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🔥May’s Hot Topic🔥:

More than “thoughts and prayers.”

We demand policy change for the victims of mass shootings.

When tragedy strikes, thoughts and prayers are not enough. We sorrowfully mourn the lives lost in the devastating mass murder of our Black elders by another white supremacist in Buffalo, NY; the appalling mass murder of 21 people, most of whom were Latinx children, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas; and the hate fueled attack on Taiwanese churchgoers in Laguna Woods, California. Our Black and brown people deserve safety; deserve to live full, joyful lives. When the rage settles, media coverage ends, and the nation moves on to the next hot topic; what do we have left? What have thoughts and prayers solidified for us? We demand meaningful, structural change.

Systemic change is necessary and long overdue. This country is rooted in white nationalism and anti-Black terrorism. Black people have been unprotected, underserved, and subject to anti-Black violence by the state and vigilantes for far too long. The system is tailored to harm communities most impacted by HIV: Black people, queer and trans people, Latinx people, Indigenous people, and people struggling to make ends meet.

PWN created a policy agenda to guide our collective fight for liberation and transformation. Lawmakers must actively center, support leadership from, and make long-term investments in Black communities to offset unemployment, poverty, housing instability, failing school systems, lack of access to healthcare, voter suppression, food insecurity, and police presence, surveillance and violence. The basic necessities have been lacking in Black and brown communities for so long. Besides thoughts, prayers, and gun control, Black and brown communities need equitable investments that would enable them to build long term power and sustain overall quality of life.

Under the framework of reproductive justice, each person has the human right to maintain bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent their children in safe and sustainable communities. Parenting children in safe environments would mean there is no fear of sending them to school, which is supposed to be a safe space. Parenting children in sustainable communities means that all of the basic necessities are accounted for. Policy must catch up to crisis and ensure that children will come home safely to communities that have the support and resources to sustain them.

We will continue to fight and mobilize our folks to ensure a better future – a place where lives are not lost to domestic terrorism and neglect from the state. Though mental health is a very serious issue, it cannot continue to be used to divert the conversation about white supremacist terrorism in the U.S. When the public display of thoughts and prayers subsides, we will continue to fight for visibility, legislation, and a genuine systemic and infrastructural awakening so that Black and brown people can live.

Other Updates


The “hot topic” (above) is a deeper dive into one or two of the most pressing policy-related issues each month for people living with HIV and our communities. But a lot happens each month! Below we list some other important updates relevant to PWN-USA’s intersectional policy agenda.

Access to Healthcare

  • The U.S. Senate has confirmed Dr. Nkengasong as the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator overseeing U.S. sponsored humanitarian efforts to end the epidemic around the world.

  • The Medicare for All Act of 2022 has been reintroduced! This initiative would change the U.S. to a single-payer healthcare system for all people, not just those over 65, and expand benefits without out-of-pocket costs.


Reproductive Health, Rights & Justice

  • California’s Governor vows to amend the California Constitution to protect abortion rights.

  • Oklahoma imposes the most extreme abortion ban in the country, banning abortion after fertilization. House Bill 4327 encourages private citizens to bring civil lawsuits against a person who aids and abets a person seeking an abortion any time after conception.


Ending Violence

  • A federal lawsuit is challenging the military’s current HIV policy which bans people living with HIV from joining the military or military academies.

  • Massachusetts Governor Baker vetoed a bill allowing immigrants without legal status to acquire state-issued driver’s licenses. House and Senate expected to override the veto.

  • The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people in state prison no longer have a constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court that they were inadequately represented, effectively gutting a final safeguard against error or misconduct.


Economic Justice

  • President Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to help ease the baby formula shortage. The shortage has deeply impacted people of color and folks struggling to make ends meet; this includes people living with HIV, who are often discouraged from breast and/or chest feeding.


Ending Criminalization

  • Georgia has updated their policy on HIV criminalization! The new law reforms the state’s outdated HIV criminalization laws, completely removes some criminal penalties and lowers others.

  • The Tennessee state Senate has voted to remove the sex offender registry requirement of their HIV-criminalization law.

  • A district court has blocked the Biden administration from lifting Title 42, an anti-immigrant pandemic-related health order put in place by the Trump administration to expel migrants at the Mexican border. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed an appeal.


LGBTQ Health, Safety, and Justice

  • A federal judge has blocked part of an Alabama law that makes it a felony to provide youth under the age of 18 with gender-affirming care including hormones and blockers. Other aspects of the law were affirmed.

  • A federal judge struck down a Tennessee law that required businesses to post public notices outside their restrooms if they allow transgender or nonbinary folks to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

  • The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that neither Governor Abbott nor Texas’s attorney general had the authority to order child abuse investigations on families that provide gender-affirming care to their children.

  • New York’s Governor Hochul has announced that NY residents can now choose a non-binary “X” as a gender marker on the NYS driver’s license and ID card.

  • In Oklahoma, the governor signed a law banning non-binary birth certificates.