Salsawit is impressive. At 30 she is an entrepreneur, designer and businesswoman who started the Sel Art Gallery, a handicrafts business which employs 35 women in the making of home accessories. She also manages TAF plc, an import/export business with over 100 employees. Ms. Salsawit is a member of the Core Team of the Women Entrepreneurs Group (WEG) in Ethiopia and also happens to be the mother of a five-month-old baby boy. We talked about many things but what impressed me most was her keen insight and sharp grasp of what women need to succeed as entrepreneurs in Ethiopia.

In case you missed the town hall, I have posted it below:

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This is the same audience I have been listening to for the past two years since the release of All of Us as well as the audience that continues to find me through my work. From Addis Ababa, to D.C., to New York, to Philly, to Los Angeles, I have been inspired by the many emails I have received from  front line workers.  So first and foremost, I want to say - I hear you and I am with you!

In preparing my comments for the good people of City Year I thought it would be a good idea to check in. I know I have been neglecting the blog - but trust I have been busy in D.C.

The theme of World AIDS Day 2009 is Universal Access and Human rights. Both issues are about the front line. Human rights hinges on three principles: indivisibility, agency, and accountability.  All three are also important for innovation.

I think the next wave of HIV front line work must focus on innovation. This is the message I will bring to the good people of City Year. I have been blown away by TruthAIDS volunteers that have devoted their creative energy and time to help push front line work along and I believe that are many more innovators out there who want to get involved.

So what is innovation about anyhow? According to John Kao, the author of “Innovation Nation”, innovation is “applying work ethic to a dream.” I love this definition and I think it applies directly to front line work. The teachers, preachers, and outreach workers in urban centers are working everyday to make the dream of a better America a reality. Health equity is central to a vision of a better America. The distribution of health matters for the opportunities available to the citizenry.

In closing, on World AIDS Day 2009, I salute all front line workers and encourage all nascent innovators to join the front line. Aint nothing like it.

I am incredibly thankful to the RWJF for allowing me time and space to think, dream, and be creative about health. Not having to worry abou a salary for two years and have protected time to continue to do ethnographic work has been critical for my career and for stregthening TruthAIDS.  I am sure my upcoming Washington D.C. move would not have been possible without their support.

That said, RWJF just posted an article about me and David the Piano Player for their website. Click here to read.

Truth be told, the story actually start in Washington, D.C.  I was attending my cousin’s film premiere Guzo when the cinematographer on the film, Zeresenay Mehari, started to tell me about his own project Oblivion.  The film is about the story of a legal precedent setting case against the abudction of girls into marriage in Ethiopia. My ears immediately perked up because I recognized it was a story of women’s rights and justice.

Fast forward, a few weeks later, I am in L.A. for a conference and I connect with Zeresenay, who happens to live out there.  He gives me a copy of the screenplay and I am literally blown away by the story. I had to be a part of it. More importantly I had to help! TruthAIDS is currently designing the outreach plan for the film and helping out in any way possible to get the project done.

The production of this film will mean big things for women’s rights in Ethiopia. So thankful that it found me!

I am excited about moving to D.C. and being a part of a historic administration.  I plan on soaking up all I can regarding how policy change works and listening in on as many conversations as I can find myself in.  Will keep you posted on all I learn.

In the meantime, there is a great Gordon Parks quote I will leave you with:

“There’s another horizon out here, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know.”

Have you ever thought about the connection between housing and health? Well, the following are relevant internationally recognized human rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to consider:

Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 17: 1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well in association with others 2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 25: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Come learn about how all of this relates to health. Details can be found at: www.southlahealthandhumanrights.org. In the meantime, listen to what Rep Kucinich said about our conference below.

I recently came across a free PBS documentary that poses the disturbing question: Have America’s jails and prisons become its new asylums? Check out the following link to see the full documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/view/

As many of you know, I have been working on a new documentary, David the Piano Player, which tells the story about trauma and HIV. Trauma is the mental health issue that often gets trivialized or ignored. In “All of Us”, trauma was where the ‘all of us’ argument completely fell apart. For the past two years, I have been studying trauma and men to complete the story I started about HIV in urban communities.

It’s impossible to tell that story without mental health.

I screened a trailer of my new film David the Piano Player at the New York Academy of Medicine. It’s a healing story about trauma, displacement, and dignity. After 14 months of work, it finally came to fruition. A dream realized, and this is only the beginning. I aiming to have a half-hour segment done by the end of the month. I can’t tell you how good it felt to watch in on a big screen with a room filled with the very people who would understand David’s story the best!  Life is pretty darn good right about now.

Upwards and onwards.

I have also been getting so many kind emails from people, especially my fellow Ethiopians. Thank you for the kindness and words. Please stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, check out a video for a panel I was part of on HIV prevention. Enjoy!

Lily wrote me about three months back after seeing the film All of Us. She sent me a copy of her book and shared many kind words about how the film made her feel like “keeping on keeping on.” Like me, she had grown weary, and needed to be re-inspired. I think we all need a recharge from time to time which is why it’s so important to stay connected with each other. In any case, Lily’s book is a great tool for TruthCircles. It has some adult language and content so parental discretion is advised. However, it is a great way to delve into some of the issues related to abuse, being a girl, and coming into your own womanhood. Please support her work and use it to heal.

TruthAIDS will be running empowerment workshops for National Women and Girls’ HIV Awareness day in a West Philadelphia community center. I am using Lily’s book of poetry to help run the TruthCircles. To learn more about her, please read below.

lily(like the flower), grew up in Compton, California and began writing poetry, songs and short stories at the age of ten. lily spends much of her time writing, promoting her first book girl Child (The Transition in Poetic Form) and hosting poetry/ self-expression workshops for at-risk youth. lily is currently working on her first spoken word album and a second collection of poetry.

As an author, poet and lyricist, lily’s strong voice holds true behind the powerful message of acceptance and self-love that she promotes in her poetry and music.

About the book girl Child (The Transition - In Poetic Form)
girl Child puts into poetic verse a young woman’s journey from adolescence to adulthood. girl Child’s message is as honest and witty as it is empowering. For more information visit www.lilyliketheflower.com or www.amazon.com.

Empowerment is an expansive topic.  There is a totality about the phenomenon that is bigger than what any individual can see or say. That’s why it’s hard to explain. To understand empowerment we have to think collectively for the idea to fit in our world. I think ultimately it’s about freedom and having whatever you need to be free. In my case, my friends and family are critical.

An important aspect of staying free are supportive relationships.  I just got a video from a kindred soul that prompted this blog entry.  People can help keep you free. So part of what empowerment looks like to me is a web of nurturing relationships.  Relationships that find you at the right time and at the right place.  A lot of people don’t have this web.  I would be lost without mine.

On that note, I have attached the video that inspired the lesson. Not surprisingly it is no other than Nina Simone. Enjoy and stay free…

I have spent the week meeting with community-based leaders, non-profits, advocates, and teachers. Everyone is ready to do their part in taking HIV prevention efforts to the next level. The mantra for 2009 is: “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

Happy Holidays.

Thank you Nathalie for having me on your show.

Radio is an important medium to use when educating about health. Research has shown most African American women receive their health information from the radio. Yet, there are far too few programs dedicated to this purpose. Hopefully that will change.

I had the pleasure of participating in a similar radio program in Atlanta called WomenSpeak last week.  We talked about HIV and women from a societal perspective and struggled to get to the root causes together.  I shared the space with Dazon Dixon Diallo of SisterLove Inc. and our gracious host Wiata kept the questions coming. The second segment of that interview will continue next week on December 18 from 7-8p on 89.3 WRFG Atlanta.

I like using the radio to teach. Mixing music in between conscious messaging is a great strategy to spread lessons of empowerment. Breaking silences without the distraction of visual images presents yet another strategy in creating safe spaces for women to speak.

Fundamentally, the HIV epidemic is about the connection between health and human rights as well as the obligation we all have to serve. As the saying goes, “start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can.” For all of you who never had a connection to HIV and are now inspired to be part of the movement, jump in. Here are some suggestions:

1) Call a local AIDS service organization in your neighborhood and get involved.
2) Register at www.truthaids.org and stay connected to us by taking our free online classes.
3) Get HIV tested and encourage a friend to do the same.
4) Try using a female condom if you never have. Practice makes perfect.
5) Hold a truth circle!

And just in case you need some more inspiration… check out MLK below:

First and foremost, thank you Atlanta and SisterLove Inc. for the wonderful World AIDS Day screening of All of Us as well as the awards ceremony.  I was overwhelmed with the love, no pun intended.  I have no doubt that bringing our voices together to create tender spaces like the one we created in the Shrine of the Black Madonna last night is the key to how we begin to have difficult conversations amongst ourselves. I would also like to say thank you to the “hostess with the mostest” Debra Mlambo for feeding us wonderful food, housing us, and catering to our every need. I already miss you!!

I would also like to thank Orange, NJ and the First Presbyterian Church for showing warmth to Chevelle and I the day before.  We both agreed that these last two events have been our favorite to date.  Chevelle and I are both committed to the outreach work we started in All of Us and feel blessed that churches have extended their arms to us.

It is not easy to share personal matters. Trust me… I would know.  What I have learned is that it takes the support of community to do it.  Women supporting women, men supporting men, and then vice versa. None of us can do this alone.  The emails from the Showtime airing are starting to pour in and I can see Chevelle and I have our work cut out for us. We are up for the challenge and the best part is there are many of you out there that are ready to help us.

I have started a free online “class” called the Truth About AIDS that will be answering all the questions that have been coming in. You can register for it for free by subscribing to the TruthADS iTunes podcast or by registering at www.truthaids.org.  Please keep your questions coming.  The first of six lectures is posted below:

There are three World AIDS Day events I am participating in back-to-back: University of Orange’s Telling the Truth in Orange NJ, SisterLove Inc. in Atlanta, GA, and Delta Sigma Theta Rho Chapter’s Event in NYC. For all of the Atlanta folks please come observe World AIDS Day with me, December 1, 2008.  The event is being hosted by a wonderful organization called SisterLove Inc. that has been supporting women’s education, empowerment, wellness and rights since 1989!

The event will be held on Monday 6-9pm at the Shrine of the Black Madonna and they will be honoring physicians dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS. For details please visit: http://www.sisterlove.org/sl_all-of-us_3.htm.  On a sidenote, all the HIV awareness events I have been asked to speak at lately are in churches. I think this is a very positive thing for HIV. Let’s hope the trend continues. Come support!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Molly Rose Kaufman
Tel: (917) 664-6335
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(November, 19, 2008- Orange, NJ)

TELLING THE TRUTH: A WORLD AIDS DAY OBSERVANCE IN ORANGE

The University of Orange is pleased to announce Telling the Truth: A World AIDS Day Observance featuring a preview of the critically acclaimed documentary “All of Us” which will air on Showtime on December 1.  Dr. Mehret Mandefro, who is profiled in the film and the founder and managing editor of Truth AIDS, will lead a discussion following the screening.   Joining her is the prominent AIDS researcher, Dr. Robert E. Fullilove, Mayor Eldridge Hawkins and Chevelle Wilson, whose story is told in the movie.  Special guest Vanessa Connor will present excerpts from her gospel play, “Oh No You Didn’t: The Secrets of Black Woman.”

“This event is about telling the truth together,” Dr. Mandefro said.  “Combining the film with excerpts from the play is a great model for this. I hope other cities’ mayors will invite me to do the same across the country.”

The event marks the launch of Dr. Mandefro’s University of Orange online course, The Truth about AIDS.  “I have gotten so many emails from people who have seen “All of Us” and want to do something,” Dr. Mandefro, Professor of Social Medicine at the University of Orange, said.  “This course is an answer to that call.  It is about creating new community around these issues and problem solving that can lead to real changes.”

The University of Orange is a free people’s university founded in April, 2008 that uses collaborative learning to solve complex problems in cities.

“In the 27th year of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the University of Orange is proud to take its place as a critical voice, highlighting the impact of AIDS on our community,” said Dr. Robert Fullilove, AIDS researcher at Columbia University and the president of the University of Orange.  “Our goal is not simply to sound the alarm, but to demonstrate that we all have a role to play in making AIDS an important priority for us all.”

Telling the Truth: A World AIDS Day Observance in Orange, First Presbyterian Church, 420 Main Street, Orange, NJ.  Sunday, November 30, 2-4 p.m.

David’s charisma oozes off the screen and his life was filled with lessons, music, and love. This one will be a treat for all. The film also has an accompanying book comprised of his oringal writings and poems in addition to a couple of new essays. It’s quite a task to combine print and video. The different mediums convey different messages and emotions.

Stay tuned for updates.

Human capacity in the form of doctors and other service providers are invaluable resources in sub-Saharan Africa. I am aware of this and plan on staying in multiple places with my for this very reason. Human rights, and more specifically, social and economic rights know no geographical boundaries. My work is about teaching about the connection between health and human rights. This work takes me across many geographical boundaries, one of which is Ethiopia. I am due back this December to continue this work.

There are many Ethiopian ahead of me that are blazing a trail, some are physicians like Dr. Mengiste, some are public health practitioners like Sister Zebider, and other are good samaritans like Abebech Gobena. I hope to support all these Ethiopians in their endeavors as well as create a community in the Diaspora that can begin to get organized around the issues of social development.

My most recent involvement to this end has been serving as a technical advisor to the Ethiopian Forum for Peace, Democracy and Development (EFPDD). (Visit the Facebook page by clicking here). It is a non-political group devoted to helping Ethiopia meet her Millenium Development Goals. This groups is desperately in need of young members and I encouraged all interested to join.

The work with the EFPDD presents an important opportunity for intergenerational dialogue. The founding member’s are my father’s peer group and the Chairman, Ambassador Imru Zelleke, is one of the most active 85 year-olds I have ever met. The degree to which he is engaged in civic life, public affairs, and world matters sets a high bar for advocacy. The youth would benefit from exposure to such vitality.

I am in the process of digitizing some of the lectures the Forum has hosted on Ethiopia as part of a public video series. I hope this series will help spark dialogue and foster participation among the younger members of the Diaspora. I think it’s time young and old finally find ways of productively building bridges together and I am excited to help in this endeavor.

As far as public service is concerned, young and old need each other to prevent making the mistakes of the past and learning how to map a new future.

As it relates to HIV, public health, and human rights, the larger picture is about building a prevention model of care that works. Health is a lot more than the absence of disease. Many in specialized circles have been advocating for this expanded definition since the Alma Ata declaration of 1978.  Alma Ata’s 30th anniversary just passed and we are no closer to the robust definition of health for all.

Yet when you listen to patient’s stories, it is pretty clear that housing, education, employment, and a host of other societal determinants are critical for promoting health. Conversely, violence, incarceration, poverty and other negative societal determinants are obstacles to health. The challenge remains incoproating these “non-health” factors into policy about public health and re-focusing our gaze on the forest.

I started out the my talk by asking the crowd the difference between solidarity and partnerships?  The audience had much to say on this point. There were many great answers but one that stuck is that partnerships are “financial” and limited, while solidarity is much bigger. Solidarity is about the sharing the risk in the work and making sure all benefit.  This definition was given by a young Trinidadian woman from Washington D.C. that does a great deal of work with HIV positive women.  The same woman later asked me  about the “bigger vision”, meaning 10-20 years from now, what are the steps we would have to talk to create a society where peace was the default?

My response was announcing the class I was going to be teaching called “Mass Collaborations.”  The class is about the mechanics of finding the practical steps to the big questions, together. This course will be administered by the Community Research Group at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. It is a class being offered through the University of Orange which is a free online university.  This course is designed for all who have seen All of Us which opened in the theater in the Cinema Village theater in NYC this week.

This course is about how we can work together in an equitable manner to solve the bigger problems in society, like HIV and violence.  There will be future postings so look out for it. In the meantime click here to learn more.

It is much easier for people to understand risk as solely being about unprotected sex than it is for people to understand risk as linked to social change or securing human rights. In fact, when both are presented, social change quickly gets relegated to barely mentioned with authority. This is largely due to the fact that insisting on human rights as the primary message means keeping the focus on the “marginalized” and runs counter to personal responsibility.  This is a tough task in America where individualistic culture permeates everything instructing that me, myself and I is the only thing that matters. Personal, personal, personal. Not collective.

bell hooks writes about this in Talking Back (Chapter 15: Feminist Politicization). She cautions about the dangers of using the “personal as political”.  The personal is seductive in an individualistic culture like America and makes it incredibly challenging to value the political with any seriousness.  The following is an excerpt from the book:

“Always a part of my inner listening self closes down when I hear the words ‘the personal is political.’ Yes, I understand them. I understand that aspect of early feminist consciousness-raising that urged every listening woman to see her problems, especially problems she experienced as the outcome of sexism and sexist oppression, as political issues. To begin on the inside and move outside.  To begin with the self as a starting point, then to move beyond self-reflection to an awareness of collective reality.  This was the promise these words held.  But that promise was all too easily unfulfilled, broken. A culture of domination is necessarily narcissistic.  To take woman to the self as starting point for politicization, woman who, capitalist patriarchy, is particularly made, social constructed, to think only me – my body – I constitute universe – all that truly matters.  To take her — this woman — to the self as starting point for politicization is necessarily risky.”

hooks continues:
“We see now the danger in the ‘personal is political.’  The personal most known as private, as that space where there is no intervention from the outside, as that which can be kept to the self, as that which does not extend beyond.  Knowing the way this culture conceives the personal, the promise was to transform the meaning by linking it with the political, a word so associated in the minds of even small school children with government, with a world of affairs outside the body, the private, the self.  We see the danger. ‘The personal is political.’ No sense of connection between one’s person and larger material reality – no sense of what the political is.  In this phrase, what most resonates is the word personal – not the word political.  Unsure of the political, each female presumes knowledge of the person – the personal. No need then to search for the meaning of political, simpler to stay with the personal, to make synonymous the personal and the political. Then the self does not become that which one moves into to move beyond, or to connect with it.  It stays in place, the starting point from which one need never move.  If the personal and the political are one and the same, then there is no politicization, no way to become the radical feminist subject.”

There is nothing political about leaving a discussion about HIV prevention to condoms. It’s strictly personal under the guise of politics.  This fact is even more true when considering the beast of domestic violence.  Leaving the discussion to just condoms means reproducing destructive power dynamics in women’s relationships that are in some cases life-threatening.  How many women have to get beat before we realize that conventional wisdom is hurting some?  The same ones who are often left out of the discussion in the first place.

This point was drilled home to me when I lost my most beloved patient during residency.  Tara did everything I told her to do, learned how to advocate for herself, left her abusive relationship, and she still didn’t make it. In fact she took her own life.  I have thought about the last months I spent with her over and over again, trying to figure out if I could have predicted what was to unfold.  In retrospect, I don’t think so.  But she surely changed everything I thought about this epidemic and our messages.  HIV is not about individual behaviors. HIV is about the irrationality of violence. As Ghandi stated: “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

Dealing with HIV means keeping squarely focused on the poor, the imprisoned, women, especially those facing domestic violence or with past histories of sexual assault, and allowing their stories to change us. And by us, I include myself, and mean to include all privileged people. It means sitting with our privilege and willing to be uncomfortable enough to change our small-minded thinking. Using yourself to “move beyond” as hooks instructs. Not using yourself to keep the discussion about yourself. Privilege does not exempt you from risk but it sure as hell gives you a lot that protects your human rights.

Therein lies the challenge of HIV prevention and moving discussions beyond condoms.  Make no mistakes about it… this will take a fight.

This TV show also has an associated podcast via (drmehretmandefro.blip.tv/rss/itunes/). Just subscribe using this URL through your iTunes player.  Let me know if you have any problems.

Safety has weighed heavy on my mind since attending a session on sexual violence in conflict zones at the XVII International AIDS Conference. The stories from the Congolese and Zimbabwean women were unforgettable… transformative really. If you didn’t care about sexual violence, there was no way you could have left that room without becoming an ally. It is this process of becoming an ally that I cannot stop thinking about. Of all injustices women experience, sexual violence is by far the most traumatizing and costly to a women’s health. This makes accountability for these atrocities the number one objective for women’s rights advocates.

A large part of becoming an ally is demanding accountability for wrongs committed and creating paths for this accountability to happen. The truth is that many will never know the pain these women experienced in the conflict zones but we don’t have to - to say enough. No more exploitation. All we have to do is put our experiences to the side and create room for theirs. The implications of this statement are far-reaching. It means new voices at the table and a new table.

The latter encompasses the last presenter of the session who was a HIV positive woman talking about organizing for peace. She made the point that since the casualties of war are often the women and children, then the best thing to do is to prevent the wars from happening in the fist place. “A safe world means safe homes, and safe women,” she said. I couldn’t agree more. The intersections between violence prevention and HIV prevention are profound. Until men feel safe on the streets and women feel safe at home, we are all in trouble.

As a woman who has never experienced threats of personal violence, taking care of traumatized patient who had, forever changed the way I thought about HIV prevention and solidarity. Hearing the stories from the Congo, Zimbabwe and Kenya reinforced this connection further and invoked the same feelings I had thinking about these issues in the South Bronx. What does it mean that so many can continue to suffer with so many watching and so many trying to “help”?

It means solidarity is missing.