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AIDS group criticizes Obama as int’l conference approaches
Others praise administration, call attacks ‘misplaced’
Tom Myers, chief of public affairs and general counsel for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (Blade photo by Michael Key)
President Obama is facing criticism from an HIV/AIDS group for not yet committing to speak at the upcoming International AIDS Conference and not doing more to confront the global and domestic epidemic. Other groups, meanwhile, are calling the criticism of Obama misguided.
On Monday, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation held a news conference in D.C. at the offices of Parry, Romani, DeConcini & Symms Associates to call on Obama to speak at the conference and take more action to confront HIV/AIDS. The organization provides advocacy and medical care to more than 166,000 people with HIV/AIDS in 26 countries.
Tom Myers, chief of public affairs and general counsel for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, was particularly critical of Obama for not yet confirming that he’ll make an appearance at the upcoming 19th International AIDS Conference, which will will take place at D.C.’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center during the week of July 22.
“We are here to express our concern and dismay that, less than two weeks from the start of the conference, President Obama has yet to commit to attending it,” Myers said. “In the 20-odd year history of this conference, it is virtually obligatory for the head of state of the host nation to address the conference at its opening.”
It’s the first time since 1990 that the conference will take place in the United States. Organizers agreed to hold the conference in D.C. after the lifting of the HIV travel ban in 2009, which had prevented HIV-positive foreign nationals from entering the United States. The process for removing the ban started under the Bush administration through legislative action and ended under the Obama administration.
As of Monday, the conference hadn’t yet announced whether it had received confirmation that Obama would speak. Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said he had no updates on whether Obama will attend the conference.
Former President Bill Clinton has agreed to speak at the conference this year as well as former first lady Laura Bush. High-ranking administration officials who are set to speak include Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.
It’s not unprecedented for the head of state to be absent from the conference, according to organizers. The Canadian prime minister didn’t speak when the conferences were held in that country in 1996 in Vancouver or 2006 in Toronto, nor did Spain’s prime minister attend the 2002 conference in Barcelona. In 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush didn’t address the conference in San Francisco, but then-Secretary of Health & Human Services Louis Sullivan delivered remarks at the closing ceremony.
While criticizing Obama for not confirming his attendance, Myers at the same time said the administration wasn’t doing enough to confront HIV/AIDS and said “it may be better if the president not attend the conference if he is coming without any concrete proposals to fix these problems.”
For starters, Myers criticized the president for cutting funds in the fight against the global AIDS epidemic, calling on Obama to restore the money that was cut from PEPFAR, as part of the fiscal year 2013 budget request.
“Internationally, the Obama administration is the first administration to actually propose cutting funding to America’s efforts, including cutting almost half a billion dollars from PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” Myers said. “A retreat in the efforts to fight the global epidemic is unprecedented.”
The sentiment that Obama has taken a step back in global fight against HIV/AIDS was echoed by Omonigho Ufomata, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s director of global policy and advocacy.
“We demand he restore funding to PEPFAR and expand treatment prior to addressing the International AIDS Conference,” Ufomata said. “We have a blueprint for stopping AIDS, i.e get more people on treatment, but that can only be achieved if President Obama gets real about the money.”
Further, Myers faulted Obama for not providing enough support to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, the primary program for providing lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to low-income people, saying the wait list for the programs stands at 2,000 people.
“Domestically, President Obama has presided over the longest and deepest waiting lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP in history,” Myers said. “ADAP is the primary program for providing lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to uninsured people of limited means in this country and for years, thousands of people, at one point almost 10,000 people, have had to wait to receive these drugs.”
Myers called on Obama to redirect funds within the Department of Health & Human Services “to immediately end the ADAP waitlists once and for all.”
Despite these criticisms, Obama has generally received praise for his work on HIV/AIDS. On World AIDS Day in December, President Obama announced an additional $35 million for the ADAP program and $15 million more for Part C of the Ryan White Care Program as well as a three-year, $4 billion pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Additionally, under the FY-13 budget request, funding for the Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Program would increase by $75 million. The budget also bumps up $1 billion for AIDS drug assistance programs, an increase of $67 million above the previous fiscal year’s levels. The administration is predicting this funding will end ADAP waiting lists next year.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said PEPFAR is able to accomplish more with less money in previous years as the number of people the United States directly supports with lifesaving antiretroviral treatment has more than doubled from around 1.7 million to more than 3.9 million.
“PEPFAR continues to improve efficiency and lower costs,” the official said. “By using generic drugs, shipping commodities more cheaply, task-shifting to nurses and community health workers as appropriate, and linking AIDS services to other programs (such as maternal and child health), the per-patient cost to the U.S. of providing anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS patients has fallen by over 50 percent since 2008.”
Based on this commitment, the leaders of other HIV/AIDS groups said they didn’t share the criticisms levied against Obama by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, said he’s still hoping Obama will make an appearance at the AIDS conference, but believes the criticism is “misplaced” and should be directed elsewhere.
“We feel the president has been leading on domestic AIDS and has put forth an ambitious National HIV/AIDS Strategy, passed health care reform, and proposed budget increases for ADAP and HIV prevention,” Schmid said. “While he could always do more, we feel the criticism is misplaced and instead the focus should be on some members of the Congress, many of whom want to repeal health reform and cut funding to AIDS programs.”
Chris Collins, vice president and director of public policy for the Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR, said Obama has “greatly advanced” the domestic response to HIV.
“His national strategy, the Affordable Care Act — these are game changers in the domestic epidemic, so we should be proud of what the president has done on domestic AIDS,” Collins said.
Collins added he wants “to see increases” in PEPFAR funding, but said Obama has made historic commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and “new and more substantial commitments in terms of scaling up services.”
Asked by the Washington Blade during the news conference if Obama deserves credit for increasing funds for the Ryan White Care Program, Myers said Obama deserves some praise, but more is needed.
“The problem is, again, even with that, the ADAP waiting list – and ADAP is a part of the Ryan White Program — it’s chronic, it’s ongoing. … So, again, increases that have occurred, credit is where credit is due, but the point is, it is not enough,” Myers said.
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who joined the conference via telephone, dismissed Obama’s increase in funds for the Ryan White Care Program on the basis that a minority percentage of people with HIV/AIDS are in regular care under the program.
“We are sending out a really mixed message when we have more waiting lists for these drug programs and we’re telling people that they should be tested,” Weinstein said. “I mean, why would they want to get tested when they don’t know if they can have access to treatment? But the bottom line is that to have only 41 percent of people in routine care and having more than 600,000 people who either don’t know that they’re positive or are not in routine care is not a success.”
Weinstein added his organization has tried “without a lot of success” to enlist help from the administration in bringing down the cost of medications, saying the federal government could offer more support “in negotiations with the drug companies to make these drugs more accessible.”
Blade photo editor Michael Key contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An initial version of this article misquoted the AIDS Institute’s Carl Schmid as saying the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s criticisms of Obama were “misguided.” The word he used was “misplaced.” The Blade regrets the error.
National
Blade reporters reflect on covering Pulse massacre 10 years ago
Orlando stepped up to comfort and support its LGBTQ community
Friday marks 10 years since a gunman killed 49 people inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
The massacre, which, at the time was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, left the LGBTQ community in this country and around the world reeling. It also prompted renewed calls for gun control.
The OnePulse Foundation, which Pulse owner Barbara Poma founded after the massacre, raised upwards of $20 million for a memorial that never materialized.
The city of Orlando in 2023 purchased the Pulse property for $2 million. Crews earlier this year demolished the former nightclub. The city of Orlando has pledged $12 million for a permanent memorial that is scheduled to open in 2027.
Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff and International News Editor Michael K. Lavers reported from Orlando in the days after the massacre. Here are their reflections a decade later.
Describe the scene when you arrived in Orlando. Where did you go first?
NAFF: Most mainstream reporters headed for the Pulse nightclub, but it was already roped off with police keeping bystanders at least a full city block away. Instead, I hurried to The Center, Orlando’s LGBTQ community center, downtown. I expected to find it locked down with tight security but instead the doors were flung open and everyone inside was busy at work. No tears, just dedicated staff and volunteers working the phones to secure visas and free plane tickets for relatives of the victims. The director gave me a tour and in the back storage room were pallets and pallets of bottled water stacked to the ceiling. When I asked what all the water was for, he said the city had issued a call for blood donations and the lines to donate were 1,500 deep in 100-degree heat. So The Center drove around to all the sites to deliver water to all those standing in line.
That scene was so inspiring and a testament to the strength and resiliency of the LGBTQ community. We’d seen tragedy before and knew how to respond.
LAVERS: I arrived in Orlando about 14 hours after the massacre took place. The city was shellshocked.
Equality Florida, the state’s LGBTQ advocacy group, and other organizations held a press conference at The Center shortly after my flight from D.C. landed. I drove there from the airport. Terry DeCarlo, who was The Center’s executive director at the time, along with then-Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith and others spoke on behalf of a community that was reeling. The Center at the press conference handed out business cards that read, “You matter.” I had it in my wallet when I drove to a makeshift memorial that was a block from Pulse — the police had cordoned off the area immediately around the nightclub. A local resident who I interviewed told me that she did not know if her friends who were at Pulse when the gunman opened fire survived. Another person with whom I spoke shared a similar story.
A torrential downpour began shortly after I arrived. The storm was an apt metaphor for the raw emotion of that horrific day.
What’s your most prominent memory of covering the Pulse massacre?
NAFF: I was covering a vigil in downtown Orlando when then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s motorcade arrived unannounced. To that point, he had not addressed the LGBTQ angle and seemed to be downplaying the fact that this was an attack on our community. I hurried to the front row as he held an impromptu news conference. To my dismay, he took only three short questions from TV reporters then rushed away. I grabbed his communications director and insisted that Scott take a question from the LGBTQ media. She agreed and told me to wait next to the SUV. When Scott approached, I asked him, “What is your message to LGBTQ Floridians?”
To my surprise, he sputtered, stammered, and broke into tears before telling me, “This was an attack, what else can you say? This was an attack against the gays, an attack against Hispanics, an attack against our country, our nation and it’s disgusting. The biggest thing we do now is ask how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
It was his first public acknowledgment that the LGBTQ community was the target of the attack.
LAVERS: Two moments stand out for me.
The first moment is when then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Orlando on June 16, four days after the massacre. I was one of the reporters who the White House asked to be part of the local press pool. I was about 50 feet away from Obama and Biden when they placed bouquets with 49 flowers — one for each of the victims — at a makeshift memorial between City Hall and the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando. Obama in remarks he made to the press pool mentioned one of the gay victims who had once said, “We cannot be afraid.” The emotions of the last four days simply became too much, and I broke down. Another reporter who was part of the press pool who was standing next to me realized I had broken down. She put her hand on my back to console me.
The second moment came a few weeks later when I was in Puerto Rico to cover the community’s response to the massacre and to interview victims’ relatives. Orlando has a very large Puerto Rican community, and nearly half of those who died at Pulse were of Puerto Rican descent.
I drove to Caguas, a city that is roughly 20 miles south of San Juan, the island’s capital, on July 7, and interviewed Aida Velázquez in her small apartment. Her son, Frankie “Jimmy” de Jesús, died at Pulse. Aida talked about her son, and she showed me pictures of him. Jimmy also danced Jíbaro, a Puerto Rican folk dance. The interview took place less than a month after the massacre — Jimmy’s funeral took place in Caguas less than two weeks earlier.
I sat in my car after the interview and sobbed uncontrollably for nearly five minutes. Nothing can possibly prepare you for interviewing a mother who had just lost her child in the most horrific way possible.
How did the local community respond and what about their response gave you hope or inspiration?
NAFF: In addition to the staff at The Center working to assist victims and their families, everyday Orlando residents stepped up to help however they could. At the downtown vigils, straight mothers and fathers carried signs offering hugs to anyone who needed them. I encountered a group of young teenage males who approached a group of law enforcement officers and appeared to perform for them. When they finished, I asked what they were doing and they told me that they were straight friends who lived in Orlando and wanted to do something to help so they composed an uplifting rap song and walked around performing it for anyone who needed cheering up.
LAVERS: The way that Orlando rallied around the LGBTQ community was simply inspiring.
Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, at a memorial service that took place at the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center on June 13 said his organization was “united as Americans when it comes to standing with the LGBT community and their rights to live freely and to practice their lives here.” This comment underscored the outpouring of support that Orlando showed its LGBTQ community after Pulse. It was also a call for the better angels among us to reject hate in all of its forms.
What surprised you most about the experience?
NAFF: I was most surprised — and moved — after talking to Rev. Debreita Taylor of Oasis Fellowship Ministries, an LGBTQ-affirming ministry.
“My message is love. Period. Love. Period. There’s nothing in the word of God that faith leaders can go to that teaches hate,” she told me. “Have faith and believe that evil and hate can be eradicated one person at a time. How do you treat someone? How do you embrace someone who treats you wrong? We all bleed, laugh, hope and have great victories and major defeats. And so, you know me, even if you don’t know my name — I’m you.”
LAVERS: It admittedly took me quite a while to fully process what I experienced in Orlando — I was focused on doing my job as a reporter, which was to cover the story, and, most importantly, show the human impact of what had happened. I suppose one surprising aspect of the time I spent in Orlando was that I found myself feeling more defiant against those who seek to destroy our community. They want us to live in fear, and I refuse to give them that satisfaction.
What, if anything, changed as a result of Pulse?
NAFF: In the immediate aftermath of the attack, queer spaces began rethinking their approach to security, which has served us well in the years since. Sadly, just a year later, Pulse was bumped to the No. 2 deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history when a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, killing 60 people. Americans and their politicians never learn from these largely preventable tragedies. The carnage continues.
LAVERS: Gun violence remains a shameful scourge in this country. Our community remains vulnerable to violence and discrimination. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other politicians here in Washington, around the country, and overseas continue to use our community to advance an anti-equality agenda. The carnage continues, as my colleague correctly notes, but our community remains strong and defiant. That gives me hope.
National
Queen Jean is Tony’s first transgender winner
Designer/activist wins for work on ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’
It was a historic night at the 79th annual Tony Awards on Sunday as Queen Jean won the award for Best Costume Design of a Musical, making her the first out transgender person to win a Tony.
“This experience has been monumental. We are here for the legacy of queer people, trans people,” she said. “We are taking up space in ways we have to take up space. We have to shift the paradigm. So I just want to say, thank you all so much for this incredible honor. The world right now is deeply, deeply combating so many ailments, and we know as a society that when we come together, we can make real, permanent change.”
She won the award for her work on “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” and was also nominated for best costume design of a play for “Liberation.”
In addition to her stage work, Queen Jean is the founder of Black Trans Liberation, an organization that supports trans and gender-nonconforming people in New York City.
National
Madonna turns Times Square into massive dance floor
Pop icon celebrates Pride month with surprise performance
Pop icon Madonna celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday to the delight of 50,000 fans.
She performed for about 15 minutes high above street level, including several songs from her new album “Confessions II” due on July 3, along with a trio of songs from the first “Confessions on a Dance Floor.”
In addition to the brand new “Love Sensation,” she performed “I Feel So Free” and “Bring Your Love,” plus “Hung Up,” “Get Together” and “I Love New York.” She wished the crowd a happy Pride season; the event was shared with audiences through Grindr’s first-ever livestream.
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