Our December 2020 Shero of the Month is LaDawn Tate of Detroit, Michigan. This mother of two is a tireless advocate at the local level, where she was elected co-chair of the Detroit Ryan White Planning Council this year. “LaDawn has been by my side in this advocacy journey for over five years,” said PWN Board Member Chunnika Hodges, who nominated her. “From the start, she has been eager to learn and grow as a community leader. She is very passionate about women’s sexual health and full body autonomy. Since meeting this woman, I witnessed her growth from a newbie community advocate to a full force to be reckoned with.”
LaDawn credits PWN with motivating her to get fully involved in advocacy. “It was Myrtle Beach in 2018 [the PWN Speak Up Summit]. It was like, Oh my God, I get to be around all these women. Do we have this at home? I wanted to connect. The connections I made in Myrtle Beach were priceless, and I wanted to make those connections here in Michigan. Learning everything I learned–we’ve got power. The fact that our voices have power, that’s the most powerful weapon I can use. Trying to end HIV stigma, trying to help people understand what we need out here, trying to gain allies–God has given me my mission and I plan to fulfill it.”
She says the PWN Policy Fellowship took her advocacy to the next level. “I took what I learned out of the fellowship, learning how to get involved and get connected with the right people. I needed to learn some things–what was this all about? What do we do? It wasn’t easy coming to the planning council. I was loud and ratchet. Once everyone got to know me, they appreciated the loud girl. They took away the ratchet and appreciated the loud girl because she’s got a statement to make and wants to make changes.”
One of the changes LaDawn has brought to the Detroit planning council is Project LEAP (Learning, Empowerment, Advocacy, and Participation). “Two of our council members went to Texas and learned about [Houston’s] program,” explained LaDawn. “I found about it and said let’s do this. I worked with planning council to put a Detroit stamp on it, and now we have our own Detroit Project LEAP that is going amazingly. I connect with different people and organizations who come to teach about different things, like how funding works, how the planning council works, how to become an advocate, how to learn about voting and making sure you know who you’re voting for. Project LEAP teaches all of that and more.”
Project LEAP is especially important to her because, coming in as a new co-chair, she realized how much she didn’t know–and none of it was spelled out anywhere in writing, and there was no real training. “We went through an election process. If there had been a different person chosen, it would have been two new people as co-chairs. Luckily, the person who got elected with me was already a chair, so he became my mentor,” she said. “We had to put in place a succession plan so that we’ll always have someone on board who knows what’s going on, so that when a new person comes on, they’ll get trained. So the co-chair and I worked together to come up with this plan and policies. The PWN Policy Fellowship helped me learn how to put policies in place.”
Detroit’s Project LEAP was supposed to begin in March, but due to the pandemic and shutdowns, it ended up being postponed and kicked off virtually in October. “When you join the planning council, there’s so much you need to learn. They want to make it where Project LEAP is the start to coming into the planning council that you have to go through to join the council.”
LaDawn is an advocate for women living with HIV in her work as a linkage to care specialist for Unified HIV Health and Beyond as well. When she heard about a grant to be focused on women in Michigan, she urged the organization to apply for it. They got it, and she started Detroit RISE (Respect Is Empowerment), a support group for women living with HIV. “Detroit RISE is a place for women to actually have conversations that they’ve probably never had with anyone in their lives. We can actually relate with one another,” she said. “When I first got diagnosed, I went to a support group, but it was mostly MSM–there was nobody there that represented me. Working in the field, that was something I heard a lot.”
Detroit RISE started in March with ten women; now there are 21. LaDawn stressed that the group is run by and for the women participating in it. “They decided the time, the platform, everything. I wanted them to understand, this is for you. They decide the topics. The women would bring topics, and I’d research them or bring people who could talk about them personally,” she said. “Some of the ladies didn’t know anything about absentee voting; I had Chunnika come in and teach them. We’re building community partnerships. I just want to have all the resources for my ladies. At first we were meeting twice a month when it was face to face; now that it’s virtual, it’s every week.”
When she’s not in her advocate role, she is with her family or friends. “I am the life of the party. I love to dance,” she said. “And now I’ve got a PS4. I’m a gamer now. If I’m not with my family and friends, I’m at home with my boys–they are 21 and 13. They keep me going. My 21-year-old is my biggest supporter. He teaches what I teach to the deaf community. Junior [the younger son] is me all over. He will call out false information whenever he hears it. He stands up for the LGBTQ community with his friends.”
LaDawn doesn’t see herself stepping back from advocacy for a while yet. When she starts feeling overwhelmed, she looks forward to taking a good chunk of vacation time. But she says she’ll always come back to the work. “My community needs me. Michigan still needs me. We’ve still got work to do,” she explained. “My mission won’t stop until the stigma stops. Once the stigma stops and we can literally say that we’ve stopped transmission, then I feel like I’ll be able to retire. I’m in this until the end.”
We look forward to many more years of fighting the good fight with LaDawn!