Organizational Leadership and management are important to the African-American MSM community for many reasons: the cultural legacies of our community institutions, the complexities/diversity of roles organizations play in the community, and the unique challenges organizational leaders face as both members and leaders of a marginalized community.

African-american MSM organizations were founded on strong social networks and building homes for our local communities. These organizations hold the local histories of communities while serving as “meeting house” for generations of MSM of African descent. Over time, these same organizations have taken on national roles in efforts to secure issues related to quality of life (i.e employment, education) and HIV/AIDS/health disparaties. In order to maintain African-american MSM organizations, we need strong management and organizational development lenses from which to understand the institution legacies/place and the emerging needs of the community while maintaining sustainable, transparent and accountable organizations.

African-american MSM organizations continue to play a diversity of roles, providing social supports, direct services, and/or HIV/AIDS service providers. In addition, organizations serve as public advocates around issues related to African-American MSMs, and local community gathering space. Organizations and leaders need the skills necessary to navigate the diversity fields which intersect in African-american MSM community based work. Strong organizational management and leadership build the capacity of organizations to remain relevant.

We've yet to fully enter the new decade and another jewel of the African Diaspora has been struck a crippling blow. (the Republic of) Haiti was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake (BBCNews.com). Her capital, Port-au-Prince, wounded and her people struggling; the first images released to the American public are echoes of Hurricane Katrina. Lest we not forget the past so swiftly, we must ask how will we respond to the tragedy of our sisters and brothers. American society's immediate respond was to solicit monetary donations to fund relief efforts. As people searched for ways to communicate with families and friends, in Haiti, they found donation instructions on the website of the American Red Cross and other charitable agencies. Money is not the response. "Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able...to change the history of the world," James Baldwin reminds us. Our Haiti sisters and brothers, locally and abroad, are hurting and in need of a safety net, encompassing them with love and protecting Haiti against international exploitation. Let us not falter; while, assuming money will pay for the relief of lost and collective trauma.

Haiti, the first nation of African descendants to fight and receive independence in the western hemisphere, has a long history of struggle, which personifies the strength of people of African descent to live against racism, poverty, and oppression. Her story is the story of African people in North and South American. Her legacy is the heart of the African continent. A challenging and diverse history, Haiti has long stood as a symbol of the liberation and revolutions. Her story, and the story of the Haiti people, so often amplify our political struggle on the world stage and yet we often forget to embrace her. We know her people and they continue to inspire us. Let us find our ways to support Haiti as she rebuilds. Our efforts should do more then lighten our wallets. Our effort should be rooted in the depth of our collective consciousness. The lessons learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina can't be forgotten, as we rush to quick judgment to absolve our souls' of pain and hardship. We must find ways to apply the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrine to inform how we contribute (mind, body and soul) to the efforts.

As I reflect on the devastation, I can't help but view it through the lense of a HIV/AIDS service practitioner. I see the gravity of lost and am weakened by the immediate infrastructure needs of those living with/affected by HIV/AIDS. I see images of hospitals destroyed and feel the anxiety of thousands wondering where their medications/treatment and care will come from. My thoughts drift to orphans affect by HIV, who may have lost caregivers and homes. The clinics which support people living with AIDS no longer exist, and American charities are competing to make a $1million dollars a day via text messaging. Pledges won't relieve the anxiety and fear of those living with HIV/AIDS or scared lonely children. Money doesn't accelerate the time it takes for one to grieve or heal from trauma. Haiti needs prayers and protection to allay her soul of this heavy burden. Haitians deserve the deepest commitment of the Diaspora to support one of our international Cultural Capitals. Haiti deserves our sweat and our tears. The faces of the relief should be ours. The international charities will set up short missions to distribute food and supplies while setting up basic infrastructure. We, as people of African descent, should be there to pick up the baton when they withdraw. Locally and domestically, we need to challenge charitable organizations, and other entities, who may use the Earthquake and relief efforts for political gain. Wherever we are in the world, we need to feel and acknowledge the suffering and lost of Haiti.

The Diaspora needs to use our collective skills to work with the Haitian people to build short- and long term sustainable infrastructure (public utilities, public education, public transportation and public health) . Every person of African descent, worldwide, must stand in solidarity with Haiti. Our response should be based in our knowledge, crafts and expertise. Students and professionals (especially focusing on areas of seismology, geology, environmental sciences, engineering and other critical areas) must become innovators and find quality local building resources and methods for the forthcoming development. As her family abroad, our charge is to hold accountable those who respond and/or seek to profit from the suffering of the Haitian. Haiti deserves a plan which is designed by/with/for her people, and with their concerns at the center of any and all development efforts. We needs to pressure governments and international agencies (the World Bank, the United Nations, etc) to provide direct funding, or a very least 0% loans, to the relief efforts. Haiti, her people, nor her government should not be burden with more (international) debt in response to the Earthquake. In her name, we must demand high quality results from those "fundraising" for relief efforts; as well as, ensure Haiti is not re built as a resort destination for the global wealth class.

Our people are in pain and we need to harness our skills and abilities in service to Haiti. We can not stand aside and watch as the world tries to monopolize and commercialize Haiti, while neglecting and displacing the Haitian people. We need to develop a response truer to the core of social justice values, rooted in our collective faith, and founded in Love. The impact of the international communities will be felt for generations. The government of Haiti may remember this moment and how the nations of the World respond in this hour. The people of Haiti will reflect on the people of the Diaspora, and this moment, and wonder if stepped aside, dulled our emotions via our wallets, or rose up in response to her grief. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr once said: "Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul." Let us not find pity in this moment but find true responses in the depth the soul.

I recently came across this posting and connected to the author message. I wondered what others thought about the posting. Let me know what your thoughts are...

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LZ Granderson: Gay is Not the New Black
Posted on July 17, 2009/www.kenyonfarrow.com

This piece just ran on CNN.com by Black gay journalist LZ Granderson. I am totally shocked CNN ran it. Granderson’s central point is illustrated here:

Despite the catchiness of the slogan, gay is not the new black.

Black is still black.

And if any group should know this, it’s the gay community.

Bars such as The Prop House, or Bulldogs in Atlanta, Georgia, exist because a large number of gay blacks — particularly those who date other blacks, and live in the black community — do not feel a part of the larger gay movement. There are Gay Pride celebrations, and then there are Black Gay Prides.

There’s a popular bar in the heart of the nation’s capital that might as well rename itself Antebellum, because all of the white patrons tend to stay upstairs and the black patrons are on the first floor. Last year at the annual Human Rights Campaign national fundraiser in Washington, D.C. — an event that lasted more than three hours — the only black person to make it on stage was the entertainment.

When Proposition 8 passed in California, white gays were quick to blame the black community despite blacks making up less than 10 percent of total voters and whites being close to 60 percent. At protest rallies that followed, some gay blacks reported they were even hit with racial epithets by angry white participants. Not to split hairs, but for most blacks, the n-word trumps the f-word.

I like that this piece continues to do, as myself, Jasmyne Cannick and others have been doing for the last several years, to continue to raise the issue of racism within the gay community. And I am happy that more of us are able to access mass media to break intervene in the hegemony of gay politics. But, I think there are two places where I depart from Granderson. One, Granderson suggests that there Black LGBT folks are not unhappy with Obama. I think there are Black LGBT folks who have critiques of Obama, but are very different critiques from what are raised by the mainstream LGBT Movement. I think that there is a way in which Obama, and everything his restoration of Black masculinity and Black family values he represents, implicitly supports and encourages heterosexism & homophobia in the Black community. For me, this is as critical as an end to DOMA or the HIV travel ban.

Also Granderson goes onto say that

The 40th anniversary of Stonewall dominated Gay Pride celebrations around the country, and while that is certainly a significant moment that should be recognized, 40 years is nothing compared with the 400 blood-soaked years black people have been through in this country. There are stories some blacks lived through, stories others were told by their parents and stories that never had a chance to be told…While those who were at Stonewall talk about the fear of being arrested by police, 40 years ago, blacks talked about the fear of dying at the hands of police and not having their bodies found or murder investigated.

I think rather than using Stonewall as a moment separate and apart from historical structural Black oppression, I think Granderson misreads the racial and sexual/gendered dynamics of police oppression of queers that led to the Stonewall Riots, and factually misses who was present, or that police don’t or did not, actually kill queers, and that the spectre of that kind of violence wasn’t also especially targeted at Black queers–we still see that to this day, as last year black transgender woman Duanna Johnson was beaten by Memphis police officers while handcuffed in the precinct, and was later shot to death after filing for a lawsuit against the Memphis Police Department. Granderson could have actually talked about the way this history has been re-cast as white and bourgeois, and as a natural pre-cursor to same-sex marriage and military inclusion fights, rather than actually being in direct opposition to the current LGBT movement projects. In fact, it was widely rumored after Stonewall that the Black Panthers and/or Students for a Democratic Society had been behind the riots. While proven untrue, it was clear that the powers that saw Stonewall as part of the radical black power, anti-imperialist and feminist movements, rather than assimilationist.

So while we have to continue to push and challenge racism in mainstream LGBT politics, we also need to be critical of the Obama Administration, and not allow for racist and revisionist history to obscure and de-value radical politics of Stonewall.

*Geiger Gibson Community Health Center
250 Mount Vernon Street
Dorchester, MA 02125
Phone: 617-288-1140 (24-hour)

*Neponset Health Center
398 Neponset Avenue
Dorchester, MA 02122
Phone: 617-282-3200 (24-hour)


*Boston HAPPENS *specializes in adolescent health
Children's Hospital Boston
300 Longwood Avenue Boston, MA 02115 USA
617-355-6000

Day & Times: Monday 1pm – 5pm, Tuesday 2pm – 7pm,

Wednesday 1pm – 5pm,
Thursday 1pm – 7pm and
Friday 1pm – 5pm



*Project TRUST
721 Mass Ave
Boston, MA 02118
617-414-4495

Monday - Friday, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm
Testing available 9 am - 4 pm



*Whittier Street Health Center
1125 Tremont Street Roxbury MA 02120
(617) 427-1000
www.whsc.org

Mon – Friday 8:30am – 8:00pm
Saturday 8:30am – 5:00pm


*LHI (Latin American Health Institute)
95 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617) 350-6900 x144

HOURS:
~Appointment~ M-TH 9-4
~Walk-In~ M & W 9-3:30 (FEES: Free)



SIDNEY BORUM, JR. HEALTH CENTER
130 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617) 457-8140
Fax: (617) 457-8141
___________________________
Did you know?

* Every day 7,397 people contract HIV—308 every hour.
* One child dies every minute from AIDS.
* In the United States, African Americans account for 48% of new HIV infections.
* The rates of AIDS diagnoses for African-American was nearly 23 times the rate for White women, and the rate of AIDS diagnoses for African American men was 8 times the rate for White men (CDC, 2008).
* While 53% of people living with HIV/AIDS in Massachusetts are people of color, they only comprise 12% of the population (An Added Burden, MA DPH, 2007).
* AIDS is the leading cause of death for African American women aged 25 to 34
* Every fifteen seconds, another person age 15-24 becomes infected with HIV/AIDS.
* At least half of all new infections are among people under the age of 25.



For more information:

*Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bureau of Infectious Disease

http://www.mass.gov/dph/aids


*Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/


*Black AIDS Institute

http://www.blackaids.org/


Get Informed, Get Tested, Get Treated, Get Involved


For more information contact:

New.Era.Bosotn@gmail.com

check out our FaceBook Group: Test 1 Million

World AIDS Day 2009
“Universal Access & Youth Rights”
Five ways to Commemorate World AIDS Day

1. Realize 33.2 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.
Prayer for Unity
God of us all,
We pray for the unity of the Black Church, that we may find a unified way to fight this disease of HIV/AIDS. Lead the Church out of passivity and old-fashioned attitudes. Replace ignorance with education. Teach the young self-worth and strength, the strength of self-discipline. Teach the old, new ways of caring and compassion. We pray for the commitment of time and money that will provide crisis intervention, professional guidance, community seminars and outreach programs to provide alternatives to the harmful enticements of the streets. Grant us, together, acknowledge of what is and what is not, as well as a vision of what can be. In the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.

(The Balm In Gilead, Inc. ™ We Will Break The Silence! Liturgical Resources for the Healing of AIDS)

2. Get Informed.
Did you know?
 Every day 7,397 people contract HIV—308 every hour.
 One child dies every minute from AIDS.
 In the United States, African Americans account for 48% of new HIV infections.
 The rates of AIDS diagnoses for African-American was nearly 23 times the rate for White women, and the rate of AIDS diagnoses for African American men was 8 times the rate for White men (CDC, 2008).
 While 53% of people living with HIV/AIDS in Massachusetts are people of color, they only comprise 12% of the population (An Added Burden, MA DPH, 2007).
 AIDS is the leading cause of death for African American women aged 25 to 34
 Every fifteen seconds, another person age 15-24 becomes infected with HIV/AIDS.
 At least half of all new infections are among people under the age of 25.

For more information. check out:
Massachusetts DPH, Bureau of Infectious Disease
http://www.mass.gov/dph/aids
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/
Black AIDS Institute
http://www.blackaids.org/

3. GET Tested at one of the following testing sites:
Neponset Health Center
398 Neponset Avenue
Dorchester, MA 02122
Phone: 617-282-3200 (24-hour)

Boston HAPPENS *specializes in adolescent health
Children's Hospital Boston
300 Longwood Avenue Boston, MA 02115 USA
617-355-6000
Day & Times: Monday 1pm – 5pm, Tuesday 2pm – 7pm,
Wednesday 1pm – 5pm, Thursday 1pm – 7pm and Friday 1pm – 5pm
Project TRUST
721 Mass Ave
Boston, MA 02118
617-414-4495 Monday - Friday, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm
Testing available 9 am - 4 pm

Whittier Street Health Center
1125 Tremont Street Roxbury MA 02120
(617) 427-1000
Mon – Friday 8:30am – 8:00pm
Saturday 8:30am – 5:00pm
www.whsc.org

LHI (Latin American Health Institute)
95 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617) 350-6900 x144
HOURS: ~Appointment~ M-TH 9-4
~Walk-In~ M & W 9-3:30 (FEES: Free)

SIDNEY BORUM, JR. HEALTH CENTER
130 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617) 457-8140
Fax: (617) 457-8141

4. Get Involved and Join us:
World AIDS Day Youth Health & Resource Fair
Roxbury YMCA, 1125 Martin Luther King Blvd, Roxbury MA 02119
Saturday, November 28, 2009 3pm-6pm

World AIDS Day “I am 1 in a Million” H.S. tour
Contact Tasha Campbell-Parker by email: new.era.boston@gmail.com
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 8am-1pm

World AIDS Day RED March & Rally
March begins Boston City Hall at 3:30
Park Street Candle Lighting Vigil at 4:30
Massachusetts Statehouse Rally at 5pm
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 3:30pm-5pm

World AIDS Day Awareness “College AIDS Week”
African Student Organization of Northeastern University
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 1pm-5pm
Student Government Association & ALANA of Wheelock College
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 10am -5pm

5. Get Treated
Local supports for people living w/ HIV/AIDS
Support universal access to AIDS prevention, treatment and care. The Boston Living Center
www.bostonlivingcenter.org

Cambridge Cares About AIDS
www.ccaa.org

Sydney Borum Health Center
617.457.8140