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In this issue:
- Meet Our June 2018 Shero of the Month, Stacy Jennings
- Join Us at 3pm EDT TODAY for PWNVotes: Building Your Voter Universe
- PWN-USA Texas Heads to the Border to Stand Up for Immigrant Justice
- Ask Evany on Facebook Live Friday
- Great News for U=U
- PWNCares: Keeping It Real–Being Trans & Living with HIV
Meet Our PWN-USA Shero of the Month, Stacy Jennings
Our Shero of the Month for June 2018 is Stacy Jennings of Columbia, South Carolina, who often says, “nothing beats a failure but a try.” PWN’s membership engagement coordinator Evany Turk says, “Stacy is a warm soul. Every time I’m in her presence or I’ve worked with her, she always exudes peace. Working with her has been a great experience as well, because she always leaves an amazing gem in the space she was in that’s almost impossible to forget.”
Stacy is a motivational speaker, a poet and an advocate at heart, who will stop at nothing to make a difference. She is a co-chair and communications rep of the PWN-USA South Carolina regional chapter, a member spokesperson for PWN, a PWN policy fellowship graduate and a South Carolina HIV Criminalization Ambassador, just to name a few. She has also been featured in two videos in the PWNCares series.
Stacy has chosen to advocate in a variety of ways. One way is through her poetry. “I write with the passion to change lives. As a young lady, I started writing as a gateway to my healing, as a way to make a difference, and as a way to gain the power to my freedom. Writing became a therapeutic tool for me and for those that have a desire to partake of it. My writing strengthens my message because I express it and as I speak it, it encourages, uplifts, heals and brings about happiness and an inner peace so profound that all can be free. I shall turn hearts forever because I will never stop raising my voice through the spoken word.” Read more about Stacy here.
Join PWN at 3pm ET/12pm PT TODAY to Learn How to Build Your Voter Universe!
Did you know? It’s totally legal for 501(c)3 nonprofits to register voters. There are over a million people connected to HIV service delivery settings in the U.S. Imagine if we could harness the power of the HIV vote in November 2018!
PWN-USA Texas Heads to the Border to Stand Up for Immigrant Justice
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Amid atrocious violations of human rights perpetrated as part of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, criminalizing and incarcerating all migrants who cross the border, separating their children and confining them to detention “shelters” with no clear plan or system in place to reunite them with their parents, massive protests have taken place across the country, with more planned for the coming week. The executive order Trump signed last week, ostensibly to reverse his own policy of family separation, offers only family incarceration as an alternative.
Additionally, yesterday the Supreme Court upheld by a 5-4 opinion Trump’s blatantly discriminatory “Muslim ban,” all but ignoring Trump’s repeated campaign promise of a “total shutdown on Muslims entering the country,” and provoking a blistering dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor and widespread protests like the one PWNer Jessi Mona of Houston participated in yesterday (see photo).
Tana Pradia, co-chair of PWN-USA Texas Greater Houston Area, will be joining the protest in Brownsville, Texas, on June 28. Her first reaction to Trump’s new policy was anger and worry, since she could not even imagine that something like this could happen today so quickly. “This is heartbreaking to me as a mother to have these children go through the trauma of being apart from their parents. The damage that is being done to their children emotionally is heartbreaking,” said Pradia. Read the full story here.
Tune in to PWN-USA on Facebook Live Friday, June 29, at 3pm EDT for “Ask Evany!”
Got questions? PWN’s Membership Engagement Coordinator, Evany Turk, has answers!
Join us next Friday, June 29, at 3pm EDT/2pm CDT/1pm MDT/12pm PDT on PWN-USA’s Facebook page for the premiere of “Ask Evany” on Facebook Live!
She will answer questions you have about PWN, living with HIV, issues to get active on and mobilize around, and more.
Tune in and join the conversation! If you have a question you’d like her to address, send it to her at [email protected]
More Great News for #UequalsU!
Yet another top public health official–Dr. Maureen Goodenow, director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of AIDS Research–has publicly endorsed the well-established science that a person living with HIV with a sustained undetectable viral load cannot transmit HIV to their sexual partner(s), even without condoms (undetectable=untransmittable, U=U).
The Prevention Access Campaign (U=U) has succeeded in bringing science that the world’s top HIV researchers have known for years to people living with HIV when their own health care providers would not, and has pressured public health officials around the U.S. and the world to publicly announce their understanding of and agreement with the science.
PWN-USA has been a proud community partner of the U=U campaign from its inception, with many of our members serving as spokespeople for the campaign and sharing the knowledge within their own communities and networks. Check out our PWNCares video and resources released for World AIDS Day 2017 where women living with HIV share their experiences with U=U.
Join Us for PWNCares: Keeping It Real–Being Trans & Living with HIV!
WED., JULY 11, 1PM EDT/12PM CDT/11AM MDT/10AM PDT:
PWN-USA is thrilled to launch the fourth video in our #PWNCares series, created by and for women living with HIV with the support of ViiV’s Positive Action for Women grant. Keeping It Real: Being Trans & Living with HIV will premiere Wed., July 11, at 1pm EDT, in a virtual coffee table chat open to all people of trans experience. Register here.
The virtual coffee table chat will feature as panelists Jada Cardona and Tiommi Luckett, both of whom are interviewed in the video, as well as Dee Dee Chamblee. After watching the video, participants will be invited to ask the panelists questions, share their own experiences and perspectives, and discuss available resources and future opportunities to connect. Register now! And check out the rest of the PWNCares series, which includes discussion guides for use in meetings, groups and events.
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Positive Women’s Network – USA is a national membership body of women living with HIV and our allies that exists to strengthen the strategic power of all women living with HIV in the United States. Founded in 2008 by 28 diverse HIV-positive women leaders, PWN-USA develops a leadership pipeline and policy agenda that applies a gender lens to the domestic HIV epidemic grounded in social justice and human rights.