Rejuvenate, Revitalize, Remember, or Did We?
By Joel de Vera Moncada

This year's United States Conference on AIDS (USCA) afforded a good amount of rest and relaxation at a first-rate resort hotel, unfortunately the conference theme, "Rejuvenate, Revitalize, Remember," failed to resonate throughout.  As a new face to HIV service field, USCA was my first national convening to listen and learn from AIDS service organizations (ASO) from all regions of the United States.  Attending without any expectations, the conference fell short in empowering me about how I can better serve Asian and Pacific Islander men who have sex with men (MSM) and queer youth. Despite my overall impression of USCA, a few themes spark my thoughts and experience, specifically seclusion and storytelling.

At an early plenary, a forthright tension ignited from gay Black Men about financial resources and their communities greatly affected with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  From my understanding, much of this tension was forwarded to Black Women, who too are in need of our limited financial resources.  What disturbs me about this confrontation is the unnecessary reoccurrence of "Oppression Olympics,” the sentiment that one community is more oppressed than the next.   As a provider for the Asian and Pacific Islander community, we too are struggling with HIV/AIDS killing our communities. We must remember that these conferences are not to seclude and fight each other, but align our issues to collaborate together.

Furthermore,   throughout the conference I could not help but be reminded of Beverly Tatum’s, “Why are all the [Asian] Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”  The intent behind this statement is not too attack other communities present at the conference, but to respectfully share the visible division of communities of color. I found myself particularly networking with other Asian and Pacific Islander AIDS service organizations impart due to our relatively small attendance.  One might call this personally isolating myself from other ASOs of color; on the other hand, it was necessary for me to connect our work serving Asian and Pacific Islanders.  With this said, I do hope, as other A&PI HIV providers have told me about previous USCAs, we can be a bigger presence in the continuing years, not to fight for resources, but to voice the stories of the people we serve. 

Luckily while the conference did have its uncomfortable moments, they were times I personally found profoundly significant to share.  I attended a well prepared presentation about how collaboratively youth and providers can approach legislators to raise awareness about young people affected by HIV/AIDS.  In this workshop, it was a delightful moment to count more youth than providers in attendance.  Secondly, one youth shared her stories fighting HIV/AIDS, even disclosing to us that her infection came from her birth mother. As a youth provider, I have yet to experience working with young people living with HIV.  For me, her story shook me in a way that propelled me to think critically about doing HIV/AIDS prevention work. While I am doing prevention on a direct-individual level, how can I think larger about HIV prevention and doing prevention with young-positives?  It stories like hers that I believe should impact all of us to question who is more oppressed by HIV/AIDS than the other.

In closing, what I must remember about USCA is that HIV/AIDS does not discriminate along age, race, gender, sexuality, and/or class and with that knowledge alone we cannot afford to discriminate against each other.  Every community is hit with HIV/AIDS! Therefore, we must listen and learn from these stories so we can better serve and save. 

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USCA Title Waves
By Anthony Huynh

Perhaps the title of this report may seem misleading; don’t get me wrong, there were no hurricane, no thunderstorm and lucky for us there were no tsunami, phew! The conference was held in the luxurious (to me it is) Westin Diplomat Hotel (and yes I did get my STARWOOD POINTS!)  in Hollywood Florida, about 2 miles south of Fort Lauderdale and 12 miles north of South Beach Miami, a great place that match the theme of the conference “Rejuvenate, Revitalize, Remember”.  Throughout the conference I feel exactly just that, each day I feel rejuvenated after my relaxation in the huge tub (in my hotel room) filled with hot water and bubbles, I feel revitalized after a long afternoon break on the beach gazing at the clear blue calm water with my head cleared and freed from every stressful aspect of life (until my alarm rang and remind me the next session starts in 5 minutes) and that short moment of peace just eliminated a life time of stress for me.   Yet the most important thing about this conference for me is the part about  remember-ed-ing the segment of each day; one that make me feel embarrassed, up set, intimidated, belittled, and very little joy, and that is the title of people I bumped into at the conference, there were Researchers, PH.D, Doctors, LCSW, MSW, MPH, MA, Data Analyst, Evaluators, Executive Directors, Directors, Project Managers, Project Officers, Chairs, Co-Chairs, President, Epidemiologists and the list go on and on with some that I couldn’t even pronounce.

My point of all this is almost every workshops I attended were filled with the people whose title attached to their names and the hundreds slide of graphs with red, blue, yellow and all the color you can imagine with lines that goes up and down and some oddly shaped I thought were bad motor skilled; but to them these represents a pattern with numerical “data” collected which tell them some information about the study “participants” and some called it “subjects” behavioral trends that allow them to analyze and draw conclusion about a certain “population”.  As I sat there and listen patiently as they go through their sophisticated slides created using expensive software from their million dollar (don’t quote me, from what I saw and heard it looks like that) “scientifically sound” research project and replacing people with terms like “subjects” “variables” “values” and Elements” I can’t help it but feeling intimidated, in due part because it made me realized that I am not academically trained enough to ask question or interpret their data.  Embarrassed because the presenter gave me that look as if I were too stupid to understand his research and refer me back to his 25th slide after I asked him a question about the people (demographic) made up of his research which he referred to as “study subjects” and I am upset at the fact that these highly educated people with big titles and their research has failed to show me any impact made through their so call “scientifically sound” research.  But what I get is their common answer “hopefully these numbers will inform us to conduct better research in the future” (great, more research is exactly what we need; eyes rolled).  At the moment I felt a sense of lost, frustration, and really sad because I don’t see enough of frontline staff at this conference, I don’t see enough of practical skill building workshop, I don’t see forum for frontline staff to meet and exchange information, shared best practices and I don’t mean the kind that in the form of research but on the streets, in the bars, in shooting alley, sex clubs, bathhouses, tell their stories, tell their experiences, challenges and the great impact they’ve made on people’s lives.  I am tired of hearing researchers presented on same repeated theme about drugs and its impact on people’s behavior and they all came up with the same conclusion with different wording.  I am tired of hearing program managers, program directors, complaining about the lack of resources while they praise million dollar research that has very little or no impact on the people they serve.

Ok, so now that my ranting is out of the way.  Here is my highlight of the conference.  Finally a sense of hope; Sunday afternoon session titled “The evolution of a Transgender HIV Prevention Program into a Rapid Testing Project, TIPS (Transgender, Intervention and Prevention Services)”.   Based in South Beach Miami Florida, the project coordinator, Leslie Mena was one of the presenters.  Leslie is a self identified Transgender woman from Cuba, she was pretty, she was humorous, she was sincere, and she was a person of inspiration to me.  Leslie presentation did not involve any computer slides or any numbers, or any scientific conclusion.  Her presentation was purely about the transgender persons that she spend night after night late hours trying to educate them about HIV/STDs, protect them from being harassed by the police, shelter them in safe houses, support them with groups and help them get off the streets by training them one by one how to get regular jobs.  This was a heart felt moment for me, an eye opener by hearing how dedicated Leslie is and how creative she was with the little funding that she has to work with.  And it daunting to me when I think about the million dollar research that made little or no impact on the people that participate in the study (transgender included) but a small funded program like the one Leslie created made a whole world of difference for the transgender persons living in South Beach Florida.  At the end of the presentation, Leslie said something that is so simple, yet so profound that actually shed tears to my eyes is when she said “when you want to serve/help the Transgender or any body you do it with love, start from your heart and find the funding to meet their needs and not what they have to do to meet the funding criteria”.  I felt like lightening just hit me and I can’t help it but feeling shamed because I wonder if I too lost that sense of connectedness to the community that I serve.

With that said, in my conclusion I want to acknowledge NMAC for putting on this conference and ensuring the diversity of attendees.  At the same time I also feel responsible for the lack of presence of my co-workers who are frontline staff who could have benefit greatly at this conference.  This conference can be a source of inspiration for some and to me its another year of titles and research.  So the lesson learned for me is, its not the titles that counts but the work that come from the heart often makes huge difference that went unnoticed.  As corny as that sound, this simple philosophy changed my life.

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