COLLECTIVE MEMBERS & ROLES

  • The Counter Narrative Project (CNP) builds among power among Black gay men and works in solidarity with social justice movements. We believe that narrative change is critical to social change, and through changing hearts and minds, we can change public policy. In the Collective, CNP will:

    • shift narratives around HIV criminalization and mass incarceration by engaging cultural workers and content creators to produce work related to the human and community impacts of HIV criminalization. Products may include: podcasts, video content, and written narratives.

    • develop and nurture a network of Black attorneys through outreach to professional associations, hosting dialogue on movement legal strategies, and serving as a community resource to the Black legal community.

  • Positive Women’s Network-USA (PWN) is a national organization building power by and for women and people of trans experience living with HIV, through leadership-building, with a focus on those communities most impacted by the epidemic; organizing and mobilizing advocates to take action; strategic communications that center the perspectives of those who would be most impacted by decisions; and policy analysis and policy advocacy. All of our work is grounded in a racial, gender, and economic justice analysis. In the Collective, PWN will:

    • develop and deliver political education and training on intersections between HIV criminalization, surveillance, and policing as they impact Black, Latinx and trans communities.

    • advance strategic collaboration between the HIV decriminalization movement and efforts to decriminalize sex work.

    • directly support HIV decriminalization efforts in multiple states.

    • educate relevant candidates and decision-makers about the negative impacts of HIV criminalization laws and opportunities to address them, leveraging election cycles and legislative sessions between now and 2022.

    • Serve as the administrative hub for the Collective

  • Sero Project centers the leadership of people living with HIV (PLHIV) to end HIV criminalization, mass incarceration, racism, and social injustice by supporting inclusive PLHIV networks to improve policy outcomes, advance human rights and promote healing justice. In the Collective, Sero Project will:

    • lead the production of HIV is Not a Crime (HINAC) training events and development of a continuing legal education (CLE) curriculum.

    • bring together PLHIV network leadership and sex work advocacy leadership to develop a three-year plan for creating support for sex work decriminalization among PLHIV networks and HIV service, research, advocacy and policy groups.

    • present at conferences and to professional organizations.

    • provide technical assistance on state-level decriminalization advocacy.

    • develop and conduct a national survey of PLHIV.

  • Transgender Law Center (TLC) is the largest national trans-led organization advocating for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures. Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation. In the Collective, TLC will:

    • lead impact litigation efforts, support development of legal resources, and play a key role in outreach to and education of the legal and prosecutorial communities.

    • elevate participation of transgender people of color in HIV decriminalization work, build the Consortium’s capacity to engage TGNC people most impacted by HIV-related criminalization, and ensure adoption of TGNC-inclusive language.

    • work closely with the TGNC people of color most impacted by HIV to explore viable strategies of abolishing laws and policies, such as Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature law, that continuously harm TGNC people in and out of all forms of incarceration.

  • The United States People Living with HIV Caucus (HIV Caucus) is a network of all the national networks of people living with HIV (PLHIV), regional networks and individual HIV advocates. Since 2011, the HIV Caucus has brought representative voices of people living with HIV in the United States to federal policy, in order to increase the meaningful involvement of people living with HIV (MIPA) in the domestic HIV response. In the Collective, the HIV Caucus will:

    • strengthen individual and collective advocacy capacity in communities of PLHIV.

    • educate on and encourage advocacy efforts for HIV decriminalization, towards the abolition of the carceral state.

    • provide in-person and online community education sessions with PLHIV to share their experiences and points of view on HIV criminalization.

    • support PLHIV to access state capitals and educate elected officials on the impact of HIV criminalization and the carceral state on PLHIV.

WHY WE MUST ACT NOW

Criminalization is never a solution to health challenges. Communities already heavily surveilled, policed, and criminalized bear the brunt of HIV criminalization — and now are experiencing elevated repression in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. A response rooted in policing and criminalization not only undermines public health and human rights, but jeopardizes the long-term survival of our communities. 

The HIV movement can contribute much in this moment. For decades, we have lived experiences of surveillance — how our bodies are counted, attempts to contain us — and law enforcement — as in the case of HIV criminalization; we know these practices are neither neutral nor accountable in supporting the health and well-being of our communities. As more calls for carceral public health strategies emerge from COVID-19 and the widespread social protests on race and the criminal justice system, the HIV movement can and must illuminate how interlinking public health and law enforcement is dangerous, damaging to our communities, and ultimately unsuccessful. 

The Collective prioritizes authentic engagement, activation, training, and leadership rooted in our principles and deep investment in our communities. We are united against the use of policing, prosecution and imprisonment in public health crises, and committed to the abolition of the carceral state, including immigrant detention, which places the profits of the few over the health and lives of our communities. We insist on scrutiny of any forms of policing and surveillance, including those developed or deployed for public health interventions. 

In these efforts, we are dedicated to the leadership, health, safety, and dignity of BIPOC, people living with HIV, people involved in the sex trade, substance users, imprisoned and detained people, people who access harm reduction services, immigrant and migrant populations, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people, people with disabilities, and no- and low-income people.

OUR PRINCIPLES

  • We believe that our role as organizations that are comprised of and accountable to the most affected, that it is our duty to center and uplift the leadership of our membership at every opportunity.

    We commit to supporting communities through the actualization of our principles and through an understanding of power that is founded in a racial and gender justice lens.

    We commit to support communities most impacted by the carceral legal system–Black, Indigenous, people of color, those of trans experience, sex workers and those living with HIV–to create shared analysis of power and to build power.

  • We believe that the capacity for leadership lives within the people living with HIV that compose our membership and networks.

    We commit to engage with the most directly impacted at every level of decision making as thought partners and experts.

  • We believe that the criminal legal system does not serve to provide justice in any capacity. Laws are not neutrally applied. Instead, they serve to victimize and stigmatize already vulnerable and underserved communities. The effort to decriminalize HIV cannot be divorced from a larger movement to abolish the prison industrial complex.

    We commit to co-creating a world beyond punitive punishment, stigmatization and moralization of actions and through the pursuit of meaningful healing and justice to victims of harm.

  • We believe that racial justice is at the nucleus of our work. In order to undo the harms of centuries-old oppressive systems, we must acknowledge the harms of racialized oppression.

    We commit to utilizing a racial justice lens that centers and uplifts the voices of Black and brown communities and identifies the ways that anti-Blackness has permeated our society–from institutions to interpersonal interactions.

    We commit to fostering proactive and meaningful allyship, and aim to shift the strategy from divesting from harmful practices to investing in creating long-term sustainable harm reduction norms within the movement for decriminalization.

  • We believe in the interconnection between reproductive justice and the movement to decriminalize HIV.

    We believe that all people deserve the right to inhabit their bodies as they see fit. This includes, but is not limited to, gender expression and identity, the right to necessary and affirming medical treatment, as well as the freedom to have children, not have children and to parent with all desired and necessary social supports.

    We commit to uplifting the importance of bodily autonomy, affirming healthcare access and choices, and the human right to own all decisions regarding health and reproduction.

  • We believe ableism has created the conditions for the reliance on the carceral state in response to public health.

    We believe that the lack of attention from HIV movement spaces towards the overlap and alignment with the disability rights movement is to the grave detriment of the HIV justice movement.

    We commit to prioritizing and expanding HIV movement practices to center disability justice in both the content and the conduct of our movement space.

    We commit to remove any accessibility barriers for disability/Deaf/chronically ill communities’ participation in the HIV decriminalization movement.

    We believe that our power rests not only in our meetings and messages, but in the spiritual and emotional health of our bodyminds.

    We commit to and affirm the powerful lineage of healing justice, a practice of recognizing, honoring and amplifying the role of health workers and healers.

  • We believe that economic justice will create the conditions needed for the liberation of our communities.

    We commit to operate from a framework that disrupts practices that maintain inequality through undervaluing the contributions and work of the most marginalized, and makes criminalization of HIV profitable.

    We commit to pursuing a world where vulnerable communities are not exploited for capitalism and profit.

  • We believe in the power of storytelling and creating a narrative of the criminalization of HIV that centers the experiences of the most impacted.

    We commit to the work of correcting the narrative around the HIV community and HIV criminalization that misrepresents and denies the dignity and agency of people living with HIV.

    We commit to prioritizing the voices of BIPOC, those of trans experience, and sex workers as not only those most impacted, but those working to bring an end to the harms of HIV criminalization.