouraging people to get tested. We're gonna roll out a campaign that talks about getting treated. We're gonna roll out a campaign that talks about getting involved. We're partnering with Cable Positive to kind of distribute this campaign to cable networks all over the country. And it's just a really exciting effort. We're working with BET and TV One, and this campaign I'm very excited that it was so easy to get them engaged. Everyone said, when we came up with the idea, well, they won't want to do it. But you know what struck me is when we began to talk to the artist about the disease, person after person after person said, My brother has AIDS, my sister died from AIDS. My homie has HIV. And again, all of us now are kind of touched by this disease, but we're isolated because we're not talking about it. Danny Glover's brother has AIDS, Flex Alexander's brother died from AIDS. So it is something that is happening in our community and people are starting to turn around. And that makes me so proud. - Well, there's only 40 people in the State Senate, out of 35 million in California. One of my colleagues' brother died of AIDS. I mean, it is everywhere. And if we started to do what you were doing in the churches and said, do you know somebody? It would be everybody of the 40 of us. But I think it'd be good if we saw one of the PSAs, one that's sort of aimed at men and women. You have one specifically for men, one specifically for women. But this one is for both. We'll see it now. - There's a saying, it goes, When America catches a cold, Black folks get pneumonia. - You know what, that's exactly what's happening with HIV. - Over half of the people infected with HIV and AIDS in this country are Black. - HIV happens to us more than it does anybody else. - And you can put an end to that just by simply getting tested. Be safe, don't be sorry. - The more you know is the more you know. You don't know, you won't know. - Go get checked, make sure, breathe a little easier. Feel me? - Get tested for HIV, because if we don't step up, who will? - That's a good one, that's a good one. Are the other two like that too? - Yeah, there there's one about, only about women, and there's a short one with Maya talking about the disease and then there's one with the men. - Well, I think it's very powerful to have. I mean, it's an interesting thing to me, how people who are celebrities, no, more than celebrities, artists, musical artists, especially for, I think for young people, have so much power to say, this is the right thing to do. And I'm glad that they got engaged in it, but people who are doing, nothing bad about them, but the people doing the real work day to day, like you, have to really design the ways in which this is happening. Is there a national organization thinking about how to move us through the next 10 years? - Actually, there is. The Black AIDS Institute of course is working on mobilizing Black communities. We are part of a coalition of organizations that includes the National Black Commission on AIDS, BLCA, which is based in New York City. Its executive director is Deborah Fraser-Howze. It includes the Balm in Gilead, which focuses on Black churches, and its executive director is Pernessa Seele, the Magic Johnson Foundation, and ICASO, which is a coalition of AIDS service organizations that have African American executive directors. We have all come together to form a group called The National Black AIDS Mobilization. And the goal of that coalition is actually to do exactly what you said: to strategize from a national perspective on how to mobilize know Black folks. And you're right about the power of celebrity, but the power of the individual and the everyday person earlier, we were talking about young people and one of the campaigns that we are engaged in involves students on historically Black college campuses. And we've developed the first national magazine that is written and edited and published by students on historically Black college campuses. And they have launched a campaign, a t-shirt campaign called, Got AIDS? The front of the t-shirts asked the question, Got AIDS? Kind of like the got milk commercial. And the back of the t-shirts asked the question, How do you know? That's the campaign being done by students for students on college campuses. So I guess the take-home message for me is that there is something for every one of us to do. And it's important for every one of us to do that thing that we can do. - February's Black History Month, used to be Black History Week. Now it's Black History Month. That's a step up. And it's a long history in this country and a painful history in many ways, but also a triumphant history. And this is part of the latest chapter. It seems to me that the community, like many beleaguered communities, has overcome a lot of this, or just, you know, lived with it and has taught us a lot. I remember when we were talking just about the gay community and how the gay community was fighting AIDS and you were deeply involved in that effort, how the community not only was taking care of its own, but in many ways was setting an example about how to articulate the issues, how to fight for the issues. What do you see? I'm just gonna ask you because you know the answers to virtually everything, what do you see as the, in the experience of the Black community over the past 200 years here that will help that community get through this issue as well? - That we know that we're going to survive. We have a rich history that tells us that we're going to survive and we have survived because we fundamentally understand that everybody counts, that we don't have anybody that we can spare. And if the Black community has any power or lesson that I would wish upon all of America, it would be that lesson, that we don't have anybody to spare, all of us counts and that's the only way that we're going to survive. - And I know that, you know, Dr. King emphasized telling the truth. He was about a lot of good stuff, and he became part of all of our lives. And to me, one of his most powerful messages was about telling the truth, writing from jail. His letter, which was just published on the occasion of his birthday, again. A lot of people, they know that I Have A Dream speech, but they don't know this letter. And it seemed to me that in his very firm but respectful way about issues, he really emphasized telling the truth. And it seems to me, that's a lesson in this area as well. - Well, because the truth is the only way. The cliche, the truth will set you free is very true, you know, not to be redundant with the phrase, but we can't get through this, unless we are able to see the truth. And unless we have the courage to look at the truth, because by looking at the truth, we see our way through it. We figure out what we have to do. And for far too long, particularly in Black communities, but not just Black communities, AIDS has been one of those things that we've not been willing to look at. We've not been willing to tell the truth. We've not been willing to say, our community has as much sexual diversity as any other community. That HIV in fact is a problem in our community and we have to deal with it, and that we have to deal with issues around domestic violence and issues around gender disparities and issues around sexual orientation and economic disparities. All of those issues are issues that we have to deal with in a Black context. What we have to deal with is a society of the whole. - Well, part of this truth-telling thing, I know that the LGBT community began encouraging coming out. It's very much the same with HIV/AIDS. You don't necessarily know that a person is infected by looking at them. You don't know that a person is gay by looking at them. So what we were saying was you need to take power over this yourself, and you need to tell people, this is who I am. Has there been any move similar? I was struck by what you were saying you did in churches, in getting people to participate. Maybe we need national coming out day or national coming out week about HIV/AIDS too. - Or a disclosure campaign, exactly. I think that the campaign with the students is the beginning of that. That that's what they were trying to get at, that you can't tell when someone has HIV, even though one of the myths is that you can, and that we certainly are focusing on encouraging people to tell the truth about either their own HIV status or how HIV and AIDS has touched their lives. And that's beginning in communities, it's beginning at high-profile celebrity levels across the board. - Well, I think that's part of the education piece of it too. Do you see any change or action that we need to engage in in order to make the government more responsive or our sets of governments more responsive? - Well, I definitely think that we need to make sure that our government does not forget that there's still a domestic AIDS epidemic, and that we're not distracted into believing that you have to do the global or the domestic, it's a Sophie's choice. We in fact can do both. It's a false paradigm, we have to do both. - Well, and do we have borders around this stuff? I mean, it's a funny thing to talk about whether we- - Well be careful, because they might go there. - That's right. I mean, this is about only, you know, AIDS is out there. We've taken care of it here. That's where the money should go. Although all that money he promised never showed up anyway. But what's the relationship between the global epidemic and the American epidemic. - HIV has no respect for the person or border or any of that kind of stuff, you know? So as long as it is active, anywhere it's active everywhere. And so, it's kind of this game. I dunno if you remember as a kid, there was this, I remember there's this popup game where you press it here and it would come up here. That's what happens with HIV. And that's why, when you ask the question, what do we need to be doing? We need to be mindful that we can fight this disease and have to fight this disease in order for the domestic as well as the global. I think that we need to pay attention to the demographic shifts that are happening with this disease, as it impacts the domestic epidemic. I think within Black communities in particular, we have to take responsibility for ending this disease in our communities. And I think particularly for the gay or lesbian community, I was in those rooms when we said that we were not going to stop until it was over. And a few drugs that work some of the time for some of the folks does not a cure make. It's not over. We're all still desperately needed in the front lines in the battle against HIV and AIDS. - So what would you say to this audience? Obviously the only people hearing us right now are the people watching us right now. But it's a significant group around the country. So to each individual that's watching, what would be your advice or your request or your demand? What should they do? - I would say, first of all, to get back into the fight, I mean, so many folks have left the fight. You know, it's not over, we have to keep our promise to be there until it is over. Certainly to re-energize and to mobilize and to get back active, to hold our government accountable. It is our government, it really is. It's our country, and I'm sorry, you don't get to abdicate that responsibility by buying a bumper sticker saying "Not in my name." We have to be engaged every step of the way over the next four years or eight years or 12 years or whatever, it doesn't matter who's in the White House or who's the head of the Senate or who's the head of the House of Representatives. It is our house, it's the people's house. And so we need to make sure our voices are heard and we need to hold our government accountable. - What about individual action? - I think individually, folks need to make sure that they continue to protect themselves. If you're not HIV positive, you have a responsibility to make sure that you don't get infected. If you are HIV positive, you need to make sure that your virus stops with you. That you don't infect another person. And all of us need to make sure that we keep this issue in its appropriate place that we keep talking about the, about the disease individually. - You say, get tested to them too. - Oh, absolutely, everybody should get informed, know the facts. Everybody should get tested. Everybody should get involved. - So do you feel hopeful? - I'm always hopeful. You know that. - I know that. - I'm always hopeful. - I know, but you have to say why, because you know, sometimes, I mean, I don't know really who's watching the show. But there may be some people that are saying to themselves, you know, that's easy for him to say. Look, he's sitting there all successful and everything. And he thinks a good deal of himself, but I don't know about myself, but they don't know your history. And where you came from, and your own struggle and that you have been hopeful, but you've also made some of that hope happen. Tell me why you're hopeful now. - Well, I mean, I'm hopeful because I was supposed to be dead 22 years ago. 24 years, I've been living with HIV. 14 years of full-blown AIDS. And I'm still here. Hope is an important tool in the HIV arsenal. I'm hopeful because, I don't know. My friend Sheryl Lee Ralph says every day above the ground is a good day. And no matter how bad it gets or can get, the fact that we're still here and we can still say no, or we can still turn it around, we can still win. That makes me hopeful. I'm hopeful because I worship a God that is a compassionate, caring, loving God. That makes me hopeful. I'm hopeful because I really do believe that, in America, in our goodness, and despite the way that gets twisted every single day and it makes me crazy, and I'm not talking about that kind of imperialistic America, I'm talking about kind of the promise of America. Maybe it's a promise that we've not been able to meet yet, but that makes me hopeful because it's a promise that's there. - Well, one of the reasons I'm hopeful is because I've seen you working on this for years and what an impact you've made and people that you've worked with and people you've inspired and people who've inspired you. And it is true. I feel very much the same way. During the Vietnam war when there was the bumper stickers that said, "America, love it or leave it," I made a bumper sticker that said, "America, if you love it, you work to fix it." - [Phill] That's right. - And we're participants and you're participants too. We're really happy that you joined us for this show. I want you to remember that this is a serious epidemic in our country, in our communities, in the Black community. I don't want you to "Get Used to It". I want you to do something about it. (upbeat music)