With all the private and government organizations designed to help AIDS patients in America, why is there still a shocking percentage of people who fall through the cracks?
Chicagoan Michael O'Connor is an HIV+, African-American activist who has been part of several legislative efforts to provide more support to Illinois residents living with HIV/AIDS whom he feels are not getting the support they need. In his political career O'Connor has been part of lobby groups that attempt to raise awareness within the African-American gay community. "When was the last time you saw a demonstration about homophobia in the Black community?" O'Connor asked.
O'Connor was diagnosed with HIV in 2001 after collapsing in Springfield just prior to a lobby session before the Illinois General Assembly concerning an organization he was working with called Second Chance. Over the past decade O'Connor has experienced a myriad of both social and health issues. He had no support system when he found out his status, just enough friends to help him move his things into storage while he was in the hospital.
"When I became ill, a well-known HIV advocate offered his home to me while I recovered, but when I got to his house he informed me that I couldn't sleep on his couch," O'Connor said. "I had to sleep on the floor, because he didn't want the medications that I was taking to seep into the couch materials, he said it may smell up the livingroom."
A support system of friends and family is a vital part of coping and survival for HIV/AIDS patients, especially in the initial diagnosis period and it was clear that O'Connor did not have the support he needed. "It's been a lot of rejection." O'Connor says, "Certain friends and family just don't understand the disease and it's still a major taboo among the Black community, especially the gay Black community."
Though he earned a B.A. in Political Sciences from Chicago State University and is about to finish another degree from Roosevelt University, today's economic state-of-affairs show that even those credentials are no longer a financial guarantee. His illness does prevent him from working as much as a healthy person might but it does not mean that he is unfit. In his experience with HIV, O'Connor has felt himself the victim of discrimination in the professional world. "I was denied a job within a legislative district office that I volunteered in. I was denied that job after the person rescinded her offer, even though I was initially offered the position. I was then offered a job to work with a non-profit HIV support service organization where she was a board member," he said. "I suspect she thought I was better suited for that the HIV non-profit job because I was HIV+ even though I had quit my other job to be a part of the legislative staff within her district office. I suspect she didn't want to take any chances of me getting sick at that particular job."
Through a combination of discrimination, lack of support and lack of funding, O'Connor has found himself living in the Dearborn YMCA because he can't get his social security to come through for housing. Luckily he gets medical support through Medicaid. "If I would have waited on advocacy agencies I don't know if I'd still be here, I've done more for myself in these past 10 years and it worries me for other people in my situation," he said.
O'Connor is hopeful, having just taken his LSATs he is gearing up for law school after his graduation from Roosevelt in the fall. "I've made it this far," he said, adding that he remains hopeful and continues to want to make a difference.
Now in his 50s, O'Connor has been influenced by the large amount of GLBT history he's lived through in Chicago. He officially came out as gay at 18 and moved from the South Side where he grew up, to Boystown in the late 1970s. He lived in an apartment on the corner of Lake Shore Drive and Waveland Avenue with his first lover. "I used to have to show my I.D. just to get into my own building, there was still a lot of racism during the '80s in Chicago," he said. O'Connor began his activism during this period, participating in one of the first GLBT demonstrations in Chicago. He still keeps the banner though the Chicago History Museum has asked him for it.
O'Connor saw a vast majority of his friends succumb to the fate of the first wave of the AIDS epidemic throughout the 1980s and '90s.
"I stopped counting after I lost 40 friends," he said. "I have a phone book full of scratched out numbers, about 70 people now. A lot of my generation of gay men in Chicago were wiped out by the virus, if jail didn't get them. AIDS began to change my life then because I watched a lot of the friends I grew up with dropping dead from it."
Even before he was diagnosed, O'Connor was an activist for several causes in Chicago. "I support a wide array of advocacy causes, GBLT, ex-offender, and HIV causes," he said. "I support these causes by actively involving myself. For example, I am the co-founder of the Rocks Coordinating Committee, a predominately African-American, GBLT pride, one-day HIV testing outreach event ( one of the oldest and largest one-day HIV testing outreach events in the state of Illinois, held Pride Sunday at Montrose and the Lake ) . Additionally, I and a small group of volunteers led the first criminal justice legislative initiative which focused on ex-offenders recidivism, resulting in amended changes to the Illinois compiled statutes; specifically the criminal code section 720. … Finally, I and Ben Montgomery, a recently retired legislative staffer for Congressman Danny K. Davis, co-authored the Quality of Life Endowment fund which resulted in the Red Ribbon Lottery legislation and led the statewide legislative lobbying and GBLT legislative education process. This is the first and only HIV state revenue enhancer of its kind in the United States. So far we've made well over $3,000,000 from this lottery and it has been distributed to HIV supportive services organizations within the State of Illinois."
O'Connor has an impressive background in Illinois legislature but to him it is not enough. "There's still not enough activism among the African-American community, there's not enough accurate education about AIDS and certainly not enough resources for those living with it, do you know there's not a single trauma center on the South Side?" he said. "That has a pretty big influence on the care of HIV/AIDS. We used to get kicked out of bars in the '90s for handing out condoms!
"My community needs to be held more accountable for urban African-Americans living with AIDS. We aren't doing enough to raise awareness and I fear it will get worse with the current economic situation. I know people who are getting turned out of their homes because their rental supplements are not coming through. Some of these agencies designed to help people are still waiting on their money from the government and therefore people who need it have to wait even longer. The apathy needs to end, because silence equals death. What needs to change is that the gay African-American leadership needs to start being tired of being tired and become more proactive in the community. Don't get me wrong though, I do see glimmers of hope, I do."
His advice to anyone who wants to help this serious cause is, "that person who wants to make a difference in the lives of those coping with HIV needs to stop being silent about the lack of HIV public funding in economically disadvantaged communities and among constituency groups where the disease is running rampant. Additionally that person could join organizations that assist HIV+ people in their daily lives. That person could challenge organizations and public persons that only give lip service to the issue. That person could join a number of Chicagoans who are challenging the institutions within their own communities and demanding organizational accountability and transparency as well as competent organizing leadership within the communities that are adversely affected by HIV."
Though O'Connor endures numerous health issues a year, he lives his life according to the words of the late gospel singer Alberta Walker, "I'm still here": "God is not through with me yet, I believe that is why I'm still here. And because I'm still here I feel I have an obligation to positively affect other people's lives by being a channel of advocacy to help those who can't or don't know how to empower their lives."
