A National Condom Week flyer from 1995; Beowulf Thorne Papers (2003-10), GLBT Historical Society.
SARS-CoV-2 is not HIV. But can the hard-won lessons of HIV prevention help fight this new virus? As of June 1, most of us have been sheltering in place, or at least facing restrictions on our activities, for ten weeks or more. Psychologists have cautioned that the indefinite curtailment of our ability to socialize—at work, with friends, and at community-based hobbies—is not sustainable from a mental-health perspective. As different states and jurisdictions gradually loosen restrictions, how can we promote ongoing safe public-health initiatives while not giving up on all the activities and interactions that make life worth living?
A panel of community historians, harm-reduction experts and AIDS educators will consider what harm-reduction and risk-management strategies from the AIDS crisis might point our way forward as our responses to COVID-19 continue to evolve.
SPEAKERS
Terry Beswick (moderator) has served as executive director of the GLBT Historical Society since 2016. At the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, he was a founding member of the local ACT UP and was the first national coordinator of ACT NOW, the national AIDS activist network. He advocated for HIV/AIDS research and treatment with Project Inform, the Human Rights Campaign and the White House Office of HIV/AIDS Policy. After the advent of effective treatments for HIV, Beswick worked as a journalist for the Bay Area Reporter and other LGBTQ community publications. More recently, he spearheaded a successful campaign to save and renovate the Castro Country Club for the queer recovery community and co-founded the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. He holds an MFA in playwriting from San Francisco State University. Beswick has been named a Community Grand Marshal for the 50th Anniversary San Francisco LGBTQ Pride Parade and Celebration in 2020.
Kenyon Farrow is a writer and activist. He is currently the senior editor of TheBody.com and TheBodyPro.com.
Keiko Lane, MFT, is a psychotherapist based in Berkeley, CA. She writes and teaches about the intersections of queer culture and kinship, oppression resistance and transgenerational trauma, racial and gender justice, HIV criminalization, reproductive justice, queering sex therapy and liberation psychology.
Derrick Mapp has been with the Shanti L.I.F.E. Program in San Francisco since 2000, initially as a program volunteer, as an emotional health support counselor and group facilitator, and since 2018 as senior services care navigator. From the late 1980s, he has been a direct service provider in the mental health/substance use and harm reduction/recovery communities, with short involvement in ACT-UP Philadelphia and ACT-UP New York subcommittees. After seroconverting in the 1990s, he began his community advocacy activities in HIV treatment and prevention research networks.
Laura Thomas is the director of Harm Reduction Policy for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation where she is leading efforts to open supervised consumption services in San Francisco. She has been advocating on HIV and public health issues in San Francisco for over 30 years, since becoming involved in AIDS activism through ACT UP in San Francisco. She was previously the deputy state director for the Drug Policy Alliance in California, leading legislative and policy work on harm reduction, drug user health, overdose prevention, access to treatment, and supervised consumption services, as well as working on criminal justice reform and marijuana legalization. She has worked for community-based organizations in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and as a health policy consultant. She was appointed to the San Francisco Entertainment Commission in 2016, where she serves in the public health seat. She is a member of the San Francisco HIV Community Planning Council. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a master’s in public health and a master’s in public policy.
Monique Tula is the executive director of Harm Reduction Coalition, a national advocacy and capacity-building organization that promotes the health and dignity of people affected by drug use. Previously, she was the vice president of programs with AIDS United, where she oversaw the grantmaking and technical assistance portfolios. With more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Ms. Tula has devoted her career to harm reduction advocacy and infrastructure development of community-based organizations.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
This event will take place online. After you register, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and instructions on how to join the Zoom webinar as an attendee. The event will also be livestreamed, and then archived, on our YouTube page at https://bit.ly/2UyGVbG.
ADMISSION
Free | Suggested donation of $5.00
Register online here: https://bit.ly/2LMYxvm
The event is limited to 500 attendees.
JOIN THE GLBT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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