AIDS Activists Seek Gains
Amid High Infection Rate

Chelsea — Frank J. Oldham, Jr., who has been HIV-positive for over 20 years, is still haunted by memories of the early 1980s when an unidentified, lethal plague wracked lower Manhattan. “AIDS was like a holocaust for the gay community in Chelsea and Greenwich Village,” Oldham recalls. “There's a generation of us who saw friends and lovers dying all around us. We were going to memorial services daily.”

Since then, Oldham has dedicated much of his time to keeping the spotlight on HIV/AIDS. He served as head of the city's Office of AIDS Policy Coordination in 2003 (whose functions have since been rolled into the city health department), and now leads the National Association of People with AIDS as president and CEO. “We can't pretend as though it's no longer fatal. The epidemic is still destructive and spreading so rapidly,” says Oldham, a Brooklyn native. “Given the statistics about who is most at risk, we definitely need more black gay male organizations doing intervention work.”

But the effort to reverse the trend that has HIV infection spreading most rapidly among black gay men will no longer include People of Color in Crisis (POCC), a leading gay advocacy organization that recently ceased operations. Founded in 1988, POCC received national recognition for its HIV/AIDS prevention services that catered to the city's African-American and Caribbean populations. The group also sponsored a popular annual festival, dubbed Pride in the City, which blended raunchy revelry, on-site HIV testing and musical performances by major recording artists like En Vogue and Amerie.

Critics, however, charged that POCC engaged in dubious spending practices. By 2008, POCC's budget was reportedly being audited by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Two weeks ago, POCC's website was up and running – but now even most of the content has been removed.

And while other community-based organizations including Gay Men of African Descent in Brooklyn, Harlem's Black Men's Xchange, and the Queens-based Hispanic AIDS Forum remain, the demise of POCC vexes some HIV/AIDS activists. “POCC was a place for innovation around prevention,” says Leo Rennie, a POCC board member in the mid-1990s. “It's a huge loss for the community because they pioneered programs that have been adopted across the country.”

It's been four months since the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released its latest HIV infection figures, which continue to show a disproportionate impact among black and Latino men who have sex with men – or MSM, as they're called. That's been the case for years now in New York, where the HIV infection rate is three times the national average.

From 2001 through the first half of 2008, newly-diagnosed HIV cases in New York City rose by some 37 percent among young MSM, particularly black males under the age of 30, according to the health department. The agency's response has included distributing nearly 42 million male and female condoms last year, more than doubling the number of HIV tests performed at city clinics during the past six years, and launching a peer social networking program designed to increase testing among at-risk groups.

"We take the view that one infection is too many,” says Dr. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner of the city health department's Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control. “We're working to make sure that everyone who is HIV positive will take steps to ensure that the infection stops with them and that anyone who is HIV negative will say, 'I am responsible for making sure that I don't become infected.'”