The Good Fight
A veteran advocate calls for renewed action
by Judy Greenspan

In a decade when the incarceration rate has skyrocketed and the number of HIV-positive people in prison has grown faster than ever, AIDS-in-prison advocacy has not kept pace -- only a handful of individuals and organizations are working to help inmates with HIV/AIDS. In many ways things are back to where they started 15 years ago, and yet we're also poised at the edge of what could be an exciting new time for AIDS-in-prison activists on both sides of the walls.

The birth of the AIDS activist movement in the mid-'80s, with ACT UP leading the way, spilled over into prisons. Prisoners all over the country worked tirelessly and often underground to establish peer education and counseling programs. In New York, women prisoners set up ACE, the AIDS Counseling and Education program at Bedford Hills, now a national model of innovative peer education. It has spawned PACE, a similar project for male prisoners. Many were also punished for their efforts. New York state prisoners David Gilbert, Yusuf A. Shakoor, Cruz Salgado (now known as Ruben Rodriguez), and others were locked down and even shipped to different prisons throughout the state for daring to start HIV peer education programs behind the walls. Despite this repression, those were exciting and inspiring times for prisoner activists and peer educators. "I really felt part of a movment for justice and peer education," recalls Ruben Rodriguez, who now works for the AIDS in Prison Project of the Osborne Association in New York. "I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't participated in those struggles."

California became a hub of prisoner activism. At the all-male California Medical Facility, prisoners reached out to state legislators, led hunger and medication strikes, and faced indefinite lockup in the high-security Pelican Bay State Prison for membership in the "gang" ACT UP. At the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in 1994, Joann Walker, an HIV positive prisoner activist, campaigned for the compassionate release of dying women, and organized a rally on the prison yard while supporters demonstrated on the road outside the prison. Demonstrations for better care continue today, led by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) and California Prison Focus (CPF). CCWP was organized in 1995 to support a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of women prisoners with serious and chronic illnesses at both CCWF and the California Institute for Women (CIW).

As prisoners rallied inside the walls, members of ACT UP and other activists picketed, held die-ins, sent in educational materials, made videos, and tried to support peer education and prisoner activism from the outside. Demonstrations were held in Albany in front of the New York State Department of Corrections headquarters to protest poor access to medical care and the high death rate of prisoners with HIV/AIDS. A dramatic demonstration was organized inside the state capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin to protest the murder of Donald Woods, a prisoner with AIDS, who died of asphyxiation after prison staff bound and gagged him, then strapped him to a bed, leaving him to die.

Although conditions improved somewhat for male prisoners, the medical neglect faced by HIV-positive female prisoners continues today. The fight for better care for women prisoners with HIV began at CIW. That struggle led to a takeover of the top offices of the California Department of Corrections by members of ACT UP-Los Angeles in 1991, an action memorialized in the video "Acting Up for Prisoners," and the eventual release of Judy Cagle, a woman prisoner living with AIDS. Mary Lucey, an HIV-positive former prisoner, comments, "After I was released from prison, I felt I could not turn my back on women who still suffer behind bars. It is our responsibility to continue to bring attention to the cruelty that people with HIV/AIDS face in the prison system."

Other AIDS activists rallied to the defense of HIV-positive prisoners who were charged with attempted murder for alleged spitting and biting incidents against prison guards. ACT UP-Philadelphia began a campaign demanding freedom for Gregory Smith, an HIV-positive gay, African American prisoner convicted of attempted manslaughter in New Jersey in 1990 and sentenced to up to 25 years after he was brutally beaten by a New Jersey prison guard. The guard maintained that Greg bit him, but Greg was chained and shackled and bore signs of a harsh beating. "Greg's commitment as an activist and peer educator inside prison is inspiring; the hurdles he must overcome to share life-saving information, including solitary confinement as punishment for his activism, are monumental," said Julie Davids, a long-time supporter of Greg and member of ACT UP-Philadelphia.

While the energy of the prison AIDS activist movement clearly inspired many prisoners around the country, its dissipation over the last several years has left many more without a base of support and little voice in the community. "The support and assistance from groups like ACT UP was crucial to our efforts in California," recalls Michael Haggerty, a former prisoner who fought for programs at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville in the early 1990s. "Sadly, I don't see the same spirit of activism or support for prisoners."

And with the shrinking of the movement has come the shrinking of the list of demands activists are now willing -- or able -- to raise. While the fight in the streets and communities for needle exchange has become almost commonplace, harm-reduction programs for prisoners are practically nonexistent. The last campaign for prisoner access to condoms took place in Washington, D.C. in 1991. Access to condoms, dental dams, methadone maintenance, and bleach would save hundreds of prisoners' lives. Ten years ago, I counseled AIDS activists not to catapult hundreds of condoms over the fences of New York state prisons in a dramatic protest over the system's refusal to grant access to these life-saving prevention tools. Today I would applaud the audacity of a group willing to take this action. At least it would show the interest and willingness of an AIDS organization to tackle an important and life-extending issue.

Concurrent with the dissolution of the AIDS-in-prison activist movement has been the rapid growth of the multimillion-dollar AIDS service industry, made up of a vast array of organizations with different agendas (see "Big Business"). While these organizations have traditionally focused on providing services to people who are not incarcerated, funding opportunities have turned the AIDS industry's interest toward prisons. This new focus, though not unwelcome, is very different from the attention paid to prisoners by activist organizations.

AIDS service organizations (ASOs), often staffed by activists, are funded by both public and private sources who do not relish the idea of ASOs speaking out against the prison system. As a result, some ASOs find themselves in a bind. According to Haggerty, who's also the former executive director of the Correctional HIV Consortium, "Any executive of an AIDS Service Organization with a lucrative government contract knows better than to bite the hand that feeds it. Eventually, there will come a time when an ASO has to choose between the good of the prisoner client and maintaining the funding." Often inexperience and the race for funding drives these service providers into the bosom of the system they once opposed. And in cozying up to the jailer, AIDS service providers lose the faith and trust of the very prisoners they hope to represent and serve.

While ASOs are reluctant to advocate on behalf of prisoners, there is a new turn in prison activism. Led by students, youth, former prisoners, and prisoner advocates, a new movement is demanding more funding for education, housing, jobs, and health care-not new prisons. Grassroots organizations opposed to the growth of prisons are sprouting up all over the country on high school and college campuses. For many young people, this new prison opposition movement is their first foray into political activism. Last year, several thousand middle and high school students walked out of Bay Area schools, surrounded a newly constructed suburban jail and demanded "Education Not Incarceration."

The largest gathering of people opposed to the growth of prisons was held in California in September 1998. Over 3,500 attended "Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex." Three weeks after this conference, the first statewide caravan and demonstration for prisoners' rights was held in front of several California prisons. This year, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)/Pastors for Peace and several other groups are organizing a national caravan to travel from prison to prison to raise consciousness about prison justice in the U.S. "The antiprison activism that consolidated at Critical Resistance a year ago is forming the nucleus of a broader movement for social justice," says Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Ph.D., a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the conference's organizing committee.

Nearly 13 years ago, when I first contemplated taking the position of AIDS Information Coordinator at the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C., I felt I could count the number of people who cared about prisoners on one hand. Today we are back to our small numbers. Many activists on both sides of the walls have died or simply moved on to other fronts.

Yusuf A. Shakoor, a prisoner peer educator, wrote in 1993, "Prisoners need advocates and activists to help rally their cause. Too many people are already aware and have witnessed the inhumane and cruel conditions imposed on prisoners. . . but have remained silent or unable to expose what they have witnessed and rally support to make the necessary changes. No reports need to be written. Action needs to be taken in order to stop the genocidal actions this state has implemented by withholding adequate treatment and care for HIV/AIDS prisoners."

Today there are new coalitions and connections to be made. Many progressive organizations -- national and local -- are putting the issue of prisoners' rights on their agendas. I recently received a phone call from the National Organization of Women about starting a prison subcommittee. It's time for a rebirth of activism around prisoner health issues and for the AIDS industry to reach out, support, and listen to HIV-positive consumers behind the walls. They are a vulnerable part of our community in dire need of advocacy whose voices must continue to be heard. By joining with the growing campaigns to dismantle the prison industrial complex we can make a powerful statement. Our humanity and the lives of our brothers and sisters behind the walls are at stake.

Judy Greenspan is a longtime advocate for prisoners with HIV and AIDS and committee chair of the HIV in Prison Committee of California Prison Focus.