Some concerns from Western Jamaica on homelessness and homo-negativity

Readers and listeners welcome to another timely post on homelessness that I would normally cover on my other blog Gay Jamaica Watch but this time I was hauled over the coals by some of my following to also pay closer attention to the homeless and displacement issues in western Jamaica predominantly Montego Bay, Pitfour, Grandville and Savanna-la-mar along with other homo negative issues and a few same gender loving women concerns so I took a two day trip to Montego Bay and overnighted with a friend. From the moment I landed it hit me, why aren't you dealing with us as well on your blogs and audio/podcasts? I was repeatedly asked. So I was taken to task for the very thing I critique lol but such is life, there is always a teaching moment to learn from and I am guided by you my readers and listeners. But also understand that the issues in Kingston require urgent and consistent vigilance as the circumstances change so rapidly.

Indeed the social interventions by the LGBT advocates seem not to be island-wide and merely concentrated in Kingston proper but as we huddled and began to examine what was is really taking place it soon became clear that the same issues and more that were and are bedeviling the homeless msms in Kingston are the same as our western counterparts. Issues such as:

1) Transactional sex and related negotiating issues?

2) Identity issues and effemophobia clashing with hypermasculine types 

3) Gay for pay populations crossing over into the main homeless MSM populations and the subsequent fallouts

4) No permanent shelter and residential access

5) Improper diet and health issues especially HIV positive members of the groups 

6) Homophobic attacks and homonegative responses from the mainstream

7) Inability to reconnect with biological families and subsequent interventions and related social services

8) Non response or aloofness from the LGBT bodies that readily parade the men's issues overseas

9) Increased cynicism and refusal to report incidents to the very LGBT bodies

10) Little follow up from the LGBT legal arms and meaningful assistance from same

11) An unusual phenomenon of stoning becoming a fixture as part of the anti gay response in reported homophobic incidents 

The predicted fallout from the lotto scam crackdown by the authorities and the coming to a halt the informal half way house program that was carried out by a key influential who has been fingered as a key player in the illegal scam has also come to light as many of the displaced and homeless men who benefited from that arrangement have now found themselves having to move to other parts of St James and by extension other parishes including Kingston. This was the same influential who ran a club that was invaded in February 2011 by cops with some awful results, see the link for more: 

Big Blow for homeless/displaced MSMs in Western Jamaica …..

Meanwhile other alleged scammers too have fallen on difficult times financially and are now joining the fold it seems as they were once vilified by the originally displaced that were not helping and selfish while enjoying their ill gotten wealth.

Also with the veiled threat of sorts coming from the supposed criminal underworld as well that was carried in the tabloids recently many persons in the community are also surmising the increased hostility towards perceived LGBTians as a consequence of this threat.

see: 

Thugs warn drag wearing scammers ……………

A few incidents were reported to have occurred over the past few months where the persons so harmed have flatly refused to go into the report their concerns and injuries either to Jamaica Forum for Lesbians Allsexuals and Gays and worst yet the police who in western Jamaica do not treat with any urgency or proper regard the sanctity of ones rights in a precinct of a station instead reportees are ridiculed or made to feel dejected as officers make a mockery of the situation. The untimely departure as well of Manger and his assistant at Jamaica AIDS Support for Life Montego Bay offices as only serve to add insult to injury as he also acted as a crisis intervention contact in western Jamaica often putting his own self in harm's way to offer emergency shelter or relocation for persons who would normally call the office for assistance. He was fired due to internal matters that have left many stunned even now some several months after his departure. The new staff members have been described as out of touch and very snooty and seem not interested for the most part in getting involved in serious cases but those who still do engage have a hard time convincing the homophobic victims to report the issue to JFLAG, the response is usually they feel it will go nowhere than just on paper. 

A same gender loving woman also had to beat a hasty relocation as she was the victim of a stoning incident as well so she took evasive action, she surmises that after the visit of a butch identified friend she became profiled by her immediate neighbours hence the incident that followed. A nurse also had to take action at her place of work where another coworker verbally abused her but the regional authorities quickly diffused the situation and transferred the offending worker to another locale.

With no permanent presence at this time of a crisis intervention team in Montego Bay how are the persons going to report incidents separate and apart from calling in to them. JFLAG has indeed indicated that it will be opening some shelter of sorts finally after 14 years of existence the first time a shelter is being opened after so many years of not addressing the social issues that have grown exponentially. How many beds are there in this project and if it will remain open and close surprisingly and dubiously as the previous Safe House Project we are yet to see. One other issue is will this new shelter if and when it opens will the services be so offered to engage the existing homeless men numbering some thirty or more just by observation and some of whom have been around since 2007 after the exposure of an LGBT party DVD by bootleggers first in Montego Bay then in Kingston leading to an islandwide meltdown. Many persons from western Jamaica had to beat a hasty retreat to come to Kingston hence the explosion of displaced and homeless persons to this day with all the associated problems some internally caused unfortunately.

Please see the following for some background to some of the issues:

Murder, Homelessness and fallouts ..................................

June 13th double murder scene of two homeless msms which was not a homophobic killing

also hear a recent audio commentary on the Trafalgar murder matter and more

and recent issues with the Kingston cohort 

From the pen of one of our homeless brothers ……..

There are several things to consider here folks as we navigate LGBT life here on the rock especially for those of us who choose to remain here and battle it out and not run off using the tempting asylum routes being waved infront of some as a dangling carrot but it becoming more clearer is the social fallouts and homonegative issues however small they make look needs urgent attention by the advocacy structures. Influentials alone can no longer take on these matters as they are spent from attempting to do so and resources are scarce on their part yet millions are available from the LGBT groups and they do not act on addressing the glaring issues staring us all in the face.

Think on these things

Peace and tolerance

H

Caribbean Sees Progress on HIV/AIDS, Fears Funding Cuts

Ian McKnight, executive director of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVCC), used one word – “tokenistic” – to sum up his perspective on the 19th International AIDS Conference that ended here over the weekend.

Addressing the final session of the six-day event, McKnight said while “hubs” were important for allowing delegates to voice their opinions in small gatherings, these same delegates were not given the same opportunity at gatherings attended by scientists, officials and other major stakeholders.


The Caribbean has the second highest incidence of HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa. McKnight said he was disappointed that the conference had excluded vulnerable populations, such as drugs users and sex workers, from making their position known.


U.S. President Barack Obama lifted a travel ban on HIV-positive travelers, but some sex workers say they were denied visas to attend the conference. “It is nothing short of an abomination that they have been excluded from this conference …we need their voices and their issues here with us at this conference.


“So these half baked attempts at including people who use drugs and sex workers are tokenistic and it must stop now,” he said to loud applause.


Prior to the official start of the conference, the executive director of the Barbados-based Caribbean Media Broadcast Partnership (CMBP), Dr. Allyson Leacock, said that while the Caribbean media had adopted a significant role in educating and informing the public about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, she was also fearful that the conference would sideline Caribbean concerns.


She said the challenge for the Caribbean is that its population is so small and donors and other agencies “tend to use these numbers when HIV has the same potential to decimate the region”. Jamaica’s health minister, Dr. Fenton Ferguson also appealed to the international community not to cut back on aid to the region as it deals with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.


“The move to make funding decisions based on limited criteria such as World Bank country rankings without wider economic and potential impact assessments will be judged as an error by history if allowed to stand. “These decisions threaten the very lives of the people we have just saved, “he said, adding that Jamaica, and the region as a whole, “cannot go it alone from here”.


“We need the continued support of our international development partners, who if they abandon us now, in the words of Michele Sidebe (UNAIDS executive director) would be making a decision to let HIV regain a foothold and flourish in Jamaica and they would be making a decision to abandon the next generation of children to HIV,” he said.


Ferguson said a recent study indicates that Jamaica would need 30 million dollars annually by 2030 compared to 15 million annually today to sustain its HIV programmes. “We could therefore see a doubling of the cost to the response if the investments to mitigate its impact are not made now,” he said, adding “today Jamaica, like many other countries, is concerned about the potential impact of the global financial crisis on the sustainability of its national response to HIV”.


McKnight said cutting back was not an option, adding that all the progress being touted at the conference “would be doomed to failure if we do not have the funding to do this work”. “None of it, none of it can ever happen without serious commitments and so we call again on our governments and say renew your calls to take ownership for this response and to make the investment necessary and to end AIDS,” he said.


U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said more than 150 million dollars in new U.S. spending initiatives geared toward leveraging progress against AIDS already achieved through new drug treatments, programmes to stop mother-to-child transmission of HIV and the preventive effect of expanded voluntary male circumcision.


But there were suggestions here that the US funds were geared more towards Africa than the Caribbean. In a report titled “Together We Will End AIDS” released ahead of the conference, UNAIDS noted that AIDS-related deaths in the Caribbean have declined by almost 50 percent in 10 years.


AIDS-related deaths fell to about 10,000 in 2011, nearly half of the figure for 2001, in the almost 30 years since the start of the AIDS epidemic. “This is in large part due to the relatively high antiretroviral treatment coverage of 67 percent for the Caribbean as a whole. At present 230,000 people are living with HIV in the Caribbean. The estimated number of persons who were newly infected with the virus last year was 13,000,” the report said.


UNAIDS said that about 1,100 children became infected with HIV in the Caribbean in 2011, the majority in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which together comprise 68 percent of the region’s HIV epidemic. UNAIDS said that many of the member countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) “are close to achieving elimination targets for the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT).”


But there is need for caution. “We don’t want people to think that the AIDS epidemic is over because we have eight million people in treatment,” UNAIDS deputy executive director Paul De Lay told IPS after participating in a panel discussion on “HIV/AIDS and the News Agenda – Implications for Ending the Epidemic”.


“We need to work with the media to ensure that we are putting the right spin on the data,” De Lay said, noting that while it is important to note that eight million people were receiving medical treatment for the virus, “underneath that figure is a lot of people who are not getting treatment”.