TIME MAGAZINE  WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 30 2009

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

ABUJA

International travelers flying out of Nigeria’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos during the Christmas season are used to being hassled by security. Usually, it’s a demand for tips and gifts. At every point of contact with officials, from check-in to final boarding, the requests are constant.

As a result, many passengers familiar with the Lagos airport aren’t surprised that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit, could have boarded his flight with liquid explosives. “They tell you, Take your shoes off, take your boots off, take your belt off, but the woman who is looking at the X-ray machine is looking at you to give her a tip,” says Victor Chidi Asaba-One, 41, a businessman who shuttles between Detroit and Lagos about 20 times a year, often on the same KLM and Northwest flights that Abdulmutallab used.

The 23-year-old son of one of Nigeria’s wealthiest men and most prominent bankers has lived outside Nigeria for years and had severed ties with his family. On Dec. 24 he re-entered Nigeria and boarded a KLM flight to Amsterdam that same night. He used an e-ticket that had been purchased in Accra, Ghana.

Shortly after the thwarted bombing attempt, Nigerian authorities stressed that its airports had recently passed the International Civil Aviation audit and just last month passed a Transportation Security Administration audit as well. “However, in light of our new developments, we have reinforced our security systems in all our airports,” said Information Minister Dora Akunyili.

Nevertheless, Ifeanyi Ukoha, 39, a banker in Lagos who flies from the Lagos airport regularly, insists the security at Murtala Muhammed International Airport is comparatively lax. “Unauthorized persons are allowed beyond the stipulated point mostly because they are in uniform,” he says. “And security personnel will keep soliciting gratification, especially during festive seasons.”

Other passengers say screening processes, particularly at Lagos, are geared toward looking for drugs. In fact, there is an additional checkpoint for local drug enforcement once passengers have passed customs and immigration.

At the airport in Lagos, as well as the one in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, passengers are now subjected to extra screening, with officials there saying everyone will now be subjected to body-screening. “It’s a joke, man,” Asaba-One says. “They may have functioning X-ray machines, even though they are older, but I’m not sure the person looking at the screen even knows what to look for. If, for example, I had a liquid explosive that is going through it, will they be able to tell the difference between a liquid bottle of Coke versus a liquid bottle of PETN? I don’t think they can tell. I know they can’t tell.”

Some passengers also know that liquid gels in plastic containers less than 100 ml don’t set off magnetometers. They say they simply put them in their pockets and let their shirts hang over them as they walk through airport checkpoints in Nigeria — and head for Europe and the U.S.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1950695,00.html

The AFRican
By Frankie Edozien

KAMPALA, Uganda - A beacon of hope has emerged for the millions of Africans dealing with HIV/AIDS from an unassuming single story clinic, nestled in the hills of this city.

Since its doors were open in 2004, the Infectious Disease Institute (IDI) has been on the forefront of Africa’s response to the pandemic, quietly and methodically conducting scores of clinical trials while treating thousands. IDI and its staff have proved through their outreach and treatments that high-quality care can be given without having to build brick-and-mortar infrastructure in every rural area.

The friends, as the patients there are called, are regaining their foothold in society, living healthier, with their heads held high and some are even heading back to the workplace after being pull from the brink of death.

“When this clinic started in a small room, a HIV clinic was a specter of a lot of depression and sadness, people laying on the floors. Now as you will see it’s a vibrant population,” said Andrew Kambugu, IDI’s head of clinical services.

“People are well, they are going back to work, they are looking for spouses if they’ve lost their loved ones and they are looking to live life again. For me as a young African professional, I think there are fewer places that give more satisfaction,” the doctor added.

IDI’s success in rolling out anti-retroviral therapies (ARVs) while simultaneously conducting high level research work began as dream. American and African academics wondering how to deal with Africa’s AIDS crisis came up with the idea to open up a state-of-the-art regional center of excellence to serve the continent.

Thus, the Academic Alliance for AIDS care and prevention in Africa was born. The Alliance got the Pfizer foundation to donate funds for the building and operational cost for the first few years and IDI opened it’s doors in 2004. It costs $2 million a year to operate.

“When we came here in 2001, it was very clear that we would never be able to accomplish the vision with the physical infrastructure that was here at the time,” said W. Michael Scheld, a medical professor at the University of Virginia who has been involved with IDI since it was an idea. “We had the [nearby] Mulago Clinic, but it was only open a half day at a time. They saw about 100 patients a day and almost no one ever came back because there was nothing to offer.”

Today, thousands are treated, given medication, taught new activities to help them generate income, and most are smiling on any given day you find them at IDI. Indeed the miracle drugs paid for the Global Fund; the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are partly responsible. But anti-retrovirals (ARVs) were just the beginning.

“Two and a half years ago, we had trouble in the waiting area. It was a very stigmatizing environment. Friends (patients) would come in and hide in the waiting area. Not wanting to be noticed. Some of them would actually cover their heads. There was a lot of stigma in that waiting area,” said Caleb Twijukye, 32, coordinator of IDI’s creativity initiative.

“So we saw a need to start something that would engage those friends and something to fight that stigma. We began by creating communes in those waiting rooms.” With participating in music, games, spiritual healing, and sharing, each patient found a place to feel more vibrant.

“They come in now dance and sing, and they are happy. By the time they get into that doctor’s room, they are already happy and treated. It really works,” Twikujye added.

IDI, at its core is a clinical research facility that holds its own with other such facilities the world over, despite being right in the middle of a relatively poor country in East Africa. Dusty dirt roads lead up to the hills where IDI is yet, its laboratories are only one of three College of American Pathologists(CAP) certified on the continent. Stepping into the sterile environment with its international cadre of medical professionals, it is easy feel like one is in a Western capital.

“We’re not here to train Europeans or North Americans to have their African experience,” insists Phillipa Easterbrook, the head of research. Easterbrook is a medical professor who took a leave from Kings College in London to work at IDI.

“We are here to train the next generation of clinicians, teachers, researchers in sub-Saharan Africa.” The era of scientific projects emanating from the West with Africa being the receptacle is ending. It will be us in sub-Saharan Africa saying these are the questions we want to ask together. We will write the grants, we will do the programs, we will do the analyses, we will write the papers. And that’s the spirit I’m trying to engender in IDI.”

In just a few years, 27 African nations have sent close to 2,000 medical professionals to be trained in the latest in HIV care. Yet, some trainees have come from Europe and Asia. IDI insists that those it trains go to their home country and train others. They keep regular communications and have staff waiting to take queries about difficult cases.

Taking a short break from one of the intensive month long training sessions, Zambian physician, Patrick Makelele, said he was drawn to IDI by the caliber of clinicians lecturing. “My expectation is to update my skills in ART management, get the latest if there is any and also to learn from the huge experience of Uganda,” he said. “I wanted to know more [see] what is going on, on the ground … realize my gaps.”

Nigerian military physician, Nathan Okeji, said he planned to return to his home facility and turnover how he’d been doing things. “I’m very impressed with what I’m seeing here, I think we are going to bring an entirely new face to HIV management in Nigeria especially among the military,” the doctor said. He said he immediately wants to begin testing infants born of HIV positive mothers at six weeks rather than wait 18 months as he’d been doing. “The standard here is exactly almost what I’ve been seeing going abroad the in the UK or USA. As far as I’m concerned, the USA is now here in Uganda.” He also plans to use an IDI inspired method of shifting medical tasks to competent nurses. “The doctors are doing everything and we are overwhelmed. We are seeing about 40-something patients, daily. You go from your house to the hospital. Then you are fagged out and you go to bed.”

Easterbrook, who has brought a strong focus on epidemiology to all staff and trainees at IDI, insists that Africa is the place to get answers for HIV now. “My role is to really make sure we’ve crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’, in having a rigor in our procedures that rival those in North America and Western Europe.”

Yakari Manabe, a doctor from decamped to Kampala to run the labs here, said simply that “IDI has the ability to answer questions that cannot be answered in the states.” The New Jersey doctor added that: “If you want to look at HIV and tuberculosis co-infection and understand better the collision of those two infections and the devastating epidemic that comes from it, it is best done in places like this.”

While IDI serves some 10,000 friends, it has partnered with Kampala clinics and heads out to different clinic sites ach week to treat hundreds of other patients.

“My dream is maybe to see a negative generation. A new, negative, generation,” said Zam Nakawooya, 35, a former teacher now peer counselor at IDI.

IDI is part of my life now,” added Peter Kamlimba, 38. “I can’t relate it to anyplace. This is where I found my life. I’d lost my life and now I’ve gained my life again. I’m strong, I’m healthy, I can do anything.”

For IDI’s board, the goal is to replicate its success across the continent. Already similar centers of excellence are planned for Ethiopia and Nigeria.

This report is supported by the Project for International Health Journalism Fellowship Program as part of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Media Fellowships Program

IDI clinic by the numbers:
Patients/friends being served: Over 10,000 for free.
Clinical trials performed: Over 80
Tests performed yearly: 160,000
African countries trainees have come from: 27
Trainees trained since 2004: 2000.

Images Courtesy of http://www.idi.ac.ug/

The AFRican

By Frankie Edozien

KAMPALA, Uganda

With so many people infected by the HIV virus here, it was inevitable that a sizable number of couples would have negative partners. Keeping those partners virus free has led one organization to try a novel approach — having a social club for such couples. The Discordant Couples club is run by The AIDS Service Organization (TASO), Uganda’s longtime HIV support network. They meet quarterly and share experiences and have counseling sprinkled into their sessions. “It is a big challenge,” said TASO spokeswoman Anne Kaddumukasa.

“Many of them do share that their spouses get tired of using condoms and sometimes if it is the woman, because culturally the woman has less power over sexual related issues, sometimes we may not have enough power to convince the spouse to put on a condom,” she added. Since TASO began the club, it has grown to over 100 couples. About half of the patients in TASO’s Kampala center qualify as discordant couples. Indeed, many women have found out they are infected and their husbands continued as before, until the women actually fell sick, as was the case of Zam Nakawooya, a schoolteacher.

The married mother found out she was HIV positive in 1993, but it was not until her second child was born and she fell sick years later that her husband got tested. “We took our blood and found out I was positive and he was negative. So he wondered ‘how did it come? I’ve stayed with my wife almost 10 years; how can it be like that?’ That doctor said it usually happens and we call those people, discordant couples.”

At Kampala’s leading HIV clinic, the Infectious Disease Institute, head of clinical services explained that HIV has touched the entire nation. “In Uganda any family, has lost someone or a friend to HIV, in that sense it is easy to deal with stigma. Everyone is affected,” said Andrew Kambuga. “The national prevalence stands at 6.4 percent that represents a triumph. So before this, HIV prevalence was between 12 and 15 percent in the late 90s.” The doctor estimated that now there could be 150,000 new infections annually so novel approaches are welcome and needed. The nation’s population is 27.6 million.

“We realized that we really needed to support these people, because many of them have children, many of them have been living together for over 10, 15 years, and encouraging them to separate will not help because they need to bring up these children,” Kaddumukasa added.

Speakers are brought in often and blame is severely discouraged. Part of the club’s mission is to have members have a life free from blame, free from judgment and a sexual life that includes proper condom use all the time. Very few members who are negative have been infected in the five years of the club. “We keep checking them but it’s very insignificant. So that means they are using condoms. We also assure them that ‘you may not remain negative all your life if you continue to expose yourself to the infection. You can sero-convert and become positive,” she added.

This report is supported by the Project for International Health Journalism Fellowship Program as part of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Media Fellowships Program.

Images Courtesy of www.tasouganda.org and http://www.idi.ac.ug

 

Fight Against AIDS in East Africa

WORLDPRESS

By Frankie Edozien, October 1, 2008

KAMPALA, Uganda: For the millions of Africans dealing with HIV/AIDS, a beacon of hope has emerged from an unassuming single story clinic, nestled in the hills of this city.

Since its doors were open in 2004, the Infectious Disease Institute (IDI) has been on the forefront of Africa’s response to the pandemic, quietly and methodically conducting scores of clinical trials while treating thousands.

IDI and its staff have proved through their outreach, and treatments that high-quality care can be given without having to build brick-and-mortar infrastructure in every rural area.

And the friends _ as the patients there are called _ are regaining their foothold in society, living healthier, with their heads held high and some even heading back to the workplace after being pulled from the brink of death.

“When this clinic started in a small room, a HIV clinic was a specter of a lot of depression and sadness, people laying on the floors. Now as you will see it’s a vibrant population,” said Andrew Kambugu, IDI’s head of clinical services.

“People are well, they are going back to work, they are looking for spouses if they’ve lost their loved ones and they are looking to live life again. For me as a young African professional I think there are fewer places that give more satisfaction,” the doctor, 35, added.

IDI’s success in rolling out anti-retroviral therapies while simultaneously conducting high level research work began as dream. American and African Academicians wondering how to deal with Africa’s AIDS crisis, came up with the idea to open up a state-of-the-art regional center of excellence to serve the continent.

Thus the Academic Alliance for AIDS care and prevention in Africa was born. The Alliance got the Pfizer foundation to pony up funds for the building and operational cost for the first few years and IDI opened it’s doors in 2004. It cost $2 million a year to operate.

Article Continues

When we came here in 2001, it was very clear that we would never be able to accomplish the vision with the physical infrastructure that was here at the time,” said W. Michael Scheld, a medical professor at the University of Virginia who has been involved with IDI since it was an idea.

“We had the [nearby] Mulago clinic but it was only open a half day at a time. They saw about 100 patients a day and almost no one ever came back because there was nothing to offer.”

Today thousands are treated, given medication, taught new activities to help them generate income, and most are smiling on any given day you find them at IDI. Indeed the miracle drugs paid for by the Global Fund; the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are partly responsible.

But anti-retrovirals (ARVs) were just the beginning.

“Two and a half years ago, we had trouble in the waiting area. It was a very stigmatizing environment. Friends (patients) would come in and hide in the waiting area. Not wanting to be noticed. Some of them would actually cover their heads. There was a lot of stigma in that waiting area,” said Caleb Twijukye, 32, coordinator of IDI’s creativity initiative.

“So we saw a need to start something that would engage those friends and something to fight that stigma. We began by creating communes in those waiting rooms.” Music, games, spiritual healing, sharing, each patient found a place to perk up.

“They come in now dance and sing, and they happy. By the time they get in to that doctor’s room they are already happy and treated. It really works,” Twikujye added.

IDI, at its core is a clinical research facility that holds its own with other such facilities the world over, despite being smack in the middle of a relatively poor country in East Africa. Dusty dirt roads lead up to the hills where IDI is yet, its laboratories are only one of three College of American Pathologists (CAP) certified on the continent.

Stepping into the sterile environment with its international cadre of medical professionals, its easy feel like one is in a Western capital.

“We’re not here to train Europeans or North Americans to have their African experience,” insists Phillipa Easterbrook, the head of research.

Easterbrook is a medical professor who took a leave from Kings College in London to work at IDI.

“We are here to train the next generation of clinicians, teachers, researches in sub-Saharan Africa. The era of scientific projects emanating from the West with Africa being the receptacle is ending.

“It will be us in sub-Saharan Africa saying these are the questions we want to ask together. We will write the grants, we will do the programs, we will do the analyses, we will write the papers. And that’s the spirit I’m trying to engender in IDI.”

In just a few years, 27 African nations have sent close to 2,000 medical professionals to be trained in the latest in HIV care. Yet some trainees have come from Europe and Asia.

IDI insists that those it trains go to their home country and trains others. They keep regular communications and have staff waiting to take queries about difficult cases.

Taking a short break from one of the intensive month long training sessions, Zambian physician, Patrick Makelele, said he was drawn to IDI by the caliber of clinicians lecturing.

“My expectation is to update my skills in ART management, get the latest if there is any and also to learn from the huge experience of Uganda,” he said. “I wanted to know more [see] what is going on, on the ground … realize my gaps.”

Nigerian military physician, Nathan Okeji, said he planed to return to his home facility and turnover how he’d been doing things.

“I’m very impressed with what I’m seeing here, I think we are going to bring an entirely new face to HIV management in Nigeria especially among the military,” the doctor said. He said he immediately wants to begin testing infants born of HIV positive mothers at six weeks rather than wait 18 months as he’d been doing.

“The standard here is exactly almost what I’ve been seeing going abroad the in the UK or USA. As far as I’m concerned the USA is now here in Uganda.” He also plans to use an IDI inspired method of shifting medical tasks to competent nurses.

“The doctors are doing everything and we are overwhelmed. We are seeing about 40-something patients, daily. You go from your house to the hospital. Then you are fagged out and you go to bed.”

Easterbrook who has brought a strong focus on epidemiology to all staff and trainees at IDI insists that Africa is the place to get answers for HIV now.

“My role is to really make sure we’ve crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’, in having a rigor in our procedures that rival those in North America and Western Europe.”

Yakari Manabe, a doctor from John Hopkins Medical school decamped to Kampala to run the labs here, said simply that “IDI has the ability to answer questions that cannot be answered in the states.”

The New Jersey doctor added that: “If you want to look at HIV and tuberculosis co-infection and understand better the collision of those two infections and the devastating epidemic that comes from it, it is best done in places like this.”

While IDI serves some 10,000 friends, it has partnered with Kampala clinics and heads out to different clinic sites ach week to treat hundreds of other patients.

“My dream is maybe to see a negative generation. A new, negative, generation,” said Zam Nakawooya, 35, a former teacher now peer counselor at IDI.

IDI is part of my life now,” added Peter Kamlimba, 38. “I can’t relate it to anyplace. This is where I found my life. I’d lost my life and now I’ve gained my life again. I’m strong, I’m healthy, I can do anything.”

For IDI’s board, the goal is to replicate its success across the continent. Already similar centers of excellence are planned for Ethiopia and Nigeria.

This report is supported by the Project for International Health Journalism Fellowship Program as part of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Media Fellowships Program

Copyright © 1997-2008 Worldpress.org. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uganda’s ban on homosexuality is playing out in the private sector, with a local branch of the U.K.-based Standard Chartered Bank denying account access to a trans activist                                                  

By Frankie Edozien

Imagine walking into any major commercial bank, opening a checking or savings account, and then days later being told that your account has been frozen. And oh, by the way, since you’re gay and you work for a gay organization, our bank has a problem with you, and you will not be getting your paychecks deposited into that account.

An unlikely scenario? For most people in the West, yes, but that’s exactly what Juliet Victor Mukasa, a female-to-male transgender activist, says happened to him at a Kampala, Uganda, bank in March.

For all its breathtaking natural beauty and delightfully hospitable and charming citizenry, Uganda is still a place where being openly gay can turn this East African equator nation from paradise into a nightmare.

Homosexuality is criminal in this pearl of Africa. It’s been on the books for ages, with the penal code stipulating that “any person who has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” to being hauled into prison. It dates back to the penal provisions imposed during the era of British colonialism and was strengthened in 1990 to increase the penalty from 14 years to life.

Yet while these laws remain in force, Uganda has introduced democratic reforms and improved its human rights record since Yoweri Museveni became president in 1986.

Mukasa, 32, a research and policy analyst for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, was born female but now identifies and expresses himself as a male, routinely eschewing skirts for pants. He is cofounder and first chairperson of the Sexual Minorities Uganda group.

In 2005 his home was raided and he went into hiding. Then he did an about-face and sued the government for trampling on his rights by raiding his home without a search warrant and arresting his guests. A judgment is expected in that case soon.

But years after the incident, Mukasa went to Standard Chartered Bank — an international bank based in London but with branches and subsidiaries all over Africa and Asia — to open an account.

As at most banks, staff members greeted him courteously and said there would be no problems when he told them where he worked. The account application required him to mention both his current and previous employers.

“I work for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Could I still have an account here?” Mukasa recounted to The Advocate. “‘Of course, this is an international bank and we don’t discriminate. Just write it,’ was the bank’s officials response.”

Mukasa said he wrote his current employer, IGLHRC, in the blank space and for the question that required his previous employer followed, he wrote, “Sexual Minorities Uganda.”

The adviser made a copy of Mukasa’s passport, took photographs, and asked him to sign a document, then told him to return the following day, a Saturday, with passport photos and the money to be deposited.

The next day, Mukasa recalled, “The adviser took my photos and told me to go pick a deposit slip, fill it and deposit the money that I had. At the top of my completed slip he wrote something like ‘Account open…’ and signed it.”

An elated Mukasa skipped out of the Kampala branch, located in one of the city center skyscrapers, dancing for joy.

The following day he went back and deposited 500,000 Ugandan shillings (about $302) and was asked to come back the following week to apply for a Visa debit/ATM card.

“I told a couple of friends about it, how great SCB is, and I even showed them the deposit slip. They were all happy for me,” he recalls.

But the joy was short-lived. When Mukasa went in to complete the Visa application process, a bank officer took him aside with the original officer who helped open the account and told him there was a problem.

He recalls an official saying, “The account opening process goes through so many hands. Your application form got to some bosses who were not OK with it.” Mukasa asked what was wrong with his application and at first the official failed to explain. “I helped him by asking, ‘Is it because of the fact that I work with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and am a gay person myself?’ He answered in the affirmative.”

Mukasa took his case up the chain even asking for a meeting with the local CEO but the account remained closed.

SCB Uganda’s corporate affairs manager, Herbert Zake, in an April interview in his sky-high office overlooking the Kampala metropolis, stressed the bank’s community involvement over the past year: schools built in rural areas; the commitment to ending blindness by paying for cataract surgeries at $277 a pop; drilling boreholes for rural communities at a cost of $80,000 — some people have to walk 10-15 kilometers to get water and it may still be contaminated; and large-scale refurbishments of high school facilities in the capital city.

The company is even leading an effort to end stigma among those affected by HIV or AIDS by offering complimentary voluntary testing and providing a supportive environment to HIV positive employees.

But when asked about why a company that was such an outstanding corporate citizen in many ways for Ugandans and Africans at large, was denying an account to a lesbian, Zake appeared stunned by the question for a moment.

And then says, “She indicated that the money was coming from a gay and lesbian human rights organization … it [homosexuality] is illegal here.”

When pressed on whether national statute against gay actions affected whether gays could have bank accounts, Zake’s response was that the matter “is open to interpretation.” The executive then insisted that he would get clarity on the matter and forward a response to this reporter.

In May, when The Advocate contacted SCB’s parent company, officials in the United Kingdom declined to speak publicly about that one case, but insiders pointed out that the bank has a history of opening in culturally challenging locations.

While the mammoth $50 billion bank has branches in 13 African countries, it also operates in the Middle East, including Iraq, and in Afghanistan. In Middle Eastern locations where it might be difficult for both sexes to mingle openly, it has had to open banks primarily for women.

“We have a very strong ethos of diversity and inclusion in the bank and do not discriminate against customers on the grounds of sexual orientation, or gender or race, for that matter,” insists Tim Baxter, Standard Chartered’s London-based head of external communications.

The problem wasn’t SCB’s, but local law that officials feel they must comply with. Since IGLHRC promotes equality for sexual minorities, and activities of such minorities are illegal in Uganda, that puts SCB in an untenable position, insiders say.

“We operate in more than 70 countries with many different cultures and fully comply with all local laws and regulations,” Baxter says.

SCB officials say they have many senior gay and lesbian employees and try to work within the restrictions of local governments to provide retail financial services for all.

In the meantime, Mukasa has to make do with having friends who can lend a hand — or a bank account.

“IGLHRC wires my salary to a friend’s account. This is not comfortable for me. This makes me feel horrible … I am very frustrated. This place is becoming a stranger land for me every day.”

The Advocate.com. May 17, 2008

 

As the dust settles on the California Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, the question arises: Are we about to re-live the divisive political battles of the 2004 election?

The Massachusetts court ruling came down in late 2003, and by Valentine’s Day 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had opened City Hall to LGBT couples, giving marriage licenses until they were halted a month later by the same court that Thursday determined gays have the right to marry. That was all it took for President Bush and the GOP to make gay marriage a wedge issue, sparking passions on both sides of the issue, and driving conservatives to the polls. Remember the push for a federal marriage amendment?

Past is prologue. So far a million-plus signatures have been gathered to put a ballot amendment before California voters this fall to overturn the marriage-equality decision. And if the pending marriage-equality case before Connecticut’s highest court is resolved in favor of marriage equality — a decision is expected soon — there’s little doubt that gay marriage will become a factor in November’s election.

Republicans, says Ken Sherrill, a political science professor at New York City’s Hunter College, “have to do something to energize their base. The economy is in the toilet; the war is generally believed not to be going well.” However, he cautions, if Republicans turn marriage equality into a political football, they might not get any play. “The fact that a campaign or campaign supporters push certain buttons doesn’t mean that they are going to resonate with the voters,” he says, pointing to the special House election in Mississippi, which was won by a Democrat this week. “They ran these Obama–Reverend Wright ads, and it went over like a lead ball.”

As the marriage ruling made news, both the Obama and Clinton campaigns issued careful, nearly identical statements of support and respect for the decision — but also restated their commitment to civil unions, saying matrimony should be left up to individual states to decide. Republican presidential nominee John McCain, however, has yet to make a statement on the ruling.

According to Patrick Sammon, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, America is in a far different place now than it was four years ago. He notes that many jurisdictions have enacted partnership rights in the intervening years, and “voters have seen the sky hasn’t fallen,” he says. “They have gotten wise to the fact that some politicians tried to use divisive social issues to get votes,” adding he doesn’t believe gay marriage will figure as prominently in the current presidential contest. The evidence? Five GOP senators who highlighted the issue in their campaigns were booted from office in 2006, Pennsylvania’s relentlessly anti-gay Rick Santorum among them. Voters simply have other concerns at this moment in our country’s history, Sammon says, especially given that McCain is seeking to be competitive in states not traditionally Republican. That means coaxing votes from independents and some Democrats who may be alienated by too stern a tone on marriage equality.

As Sherrill says, if McCain or fellow Republicans bring the issue up, “you can expect the Democrats to run a campaign that says ‘don’t get distracted by this issue when the real issue is putting food on your table.’ ” (Frankie Edozien, The Advocate)

AFRIcanmag.com

By Frankie Edozien

For tennis fans, the just concluded Australian Open Grand Slam tournament - the first major tournament this year in tennis, has been a revelation. On the men’s side, it was expected to be a contest between the world’s top two players and 127 participants to culminate the end of two weeks of play.

However, the number one tennis player, Roger Federer, was knocked out by 20-year old Novak Djokovic of Serbia who went on to win the entire tournament and as a result, is now ranked number three in the world. Upset, of course, but not earth shattering.

A young upstart, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, a Congolese ranked 38th in the world, obliterated the number two player Rafeal Nadal. That, however, was earth shattering as was his meteoric rise throughout the entire tournament.

Tsonga, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mohammed Ali, had Australian fans cheering wildly for him as he knocked off higher ranked players to land himself in contention for his first ever tennis title at age 22.

The power server is the son of a French woman, and is fathered by a chemistry teacher, Didier Tsonga, who played international handball for Congo. The elder Tsonga was once declared the best handball player on the continent.
Tsonga’s remarkable son uses the French nationality; his succession of winners riveted Australian and French fans, all of whom embraced him. As the Melbourne Tournament went on, French sports papers’ featured his victory, including the defeat of each tennis giant he played. This earned him more Aussie fans as the tournament went on.
As Tsonga battled valiant in the finals, it was clear that he would not stop fighting until the end, making his parent extremely proud. The 15,000 fans in the audience never stopped cheering.

But Djokovic prevailed, making history by being the first Serb to win a Grand Slam, coming from behind to register a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (7/2) victory over Tsonga in three hours six minutes.

After collecting his trophy, Djokovic had this to say “I know the crowd wanted him [Tsonga] to win more. That’s O.K. It’s all right. I still love you guys.”

According to Tsonga, having his father there was a dream come true, especially for the old man who has always wanted to see him on top. Tsonga continued “For me, it was very important, because of one of my father’s dreams - it was to come here, and I did it, so it’s good.” The crowd’s cheer was unbelievable. I had frisson [goosebumps].” In addition, Tsonga added that he was very proud of himself

His approximately $680,000 prize reward as runner up in the tournament values more than his career earnings of the last two years, $460,000. Maybe one day, he’ll play for Congo. Tsonga now leapfrogs from Number 38 in the world to 28 in the rankings.

 

via africanmag blog.

By Frankie Edozien First Published: 4/9/2007

NEW YORK — When it was reported over a year ago, that New York City health officials were working on a plan to brand their own condom, Big Apple residents snickered. Jokes could be heard from one end of the city to the other.

The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, who had pushed through a smoking ban in public restaurants before it became di-riguer around the world, just soldiered on. His boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood by him and the deal was made.

Even as the secret was out, health officials revealed no details on their plan until almost two months ago when the official ‘NYC Condom’ was unveiled on Valentine’s Day.

It was no joke.

City officials, celebrities — including designer and amfAR president Kenneth Cole — and AIDS service workers showed off the product, with workers giving them away at subways, street corners, bars and just about everywhere that day.

Cole hosted the news conference announcing the condoms at his Rockefeller Center store.

Each standard-size condom, made by LifeStyles, is packaged in a wrapper stamped with the letters “NYC CONDOM” in the same font and bright colors used on city subway maps and signs. Some began calling them the subway rubbers. There were the first of its kind for any municipality.

The distinct packaging helps officials keep track of the product’s effectiveness as well as encourages its use. However, grumbling came from the city’s catholic leaders as the packets were handed out all over town.

Edward Cardinal Egan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, released a joint statement lashing out at City Hall leaders and denouncing the program as “tragic and misguided.”

Egan and DiMarzio, who together serve more than 4 million Catholics, added that the only way to protect against sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS is through abstinence before marriage and fidelity among married couples.

“Our political leaders fail to protect the moral tone of our community when they encourage inappropriate sexual activity by blanketing our neighborhoods with condoms,” they said.

But Bloomberg shrugged off their criticism and defended the initiative, saying it was not an issue of faith but a “real world” solution to a health crisis.

More than 100,000 of New York’s 8.2 million residents have HIV or AIDS, and officials estimate some 20,000 don’t know their status. The Big Apple remains the epicenter of the pandemic with blacks and women increasingly bearing the brunt of new infections.

The city began giving away condoms in limited quantities back in 1971. But the recent ramped up efforts have seen the numbers go from 4 million in 2003 to 18 million in 2006. That record could be surpassed by years end.

In the first month of NYC Condom’s distribution, 5 million were given away to residents and visitors.

The total cost is still unclear but officials say it’s a drop in the bucket for a city with a $57 billion budget. Few cities could match New York’s public health budgets and so far none has tried to brand their own condoms. Frieden

“The NYC Condom is a sensation,” a thrilled Frieden said. “Hundreds of community organizations are signing up to give out free condoms, many for the first time. I commend them for doing their part to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies,” the commissioner said.

Indeed it seems as if everywhere one goes in the Big Apple, the prophylactics are available.

Officials saw a torrent of hits to the www.nyccondom.org website, they set up for distribution (15,000 hits the first week and 35,000 by the end of the month) and sent new condoms to a myriad of establishments.

From AIDS advocacy groups to hair salons, clothing stores, nightclubs, coffeehouses and more. Anyone who wants can simply order them.

But officials have been proactive too, asking some establishments like Monster Sushi, a popular eatery with multiple branches, to pick them up. Managers said they constantly refill the baskets at the door. Close to a million condoms were distributed that way.

A sentiment echoed at other hitherto non-tradition condom distributors.

“Our customers keep asking for more,” said Peace St. Clair, a barber at the Levels Hair Salon of Harlem.

At the Pieces Bar, a gay watering hole in Greenwich Village, manager Brandon Griewank said the product’s vivid packaging sells itself. “They’re going by the handful. They capture the style and wit of New York.”

Fighting AIDS face to face: the nation’s most successful blacks gays get together to battle the number 1 killer in their community - Our health: depression aids activism and men of color health books

Frankie Edozien

When Doug Spearman left Los Angeles to be part of a group of 38 guys from around the country for a week-end on a Florida beach, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d signed up for. All he knew what he’d been invited to particpate in a treatment with other black gay professionals.

“It was like 10 Indians being invited to a country home for dinner and not knowing what they each had in common,” says Spearman, a 40-year-old actor whosee film and TV credits include parts in The Mask, Cradle 2 the Grave and Girlfriends.

But it wasn’t long after Spearman strolled into a restaurant in South Beach’s Abbey Hotel that he realized what he and the 37 other men gathered that sultry April had in comnon–intellects, razor-sharp intellects, successful careers, and one unanswered question: Why are black people more than nine times more likely than white people to to become infected with HIV?

The men were brought together for the three-day retreat by Emil Wilbelkin, the openly gay editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine, with the help of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute.

The idea, Wilbekin says, was to shake prominent black men from their complacency around AIDS and to mobilize a movement that can help save African-Americans from the scourge.

“I just believed in the mission,” Wilbekin says, “which was to bring together black men in the top of their fields, educate them about the state of HIV/AIDS, and find a way to mobilize them in their companies to make a difference.”

It was immediately clear to those gathered that one of the yet-unnamed coalition’s biggest priorities would have to be gaining acceptance of homosexuality. Because being gay is considered such a taboo in so many black communities, many black men who have sex with men chose to live their lives in the closet or “on the down-low.” Consequently, AIDS is still not a front-burner topic in most black households, churches, or bars, despite the toll it’s taking in all these establishments.

First, though, these men had to grapple with their own issues about HIV and AIDS and being gay.

For Spearman, who was raised in a middle-class home in Hyattsville, Md., there’s never been an issue with being openly gay. The son of liberal parents, he says one of his early book reports in school was on Patricia Nell Warren’s gay classic The Front Runner.

He’s had more trouble coming to terms with HIV’s role in his life. “Five out of my last seven boyfriends have been HIV-positive, and my best friend in the world is HIV-positive,” Spearman says. Yet “it always surprises me when I find out a black person’s HIV-positive.”

That the black community hasn’t really opened up to talk about AIDS is unfortunate, says Stuart Burden, 41, a San Francisco-based Levi Strauss executive who was at the Florida meeting. “It just seemed like HIV was yet another burden; there was not the immediacy of losing your house, or your job.”

Burden adds that he is among the cognoscenti who scratch their heads wondering why the virus is the leading cause of death for black women between the ages of 25 and 34 and for black men between the ages of 35 and 44, and why black men represent 49% of all new AIDS cases in the United States.

San Francisco–based photographer Duane Cramer says he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the coalition when his invitation arrived. “My initial reaction was that I wasn’t going to go,” the 40-year-old says. “But then, I know that part of my life’s purpose is to look at ways to bring an end to AIDS.”

When he was 23, Cromer lost his dad to the disease. Today, Cramer too lives with the virus and often photographs other people living with HIV and AIDS.

“Once I saw the list of participants, I knew I had to be there,” says Cramer, adding that he dived into the dawn-to-dusk workshops with gusto.

Eventually, the men emerged from their hotel with high hopes and a plan of attack, albeit a loose one. First, they want to increase acceptance of homosexuality and AIDS awareness, primarily by speaking out–everywhre from dining tables to city hall. They also want to create a public service campaign to destigmatize HIV infection among African Americans as well as lobby Congress for federal dollars to fight the disease.

All of this they hope to do on a grassroots level, pushing first for change in each of their homecities and the companies where they work. They plan to gather again after one year to see what they’ve accomplished and to set new goals.

A Cornelius Baker, the the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Whitman-Walker Clinic, said the men should be commended and noted that AIDS activism has historically come first from artists and socialites, not necessarily medical experts. “We’ve been fighting AIDS for 22 years, and we’re still going to have many more year to go,” he said. “It’s never too late to make a difference.”

Coalition members, though, are the first to say there will be hiccups in their activism. Some are wrestling with the group’s priority of visibility. Being out among friends and family is one thing some say, but being a black gay man about at work and to the world is another.

Nevertheless, others have already seen positive results as a result of their efforts. Since returning to Los Angeles, Spearman say he can’t stop talking about AIDS. “I go up to people and start the conversation. ‘Did you know …?’”

Burden says the coalition helped him realize that he’d been preaching to the choir. “I just can’t keep talking to the same public health–type people. We need to be talking to people who influence pop culture. Those people are not well represented in my Rolodex.”

And David Malebranche, a 34-year-old Atlanta physician, says, “It just gave me optimism about black men and black same-gender-loving people. I really found reason to celebrate. There’s a niche we all have–and if we utilize each other’s strength, we’ll succeed.”

Edozien is a reporter at the New York Post.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

by Frankie Edozien

It took two weeks before anyone noticed that John Canora was dead. Police found his Hyundai but let the driver go. They later said they could not find the owner to confirm whether or not it was indeed a stolen vehicle. No report had been filed in any police precinct.

But by the time his relatives had retrieved his decomposing body, out of his basement, Canora, 55, had become New York City’ latest gay man killed because of his sexuality.

This was not a man in the middle of Manhattan’s gay scene; rather he lived quietly in the Howard Beach section of Queens. This modest, middle-class neighborhood that strides Broad Channel over Jamaica Bay is an enclave of well-tended homes mostly owned by Italian-Americans. It became notorious several years ago when residents killed a black man who had wandered into the neighborhood; and for being the home of the late John Gotti, the head of the Gambino crime family, and for being the home base of the Mafia organization.

Canora’s murder, as pieced together from police and media reports, is a cautionary tale of a life lived on the fringe of the “outer boroughs,” where many gay men, especially those past their first youth, live lives of solitude. Often in the closet to family or neighbors and far away from the clubs and bars of the island to the west, they can expose themselves to danger in an attempt to find companionship.

According to reports from the New York City Police Department, in October, the middle-aged man picked up two 17-year-old boys and took them to his well-appointed Howard Beach home. All three allegedly began watching porn and smoking pot.

By the time the evening was over, cops say, Billy Ray Stanton of Far Rockaway and his chum Alex Brown of Jamaica (both nearby neighborhood in Queens) had choked their host to death, pummeled him with a baseball bat and then whacked him with a fire extinguisher.

Stanton and Brown wrapped his body in a blanket and dumped Canora’s body in the basement. They apparently sauntered off, after taking $30, which they split between them. They also took some porn tapes. They each also drove off in one of Canora’s cars-a 2002, Hyundai and a Plymouth Voyager.

When Canora’s corpse was discovered, it took dental records to positively identify him because the beating had been so severe. In a taped confession that was read at the arraignment of Stanton and Brown, Stanton confessed to the killing. “The guy put porno movies [on] and wanted to have sex with me,” “I said ’No.’ I choked him and let him drop when he went limp.”

Brown concurred telling detectives that he saw “Billy choking his friend. Billy told me this is what he does for money.” Canora may have been much older than his attackers, but he was slight and diminutive; Stanton is much taller.

Their “gay panic” defense doesn’t hold much water for Clarence Patton, who has worked for years for the New York City Anti-Violence Project and now heads the organization. “It seems a little bit over-the-top for them to say ’I was defending myself,’” he said. “If that’s the case, you don’t turn around and rob him.”

Canora’s gruesome killing comes on the heels of the bludgeoning of Michael Sandy, a young black man who was lured to a desolate Brooklyn beach only to be set upon someone he thought he was meeting for a hookup. A gang of four white teenagers set upon Sandy once he arrived at Plum Beach. To get away from his attackers, he ran into oncoming traffic on the Belt Parkway, a busy highway. There, he was fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver, who has still not come forward.

According to the New York Police Department statistics, hate crimes have spiked this year with anti-gay bias crimes up about 20 percent so far in 2006. Another murder occurred in Manhattan, when a former top city official was found bludgeoned to death in his Greenwich Village apartment. This, too, appears to have been the result of a gay man having met a man who promised sex but whose intent was robbery.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown has hit the two involved with Canora with a barrage of charges including two counts of second-degree murder; two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Brown was also hit with a resisting arrest charge.

The duo “befriended the victim and then choked and viciously beat him with an aluminum baseball bat…before callously leaving his body in the basement,” the DA said. If convicted, both men face up to 25 years in jail. Their pal, Daquan McGill, who was caught driving Canora’s Hyundai, was not charged with anything. He was also found with Canora’s house keys.