Notes from the Dead Zone

But once they get there, a new difficulty may await -- backlash. Successful black organizations are often seen as threats to white and Hispanic agencies. The increased inflow of resources to the black community, allowing new organizations to start up and older ones to expand, sometimes is made possible by diverting resources from other groups, especially since new AIDS funding is scarce. This past March in Broward County, a rare public disagreement erupted after gay white activists accused African-American and Hispanic interests of unfairly taking money away from successful gay-run programs. Blacks and Hispanics, in turn, complained whites were blocking federal aid money from going where it was most needed. In the end, the money went where the numbers were -- to the minority communities. All the hard work done by gay men in the Eighties now has paid off in lower infection rates, but also in a declining base of support. At least three venerable gay organizations in Miami-Dade have shut their doors during the past five years, victims of the changing times: Body Positive, People With AIDS Coalition, and Health Crisis Network. About a year ago gay activist Luis Penelas, brother of county Mayor Alex Penelas, became executive director of a four-year-old AIDS nonprofit, Union Positiva. Penelas worked long hours securing hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for new outreach programs into the Hispanic community, which, like the African-American community, struggles with deep cultural and religious stigmas attached to AIDS. Penelas went before the county commission last year to ask for funding for an educational campaign. "My reasoning was for the last three years the black community had been receiving a total of $300,000 to do AIDS prevention, and Hispanics had not received anything," he explains. "The incidence [of AIDS] for Hispanics is still rising. That's how I got a grant for $100,000."

But this year Union Positiva will not get that money, since the commission reduced funding for many newer nonprofits. Penelas says he understands the urgency of the crisis in Miami-Dade's black neighborhoods, but he laments post-9/11 cutbacks that he believes have disproportionately hurt efforts to reach Hispanics with AIDS.

In Miami-Dade, where racial tensions usually stay just barely concealed, there are white and Hispanic AIDS workers who believe growing black clout has helped undermine the older gay groups or won funding at the expense of nonblack organizations. "I've heard the stories," confirms Kevin Garrity, executive director of the South Beach AIDS Project, which serves a mostly white and Hispanic gay clientele. "I know some people feel that way. There's a problem of a feeling of entitlement in most of the AIDS community. But I don't buy it. I feel we're only entitled to what we earn, and if a program is based on sound science and gets results, it will get funded."

What resentment there is on all sides, however, remains under the surface, rarely acknowledged publicly. "It's sad to say this off the record but I have to live in this community," offers an advocate with long experience in the AIDS field. "I want to live in this perfect world, can't we all get along, but the underlying thing is there is hidden racism going on, because historically all the funding has been attuned to gay white men and their organizations, but when the epidemic changed [black] people said, 'We're 20 percent of the population but make up 51 percent of the epidemic,' and I thought when other people saw that they'd say, 'Yeah, we need to do something,' but instead they're feeling threatened and think we want to take away their funding. So we don't say anything for fear of offending. I struggle with this daily, how much I'm going to say, how much I'm going to be party to. I actually feel I'm part of the problem, because I don't want to lose my job and everything else I have in Miami-Dade County. It's a very tight circle, and it's not that the powers-that-be can [retaliate] -- they will."

As an alleged example of retaliation against the "threat" of a successful black organization, this advocate and others point to the six-month-long, still ongoing, audit of Minorities Overcoming the Virus through Education, Responsibility and Spirituality (MOVERS). The eight-year-old Liberty City nonprofit is the state's largest black-owned AIDS service provider with a budget of about four million dollars. Regardless of the outcome of the audit, conducted by the Florida Department of Health, MOVERS' reputation and ability to attract funding may be hurt. Both MOVERS' executive director, Patricia Kelly, and its founder, Rev. George McRae, declined to speak to New Times until the audit is finalized.