According to the press release from AIDS Project Los Angeles, War Diaries is “a new collection of words and images that highlights the impact of HIV and AIDS among people of color, featuring perspectives from LGBT members of the African Diaspora.” Edited by writers Tisa Bryant and Ernest Hardy, the ninety-page softcover volume features poetry, memoir, critical essays, and photograpy and art-based photographic images that portray and preserve the many kinds of voices from the HIV and black communities in the United States. In a [...]

The Population Council’s lead microbicide candidate moves forward by Chael Needle How do you assemble a microbicide candidate with anti-HIV and other properties? In some cases, much like one of those Mission Impossible-type movies where the leader goes around recruiting one gal who’s good at safecracking, another who is expert at acrobatic feats, and someone who is good behind the wheel, and so on. Except here, instead of Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, and Thandie Newton, the “team” consists of MIV-150, zinc acetate, and a carrageenan [...]

In this wretched economy, who doesn’t need affordable housing?! Especially those with little or no income who are also living with HIV and AIDS. But if you live in Cincinnati, Ohio, you don’t have to worry! Caracole is an award-winning agency that began in 1987. The recipient of the 2006 Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Marketplace Ethics, the 2009 ONE Award–Process Category, and the 2008 ONE Award–People Category, its mission is to provide safe transitional housing and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS [...]

Rachel Chapple Recruits Artists, Writers—Everyone—for a Conversation About AIDS by Chael Needle Imagination is the path to empathy. That’s the core of a recently launched on-line HIV awareness and prevention campaign called Real Stories Gallery. The not-for-profit Web site brings together visuals and storytelling into an ongoing and ever-changing conversation, one that interlinks diverse geographic regions, topics, and media. The aim, in part, is to pull visitors out of their spectator role and into a participatory one. Toward this end, the conversation—like any good one—needs to [...]

Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren As the recent censorship of an AIDS-themed film reminds, the separation of church & state is a thin line. By now, most of the world knows that David Wojnarowicz’s short film A Fire in My Belly was blasted by religious righters at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery LGBT-themed exhibition in Washington, D.C. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), wasn’t explicit about his religious motives, complaining merely that the film was an act of “arrogance” with taxpayer money (though the show [...]

While federal efforts move forward, hepatitis prevention remains unfunded by Larry Buhl During the seemingly interminable debate over health insurance reform, other health legislation was quietly making its way through Congress. Perhaps it was too quiet. In October, 2009 Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) introduced the bipartisan Viral Hepatitis and Liver Cancer Control and Prevention Act to address the epidemic of hepatitis B and C in the U.S. The bill, with a price tag of $90 million, would have increased the ability of the Centers for [...]

Photographer George Dinhaupt Explores the Beauty and Importance of Human Diversity by Brent Calderwood Born in Los Angeles, George Dinhaupt has been exhibiting his portrait photography since the early 1990s. Formerly a truck driver by profession, Dinhaupt dusted off his old camera in 1991 after he was sidelined by a car accident; a year later, his work was part of a show in Southern California. Dinhaupt refers to much of his work as “honorific portraiture,” which originally referred to the large-scale iconography of pharaohs and [...]

by Ruby Comer The Plaza is the place! This is my home away from home. It has all the amenities of my camp in L.A., and more. There’s a swimming pool, a spa, a golf course, a fitness center, and best of all, housekeeping service. The rooms are condo-size with stoves, patios, skylights, and some provide stunning views. And this is peachy—they provide a flashlight to find your way in the desert night and to better see the remote control (yes, this old broad needs [...]

by Carolyn Agee I am the latest in a line of who knows how many women. I’ve accepted that. He says he loves me. That much I believe. If he loved himself, he’d get the test. How can you love someone else, if you do not love yourself? Maybe, once he’s wrapped around me, this won’t matter. But I know better. I am worth the cost of $15.75: the dignity—respect of a blood test. Carolyn Agee is an actress and author living in the Pacific [...]

Hairdressers Use Their Voices & Use Their Power to Style AIDS Awareness by Angela Leroux-Lindsey On November 30, 2010, two events, occurring simultaneously—one in New York, one in Washington, D.C.—displayed perfectly the massive dichotomy (I might even say hypocrisy) that exists within the global power structure’s attitude toward HIV/AIDS. On the one hand, I attended the launch of a new UNESCO-sponsored HIV/AIDS advocacy program at the United Nations; on the other, House Republicans John Boehner and Eric Cantor, with support from the Catholic League, bullied the National [...]