Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Tyler Quick and Frank O'Cana
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RuPaul has this famous refrain that goes something like this: “We as gay people get to choose our family and the people we're around. I am your family. We are a family here.” However, like most gay people of my generation, the LGBTQ community was a family that I came into already being an adult. The learning process for how to be a happy and healthy gay person was often stymied by my actual upbringing in a culture that was homophobic outside of my parents’ home, and still heteronormative even within it. Moreover, other gay people, I quickly learned, aren’t always the best teachers for how to be gay. In fact, gay culture in the present era can often itself replicate the mechanisms of alienation and marginalization that produce queer subjects in the heteronormative cultures with which it is often juxtaposed.
Few are as marginalized in the gay community, in our present moment, than those living with HIV. The stigma surrounding what was once called the “gay cancer” is still powerful. But I’ve learned that fearing HIV will only lead to a culture that stigmatizes it, in turn decreasing information and increasing transmission. I owe that knowledge to Frank O’Cana, the Executive Director of the Boulder County AIDS Project (BCAP), and the founder of that organization’s Atlas program.
While an undergraduate at CU Boulder, Atlas was my queer family. Led now by Garrett Rose, an Atlas alumnus himself, the program is a service learning program, whose volunteers “actively participate in all aspects of producing and delivering program services, including advisory roles, administrative support, community networking, peer-to-peer discussions, resource distribution, HIV testing and counseling, event management, performance art, graphic design and curriculum development.” It has been compared to a queer fraternity or sorority by the countless people who have found their queer family through it. More importantly, it has been at the forefront of successful efforts to combat HIV stigma and lower transmission rates in Boulder and the surrounding area. What follows is an edited transcript of my interview with O’Cana about this program:
Tyler
I was wondering if you could explain to people who don’t know what service learning is what that mean.
Frank
It’s essentially an approach or process to combine education and volunteerism and self-reflection to help enhance learning and/or from a program participant point of view, maybe even behavioral output depending on the program and what the actual intention is, but essentially to enhance a learning environment through those core components.
Tyler
And also just to give our readers a little bit of background, what exactly are you all doing at BCAP in terms of service learning?
Frank
BCAP itself was founded by volunteers and have our core values aligned around volunteerism and civic engagement in terms of the work that’s done on a broad level. But service learning is quite specific to the Atlas program.
So, that is essentially the model in terms of recruiting and integrating core members, them going to orientation to both get some education, and start self-reflection and integration into the program. While in the program, they pick different volunteer points of engagement, and then either in real-time on their own or at different structured moments, they reflect on that, and then also just reflecting on perspective or introduction to engaging then it got large but then also one of the strategies around prevention, and it is your best team.
Tyler
And what do you think is so important about that personal reflection of your own relationship in this specific case of HIV but for any activist project?
Frank
The two things that come to mind, one is just to align with engagement with purpose. And that typically drives motivation. When people are able to meet that connection, and if they’re looking at their own in the context of HIV, in terms of one’s own behavioral choices, for most people, that’s either not acquiring or not transmitting HIV when we’re specifically talking about HIV.
But just the both personal and social context in which people transmitting AIDS or exposure to HIV, it’s really complex. The more we can engage people or the more that we can engage people, increase education and community capacity, increase access to prevention strategies, including biomedical intervention and then also lower community viral load. Then we’re able to make progress for lowering HIV in the US and throughout the world.
Tyler
And so, essentially when you say lower community viral load, what you’re talking about is a diffusion of the virus through fewer bodies and at a lower rate, right?
Frank
Yes. Just think HIV Prevention, right? There’s just a few things we have to do. Big picture: we have to raise HIV awareness, we have to decrease HIV stigma, we have to increase prevention strategy access.
Tyler
Do you feel that Atlas has done more to diffuse throughout the community better knowledge about, say, what it means to be undetectable or PrEP, or do you have any examples of ways in which this learning process has spread from beyond Atlas and into the wider community?
Frank
Actually, yes. We have active members on the speaker’s bureau going into middle and high schools and other community-based organizations doing presentation. We have Atlas members and counselors. We give PrEP referrals and do PrEP outreach. And getting more information out there about the opioid epidemic.
Tyler
That’s great. Do you think that a lot of people in Atlas would have a difficult time gaining the same avenues to access to nonprofits in general and to BCAP if they had not gone through the Atlas program?
Frank
I think for some, yes. I think some of the motivation to be involved is, there’s typically something that happened for people to get involved in that. That was either they got recruited by peer and they were connected to, they got connection with, they trusted that peer. And so, they gave Atlas a chance. Sometimes people get an HIV diagnosis or someone they love got one. And so, it’s driving that motivation to learn more about HIV. There’s a lot of reasons to why people are connected to Atlas, but I think the common denominator that has created a sense of connection between people coming with different motivations is that fundamental need that people have to be a part of communities and to contribute and to be a part and just have personal growth because I think our model prioritizes personal growth through service.
Tyler
I also wonder to what extent Atlas ends up filling a social role especially given that there are no longer any real gay bars in Boulder– it certainly is a gay friendly city but it doesn’t have the most widely visible gay life and gay scene and gay culture. So, I was wondering if you though Atlas also providing a cultural good to people?
Frank
I’d say yes, it has – it has throughout history provided another point of social connection. I think that helps with retention. I think people either join the program for that very purpose or they stay in the program a bit longer than they otherwise might have. For some people, it’s part of how they’re engaging in community four times a year when they make that social event with Atlas.
Tyler
Do you think that participation-oriented activism makes it easier compared to peer organizations to find volunteers for the more non-social aspects of what you all do there? It’s recruiting new testers or people to staff a booth somewhere?
Frank
Yes, we always have people. I think that’s because relationships get built through Atlas. Volunteer needs often take on another layer. It takes that relational component of giving back to the community.
Tyler
That’s so interesting. And then another aspect of the whole community thing that I was thinking about is when I came to Atlas, I was an undergrad and a lot of people I know were also undergrad at CU Boulder. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how the program is different because it is so heavily engaged with college students, how is BCAP different since it’s so engaged with the college community? Does that affect at all your relationship with volunteers?
Frank
When we look at the actual demographics, it’s pretty broken up between college age and then post-college. However, the perception is that there’s a lot more younger people because I believe you have to really jump in front of those ones…
Tyler
That’s true.
Frank
I think – and they’ll be more active if you do. They’ll have higher amount of service hours, volunteer hours. There are higher engagements. That all makes sense. And it is important to reach out to them. That’s where the epidemic is. A higher percentage of 18, 20 year old MSM are getting diagnosed and/or finding out they’re dealing with HIV in the US.
Retention is what keeps the numbers of men from the mid-20s and mid-30s relatively similar to people of age in the program. And they return after they’ve aged.
Tyler
One of the last questions I really wanted to ask you is where do you see the future of HIV and AIDS activism. To what extent is it participatory, and what are its goals now in a post-PrEP world?
Frank
Well, I think there is the universal need to minimize/eradicate HIV transmission, but I think that we’re pretty far away from that. And I think the goal is going to look differently on a global level versus the national level versus. But, with PrEP, we still don’t have equitable access across the US. That’s one issue. That’s a big issue. If you live in the South, I think it’s a long way to go.
We have a long way to go within any state that didn’t support Medicaid expansion. It’s also just the whole issue of race relation in our country.I don’t know the exact number but Black folks are like 17% of people in our country, but 48% of people who have acquired HIV this year...
Tyler
New diagnoses, right?
Frank
Yes. For the HIV epidemic, conversations about race relations help put equity at the core of trying to improve the outcome. I like that we’ve been able to contain HIV transmission rates in the country but we haven’t really lowered them. And yes, in New York there’s a very well-funded, aggressive program lowering rates but that’s not true throughout the US.
Tyler
Do you think there’s been an impact since PrEP has come out on participation and involvement? Do you think people are deprioritizing HIV activism after PrEP or no?
Frank
I don’t know any studies around that. I don’t even know how you would study that.
For some people... they might move on to another cause because the perception is that there’s not as great of a need. There’s a lot to take to that. And a lot of activists either step away from the epidemic all together or they take a break from it because they live in the trauma of the history. And some people disappear for a period of time. It’s an issue that they can be passionate about and they can really invest for a period of time but then they’re moving on to other issues or family career, whatever, when they need to pay or take more time. It’s hard to say.
I think in some ways; our nation has stepped up at providing flat or increase funding or the biomedical piece. But I think this means a lot of foundations have shifted their focus. I think it depends on where you live and what kind of culture is happening around that.
Tyler
You’ve been living in Colorado except for a few stints elsewhere for a while, and I’m sure you remember that it was once called the Hate State and known for being very anti-queer politically and that something has changed. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on if there’s an activist component too like how the culture’s changed so much in Colorado and what were – if other places could learn from that and if you think BCAP has had any part in changing the culture in Boulder specifically?
Frank
In Boulder particularly, there’s always been really cooperative and engaged relations between public health and law enforcement. And with BCAP and the city, county, university and Boulder Community Hospital.
Boulder County is often at the forefront of trying to address these issues and to try to bring resources to help people who are living in poverty and getting health disparity which is an odd thing to say because the rising cost of living has also created this disparity.
I think BCAP has been in the conversation and been very influential in advocating for a greater understanding of inclusiveness and health equity and specifically in raising awareness around HIV.
