Reborn ACT-UP Chapter Takes Fight to the Bosses

[Le Libérer]

(https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/811/t/3678/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=5875)


‘An Issue for All Workers’
(http://www.ucpanews.com/index.php/national/207-an-issue-for-all-workers.pdf)
(http://www.ucpanews.com/index.php/national/207-an-issue-for-all-workers.html?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=)
(http://www.ucpanews.com/index.php/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&link=aHR0cDovL3d3dy51Y3BhbmV3cy5jb20vaW5kZXgucGhwL 25hdGlvbmFsLzIwNy1hbi1pc3N1ZS1mb3ItYWxsLXdvcmtlcnM uaHRtbA%3D%3D)

http://www.ucpanews.com/images/stories/wpa20100315protest.gifMembers of Shreveport ACT-UP protest Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s cuts to HIV/AIDS health care funding.

Reborn ACT-UP Chapter Takes Fight to the Bosses

SHREVEPORT, La., Mar. 12 — ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, has been resurrected here to protest Republican Governor Bobby Jindal’s cuts to health care.
ACT-UP held its first protest against Jindal’s budget cuts while he was speaking to a group of people at the Summer Grove Baptist (Church) Activity Center on Feb. 26. These cuts not only affect HIV/AIDS clients, but workers statewide. Those without any health insurance will suffer the most.
Jindal is gutting state-funded public health services, including HIV/AIDS services and other health departments within Louisiana (addiction treatment, mental health, Medicaid, public hospitals, etc.), all of which are utilized by people who are uninsured or underinsured. In addition, many services are being privatized, closing them off, for all practical purposes, to workers and poor, due to lack of resources and/or insurance.

Currently, the state gives only $374,000 to HIV/AIDS health services, which is after Jindal already cut the budget once and is only a drop in the proverbial bucket. This amount is expected to be cut again (by up to double last year’s cut) in the 2010-11 budget.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the federal government doubled its funding to the state, giving $6 for every dollar the state provides. Now, Washington is claiming Louisiana has “recovered,” so it is returning to the previous funding level. As a result, the state is losing over $340 million in funding.

Moreover, because so many of the state’s working poor were permanently relocated outside of the state, the federal funds, which are based on poverty rates, will be even less.
Because Jindal has chosen to make working people a target of his cuts and privatization schemes, ACT-UP (including supporters of the Workers Party) has made Jindal a target of protests. “Sitting down for a nice little chat with our lawmakers isn’t going to force the issue,” organizers said. “Getting in the faces of the media, civil disobedience, staging shocking demonstrations is what’s going to bring attention to the issue.”
At the Shreveport event, Jindal argued that his budget did not cut higher education and protects critical health care services “without raising taxes on families and businesses.” What he didn’t say, but ACT-UP did, is that Louisiana is not matching federal funds for the state’s HIV/AIDS health program, meaning that the amount of federal matching funds will shrink — not just for HIV/AIDS care, but also for Medicaid and the state’s Department of Public Health.
In addition, the privatization of public health care facilities, like the Pines Treatment Center, for the sake of lining the pockets of his friends and campaign contributors has locked out poor and working people seeking necessary treatment, and pushed them away from getting care in the future.
The crisis among poor and working people, especially those suffering from HIV, is at a critical point. “When I step into that office every morning,” writes one HIV case manager, “I am in a MASH unit. I have 20 calls waiting for me;... if I’m lucky, I can follow through with maybe four or five of them... The next day I walk into the same scenario.”

These cuts clearly affect those living with HIV/AIDS. But just as importantly, with the cuts to health care services in Louisiana, as well as other states, this has become, as one ACT-UP activist put it, “an issue for all workers.” Working-class issues demand a working-class response and solution.

[Dr Mindbender]

best of luck, BX. I wish ACT-up victory against these vulturous bastards.

[Le Libérer]

The second part of the article was printed here (http://www.ucpanews.com/index.php/commentary/202-it-is-again-time-to-act-up-fight-back.html). It includes the historical aspect of ACT-UP, which brings us to where we are now.

Never did we think we would be thrown back to the way it was in the beginning; limited funds, limited resources. And its happening all over the US. Obama is supposedly pushing for health care reform, but on the other hand, is cutting services to those who need Medicaid/Medicare, mental health, HIV/AIDS services and substance abuse.

I want to thank www.ucpanews.com (http://www.ucpanews.com) for picking up the story and joining ACT-UP in fighting what is essentially a workers issue. ACT-UP New York has already moved away from protesting about the health reforms to HIV clients. They also realize this is an issue that effects everyone.

Heres (http://www.ucpanews.com/index.php/commentary/202-it-is-again-time-to-act-up-fight-back.html) the second part of the story which includes the history of ACT-UP.


When I told my mother I was returning to work with HIV clients, she asked me, “People still get AIDS?” People have forgotten about HIV because the media has abandoned it. Medical advances have soared, with researchers identifying different strains of HIV and treating them with cocktails of assorted new anti-virals to prolong the lives of patients. The government, federal and state, has funded HIV medicine assistance programs, and all is good with the world. Or is it?

Twenty five years ago, when the AIDS pandemic was sweeping America, as well as the world, institutionalized discrimination was just beginning to be addressed in this country. HIV was hard enough to address without the stigma of how the virus was contracted being made into a “moral” issue.

In the beginning, addressing the social and political aspects of it was like screaming into the wilderness. Usually, being diagnosed meant a death sentence. An entire political movement grew up around the cruel silence of Ronald Reagan’s White House.

The AIDS activist movement took as its call to action “silence equals death,” because the literal silence of the Reagan administration was resulting in the deaths of thousands and thousands of gay men across the country. By the end of 1983, the number of HIV/AIDS cases reported in the United States had risen to 3,064; of these, 1,292 had died.

Reagan refused to advocate safer sex and condom use, choosing instead to press for a ban on HIV-positive immigrants entering the U.S., and later abstinence, as the keys to preventing the epidemic. But because of his dismissal of the seriousness of the virus, AIDS quickly became a world pandemic.

Many believe this could have been prevented had he shown even a little compassion for those were suffering and dying, instead of refusing to get his hands dirty.
In 1987, playwright and novelist Larry Kramer cofounded ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. In many cities and towns across the country, local chapters were formed, and members protested and lobbied, staging die-ins, chaining themselves to drug company doors, and, most controversial of all, made history with a massive protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989.

Over five thousand people protested the Catholic Archdiocese’s public stand against AIDS education and condom distribution, as well as its opposition to a women’s right to privacy and choice in reproductive services, including birth control and abortion.

“We came to St. Patrick’s ... to repel the church’s destructive intrusion into public policies concerning AIDS education, gay civil rights and women’s reproductive rights,” said Michael Petrelis, a founding member.

Never in a million years did we think we would be thrown back 25 years, especially with the advances in research and medications, and have HIV care funding frozen — so those who are enjoying a happy, healthy life will no longer have access to services.

The AIDS Drug Assistance Program is a federal program with a base rate and a separate supplemental pool of monies. Louisiana, along with 12 other states, is “tapped out” on those funds, as they’ve not changed over the years to reflect the increase in utilization and need (and increased rates of HIV).

Utilization of ADAP in Louisiana, for example, rose by about 35 percent in the past year. Pharmaceutical companies who make HIV meds increased their costs by an average of 15 percent in the same period, while still posting record multi-billion-dollar profits. Big Pharma’s patient assistance programs have been relatively small compared to the need, so profit being placed over people continues to be the underlying theme here.

“It’s no accident that the groups at the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder,” writes HIV Prevention Justice, “also have the highest rates of HIV, including African-Americans, Latina women, gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender people, undocumented immigrants, and people residing in the Deep South.”

In light of this, a reactivated ACT-UP that is based in and fights for those “at the lowest rungs” is needed. Action equals life.

[Il Medico]

Good luck, BX.