In this issue:

  • Meet Our August 2020 Shero of the Month: Angela F. Hawkins
  • Organizing Spotlight: Shannon Robinson Is Fighting for Racial Justice in Rural Colorado
  • Are You Election-Ready?!
  • Loving Our People Through a Pandemic: PWN Launches Emergency Fund for Women with HIV
  • Want to End HIV? Actions Speak Louder than Sound Bites

Meet Our August 2020 Shero of the Month:
Angela F. Hawkins

Our August 2020 Shero of the Month is Angela Hawkins of Houston, Texas. Angela is a founding member of the Greater Houston Area and Texas chapters of PWN. National Field Organizer Evany Turk said, “Angela is passionate about helping and loving on her community. She works hard to make sure people are equipped with accurate information, and she will happily provide resources for various needs. She is an amazing person with an amazing spirit.”

As a member of PWN Texas, Angela is most proud of the get-out-the-vote work the chapter has been doing, which consists of registering voters, mobilizing people to the polls, and educating the community on the importance of voting. Working with allies and partner organizations for the primary and the more recent run-off primary elections, they worked to ensure expanded early voting poll locations in marginalized communities.

The GHA chapter has hosted events for National Women & Girl’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, the National Day to End Violence Against Women Living with HIV, clothing drives, vision board parties, and painting with purpose parties as a means to celebrate women living with HIV. Angela said, “I get to use my creative/hostess talents by either creating the flyers to advertise the events or provide ideas to decorate.”

Read more about Angela here!

Organizing Spotlight: Shannon Robinson Is Fighting for Racial Justice in Rural Colorado

Shannon Robinson is one busy woman. She has been organizing around the elections in Colorado with PWN since the 2018 midterms–work she’s continuing for the 2020 elections. But her organizing kicked into high gear at the end of May and in June following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

She helped organize a march for racial justice in Grand Junction, a small city in western Colorado of just over 60,000, that attracted hundreds of participants. And that was just the beginning.

We caught up with Shannon to learn more about what drives her to organize and to keep going in pursuit of racial justice.

Q: Can you tell us why you are committed to racial justice? What was the deciding factor for you?

A: I’m committed to racial justice because I’m a queer Black woman, and I can’t remember a time where the world treated queer Black women in a just manner. I don’t think I can identify a single deciding factor–I’ve always been active and outspoken. I feel like growing up–or being a child–in a very rural community was very difficult for my mother and me. We moved from rural western Colorado to Denver when I was in second grade, because my mother thought it would be easier for me to grow up in a more diverse community.

Read the full article here!

Are You Election-Ready?!


The right to vote only matters if we exercise it! Showing up at the polls and encouraging others to do so is a critical way to use your voice during this year’s high-stakes election.

Use the #PWNVotes toolkit as your one-stop shop to find out what you need to know about voting rights; voter ID laws; how to educate and mobilize your community around the election; how to register people to vote or work as a poll worker; and so much more.

You’ll find a ton of resources, links, videos, and recorded webinars to help you get in gear for the upcoming election in our #PWNVotes toolkit!

Check out the #PWNVotes toolkit here!

Loving Our People Through a Pandemic: PWN Launches Emergency Fund for Women with HIV

Layoffs and furloughs. Reduced, cancelled, or delayed services. City and state budget cuts. Taking care of ill loved ones.

“While everyone has been impacted by the covid19 pandemic, the pain has not been shared equally,” said Naina Khanna, executive director of PWN. “Too many women and trans folks living with HIV are once again finding themselves facing unnecessary hardships, whether in the form of vulnerability to covid19 due to comorbidities that are the result of stressors including racism, transphobia, and poverty, or in the form of financial distress resulting from the economic crisis.”

PWN is launching the PWN Emergency Support Fund for Women Living with HIV to help make sure our community makes it through this crisis intact.

The fund will provide fast financial relief to PWN members who need help in securing the basics: food, shelter, power, water, health care, etc., up to $250.

Donate to the PWN Emergency Fund here!

Want to End HIV?

Actions Speak Louder than Sound Bites

PWN Executive Director Naina Khanna, along with movement leaders Cecilia Chung of Transgender Law Center, Ronald Johnson of AIDS United, and Sean Strub of the Sero Project, published an op-ed in the Washington Blade last month. In case you missed it:

“Expanding access to healthcare or decimating it? Creating and improving upon nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people or destroying them? Relying on evidence or attacking science?

Which policies are those of a leader committed to ending the HIV epidemic?

Trump’s appointed co-chair of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA), Carl Schmid, a former Log Cabin Republican leader, lauds the administration’s “leadership” and suggests it has been more accessible to the HIV community than its predecessors, according to the Washington Blade article published on August 5, “Biden says he can beat HIV by 2025 — but activists are skeptical.”  

Schmid seems to believe Trump’s so-called “Ending the Epidemic: A Plan for America” can succeed without policies that protect and support people living with HIV and the communities most affected by it.  

As people openly living with HIV who have served on the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) under past administrations (Obama and Clinton), who currently serve in policy leadership roles, and who lead grassroots HIV organizing efforts, we vehemently disagree.”

Read the full op-ed here!

Save the Date: The Launch of the Trans Agenda for Liberation, September 17!


You’re invited to a virtual event on Thursday, September 17, for the Transgender Law Center’s launch of the Trans Agenda for Liberation.

The Trans Agenda for Liberation is put forward by a national coalition of majority Black, indigenous, and migrant trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming leaders, working with Transgender Law Center, the largest transgender advocacy organization in the United States.

They have challenged each other, supported each other’s work, and dreamed about how we can realize a future where we are all free.

Together, they birthed a framework to understand the forces harming our communities, and how we can unite to bring forward something new.

We can’t wait, and hope to see you there!

Register here!