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How gay neighborhoods used the traumas of HIV to help American cities fight coronavirus

Having survived the HIV/AIDS pandemic, gay communities in the US were well equipped to get residents health and social services early in the pandemic, when the government’s COVID-19 response lagged.

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HIV health and support groups offered COVID-19 testing and other community services during the pandemic. iStock / Getty Images Plus

Throughout the pandemic, local neighborhoods have played a critical and well-documented role providing the health and social services necessary for American communities and businesses to survive and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gay neighborhoods were particularly well equipped to meet this challenge, according to our latest research on these communities.

We find that the lessons learned and trauma experienced early in the HIV/AIDS pandemic helped urban gay areas respond to COVID-19 quickly and effectively – especially in the face of early federal government paralysis.

How gay neighborhoods fought HIV/AIDS

Gay neighborhoods are those that welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer and other sexual minorities – a population generally referred to by the shorthand LGBTQ+. Well-known examples include the Castro district in San Francisco, Dupont Circle in Washington and Greenwich Village and Chelsea in New York City.

Street scene with lots of pride flags flying
New York City’s West Village neighborhood during Pride month, June 2021. Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

“Gayborhoods” grew during the sexual liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, offering LGTBQ people and their allies an escape from pervasive discrimination and prejudice. In these areas, sexual minorities could rent apartments, socialize in bars and express themselves freely in a like-minded, compassionate community.

Even as LGBTQ people in the U.S. began to live more openly, gay neighborhoods really coalesced around the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

When that mysterious new disease began ravaging the LGBTQ community in the 1980s, the U.S. government turned away from, not toward, those communities. Support critical for fighting HIV – including health care subsidies for uninsured people and funding for research on treatments and cures – was initially not provided. Information given by governments about disease transmission and treatment was inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate.

Government neglect ended up stigmatizing people with HIV and leading to many avoidable deaths. So, as we uncovered in our most recent book, gay neighborhoods filled the void where government and mainstream organizations failed. They became the battlefields where the AIDS pandemic was fought and eventually won.

People in gay neighborhoods developed community organizations and systems to deliver health care and mental health services, provide social support for LGBTQ+ people and support LGBTQ-friendly businesses.

Public health organizations like New York City’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis also stepped in to do what many doctors would not. They shared information about slowing and stopping the spread of HIV and also distributed condoms, conducted free HIV testing and connected people who tested positive to help.

Men march shirtless holding a 'GMHC' lbanner and another that reads 'Fighting for Our Lives,'
New York City’s Pride march in June 1985, featuring a contingent from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Suzanne Poli/Getty Images

Building community through crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic shares many similarities reminiscent of early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

With both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, there was a disjointed and bungled government response that endangered lives and produced both fear and stigma. Even some of the same government-appointed leaders were in place: Both Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx worked on marshaling government resources to spearhead the medical response to HIV in the 1990s.

With COVID-19, as with HIV/AIDS, city and state governments were unprepared to fight a disease outbreak. They lacked both planning and infrastructure to effectively fight a rapidly accelerating public health threat.

Several U.S. states, as a result, looked to organizations within gay neighborhoods for help, relying on neighborhood-based LGBTQ+ health care organizations to help support their COVID-19 pandemic response.

'Please stand here' social distancing sticker in Pride colors
Example of social distancing signage from Toronto gay neighborhood. Robert Modzelewski, CC BY

For example, in New York, the Erie County Department of Health requested that Evergreen Health – an LGBTQ community group originally established in the 1980s as a volunteer effort to fight HIV – assume responsibility for HIV testing during the COVID-19 pandemic so that the county government could focus on COVID-19 testing. Evergreen also opened a drive-though COVID-19 testing center in the spring of 2020 – four decades after it had introduced HIV testing to the Buffalo region.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Evergreen Health not only continued to provide health care and other supportive services to Buffalo’s LGBTQ community but expanded offerings to better serve underserved and minority neighborhoods across the city. At that time, New York state was the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Chicago and other cities, activists used LGBTQ+ urban social and professional networks established during the HIV/AIDS pandemic to tackle this latest disease. Queer communities disseminated information about COVID-19 to neighbors and distributed face masks and other protective gear, just as they had once shared information about HIV transmission and given out condoms.

[The Conversation’s most important coronavirus headlines, weekly in a science newsletter]

Lessons learned

States with major grassroots activism in the HIV crisis also applied lessons from that era about overcoming misinformation and fear of contagious diseases.

For instance, New York state used a network of small laboratories to process its COVID-19 tests and administer vaccines – a model pioneered during the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic when large, centralized laboratories were initially nervous about working with HIV-positive blood samples. Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, this allowed New York to react effectively and process COVID-19 tests relatively quickly.

New York, followed by California, was among states in which COVID-19 infection first showed up in the U.S. As these state governments set up testing procedures, they drew upon methods for testing established during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The experience in both New York and California with HIV/AIDS helped, at least in part, to establish robust testing networks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United Kingdom government, on the other hand, chose centralized laboratories to process tests, rejecting an offer to create a complementary network of smaller local providers. That decision may have complicated testing and slowed results and contact tracing, according to reporting by SkyNews.

Our research also finds gay neighborhoods banded together to meet the needs of the broader community.

Activist mutual aid networks formed decades ago within “gayborhoods” deployed peer-to-peer mobile technologies to help feed locked down and sick people – not only within the LGBTQ community.

Many of these efforts to combat COVID-19, like actions taken to fight HIV/AIDS, were done quietly, without fanfare. This neighbor-helping-neighbor approach is a hallmark of the leadership that can be found in gay neighborhoods – experienced rescuers in times of crisis.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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International

‘I see no happy ending’ − a former national security leader on the Gaza hostage situation

No government wants to have to deal with a hostage crisis. A former US national security official explains that there is no winning without losing in such…

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October 26, 2023

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Israelis whose relatives are being held hostage demonstrate on October 26, 2023 in front of the Defense Ministry building in Tel Aviv, demanding the government to bring back their loved ones. Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images

Hamas took more than 200 people hostage during its deadly rampage in Israeli border towns on Oct. 7, 2023. Among the hostages are children and the elderly. While four of them have been released, the fate of the rest is unknown, as Qatar serves as an intermediary in working to free the hostages. In this interview with Naomi Schalit, The Conversation U.S. senior politics and democracy editor, Gregory F. Treverton of USC Dornsife, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the Obama administration, says most hostage-taking has specific goals. This one, says Treverton, “is basically an adjunct of warfare, and that makes it very different” – and very hard to solve.

How do people in your field think about hostage-taking? I would imagine that the feeling is, “Oh, my god, please let nothing like that happen.”

It’s an utter dilemma, because on the one hand you feel for the hostages. And as we’ve seen in the past, the Israelis have been prepared to – and did – release a thousand hostages to get one Israeli back.

On the other hand, when you do a deal to get hostages released, you’re only encouraging more hostage-taking. So you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. As a result, every government, including the United States, says, “We never deal with hostage-takers.” But of course, they all do – and they have to.

I think it’s one of the hardest parts of being in the national security business. You want to free the people – but you’re also going to get criticized. Every time President Biden has gotten somebody out of Russia, people have said, “Oh, he’s paid too high a price” or “He’s rewarded hostage-taking,” and to some extent, that’s true. You are basically rewarding the hostage-takers. But we still have to deal with them. We want to get our people out. And at some some point – as the Israelis have shown – they’re prepared to pay almost any price to get them back.

A worried and teary-eyed woman holds a photo of her daughter.
Keren Shem, the mother of hostage Mia Shem, holds a photograph of her daughter as she speaks to the press in Tel Aviv on Oct. 17, 2023. Gil Cohen-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images

Israel released more than 1,000 prisoners in 2011 in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas captured and held for five years. This is more than 200 times the number of hostages, so how do you even think about that?

At least in my professional experience, this is without precedent. The closest parallel would be the 1976 Entebbe hijacking and hostage-taking by two Germans and two Palestinians on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. Hijackers held 103 Israeli hostages, once they released the 148 non-Israeli hostages. Hamas holds twice the number of hostages, and in very, very different circumstances. In Entebbe, the Israeli government knew where they were, they were in a single place – the airplane – which had been forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda, after taking off from Tel Aviv. And that’s where Israeli commandos were able to rescue the hostages.

In Gaza, we don’t know where they are. We know for sure they’re scattered throughout the tunnels, likely in lots of different small groups. Hamas will presumably then use them as shields if fighting begins on the ground. They might think that that would encourage the Israelis not to make a major attack – to keep Hamas from killing all the hostages. We know that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t keen on a major ground assault, and this really puts the onus on the Israelis for how the hostage situation ends.

When you think about the history of hostage negotiations, do you see something that has any relevance to what’s going on now?

It seems to me it’s a really different category. Even Entebbe was hostage-taking for some political aim – the hijackers wanted Israel to release a large number of prisoners who were Palestinian. A colleague of mine used to say that the point of terrorism was to do the least amount of violence with the most people watching it. But Entebbe was political theater, basically, and this is not political theater. This is basically an adjunct of warfare, and that makes it very different. It’s not the usual kind of tit for tat, with “How much am I willing to pay?” or “Can I take a hostage to get somebody else out?”

Two buses driving through an arid landscape.
Buses carrying Palestinian prisoners on Oct. 16, 2011, who were being exchanged for Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas for five years. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

What does Israel’s heavy bombing of Gaza and the beginning of a ground invasion tell you about the government’s approach to the hostage situation?

It suggests either that they have a pretty good fix on where the hostages are located, which seems unlikely given the network of Hamas tunnels, or that they have decided they must proceed in any case and will try their best to safeguard and free hostages as they go. Given the Hamas practice of using civilians as human shields, the outcome is likely to be very ugly.

Where do you see this going?

I see no happy ending. I don’t think there’s a deal that Israel could conceivably make, given its own politics. Or that Hamas would accept. So it does seem to me that at some point there is going to be that ground attack and the hostages are going to be caught in the middle of it. I see almost no alternative, given what Israel has pledged – to destroy Hamas. The Biden administration maintains that Israel doesn’t really have a strategy. They have a desire, which is to destroy Hamas. But that’s not a strategy for dealing with the hostages or for Gaza after the attack.

Gregory F. Treverton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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International

Hamas Delegation Arrives In Moscow As Russia Blames US For Escalation

Hamas Delegation Arrives In Moscow As Russia Blames US For Escalation

In a somewhat unexpected development, a delegation of Hamas leaders…

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4 hours ago

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October 26, 2023

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Hamas Delegation Arrives In Moscow As Russia Blames US For Escalation

In a somewhat unexpected development, a delegation of Hamas leaders have arrived in Moscow for talks, the Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed Thursday evening (local time). "I can confirm that representatives of the [Hamas] Palestinian movement are visiting Moscow,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a press briefing, vowing to provide relevant details as the talks unfold.

The visit had not been previously announced by either side, and the Hamas delegation is being led by a senior member of the group, Moussa Abu Marzouk. Hamas is a designated terror organization in the US, European Union, and some other countries; but it has official relations with countries like Iran, Turkey, Syria, and now apparently Russia.

A 2019 meeting involving Hamas, Fatah, and Russian representatives, via Reuters

Russia, however, has said it remains willing to talk to all sides of the conflict in hopes of achieving ceasefire and peace. After the US exit from Afghanistan, Moscow had similarly hosted a Taliban delegation. 

It's as yet unclear whether Russia's top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, will meet with the Hamas representatives, given he's said to currently be in Minsk. 

RIA Novosti has reported that Hamas has during opening meetings with Russian officials "commended Putin’s position and the efforts of Russia’s diplomacy."

The Kremlin has said it is engaged in crisis diplomacy talks with both the Hamas and Israeli sides, at a moment that over 220 hostages are still being held in Gaza. Four have been released thus far, including two Americans, due in large part to the mediation of Qatar. Will Russia press the delegation to release more captives? Likely this is high on the agenda for Moscow. 

Just days ago Russia blamed the United States for stoking escalation by positioning Navy warships in the Mediterranean near Israel. FM Lavrov said Monday during a meeting in Tehran that "the more a state takes this kind of proactive measures, the greater the risk and the danger of an escalation of the conflict".

He called out Washington as "already among the countries intervening the most" since the October 7 Hamas terror attack. The Biden administration as of course rejected the charge, and blamed Iran for ultimately being behind Hamas and regional terror.

At the UN in New York, Russia and China have also just vetoed US drafted UN Security Council resolution on Gaza. The dueling sides have rejected the proposals of the other given Washington's pro-Israel stance, and the willingness of Moscow and Beijing to heap criticism on Tel Aviv for the humanitarian crisis and soaring death toll among Palestinians.

Turkey has also been a foremost critic of Israel's assault on Gaza, as the death toll surpasses 7,000 - with President Erdogan blasting the West's double standard on the crisis. 

He said in his most recent speech at a Thursday conference, "Is it possible not to react while seeing what happens in Gaza? Nothing justifies such savagery. Unfortunately, so-called 'civilized' countries watch it. We heard that the EU is still hesitating to call for a cease-fire. How many children should die before you decide on a call? Let us know when the cease-fire should be declared. I have been in politics for 40 years, but I never sat idly in the face of such savagery,” Erdoğan said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/26/2023 - 12:05

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Maine Gov. Confirms 18 Killed, 13 More Injured In Mass Shootings Overnight, Suspect Still At Large

Maine Gov. Confirms 18 Killed, 13 More Injured In Mass Shootings Overnight, Suspect Still At Large

Update: (1145ET): Maine Gov. Janet Mills said…

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October 26, 2023

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Maine Gov. Confirms 18 Killed, 13 More Injured In Mass Shootings Overnight, Suspect Still At Large

Update: (1145ET): Maine Gov. Janet Mills said at a press conference that 18 people were killed and 13 people were injured in last night’s attacks.

“This is a dark day for Maine,” Mills said.

Earlier, a federal law-enforcement official said a shooter killed at least 22 people.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Maine State Police worked through the night alongside local officers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to find Robert Card, 40 years old, who was their sole person of interest in the shootings.

“Card is considered armed and dangerous,” said Mike Sauschuck, Maine’s public-safety commissioner.

“We’re gonna not stop until we locate him,” Lisbon police chief, Ryan McGee, told a local TV station as the manhunt continued early Thursday.

Of course, it did not take long for President Biden to demand gun reform:

“Today, in the wake of yet another tragedy, I urge Republican lawmakers in Congress to fulfill their duty to protect the American people,” he wrote.

“Work with us to pass a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers.”

However, as The Hill reports, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said the mass shooting in Maine illustrates why communities should revive mental health institutions and involuntary commitments for those who need help, alluding to the shooting suspect.

“We pray for the Maine shooting victims, their families, and for the brave law enforcement members who are working to bring this deeply sick individual to justice,” Ramaswamy posted on X.

“We must remove these violent, psychiatrically deranged people from their communities and be willing to involuntarily commit them.”

He said this includes reviving mental health institutions and less reliance on pharmaceuticals.

“We know from the 1990s how to stop violent crime,” he added.

“The real question is if we have the spine to do it.”

The answer, sadly, Vivek is... no.

*  *  *

As we detailed last night, authorities in Maine are investigating three mass casulaty events and a single suspect remains at large, the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on Facebook.

“We are encouraging all businesses to lock down and or close while we investigate,” the sheriff’s office said.

As The Sun Journal reports, police, fire and rescue personnel descended on Sparetime Recreation on Mollison Way about 7:15 p.m. after a report of an active shooter.

Shortly after, reports came in that there was another shooting at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant on Lincoln Street.

Lewiston public information officer Derrick St. Laurent told the Sun Journal at about 8:15 p.m. that another shooting was reported at the Walmart Distribution Center on Alfred A Plourde Parkway.

CNN reports that at least 16 people are dead, according to Lewiston City Councilor Robert McCarthy, and dozens more are injured in the incidents, though it’s unclear how many are injured due to gunfire.

The Sheriff's office released this image of the alleged suspect....

The Maine State Police have named Robert Card as a person of interest. A trained firearms instructor and army reservist who has recently been released from a mental health facility...

Maine State Police also said they are responding to an active shooter situation in Lewiston in a post on Facebook.

“Please stay inside your home with the doors locked,” state police said.

“If you see any suspicious activity or individuals please call 911.”

In a statement, the FBI said its Boston division is coordinating with law enforcement partners in Maine and stands “ready to assist with any available resources,” and urged the public to remain vigilant.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills said Wednesday night she has been briefed on the situation.

“I urge all people in the area to follow the direction of State and local enforcement. I will to continue to monitor the situation and remain in close contact with public safety officials,” the governor said on Facebook.

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/26/2023 - 11:40

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