AIDS Travel Ban: 100,000+ Letters Opposed -- Interview with Ken McPherson, Mobilization Against AIDS

Last June 7 AIDS TREATMENT NEWS joined dozens of organizations urging people to write to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to oppose the travel and immigration ban prohibiting foreigners with HIV from entering the U. S., during the CDC's public-comment period which ended August 2. While the AIDS community could not save the Seventh International Conference on AIDS in Boston, which is now seeking another site because U. S. policies would impede attendance by HIV-positive delegates, the campaign was strikingly successful in generating letters and postcards to the CDC. Over 100,000 letters and postcards received by the CDC opposed having HIV on the list (of conditions excluding persons from entry into the United States), while fewer than 15,000 wanted HIV on the list (see "Mail Count," below). This outpouring of mail is especially notable since this is the first such campaign for the AIDS movement. Such grassroots political work, sadly underemphasized in AIDS until now, will be vitally important in the future. (A new postcard
campaign supporting medically sound infection-control procedures instead of mandatory testing of healthcare workers is described below.)

One organization, the San Francisco-based Mobilization Against AIDS (Mobilization), delivered 40,000 postcards opposing the travel/immigration ban. We interviewed Ken McPherson, special projects coordinator for Mobilization, who ran the postcard project and is now beginning the new campaign on healthcare workers.

"Much of the success of this campaign was from its
linkage with AB101 (a gay rights bill in California for
equal employment and public accommodation). There was no
additional cost to print the AB101 cards, since the
postcards were printed as a set. Mobilization raised
$10,000 from other AIDS organizations to cover costs, and
the AB101 staff coordinated the volunteers. They trained
them and did the phone banking. The combination of Gay
Pride day, Pink Saturday (a street celebration in San
Francisco's Castro district), and Mobilization's street
table on weekends, brought us the 40,000 cards. The linkage
worked because we both were doing a postcard campaign.

"We photocopied all the postcards, so in the future, we
can approach these people again. That's one of the reasons
for doing a postcard campaign, to find your constituents.
We will not need to re-invent the wheel each time; we are
building a machine, an army, to take care of future AIDS
needs.

"We found it harder to get people to respond to AIDS;
lesbian and gay issues are easier to sell on the street. One
generation has been to so many funerals that there is a
numbing effect. And that same generation is thinking, 'AIDS
will go on for many years of my life; am I going to focus
only on it, or on other things also? ' Meanwhile, the new
generation has not been to the funerals yet. And since
adolescence, they have grown up with AIDS, so the shock
effect is gone.

"Much of the press, when the Bush Administration gave
its "No" on travel and immigration, only reported the 30,000
to 40,000 letters and postcards in the earlier comment
period against the travel/immigration reform [proposed by
the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services and
effectively vetoed by the Justice Department and the White
House -- ed.], without mentioning the 100,000 letters and
postcards on our side in the comment period which ended
August 2. That says we need to do a better job of public
relations. The reason the PR didn't occur after the
postcards were sent is that this whole campaign was done for
$10,000, with two staff people working on it and the rest
volunteer. You cannot do all that is necessary to nurture
the media with such little funding and such a small staff.

"Our community has never pushed letterwriting, at least
on this coast. Yet it does a great deal of good. We need
to start letting politicians know that not just once but
every time they screw us over, they're going to hear from
us. And not just from street demonstrations. ACT UP is an
important component, and the AIDS service organizations are
important components. But we cannot ignore the power of the
constituency base (of voters writing to their political
representatives), and that's something we are not yet up to
speed on.

The Senator Seymour Healthcare-Worker Campaign

"Mobilization is now launching a new postcard campaign
on amendments by Senator Jesse Helms, now going through
Congress, which will in effect require mandatory HIV testing
of healthcare workers and patients if they become law.
These amendments are opposed by the American Medical
Association, the American Dental Association, and the U. S.
Centers for Disease Control. California Senator John
Seymour twice supported Jesse Helms on these amendments. He
will be voting on this issue again, so we want him to hear
from the AIDS community.

"The right way to address this issue is through
enforcement of the OSHA (U. S. Occupational Safety and
Health Administration) standard for universal precautions to
prevent transmission of all bloodborne diseases. 'Universal
precautions' means that all patients are treated as though
they are potentially infectious. The OSHA standard will
cover 4.5 million healthcare workers, and OSHA has teeth;
for example, it can impose fines of $7,000 a day for
violation, and it can enforce its standard in doctors' and
dentists' offices as well as in hospitals. Legislation is
being developed to expand OSHA's authority to impose
criminal penalties for willful violations.

"These precautions, including proper sterilization of
equipment, repair of defective equipment, and proper gloves
and gowns, have been in use at leading institutions since
1987; the problem is they have not always been applied.
OSHA issued a proposed rule in May 1989; over two years
later it has still not been made final. It should be
applied and enforced immediately. Universal precautions are
far more effective than mandatory HIV testing to protect
both doctors and patients, because they prevent transmission
of all bloodborne diseases, not only HIV, and they prevent
patient-to-patient transmission [a far greater risk than
doctor-to-patient transmission, as it's usually the
patient's blood, not the doctor's blood, that gets on the
instruments -- ed.]. Also, HIV tests are falsely negative
for weeks or months after infection, so mandatory testing
gives false assurance of safety. We want the public and the
politicians to understand that there is a right way to
prevent infection -- the universal precautions which need to
be applied and enforced in all health-care settings."

Ken explained that there were three ways to work with Mobilization Against AIDS:

* Anyone can join by contributing $30 per year or more.

* You can join Mobilization's "Lobby Team." You will be called several times a year to write letters to your representatives, and will receive an extensive information packet on each issue. Mobilization asks those who can afford it to contribute $10 a year to pay for the materials. You do not need to be a member of Mobilization to join the Lobby Team.

Ken noted that "The lobby team is still the most effective means of changing peoples' minds. A handwritten letter is the most powerful tool for a Senator or Congressperson to receive in their mailbox. But if we can't get enough letters, then postcards are fine."

* Anyone can request printed postcards from Mobilization, to circulate and return for the Senator Seymour campaign described above. There is no charge for the postcards.

"We also want to contact agencies and others who can
contribute financially. The whole budget for the Seymour
campaign is $3400. If we could increase that to $10,000,
then we could print banners and start advertising in the gay
papers, to turn out tens of thousands instead of hundreds of
cards. And advertising is what begins teaching the
community that constituent pressure on political
representatives is something we must make part of our lives.
We must all become regular letter and card writers. We must
consider this as normal and natural as the right-wing
fundamentalists do."

To contact Mobilization Against AIDS, call 415/863-4676, or write to 1540 Market Street, #160, San Francisco, CA 94102. Contributions are not tax deductible, because the organization is political.

Comment

The fact that the Bush Administration ignored over 100,000 pieces of mail (as well as the virtually unanimous consensus of the medical community) on the HIV travel/immigration issue, favoring instead a political hobbyhorse of right-wing bigots, does not mean that letterwriting does not work. No political means will work every time.

We believe that there are four essential components of AIDS political action:

* Consensus-building among AIDS organizations and the medical community;

* Street demonstrations and other media work, e.g. by ACT UP;

* Letterwriting and other forms of communication to politicians from the voters; and

* Building coalitions, especially with groups working on other diseases.

The first two have long been done well by the AIDS community. On the last two, we have only begun.

All of us should support the activists who work year after year to defend our community, and defend medically rational AIDS policies developed by health experts. Without their continuing work, none of us is safe.