In this issue:
- Meet Our Shero of the Month: Shadawn McCants
- Organizing Spotlight: Thanks to ECHO VA, Dramatic Rollback of HIV Criminalization
- Meet Our #CelebrateBlackWomen Art Contest Winners
- Center the Voices of People Living with HIV: Take the COVID-19 Vaccine Survey
- Get the Latest on COVID19 Vaccines for People Living with HIV
Meet Our Shero of the Month:
Shadawn McCants
Our March 2021 Shero of the Month is Shadawn McCants, originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, but currently living in Houston, Texas.
“Although Shadawn is new to PWN and the Texas chapter, she jumped into the 2020 get out the vote efforts in Houston with both feet and made a huge contribution to the successful voter turnout in Houston,” said PWN Co-Executive Director Venita Ray. “Shadawn has found her voice in HIV advocacy and you can expect to see a lot more of her unique skills and perspective to the movement!”
Shadawn is the second oldest of eight children. Growing up, though she dreamed of being a social worker, attorney, or police officer, she longed to be a model and actor. She cast her dream of modeling and acting aside when she learned during her senior year of high school that she had contracted HIV. She said it was the internalized stigma that manifested into shame, guilt, and fear that caused her to give up pursuing modeling and acting.
In 2018, Shadawn had a spiritual awakening and discovered her purpose in life: to embolden, educate, and empower women and girls about HIV, AIDS, and sexual health using a wellness lens and incorporating healing practices. She started her journey into HIV-related work with the creation of her nonprofit, 2 Know Is 2 Live, an organization dedicated to promoting active, engaged, and empowered Black women and girls to get tested and know their status.
She is also a licensed professional therapist: “I combine my role as a therapist and HIV and AIDS advocate, employing outside-the-box methods to reach black women and girls and vulnerable populations by educating and creating awareness through infotainment, leveraging social media to raise awareness about safer sex practices and sex-positivity to name a few.”
| Read more! |
Organizing Spotlight: Thanks to ECHO VA, a Dramatic Rollback of HIV Criminalization in Virginia
With Governor Ralph Northam’s signature on the dotted line as of Wednesday, it’s official: Virginia’s HIV criminalization laws have been modernized and dramatically rolled back.
The culmination of over two years of organizing and advocacy led by ECHO VA–the coalition founded by PWN Virginia State Lead Deirdre Johnson and Dr. Cedric Pulliam–with the collaboration of PWN, Equality Virginia, and the Sero Project, the signing into law of Senate Bill 1138 is the latest big achievement of the movement to end HIV criminalization in the U.S.
While the bill that was ultimately signed into law drastically limits prosecutors’ ability to criminalize people based on their HIV status, it does not go as far as the coalition wanted and pushed for. The new law retains a felony, though it has added a much higher burden of proof for prosecutors wanting to use the law: They must prove both actual transmission and intent to transmit.
“The final result of SB 1138 is something that ECHO VA is proud to have worked on to see change towards the decriminalization of HIV in Virginia,” said Deirdre. “We know that we are not done with our work just yet. We still have to work to have the felony reduced to a misdemeanor, however, to have disclosure removed is a major step in the right direction towards eradicating stigma towards people living with HIV.”
| Read about how they did it here! |
Meet Our Celebrate and Honor Black Women in the HIV Movement Art Contest Winners
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On March 11 during a Facebook Live, PWN-USA announced the winners of the Celebrate and Honor Black Women in the HIV Movement Art Contest. The first prize went to Lorangelis Thomas Negron who created the painting pictured above titled, “Me Exploro Y Conecto.” This piece belongs to a collection (Fluir Mas) by the artist in which she uses her menstrual blood to paint. She explains that cisgender women living with HIV are often afraid of transmitting the virus because of their menstrual cycle. Her art reflects the cycles of life women living with HIV face.
The second prize winner was Reverend Joyce McDonald for her sculpture, Compassion, in which she expresses not only the pain and trauma of her past life but also the joy and triumph of her current life. With this piece, Joyce decided she would not be a victim but a survivor. As a survivor of substance addiction, sex work, and kidnapping, Joyce has dealt with a lot of personal losses as she explained in the video.
This piece speaks to her life as a caregiver. She led an AIDS ministry at her church and oftentimes sat with those who were dying of AIDS-related complications, overdoses, and most recently COVID-19. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us through your art.
The third prize winner was Connie Johnson for her beautiful poem, “Blood Sisters.” You can catch her singing her poem here starting at 20:49 in the video. For Connie, writing is life. It is that sustaining energy that fuels her to be able to share herself with the world. She gets to share her most intimate thoughts with the world through writing.
| View this on our website here! |
Centering the Voices of People Living with HIV:
Take the COVID-19 Vaccine Survey
Are you a person living with HIV in the U.S. and have thoughts you want to express about the COVID-19 vaccine? Here is your chance to be heard. This survey being conducted by Rutgers Center for Health, Identity, Behavior, and Prevention Studies is calling for volunteers to participate.
The survey takes about 10-20 minutes on the computer. Once it is completed, participants will have the option to enter a raffle for one of two $60 electronic gift cards to a store of their choosing. The randomized drawing will occur in April 2021 and winners will be notified via email no later than May 2021.
| Share your thoughts and opinions here! |
Get the Latest on COVID-19 Vaccines for People Living with HIV from HIVMA
The HIV Medicine Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America have created and updated a document with all the information you could want on COVID-19 vaccines for people living with HIV.
It will answer your questions, such as: Is it safe for me? Are the vaccines effective? Have they been studied in people living with HIV? How were these vaccines developed so quickly, when we still don’t have a vaccine for HIV?…and so many more!
The document is also available in Spanish here.
| Get your questions answered here. |