Former President Bill Clinton lent his clout and charisma to the Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition's recent town hall meeting on HIV in prisons.
Outside the Walls: Black Inmates and the Spread of HIV was held during the organization's annual convention in Chicago last week. The Aug. 8, panel featured Clinton, PUSH founder Jesse Jackson and an array of national leaders in HIV and corrections. It was recorded and broadcast on Black Entertainment Television ( BET ) later that evening.
"We face tonight essentially World War III," Jackson said, noting the prevlance of HIV/AIDS among African-Americans. He has been at the forefront of efforts by Black ministers to draw attention to the epidemic and remove some of its stigma.
Jackson launched the PUSH convention by having 50 ministers visit Cook County Jail and get tested for HIV in front of nearly 1,000 inmates. He noted that Blacks are 12% of the U.S. population but 55% of the prison population. "The epicenter of HIV is jails," he said. " ( Inmates ) are coming out and recycling this epidemic among the civilian population."
Panelist Theodore Hammett said that about 25% of all Americans with HIV pass through a prison or jail at some point in their lives. He added that most inmates with HIV became positive before they were detained.
Clinton put the U.S. epidemic in perspective by detailing the rampant spread of AIDS through developing nations.
" ( HIV ) is creeping at us from everywhere in the world," Clinton said. Pointing to the epidemic's rise among Black Americans, he highlighted the estimates that one-third of all young, urban, gay Black men are HIV positive.
"That's the same as Botswana," he said. Those young gay men are "often ostracized in the African-American community," he said, adding that, "We need to strip the shame and fear from all this."
"We've got to do more in testing and treatment in prison," Clinton said. "If we don't, then all of the gains of the last decade will be erased, and that will be terrible for us." He ended by delivering a jab to ongoing legislative efforts to get tough on crime by lengthening prison terms. "AIDS rates would go down if we didn't send so many people to prison for so long who don't present a physical threat to the rest of us," he said, to resounding applause. "A small number of people commit a large percentage of violent crimes."
Clinton, as witnessed by his recent reception in New York's Harlem, still enjoys support among many African-Americans, and he received two standing ovations during his brief speech before the PUSH meeting.
Among those appearing on the panel were Dr. Helene Gayle, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention, HIV specialists and corrections officials from Los Angeles and North Carolina.
One of the themes that emerged at the event was PUSH's recent effort to get condoms distributed at correctional facilities. An openly gay, HIV-positive former inmate on the panel said he would have used condoms had they been available. Among the many problems with condom distribution is that inmates are not supposed to engage in sexual activity, officials said. While much of the program's focus was on the sexual transmission of HIV in prisons, one Cook County official said such tunnel vision was missing the point.
"All the ( panel's host ) wanted to talk about was sex," said Kirby Cunningham of Cermak Health Center at Cook County Jail. "The problem is people sharing needles."
