White House's Douglas Brooks Discusses Updating the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

Douglas M. Brooks, MSW, Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy

Recently, I had the chance to speak with Mr. Douglas Brooks, MSW, Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, about the update to the National HIV/AIDS Strategy he and his team have been developing. Below are his remarks.

Participate in ACE TA Center Needs Assessment

Myrlene Charles assists Farah Smith in an ACA needs assessment as she signs up for health insurance

The Affordable Care Enrollment (ACE) TA Center is conducting a needs assessment to learn more about successes and challenges to help eligible Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) clients get enrolled in health coverage use their coverage and stay enrolled.

Let's Not Forget Northern Racism—the Kind That Almost Gutted Fair Housing

Jakarl Frasier prays in front of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where white supremacist Dylann Roof, according to his confession, murdered nine black congregants on June 17. The physical brutality of this Southern crime has arguably obscured the bureaucratic, Northern racism in a landmark fair housing case the Supreme Court ruled on June 25.

Outside the former Confederacy, the massacre in Charleston confirms some people's worst fears about the American South as a sort of moral Superfund site, with toxic dust still hanging in the air from centuries of slavery, repression and state-sanctioned terrorism. Just take the setting: a city whose harbor took in four of every 10 enslaved black people between 1700 and the founding of the American republic in 1776, and then hosted the attack on Fort Sumter 85 years later. In a state that flies a Confederate battle flag on the Capitol grounds. And a black church. A black church! That most open of sanctuaries, having forgiven so many Southern terrorist attacks before this one.

In This Issue

There is an old con game where you distract the "mark" with a shiny object while robbing him blind. Black people need to be careful about the current conversation about race. It's the shiny object meant to distract and we must resist less we get bamboozled.

All Black Lives Mattered at the 16th Heroes in the Struggle Gala

Heroes in the Struggle

The Black AIDS Institute held its 16th Heroes in the Struggle Gala June 18, 2015, at the Directors Guild of America in Beverly Hills, Calif. The event honored a diverse group of individuals who embody the organization's motto, "Our people, our struggle, our problem."