Coming Home to Injustice

Organizing for Prison Reform and HIV/AIDS Awareness

Ramon Velasquez, a former prisoner living with HIV is in Detroit for the US Social Forum. He has come to this gathering of activists, organizers, social justice advocates and their allies with his membership-based group NYCAHN/VOCAL, the New York City Aids Housing Network and Voices of Community Advocates and Leaders, to speak on behalf of a community often disempowered and invisible: prisoners and people with HIV/AIDS.

Raised on the streets of Brooklyn, Ramon had been in and out of detention facilities since he was a teenager. Assaulting people in broad daylight and using drugs, Ramon now sees those early days as the penitentiary even though he was a "free" man in society. It was prison life that saved Ramon from what he affirms were the chains of his crimes and addictions.

"Prison for me was, I was not arrested. I was rescued."

His time in lockup gave him the knowledge and fortitude to try to change policies that exploit a vulnerable and disenfranchised population and raise awareness of a disease that has not gone away even though the reporters have moved on.

Frustrated by the lack of public knowledge and often outright dismissiveness of the pandemic, Ramon asserts, "If AIDS doesn't exist then why is it in me?"

A campaign that NYCAHN/VOCAL is currently involved with is trying to pass a bill that would cap the amount people living with HIV/AIDS pay for housing to 30% of their income. The bill is currently moving through the New York state legislature.

Another policy initiative NYCAHN/VOCAL is presently working on, and led a workshop at the Social Forum about, concerns prison-based gerrymandering: the practice of counting inmates originally from New York City as residents of the upstate districts where they are incarcerated. The detrimental effect of this is twofold, denying money and political power to low-income neighborhoods in New York City at the same time upstate regions unfairly increase their influence in governmental affairs through inflated populations. Given this year's Census, organizing against this practice has taken on an urgent tone as numbers from the Census will deny resources to communities in need while bolstering the power of districts with politically shrewd public officials.

As Ramon believes, "Prison shouldn't be a place of residence. It should be a place of temporary residence because you're coming home."

To hear an audio interview of Ramon Velasquez, please click here
Audio: Abdulai Bah, People's Production House