In this Issue:
- Organizing for Power: Road to 2020
- Congratulations 2018-19 PWN-USA Policy Fellow Graduates
- Remembering PWN-USA Ally: Tammy Garrett-Williams
- Webinars You Won’t Want to Miss
Organizing for Power: Road to 2020
Positive Women’s Network-USA (PWN), a national network of women and people of trans experience living with HIV, is thrilled to unveil our new nonpartisan electoral organizing strategy, led by women and people of trans experience living with HIV. Those who are new to organizing are encouraged to apply as well as seasoned organizers.
As part of our Organizing for Power: Road to 2020 (OFP) strategy, we are recruiting teams led by women and people of trans experience living with HIV who want to help elevate issues important to the HIV community in the election cycle between now and November 2020. OFP 2020 will build on voter engagement and issue elevation tactics that PWN supported its regional chapters and member leaders to conduct during the 2018 midterm elections by offering a higher level of training and support and by focusing on key geographic locations. Learn more and apply here.
Register for our webinar on Friday, April 26, at 3pm Eastern/12pm Pacific to get any questions answered about the application and eligibility criteria.
| Register for the informational webinar here |
Congratulations 2018-19 PWN-USA Policy Fellow Graduates
PWN-USA is pleased to announce the second graduating class of our Policy Fellowship. These 2018-2019 fellows successfully completed a year-long fellowship to build the policy leadership bench for women, including women of trans experience, directly impacted by the epidemic and historically underrepresented in the federal health policy advocacy arena. As part of the program, the fellows created and completed a practicum project.
Here are our 2019 graduates:
Jessi Mona Cartwright (TX) – She attempted to create a policy work group on the Medicare Part D proposed rule, i.e. changes to the “protected class” protections. Following this experience, wrote a best practices guide, which outlines the reason for the work group and the lessons learned.
Shelia Crockett-Nwachi (TX) – She gave a presentation focused on HIV-related health care in the correctional setting and linking to community-based care after release. It includes facts about HIV criminalization and two case studies of women living with HIV who experienced incarceration.
Roxie Glapion (TX) – She produced a factsheet focused on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and work requirements. Specifically, it explains the program and outlines why work requirements are harmful.
Olga Irwin (OH) – She produced a policy brief focused on Medicaid work requirements. Specifically, Ohio has been considering adding work requirements to their program, and the brief outlines why it is harmful policy using states that have enacted work requirements as a case study.
Marnina Miller (TX) – She produced a factsheet that explores the benefits of inclusive, comprehensive sexual health education with a specific focus on Texas.
Kneeshe Parkinson (MO) – This practicum supported HIV Policy modernization efforts in Missouri. The fellow did educational outreach to encourage people living with HIV to participate in the Missouri HIV Justice Coalition and participated in an advocacy day and public testimony for two bills (HB 166 and HB 167).
Tana Pradia (TX) – She gave a presentation focused on the right to access abortion as a reproductive health and reproductive justice issue in the U.S. It also includes concrete action that listeners can take to advance abortion access in Texas.
Meta Smith-Davis (LA) – She wrote a brief focused on the lack of employment discrimination protections based on gender identity in Louisiana. It includes information learned from a listening session with people of trans experience about their employment experiences in the state.
LaDawn Tate (MI) – This fellow created a curriculum for the Michigan Learning, Empowerment, Advocacy and Participation (LEAP) Program to provide people living with HIV in the Detroit Metropolitan Area 20 hours of policy-related coursework.
Congratulations to our graduates!
Remembering PWN-USA Ally: Reverend Tammy Garrett- Williams
by Barb Cardell
Last month PWN-USA and PWN CO lost a longtime ally in HIV advocacy and action. Tammy Garrett-Williams, or Reverend Tammy, as she was known, was a member of the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, often preaching peace and doing anti-racism work. She was a fierce civil rights activist, a Black Lives Matter leader, and a partner with the NAACP, dedicated to criminal justice reform and abolition. She led several police brutality reviews and forums in Colorado.
She strongly believed that everyone was better than their worst day. Building off her own experience with the criminal justice system, she developed the Above Waters Project (AWP). The AWP works with people post-incarceration to reintegrate into society. She passionately believed that working to overcome systemic racism and oppression must be a part of everyone’s work.
She was often seen at the Colorado state capitol. She testified on behalf of criminal justice reform, was a key member of the Colorado Mod(ernization) Squad responsible for modernizing the state’s HIV statutes including the repeal of two HIV related felonies, and worked to abolish slavery from the Colorado Constitution through two statewide ballot initiatives.
Tammy was an author centering her lived experience in Invisible Handcuffs: Colorado community Corrections (Halfway House) for Women; Transparency: Open to Do God’s Work!; and Will & Grace: What? God’s Gift I Did Not Deserve all are available on Amazon.
She was fierce and passionate, and she never, never backed down. She will be dearly missed!
Rest in Power
Webinar You Won’t Want to Miss
Ending Violence Against Women Living with HIV
May 23, 2019 at 3pm EDT/12 pm PDT
This webinar, the fourth in our six-part policy agenda webinar series, will explore how institutional racism and structural inequity create heightened vulnerability to violence, both from other people and from the state, for women and people of trans experience living with HIV. We will discuss steps that you can take to push for restorative justice over punitive practices and healing over trauma.
Women and people of trans experience living with HIV are disproportionately affected by violence at the interpersonal, community, and structural level. Living with HIV may in itself be a risk factor for violence and emotional abuse in relationships. Gun violence and violence against women of trans experience are forms of community violence that personally impact many of our members and loved ones. Sexism, racism, HIV stigma, transphobia, racist policing and immigration enforcement practices, and mass incarceration are just some forms of structural violence that perpetuate trauma for the majority of women living with HIV in the U.S. This webinar will be an important tool for anyone who wants to understand, and advocate to end, these forms of violence against women and people of trans experience living with HIV.
| Register here |