Speaking of the stigmas around HIV and AIDS, especially in the Black community, what is your mission and overall goal to humanize those who have tested positive?
DB: We don’t like to say anti-stigma, we like to say self-love of HIV acceptance.
What we do is create change and let people know that you can thrive and be amazing with HIV. It’s not a death sentence anymore. You can take your medicine to be undetectable, which means I’m not transmitting HIV at all. We pass these messages, and that’s just one thing we do. Another unique thing is that every week, [we] make someone feel at home. Some people are displaced, some people don’t have a home, some people are kicked out, like Lil Nas X. We make sure we create that environment and our space is very important.
LW: Our mission is to achieve health equity for Blacks saying that their loving men through direct support advocacy and building collective community power. That’s what we do. We prioritize the whole person, the whole Black gay man living with HIV, not just HIV, because we’re so much more than HIV. Our lives are intersectional, they transcend HIV, and we try to support the whole individual.
For more information on how to support the nonprofit, email [email protected] or call 404-267-1519.
