There is a new urgency surrounding the latest episode of a continuing crisis; I’m referring to the videoclips of the recent gay bashings in Jamaica and relating them to Buju Banton’s performance here at Madison Square Garden tomorrow evening. (If you haven’t heard about any of this, please refer to Terrance Heath’s blog.) I am concurrently working on resurrecting my podcast series in order to respond in protest, so be on the lookout for that.
However, the purpose of this particular entry is not to talk about the specifics of that.
I’m writing this at around 4am on Saturday morning. Yesterday I spent most of the day emailing and calling people that I know personally in my community in the hope of garnering a response greater than any that I could undertake by myself. I did not leave Harlem. I started out by making a deposit at my bank to fund my domain renewal and my upcoming global telecommunications. I walked over to Halal Roti Plus (one of the sponsors) in an attempt to engage in a productive dialogue with owner Don Grant. When I arrived, I was greeted with the same poster that I’d previously seen around Harlem promoting tomorrow’s event, but Mr. Grant was away at a doctor’s visit and was not available for comment. I crossed the street to inquire about community relations at the Amsterdam News. I walked back down 125th Street past the Apollo Theater to the Harlem State Building. About a month ago, I ran into the wife of State Senator Bill Perkins at a local restaurant and she encouraged me to physically go and remind the Senator’s chief of staff of some photos I’d taken of them during an event he sponsored this past February in celebration of Black Style Now and Fashion Week. I did just that. His chief of staff gave me her business card as she was leaving the building with the Senator. I took the opportunity also to tell them about Buju’s upcoming performance (and our Internet-based response); she hadn’t heard anything about it and actually thought he wasn’t performing anymore. We continued walking east on 125th Street and relayed to them as much as I could before going back home to organize a bit more. At the end of the day, I ended up conferencing with Tokes Osubu, executive director of Gay Men of African Descent for my podcast. We accomplished that, however, we both agreed that the need is ultimately so much greater than a response to Buju’s latest machinations or to any specific crisis.
It is time, to coin a biblical phrase, to separate the wheat from the tares.
It is now almost 5:30am on Saturday morning. I have been unemployed since December 2005. The results of my last blood draw show that, while my HIV is undetectable, I have about 80 CD4 T-cells/microliter, up from about 40 in December. That makes me officially a Person with AIDS, even though I’ve never had any opportunistic infections. Honestly, this in an of itself is not a main source of concern or worry for me; we all eventually die. Still, I take pretty good care of myself and plan to be here for a while.
I have known my seropositive status since I was 25 years old. Since then, I have served on GMAD’s board of directors. I am also one of the founders of Black Pride in New York City, back when it began as it should be: as a coalition of Black LGBT organizations throughout the city. I created GMAD’s first website and eventually created keithboykin.com for its namesake. I’d like to think that I’ve inspired many other Black gay men to start their own blogs as well, even though my own connection to the Internet has been sporadic.
My point is this: we can not effect the thorough continuous change necessary if, when faced with crisis, we have to stop to reinvent the wheel. There will be more crises in our future and many of us will die. We Black LGBT people must develop our own protocols, our own deliverables and our own infrastructures, locally and globally. It is so obvious that our very lives depend on it. Yes, we have some non-profit organizations, but ultimately they do not work. Why? Because as I type this, they all have budgetary constrains dictated by the Centers of Disease Control because of our population of people with HIV.
We have always had other concerns and worries besides HIV/AIDS. I don’t say that to diminish the significance of HIV in our communities, rather, to augment the significance of our communities regardless of HIV. For too long our non-profit organizations have been forced to try to connect the gamut of our needs to HIV in order to receive funding and our reliance upon that has to end. How?
Before I propose a possible answer, let me ask another question: what happens if a cure for HIV is found tomorrow? Our Black LGBT non-profit organizations would cease to exist as they currently are. (And, yes, that would include many of our so-called “pride events” …)
Our communities must come first. There are those who have taken advantage of our communities and our organizations primarily for their own personal gain. Ultimately, that lack of commitment and that lack of vision will be our demise - not HIV/AIDS. For example, many of our organizations are weighed down with members of boards of directors who have no idea how to raise the funds that we need to keep our organizations staffed much less to develop creative ideas of how to best serve the communities they purport to serve or to cultivate the talent that will one day replace them … and that’s just one example.
Again, it is time for us to separate the wheat from the tares. It is time for us to recommit ourselves - our living rooms, our businesses, our skills, our talents, our time and our money - back to our communities. The time is right now.
Actually, the time is about 7:15am right now. I’m going to go work on this podcast. Thanks for listening.
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