Organizing against Aids and across Prison Walls

Across the late 1980s and 1990s, activists came together to challenge the convergence of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the carceral state. Incarcerated people organized AIDS peer education and advocacy across the United States in both women's and men's prisons. They taught HIV/AIDS workshops, pushed for medical access and compassionate release, and expressed care through tactics ranging from buddy programs in prison infirmaries to fundraising walkathons on prison yards. Nonincarcerated activists joined in support, working to protest prison policy and conditions, to send information inside, and to push the wider AIDS movement to attend to prisons as well as the broader prison movement to fight AIDS. AIDS prison activists forged coalitions that laid crucial groundwork for ongoing interconnections among abolitionist, queer, and feminist politics.The three activists interviewed here, Linda Evans, Judy Greenspan, and Crystal Mason, were leaders in HIV/AIDS prison activism inside, outside, and across prison walls. Linda Evans, earlier a member of the Weather Underground Organization and in the 1980s a member of what was known as the Resistance Conspiracy Case, was incarcerated for over sixteen years in federal prisons and jails before President Clinton commuted her sentence in 2001 along with that of her fellow political prisoner and AIDS activist Susan Rosenberg. Evans cofounded Pleasanton AIDS Counseling and Education, or PLACE, while incarcerated in federal prison in Dublin, California, and today is active in the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) and on issues of immigrant rights. Judy Greenspan is a longtime radical whose activism dates to Black Panther solidarity, the antiwar movement, and the women's and lesbian movements. In 1988, Greenspan took a position with the National Prison Project of the ACLU as the AIDS Information Coordinator, later moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, where they became active in ACT UP San Francisco and founded the HIV/AIDS in Prison Project. Today a public school educator, Greenspan donated the papers of the HIV/AIDS in Prison Project to the archive at New York City's LGBT Center, opening access to a rich collection of correspondence, publications, and organizing materials from the AIDS prison movement. Crystal Mason joined AIDS prison activism as a member of ACT UP San Francisco and a staff person at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Mason's work in these roles included connecting people living with HIV/AIDS who were incarcerated or newly released with access to HIV/AIDS information and services. Active across the queer, radical, and arts communities of 1990s San Francisco, Mason today is a cultural worker and organizer with the arts network Queering Dreams.Evans, Greenspan, and Mason held differing experiences of incarceration, race, and political histories—Evans is formerly incarcerated and Greenspan and Mason not; Mason is Black and Evans and Greenspan are white; Evans and Greenspan were radicalized in the 1960s and Mason in the 1980s. All three were central figures in AIDS prison activism as well as in lesbian feminist and queer networks, approaching incarceration as inseparable from the course of the epidemic, particularly in Black and Latinx communities and among women. Interviewed together, their recollections help to surface the importance of AIDS prison activism to revisiting the queer 1990s. Emily Hobson: What brought you into AIDS activism by, for, and with incarcerated people? What conditions did you witness or learn about related to HIV/AIDS inside?Crystal Mason: I started thinking about HIV/AIDS and prison while working with ACT UP San Francisco. I was very inspired by Judy's work, I had heard about Linda's work, and I had met people in ACT UP Los Angeles doing work on prisons. ACT UP San Francisco had done work in the men's prison in San Quentin and the men's prison hospital at Vacaville. But nobody was focused on the women's prison at Chowchilla [Central California Women's Facility or CCWF], even less so the San Francisco jails. Meanwhile, women were getting really sick from HIV and dying in prison for infractions like stealing a leather jacket.1 I started working for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in the Women and Children's Program and said we need to do something about women in prison and jails. I got money from them to mail packets of information, and we did a bit of work when women were released to find them a place to live and hook them up with services.Judy Greenspan: My involvement was triggered by my work as the national logistics coordinator for the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. I had always been concerned about people inside prisons, but in that job I worked with group of men with AIDS, struggling to get them involved in the march. After that, I learned that the ACLU National Prison Project was starting an HIV in Prison Project, and I applied and got it, despite my political differences with the ACLU's positions on freedom of speech for the Klan. Then three or four months later, Linda and the anti-imperialist political prisoners [in the Resistance Conspiracy Case] were brought to DC. They were already involved in doing HIV peer education inside and supporting people inside. They and other people inside were the impetus for my work.Through my job I was able to travel around and visit with some of the most amazing people inside who were actively organizing and advocating at a time when really there were no meds, so people were dying. It was a very serious crisis. People in prison responded, not necessarily because they were HIV positive, but out of an incredible solidarity and compassion toward their friends inside. They set up a care community for the people who were dying, and they told us [on the outside] what to do. I also met with different ACT UPs all around the country, but there were only a small handful of ACT UPs that responded, including San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, of all places.The ACLU National Prison Project did not like what I was doing. They wanted me just to do a questionnaire and reach out to wardens and find out how many HIV-positive prisoners there were, which you couldn't find out unless they were doing mandatory testing, which unfortunately some of them were still doing. I wanted to do more, to advocate.But the ACLU National Prison Project did take a case in Alabama of men and women with HIV in prisons who were segregated and discriminated against—locked in a prison within a prison. They locked the HIV positive prisoners in a unit with transgender prisoners, because they figured why not, they can get HIV too. The ACLU took the case, and years later won it, so there's supposedly not segregation now, although those prisons should not exist—they were some of the most incredibly repressive, oppressive, racist prisons. It was all Black prisoners with HIV, many of them very openly gay. They definitely moved me. But it wasn't just them; prisoners wrote to me from all over the country. I was at a point in my life where I took a lot of collect calls, not just at work but at home. My life was much more focused inside than outside.Linda Evans: For me, the inspiration to begin doing AIDS activism inside was the people around me, the women who were being really stigmatized and isolated in the Washington, DC, jail. So many people were HIV positive—I believe it was at least 25 percent of the women2—and they were afraid to disclose their status, but sometimes the guards would disclose it and that would create terrible conditions for them on the units. People didn't have knowledge, didn't have access to information. The chaplain at the DC jail recognized the need, and had an intern or associate who was gay who helped him. Through them and through Judy at the ACLU Prison Project, we were able to get basic information inside to educate both those who were HIV positive and those who were not, so that they would not discriminate and be afraid and isolate the other women.By the time I was shipped to [federal prison in] Dublin [California], into the bowels of the federal system, we had already been doing the work for a couple of years. And at Dublin it was clear there was still a lack of understanding and a lack of information, even though that prison is located in the Bay Area where supposedly there was more consciousness. But we had the example of other HIV/AIDS in prison projects, specifically in New York state, both ACE—the AIDS Counseling and Education program at Bedford Hills—and numerous projects that David Gilbert and other prisoners started inside the men's prisons. So we had a model and example of ways that other prisoners could help each other with information in a situation where there was no real treatment, where people did not have hope, and it was being ignored.No surprise, other prisoners rose to the occasion and tried to fulfill that need in whatever ways we could, out of compassion, and love for each other and solidarity with each other; we created programs because it was just so obviously clear that the institution was never going to do that. Eventually, quarterly AIDS education was required in the federal system. And for [the prison administration] it was easier to allow us to do the education than for them to do it—and of course, it was much more effective. I don't think they really recognized the [effectiveness]; I think it was more a matter of their convenience.Hobson: All of you identified with lesbian or queer and feminist communities. How did you see the issue of AIDS in prison hitting women in particular, especially the high numbers of Black and Latinx women and other people in women's prisons? How were people at risk?Mason: In my experience, from talking to women after they got out and sending material inside, it was a lot of being partners with injection drug users, and being in poverty and having survival sex. I don't think that's the only story, but that was the biggest part of the story that I saw.Evans: Both in the DC jail and at Dublin, it was not just women being partners with IV drug users, but being IV drug users themselves. One of the main kinds of underground support that we were able to give to women was education about using bleach, and figuring out ways to get the bleach, because it's contraband. Heroin was the main drug of choice and people would share works because they were very rare. The idea of cleaning your works with bleach was difficult to explain because it deteriorates the rubber in the works. It was a difficult balance to get people to understand life or death in terms of transmitting HIV, versus their need and desire to get high. We did education about safer sex also, but I don't think it was as grave of a risk as the IV drug use.Greenspan: The risk was also the lack of health care, because most people coming into prison are Black and Latinx or Indigenous and have been underserved by the health-care system. They are at risk for so many things, and [many] come in already HIV positive, or maybe they get HIV while they're inside. They're also totally distrustful, because they never saw a doctor, or going to the doctor meant going to an emergency room, and they were not treated well.Evans: Or they got busted in the emergency room.Greenspan: Or they got 5150-ed by the cops and taken to jail.Mason: Even sex workers having condoms put them at risk for being arrested.Evans: They don't want to admit that we're human beings and have sex while in prison. And of course, bleach says, oh my God, there's drug use in my prison. They couldn't admit that. It was one of those contradictions in what their public-facing stories were about their prisons, “their prisons,” versus what was really going on.Mason: So in the long run, the prison industrial complex created more and more illness and death and disability, because most prisoners get out eventually and go back to communities.Hobson: What political relationships were important to the organizing you were doing around HIV and AIDS in prisons? Who were you working with, who showed up, and who didn't?Greenspan: That's a hard one. I'm sure we never felt enough people showed up. Even in the Bay Area, where there were all these political activists, getting people down to Chowchilla was hard, getting people to Corcoran to support transgender prisoners with HIV was really hard. With ACT UP, it was always hard getting them to focus on nonmen. The reason that I moved away from the work is because I wanted politically to work as an advocate and as someone who didn't believe in the prison system. I was not into providing services, and the movement became that, because of the pharmaceutical companies. When I started advocating for people inside, there were no meds available. Then, for a minute, there was AZT and anyone who took it was guaranteed to die [because of its toxicity]. Then [after highly active antiretroviral therapy came out] which meds they provided inside were based on cost, but it became a very big industry. That made it harder to build an advocacy movement around the whole issue of mass incarceration.Evans: My perspective was a little different, because we were trying to both do the work inside, and to use whatever legitimacy we had as political activists to push awareness of people with HIV in prison. I won't say we had much influence as political prisoners in the anti-imperialist and left movements; we were pretty isolated because we were [considered] domestic terrorists. But at Dublin, [PLACE] got a lot of support from an individual Catholic woman who became our outside sponsor. She developed her network of people, a lot of them Catholics. To find support in the Catholic Church was just shocking to us. But she was extremely dedicated, and she helped us make connections with organizations serving people with AIDS on the outside. This meant we could funnel money that we raised from our Prisoners Fight AIDS Walkathons to organizations like a hotel in the Tenderloin that provided wraparound services, and Oakland Children's Hospital, and a camp for children with HIV and AIDS. The kids from the camp came into the prison and gave a performance for the whole compound, which was extremely important and moving to the women of the that life on after HIV, which is hard to in I also think the AIDS into the prison was really for including the the because it was a that people from of life were being say with person on that or that had HIV or AIDS. That was a very for us and it helped with our peer education So I think we from the organizations outside, and the outside, that people were doing within the HIV/AIDS movement. People like Judy put us in with those organizations and made it for us to relationships through the through and through like the AIDS or the the San Francisco AIDS Foundation I didn't get much they just me send I got a bit more support from the San Francisco jails to support inside. the only person I felt real support from was But I helped the San Francisco AIDS and they after the so I took a of and never That my work with women in because I had to make a living and I to be I started a women's performance because I had learned working with people with HIV and AIDS, working with women in that people to their That me that I want to Women to to which was a group of women living with HIV, many of were formerly incarcerated and some of had a of injection drug They really to our They came to the and all the after that. One woman no with us was in the women's prisons she could go into prison or even jail and how you been a in her She was an amazing and always to go to and She was one of my still but it's much more One of the I was very inspired by not just in prisons but also outside, was that peer education helped a lot of people have a life because they got money doing But it like that just of What do you Linda and I think that peer education around HIV have but it in lot of the on the are being by organizations to in or to to do So I think the model but HIV is not the one health inside the prisons. is just as as it always And in prison nobody made money from doing peer They have had it as a prison but they didn't make real The was also that when peer education was inside a it would be by The people in Chowchilla would me, we got and support for And the would How can you have a program unless it's by the people I do think that one of the of our to build a movement of formerly incarcerated people is that the life of people who have been in prison is more I think that expressed around drug and it's the with that's been in prison. That was a big to get from the drug and the in terms of the It people who have been to take down the set in I believe that the people who have been to the are to the One of the broader of the 1990s was from lesbian and gay to queer that to you in prison or It was to us in prison. We were not in with the queer movement or with the lesbian and gay movement. It was all through our What was more important was that we the of our to do work inside and the when the federal [in That meant that we couldn't as an to do that of work was just For me, the time was in a couple of One was the of organizing with people, which I saw in ACT I and I still but I find a to be when I like there's some being ACT UP, I also joined a other Lesbian And to me, there was a clear gay and lesbian activism and queer activism getting to get or go into the It was more about our in wider who our was meant should have a to health But when started coming out and to people who had health were most of the people in ACT meant that activism People also of the And Clinton came to and when they come into The issues of and in the and took a lot of out of and the people who were always as other and even more pushed to the I have the that there even be an so why even about being included in But I do like there was a of the movement, and I think we can that to some of the activism of ACT UP, as well as just how HIV When I think back to the I you that one of the most in my life was when I worked with the political prisoners who were in the DC jail. That my very and political with the whole movement to political prisoners, which was with the fight It became a little easier to to people or I but while the was a time of it the Clinton came into started being a lot of the in ACT UP But queer and people and people have had a on the prison movement. Coalition for Women our about who we support to the whole of the movement of people inside and their been at But the of some of the movement organizations to make that been really The coming out of and people is a it's even as a to That's serious because it's a terrible situation when you have and lesbian people who from to advocate on of their and who are or I just have to because Crystal Clinton only Clinton as as I was was to Linda and Susan What do you see HIV/AIDS prison activism and the prison It to me that the 1990s, with HIV and AIDS, there to be more and understanding about the of people involved in the carceral system. That the for like to part of the I couldn't I think that the work that was done around HIV/AIDS in prison and made a big I the time you told me that women in formerly incarcerated women. I that's We that. go for that. many or whatever I was we with formerly incarcerated people that is an important part of our and we have to say it to be able to make in terms of policy for people in prison and our access to being very as a among and and I'm really of someone they believe in prison got to see it's got to be something that people I like it's something that people on maybe because it's for I'm very I the the I won't use the What do you want to We saw that after the of and all of the were really and in they about the But they have all it back so much that can get on and say we have to give more money to That not just that there been a but that they were being pushed by a movement. I'm really to having a mass movement that can where prisoners are with there became a point where it like something could came into and get me I'm not But what I is that in my movements. And how do we That's a and place to in talking about the queer 1990s. How do we get to movement and how do we and you all for your and It was really to see Crystal and It was so you and I just want to you both for all the work done and to say more than you you for us

Criminology · Prison · HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Psychology · Sex work and related issues