So as I blogged about the other night, I attended a LIFE Detroit forum on HIV/AIDS and gay sex the other evening in Detroit. The organizers commented that several prominent Michigan AIDS organizations had committed to attend, but they didn't show. We were all very upset by this, and so when I arrived home, I sent an email to a few staff at the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project and the Michigan AIDS Partnership to express my dismay at their absence.

Well fuck if the Executive Director of the Midwest AIDS Partnership -- Craig Covey -- didn't fire back a nasty response as fast as he could type it out! In the words of my dear friend Nat who commented when he saw the reply: "Is everyone working in AIDS-prevention an embittered bigot?" Read for yourself:

We were not invited to any such event, nor did we commit to attend. I have never heard of something called LIFE Detroit. We do work in the city with at-risk people on a daily basis. This is at clubs, bars, on the street, in parks, and in community centers. Whatever you are trying to compensate for, I wish you luck. When you finish with your schooling someday, and you enter the real world, I hope you will have learned some tact and reality-based training. Emails like the one you sent do not show much promise.

What a jerk! I'm going to get back with LIFE Detroit to see if they have e-mails that contradict his claim that they were not informed of the forum -- and that they did not commit to attend. But this isn't the most egregious piece of his e-mail. The fact that I found a flyer for this event in the bathroom of Gold Coast suggests that it wasn't a particularly obscure event. And the fact that he doesn't know what LIFE Detroit is, is even more telling.

In any case, I may be pumping out a lengthier op-ed about my experiences with all this. It doesn't say much for the state of prevention politics in Michigan, sadly. Oh -- and here was my original e-mail to the staff members:

** Please forward to the appropriate staff members **

Dear Midwest AIDS Prevention Project,

My name is Trevor Hoppe and I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan in Sociology and Women's Studies. I work on HIV Prevention issues and gay men's health.

I attended a meeting last night in Detroit organized by LIFE Detroit on HIV/AIDS prevention which included a fabulous discussion about the intricacies of unprotected sex and more generally the challenges of 21st century prevention tactics.

Your organization had committed to attending, and yet was notably absent -- as had other AIDS organizations in Michigan. This apparently is not a new phenomenon, and is just the latest in a string of instances in which your organization has committed to showing up but failed to do so.

This has the unhappy effect of making your organization seem out of touch with communities here in Detroit, and more generally to make community leaders feel less inclined to support your organization in future projects.

I would pressure you as a community leader here in the area to make a better effort to work in tandem with community-based organizations here, rather than appear as a hostile outsider. It does little to further your cause.

Trevor Hoppe
University of Michigan