Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to OKF Daily with Meet
Speaker 1: Your Girl. Daniel Moody. Pre recording from California, where I
Speaker 1: am traveling, folks. A couple of things before I get
Speaker 1: into today's episode one. It is just outright shocking to
Speaker 1: me that we are existing in a time when half
Speaker 1: of the population is in occult and doing themselves an
Speaker 1: extraordinary disservice in the midst of these horrific climate change catastrophes,
Speaker 1: to deny themselves aid, to deny themselves facts in order
Speaker 1: to continue to follow Donald Trump, who is leading them
Speaker 1: off of a cliff. It was astounding to me that
Speaker 1: the President of the United States had to get on
Speaker 1: television to tell people that hurricanes are not man made.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely unfathomable to believe that the President of
Speaker 1: the United States would have to say that if you
Speaker 1: take the seven hundred and fifty dollars worth of BEAMA
Speaker 1: emergency aid, we're not going to seize your home. The
Speaker 1: lies are reckless. They deserve litigation and accountability because they
Speaker 1: are costing people their lives and their livelihood. And I
Speaker 1: just don't know when it is ever ever going to stop.
Speaker 1: This election. Right now, is raizor thin and is going
Speaker 1: to be decided by a handful of voters in a
Speaker 1: handful of states, And that to me is terrifying, as
Speaker 1: I know it is to all of you. It is
Speaker 1: just not right where we find ourselves where we are,
Speaker 1: and I am really scared. I'm gonna be honest with you,
Speaker 1: it is really scary where we find ourselves right now.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I don't know, dear friends, how
Speaker 1: this election is going to turn out. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it will go the way that we need it to.
Speaker 1: But I do know that we are going to need
Speaker 1: each other more than ever moving forward, regardless of the outcomes,
Speaker 1: because the people that are working tirelessly to separate us,
Speaker 1: to divide us, and to create these tents of fear,
Speaker 1: these silos of fear and disinformation, are never going to stop.
Speaker 1: And we have to steel ourselves, fortify ourselves for that truth,
Speaker 1: and work outside of our fear silos to connect with
Speaker 1: one another again. Coming up next, I'm very happy to
Speaker 1: welcome to wok af Daily Craig Bowers, who has been
Speaker 1: working with APLA Health on their fortieth anniversary of the
Speaker 1: AIDS Walk in Los Angeles. The theme for this year's
Speaker 1: AIDS Walk is We're not walking back. And you know,
Speaker 1: in this conversation, Craig goes into the history and reminding
Speaker 1: us of where this country was in the eighties when
Speaker 1: AIDS was killing tens of thousands of people. I remember
Speaker 1: the quilts, I remember the protests by act UP, I
Speaker 1: remember just the devastation, and I remember mostly the indifference
Speaker 1: of the Reagan administration. To think how far we have
Speaker 1: come as a country in forty years is really extraordinary.
Speaker 1: But to think about the generation of queer people that
Speaker 1: were lost is just enormous, an enormous hole that will
Speaker 1: never be refilled. And so this conversation with APLA Healths
Speaker 1: Craig Bowers was eye opening and a really important reminder
Speaker 1: that while we continue to forge a path forward, we
Speaker 1: have to always remember where we came from. So that
Speaker 1: conversation with Craig Bowers is coming up next, folks. I
Speaker 1: am very happy to welcome to f Daily the Chief
Speaker 1: Marketing and External Affairs Officer of APLA Health, Craig Bauers,
Speaker 1: who is joining us today to talk about the fortieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the AIDS Walk in Los Angeles and their
Speaker 1: bold theme of we're not walking back. Craig, welcome to you.
Speaker 1: Talk to us first about APLA Health and then talk
Speaker 1: to us about this important theme on this very big anniversary.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, the origins of APLA Health as it's known today,
Speaker 2: when we were originally founded forty one years ago, we
Speaker 2: were known as AIDS Project Los Angeles, and this was
Speaker 2: an organization essentially just set up by peers in the community.
Speaker 2: So once HIV and AIDS started to become known, there
Speaker 2: really was not a lot of information out there for
Speaker 2: the general public. So AIDS Project Los Angeles was created
Speaker 2: as a way to kind of gather and disseminate information
Speaker 2: to community members that we're facing an epidemic and really
Speaker 2: there weren't a lot of information or resources available to them.
Speaker 1: You know. I feel that it's important for us to
Speaker 1: have this conversation, one because your walk is coming up
Speaker 1: on October thirteenth, but also because I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel as if we talk about HIV
Speaker 1: and AIDS the way that we once did probably ten
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, where it was a part of regular
Speaker 1: conversation about preventative measures, about what are the effects and
Speaker 1: what are the medications that folks are taking and how
Speaker 1: to protect yourselves. Why do you think that that has
Speaker 1: changed so much?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it kind of dovetails into our theme
Speaker 2: this year of we're not walking back, but also simultaneously
Speaker 2: celebrating forty years of progress. You know, most people don't
Speaker 2: realize if you're not of a certain age that for
Speaker 2: the first fifteen years of this, if you became HIV positive,
Speaker 2: that was essentially an automatic death sentence. There were no
Speaker 2: drugs that were going to keep you alive. And so
Speaker 2: until nineteen ninety six with the introduction of anti retroviral therapies,
Speaker 2: this disease was essentially a death sentence. And APLA in
Speaker 2: its origins, was really about disseminating information but also preparing
Speaker 2: people for the inevitable realities of the disease. Right, And
Speaker 2: so to your point, I think that we've made a
Speaker 2: lot of progress against this disease over the course of
Speaker 2: over forty years, and so it's not the automatic death
Speaker 2: sentence that it used to be. In fact, it's a
Speaker 2: very treatable and livable condition at this point. So for that,
Speaker 2: we're extremely thankful and there's a lot of people that
Speaker 2: did a lot of hard work convincing the federal government
Speaker 2: that this was a serious problem, a problem to be
Speaker 2: taken seriously. So in that regard, you know, things have
Speaker 2: changed dramatically. That doesn't mean that HIV is not out there,
Speaker 2: but it basically means that our tools that we have
Speaker 2: in order to prevent people from getting HIV in the
Speaker 2: first place and to get people in the medical treatment
Speaker 2: if they do have the disease has dramatically shifted over
Speaker 2: the course of greater than forty years.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a time, and I want to
Speaker 1: say it was around the time when I was still
Speaker 1: living in Washington, d C. I want to say that
Speaker 1: it was probably the early twenty tens when there was
Speaker 1: actually a spike in HIV and AIDS in the LGBTQ community,
Speaker 1: but particularly for black queer men. And I want to
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, ask you about the ways in
Speaker 1: which what does education look like these days, particularly for
Speaker 1: younger queer folks who don't have the memory, who don't
Speaker 1: have the deep memory and understanding of the devastation that
Speaker 1: was caused at the beginning of the crisis in the
Speaker 1: eighties and the early nineties, that kind of think that
Speaker 1: it's no big deal like, how do you work to
Speaker 1: educate so that we don't have spikes that happen inside
Speaker 1: of the community.
Speaker 2: I think that that's a complex problem that deserves a
Speaker 2: complex set of answers. Let's back up a second and
Speaker 2: just talk about America's healthcare system that really has not
Speaker 2: effectively served black and brown people. And so we're talking
Speaker 2: about this system that has not worked particularly well, that
Speaker 2: hasn't been particularly welcoming to LGBTQ plus people either. Right, So,
Speaker 2: when we talk about the disease state today, unfortunately, because
Speaker 2: of that medical reality, this disease is more of a
Speaker 2: black and brown disease, and it's more of a disease
Speaker 2: that is prevalent in places that have not expanded Medicaid.
Speaker 2: During the introduction of Obamacare, and with Obamacare, Medicaid became
Speaker 2: the vehicle to deliver health services to low income people,
Speaker 2: regardless of if you were single or a male, or
Speaker 2: it really expanded who was eligible for Medicaid services. And
Speaker 2: in the states that have expanded Medicaid, you've really seen
Speaker 2: a large uptake in these preventative measures to prevent people
Speaker 2: from getting HIV medically that you haven't really seen in
Speaker 2: non Medicaid expansion states which are predominant elite states that
Speaker 2: are known as red states.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is and I appreciate that
Speaker 1: because that is a very fair point to really underscore that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can talk about the beginning as well
Speaker 1: in terms of the negligence by the Reagan administration, the
Speaker 1: blatant negligence, right, and how racial discrimination and you know,
Speaker 1: homophobia and transphobia have played a major role in terms
Speaker 1: of weaponizing our healthcare system against black, brown, and queer
Speaker 1: folks and those that live at the intersections. In terms
Speaker 1: of younger people, Generation Z and what have you, what
Speaker 1: does the education for that community look like versus older generations.
Speaker 2: I think that the younger generations have an opportunity to
Speaker 2: get into healthcare. That is what I would call culturally affirming, right.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was a young man, the idea
Speaker 2: of me having an LGBTQ plus medical professional that I
Speaker 2: went to for council that understood the differences in my
Speaker 2: lifestyle versus a heterosexual counterpart, for example, that really didn't exist. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so I'm not saying that that's prevalent everywhere today,
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is we've come lie years ahead
Speaker 2: of where we were. And so for me, particularly at
Speaker 2: APLA Health, you know, ten years ago, we weren't a
Speaker 2: healthcare organization, but with the introduction of Obamacare, we opened
Speaker 2: up our first what's called a federally qualified health center,
Speaker 2: and in fact, on October third, we're celebrating our ten
Speaker 2: year anniversary of that first facility, and now later this fall,
Speaker 2: we're opening up our eighth healthcare facility here in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles County. So to go from zero to nineteen thousand
Speaker 2: patients over the course of ten years, and the majority
Speaker 2: of those patients are members of the LGBTQ plus community,
Speaker 2: it just really demonstrates how far we've come in terms
Speaker 2: of reaching this audience and trying to address their overall
Speaker 2: health issues, HIV being obviously a major component of that,
Speaker 2: but not certainly not all of that, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of talking about health, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's so true because I can I can remember
Speaker 1: being very young, being on you know, for instance, being
Speaker 1: on my college campus and needing to go to see
Speaker 1: a medical professional, you know, and they're checking off all
Speaker 1: of the list of questions that they ask and being
Speaker 1: at that time it was you know, late nineties, early
Speaker 1: two thousands, like being fearful of saying that I was queer,
Speaker 1: right being you know, not wanting to be judged, not
Speaker 1: wanting to you know, like I have always moved in
Speaker 1: a way to brace myself for that moment when you
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of prepare for the discrimination that
Speaker 1: you could face and like what would you say and
Speaker 1: how will you respond? But thinking that it is extraordinarily
Speaker 1: important to provide young people with the skills, with the
Speaker 1: information that they need so that if they don't have
Speaker 1: somebody that is not affirming that they know how to respond,
Speaker 1: that they can go in feeling competent and like resolute
Speaker 1: in the care that they need.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And you know you still even see it today.
Speaker 2: You know, certain people will go to mainstream institutions for
Speaker 2: their medical care, but when it comes to their sexual
Speaker 2: health care, they're still doing those at LGBTQ plus organizations.
Speaker 2: So they've really kind of siloed their healthcare in areas
Speaker 2: that are you know, reasonable for them.
Speaker 1: You know, what does it mean for you all? I
Speaker 1: mean and you know, and congratulations on the on the
Speaker 1: ten years and the amount of patients that you have
Speaker 1: been able to see during that time. What does it mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're talking to and can connecting with
Speaker 1: these folks to have this kind of facility. Now you're
Speaker 1: said you're moving into I think your eight through your
Speaker 1: ninth that you're opening. What does it mean for folks
Speaker 1: to have this kind of access? And you know, as
Speaker 1: we're in the midst of an election season and cycle
Speaker 1: where things could drastically change for the worse, how does
Speaker 1: your organization brace itself for the navigating what could be
Speaker 1: potentially a really precarious and dangerous political landscape.
Speaker 2: You know, I ironically, you know, this conversation is about AIDS,
Speaker 2: WALK and HIV and AIDS really created a political movement
Speaker 2: for the LGBTQ plus community, and we see the through
Speaker 2: lines through that from health equity, marriage equality, to what's
Speaker 2: happening right now in the political system. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think that this is anything new for the
Speaker 2: LGBTQ plus community. I think what's new, particularly to some
Speaker 2: of the younger people, is that just because necessarily we
Speaker 2: advance our cause doesn't necessarily mean that there are people
Speaker 2: working in opposition to that, and certain advances that we
Speaker 2: have may be taken away. So I think that the
Speaker 2: meta point is that you always have to remain politically active.
Speaker 2: You always have to remain alert, you know. As a
Speaker 2: part of my responsibilities for the organization, I oversee our
Speaker 2: government affairs team, and we work at a local, state
Speaker 2: and national level in order to affect positive governmental outcomes
Speaker 2: and policies for people living with HIV as well as
Speaker 2: LGBTQ plus people overall. You know, in the state of California,
Speaker 2: as an example, you pay no out of pocket expenses
Speaker 2: for PREP, which is the prophylactic use of HIV medication
Speaker 2: to prevent you from getting HIV. That just didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Many People Organization and other allied organizations put the pressure
Speaker 2: to bear on the state of California in order to
Speaker 2: ensure that that's a real thing. So Obamacare made PREP
Speaker 2: you know, a part of the overall insurance package, but
Speaker 2: it didn't prevent insurance companies from asking for copays, and
Speaker 2: some of those copays were quite expensive, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. So even though you weren't paying the full
Speaker 2: freight of the medication, you were still paying out of pocket.
Speaker 2: And now in the state of California, essentially you do
Speaker 2: not pay out of pocket for PREP. So these are
Speaker 2: examples of you know, that's just one example of the
Speaker 2: work that we're consistently doing in order to make sure
Speaker 2: that people have access to these life saving medical therapies
Speaker 2: in order to prevent people from becoming HIV and similarly
Speaker 2: people who are HIV positive, preventing them from being able
Speaker 2: to pass along the virus to others and remaining undetected.
Speaker 1: What do you think needs to be done in terms
Speaker 1: terms of the larger you know, society, really kind of
Speaker 1: understanding the needs of the community and what we should
Speaker 1: be asking for from those that represent us in government.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that there's a lot of intersectionality here.
Speaker 2: I don't think this just starts to stop for the
Speaker 2: LGBTQ plus community. I think it's you know, I think
Speaker 2: the black community has a lot of things to contribute
Speaker 2: to this conversation, and I think it's important if we're
Speaker 2: talking about HIV. I think everyone knows this is not
Speaker 2: exclusively a gay disease, although it predominantly affects gay men,
Speaker 2: But there's other people in this conversation. There's trans folks
Speaker 2: that need to be really at the forefront of this conversation.
Speaker 2: Black women need to be at the forefront of this conversation,
Speaker 2: particularly in the eastern seaboards and cities and Red States.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a broader conversation it needs to
Speaker 2: takes place. I think there's an intersectional conversation that needs
Speaker 2: to take place, And I think it fundamentally comes down
Speaker 2: to what do we want to see as a society.
Speaker 2: If one person is sick, are we all sick, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Or are we just saying that
Speaker 2: I'm good and You've got to fend for yourself. And unfortunately,
Speaker 2: our healthcare system kind of veers towards the latter, and
Speaker 2: I think we all need to work together to figure
Speaker 2: out how we create a system that's more equitable for everyone.
Speaker 1: I agree wholeheartedly. I think that that is incredibly important
Speaker 1: for us not to operate in silos. Like different communities
Speaker 1: have different needs and have been marginalized in different ways.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, it is really
Speaker 1: looking at having a robust and equitable healthcare system that
Speaker 1: tends to all of our needs. With the time that
Speaker 1: we have left, please tell us a bit more about
Speaker 1: the AIDS walk, what people can expect, how they can
Speaker 1: connect and get involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. As you said earlier, AIDS walk will
Speaker 2: be happening on Sunday, October thirteen here in Los Angeles
Speaker 2: at West Hollywood Park starting at ten am. You know,
Speaker 2: AIDS Walk at Los Angeles is the first AIDS Walk
Speaker 2: in the world, So there was no Aid's Walk before
Speaker 2: the first one occurred in Los Angeles. The original one
Speaker 2: took place on the Paramount Lot and it helped raise
Speaker 2: money to just again do anything that we could to
Speaker 2: figure out what was going on in our community. It's
Speaker 2: really hard for people to understand that when this virus
Speaker 2: first became publicly known, there just really was not a
Speaker 2: lot of information out there, and that spanned for years,
Speaker 2: and so there was a tremendous amount of fear, there
Speaker 2: was a tremendous amount of unknowns, and a lot of
Speaker 2: people were dying. So, you know, those first couple of
Speaker 2: decades of this walk were really sad affairs, but also
Speaker 2: the first instances of the community coming together, fundraising amongst
Speaker 2: ourselves and really trying to create greater awareness. Now, forty
Speaker 2: years later, this event still exists. HIV still exists, but
Speaker 2: the difference is now is that we have a medical
Speaker 2: means to end this disease right now. So if everyone
Speaker 2: who was not HIV positive protected themselves using some of
Speaker 2: these new advancements and tools that we have. And if
Speaker 2: everyone who was HIV positive got to an undetectable level
Speaker 2: using the medications that we have available, this virus really
Speaker 2: would have nowhere to go. So when we come together
Speaker 2: for AIDS WALK today, we come together to remember those
Speaker 2: that we've lost. I mean, the gay community lost an
Speaker 2: entire generation, right, I mean, and I don't think people
Speaker 2: have really processed that. But you know, if you look
Speaker 2: at gay men of a certain age, there is a
Speaker 2: huge hole there that we cannot get back. And I
Speaker 2: think for us celebrating forty years of progress is hey,
Speaker 2: look things have changed dramatically, but we still have more
Speaker 2: to go. We still have more to go to figure
Speaker 2: out how do we resolve these equity situations in which
Speaker 2: black and gay Latino men are still the majority of
Speaker 2: people contracting this virus today, whereas for people who have insurance,
Speaker 2: those numbers have gone down dramatically. So this is something
Speaker 2: that we can solve, but it takes a greater community,
Speaker 2: greater awareness, responsibility throughout the healthcare profession. It just takes
Speaker 2: a lot of actors in order to make sure that
Speaker 2: we kind of close the loop on all of this
Speaker 2: and in this disease in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Craig, I can't thank you enough for the work that
Speaker 1: you are doing with APLA Health and the work that
Speaker 1: APLA Health has done in the community for the community
Speaker 1: for decades. Really appreciate you coming on to OOKF and
Speaker 1: one to help us from member give us context and
Speaker 1: education about how far we've come, but also provide us
Speaker 1: with an understanding of what needs to be done in
Speaker 1: the future to eradicate the disease moving forward. Really appreciate
Speaker 1: you and congratulations on the amazing anniversaries.
Speaker 2: And thank you guys for having me. And if anyone
Speaker 2: wants to learn a little bit more about this, please
Speaker 2: check out our documentary and title Commitment to Life, which
Speaker 2: is streaming on Peacock and it really gives you a
Speaker 2: nice concise understanding of where we were and where we
Speaker 2: are today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for that. Appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Take care.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, Dear friends on wokef
Speaker 1: as always power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.