August 2, 2017
Page 7
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O PINION
Leaders of Faith in the Fight against HIV
We need the
Black Church
d r . M arJorie i nnoCent
Black Churches are more
than places of worship. They
are the vibrant hearts of the
African-American commu-
nity that bring the Gospel
into our lives, inspire faith,
grace, love and mercy and foster a
deep commitment to service.
For centuries, Black Churches
and faith leaders have been at the
forefront of the struggle for civil
rights, including voting rights and
the right to a quality education.
And we need the Black Church’s
leadership for another adversary:
HIV.
Make no mistake: Our nation is
facing an epidemic that is ravag-
ing our community from coast to
coast. Today, HIV affects African
Americans more than any other ra-
cial or ethnic group in the country.
While we represent just 12 percent
of the population, we account for
41 percent of people living with
HIV in the United States. This is
truly unacceptable.
As part of The Black Church
& HIV: The Social Justice Imper-
ative initiative, the NAACP asked
churches across the nation to
preach from the pulpit this month
by
about HIV as a social justice is-
sue. African Americans must ful-
ly acknowledge
the scope of
this
epidemic
and recognize
the
hundreds
of thousands of
brothers and sis-
ters it has taken
from us. In fact,
to take positive action to end the
HIV epidemic, especially in our
communities.
Overall, about one in 20 Afri-
can-American men and one in 48
African-American women will be
diagnosed with HIV during their
lifetimes; and 44 percent of all
new HIV infections are among Af-
rican Americans. This crisis is not
just about public and community
create The Black Church & HIV
initiative to develop a nation-
al network of African-American
faith leaders who will address the
disproportionate impact of HIV on
Black Americans.
The NAACP is committed to
helping enlist faith leaders from
around the country to break the
stigma surrounding this disease,
engage in meaningful conversa-
The NAACP is committed to helping enlist faith
leaders from around the country to break the stigma
surrounding this disease, engage in meaningful
conversation and education with their congregants,
provide compassionate support and spiritual guidance
to those living with HIV, and encourage Black Churches
to take action through a social justice lens.
we account for more than half of
deaths attributed to HIV/AIDS ac-
cording to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
Like many who grew up in the
Black Church, I look to my pastor
for guidance in my faith and all
paths of life. It is vital that faith
leaders take the lead in this fight,
committing to educate, engage
and motivate their congregations
health: It’s about social justice and
institutionalized racism.
The numbers are deeply dis-
turbing but not surprising. Such is
the scale of the epidemic that near-
ly all African Americans have a
friend, family member, colleague
or acquaintance that is impacted
by HIV. I am no exception.
That’s why in 2011 the NAACP
partnered with Gilead Sciences to
tion and education with their con-
gregants, provide compassionate
support and spiritual guidance to
those living with HIV, and encour-
age Black Churches to take action
through a social justice lens.
In 2013, we took an addition-
al step to further the impact and
reach of our efforts by making a
Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)
“Commitment to Action.” By
2018, our goal is to conduct 45
faith leader trainings in the 30 cit-
ies most highly-impacted by HIV,
obtain proactive resolutions from
historically Black mainline de-
nominations and integrate HIV as
a social justice issue into required
curricula in predominantly Afri-
can-American theological semi-
naries.
Thus far, we’ve reached more
than 1,500 pastors. But we need
hundreds more before we can
have the kind of transformative
impact necessary to save us from
continued, but avoidable, devasta-
tion and advance us closer to bet-
ter health and true justice for our
community.
As someone whose faith is
central to her life, I ask our shep-
herds-our faith leaders-in the Af-
rican-American community to
grasp this unique opportunity to
have a significant, positive impact
in the fight against HIV.
We must break the silence about
the dangers of HIV and the scope
of the epidemic, educate our com-
munities about prevention and ad-
vocacy and stop the growth of this
disease once and for all. With the
commitment of our faith leaders, I
believe this is a fight we can win.
Dr. Marjorie Innocent serves as
the Senior Director of Health Pro-
grams at the NAACP.
Private Prison of Cruelty, Greed and Indifference
Inflicting
suffering
for profit
by a ndrew
M oss
If you take I-15
about two hours
north from Los Angeles, heading
into the high desert of San Ber-
nardino County, you’ll reach a
for-profit federal detention facility
called the Adelanto Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Processing Center.
The center’s named for the
neighboring town of Adelanto,
which means “advancement” or
“progress” in Spanish, and it’s
not an inappropriate title for a
town founded a century ago by
the inventor of the Hotpoint Elec-
tric Iron. But the name now car-
ries a rather different set of asso-
ciations due to the ICE facility’s
presence there.
This year, eight asylum seek-
ers from Central American coun-
tries who had been “detained”
(imprisoned) at this facility went
on hunger strike to affirm the
right to asylum as well as
to protest excessively high
bail, substandard food and
medical care, and other
abuses. Three detainees at
Adelanto have died since
March, one found hang-
ing in his cell on March
22, the other two suffering
from serious medical is-
sues that, advocates say, had been
inadequately addressed at the fa-
cility.
This year’s protest follows a
previous hunger strike in 2015,
when 26 detainees protested pro-
longed imprisonment and exces-
sive bail while awaiting resolu-
tion of their asylum cases. Earlier
that year, over two dozen mem-
bers of Congress wrote a letter to
the Justice Department and ICE
officials, citing numerous cases
of medical neglect and calling for
a halt to the facility’s expansion.
More recently, an immigrants’ ad-
vocacy organization called CIV-
IC (Community Initiatives for
Visiting Inmates in Confinement)
issued a report asserting that Ad-
elanto had the third highest num-
ber of sexual assault complaints
of all U.S. immigration detention
facilities.
Last year, the Obama admin-
istration ordered a phasing out
of private federal prison facilities
like Adelanto. Citing an Inspec-
tor General’s report that faulted
the prisons on issues of safety
and security, and noting a de-
cline in federal inmates, Deputy
Attorney General Sally Q. Yates
stated in a memo that the private
prisons “compare poorly” to pub-
lic facilities: “they simply do not
provide the same level of correc-
tional services, programs, and re-
sources,” she said, and “they do
not save substantially on costs.”
All this changed with Donald
Trump’s inauguration as presi-
dent. The new Attorney Gener-
al, Jeff Sessions, reversed the
Obama administration’s initiative
to phase out the private facilities,
and the stock prices of private
correction companies like the
GEO Group, which runs Adelan-
to, and CoreCivic, went up sub-
stantially (about 80 percent for
GEO and 120 percent for Core-
Civic since the election).
Once again there is official
support for the unholy union of
two policies: the criminaliza-
tion of anyone “without papers,”
including those seeking asylum
from terror elsewhere, and the af-
fixing of dollar signs to incarcer-
ated immigrant bodies. The more
bodies that can be captured and
held, the higher the proceeds for
prison companies and the higher
the earnings for shareholders.
As I read various commentar-
ies on these developments, I was
struck by one comment in partic-
ular. Terry Dwyer, an analyst with
KDP Investment Advisors, was
quoted in the New York Times as
saying, “The deportation crack-
down is doing very good things
for these companies. On a per-
sonal level, it leaves a sour taste
in my mouth, but I guess business
is business.”
Business is business. Inflict-
ing suffering for profit may once
again be sanctioned as official
policy, but the new regime has
prompted resistance. Aside from
hunger strikes inside the walls
and activists’ sympathetic pro-
tests outside, there have been
movements to restrict or elimi-
nate the prisons altogether.
In California, for example, the
legislature last month approved a
budget measure preventing any
privately run facilities from ex-
panding the number of beds for
inmates involved in civil immi-
gration proceedings, and it now
requires the state’s Department
of Justice to audit the facilities in
order to ensure that they provide
proper food, medical care, and
access to legal assistance. More
fundamentally, a group called the
Detention Watch Network, togeth-
er with MoveOn.org, has begun a
petition drive calling for defund-
ing the private prisons altogether.
So what is Adelanto? Until the
walls and criminalized borders
fall away, it will remain a deep
stain – a composite image of
cruelty, greed, and indifference –
that we will see if we’re willing
to gaze squarely into the mirror
of American self-identity.
Andrew Moss, syndicated by
PeaceVoice, is an emeritus pro-
fessor at the California State
Polytechnic University, Pomona,
where he taught in Nonviolence
Studies for 10 years.