AIDS activists protest Ford's first day as mayor
NEWS / Ford declares "the war on the car stops today"
Andrea Houston / Toronto / Wednesday, December 01, 2010
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AIDS Action Now's Alex McClelland at a Dec 1 protest to mark Mayor Rob Ford's first day on the job.
(Andrea Houston)
Amid chants of “Shame” and “Not my mayor,” AIDS Action Now’s Alex McClelland got behind the microphone and declared that Mayor Rob Ford “doesn’t give a shit” about him because he is HIV-positive.

“This is World AIDS Day, and it’s a sad day to welcome our new mayor, who hates people living with HIV,” McClelland roared while a protest in front of city hall grew in numbers on Dec 1. The protest was called Give Ford the Welcome He Deserves.

“When Rob Ford was in council in 2006, he said, ‘If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you probably won’t get AIDS.’”

“Shame!” screamed the crowd of about 150 protesters, many carrying Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) banners, CUPE flags and homemade anti-Ford signs.

McClelland admits Ford got some of his information right. About 56 percent of HIV infections in Toronto are among gay men and three percent of infections are among injection drug users, he says.

“But what Ford really said with this statement is HIV happens to people he doesn’t give a shit about, and that our city shouldn’t fund programs to prevent new HIV infections,” McClelland says.

“I am one of those people that Rob Ford doesn’t give a shit about. And I’m here to let him know on behalf of people living with HIV across Toronto that we are citizens of Toronto and we are assured our rights, including our right to health.”

People with HIV/AIDS will not stay silent and will not stop fighting, McClelland vows.

“People with HIV are fierce opposition,” he says. “We will fight and resist his ignorance and stupidity every step of the way.”

The protest in Nathan Phillips Square, organized by OCAP and No One Is Illegal, a group that fights for the rights of undocumented people, marked Ford’s first official day as Toronto’s new mayor.

While the protest raged outside, inside Ford held a brief press conference and declared, “The war on the car stops today,” vowing to cut the car registration tax on Jan 1. Ford also pledged to chop councillor expense accounts from $50,000 to $30,000.

He also promised to begin the process to declare the TTC an essential service.

Earlier in the day Ford met with TTC chief general manager Gary Webster to emphasize that subways are preferable to the 120 kilometres of streetcar routes laid out by Mayor David Miller, dubbed Transit City.

“I was given a mandate to deliver on subways,” Ford told media.

Ford could get a Transit City motion introduced to the new city council as early as Dec 16.

The first council meeting is Dec 7.








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Reader Comments


 
context?
I'm curious as to the context of Rob Ford's 2006 comments. While I disagree with his politics, he was factually correct. If you do not use intravenous drugs, and you are not a man who has sex with men, the likelihood of you contracting HIV is very small.
mike, toronto on
12/01/10 8:12 PM EST
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**Gays in N.America got HIV from Heterosexuals.**
If you are a woman who has sex with men, you can also get HIV. North American teenage girls and Black women are acquiring HIV infections at rising rates. Some African countries have 25% HIV infection of their whole population -- men, women and children. The children get it from their mothers during birth. Teenage girls get it from men who use them as prostitutes. Did they all get it from Gay men? HIV has existed in Africa for centries. It was brought to N.America by American soldiers. ***Gays in N.America got HIV from Heterosexuals.*** It spreads faster in Gay men only because of Anal sex. We are the canaries in the mine and the minefield of HIV. The anus is more absorbent to liquids. We will also be the canaries in the mine when the city water turns toxic, because we wash inside and out. We are a clean people :-)
Charles Fisch, Toronto Ont
12/02/10 12:45 AM EST
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Mike's question
Mike, the context of Ford's comments on AIDS in 2006 was a discussion of AIDS prevention funded by the city as a part of a package of grants it does for public health, by getting community AIDS organizations to deliver prevention via education (drug prevention/education is similarly funded for the same reasons) via ACT, BlackCAP, ASAAP, etc. Ford had argued that the responsibility is provincial, and that AIDS prevention is funded by the city but cancer (which killed his father) wasn't. (Though the city has done stop smoking programmes, so that's not entirely true). He has spoken out on a range of health programme funding, including bathhouse outreach, needle exchange programmes and other harm reduction measures. For someone who claims to be about demands on the public purse, he doesn't seem to grasp the concept that people who get sick are a huge burden on the system, so even a conservative should get behind it. He has since apologized for some of his remarks, but appeared to do so only to prevent it becoming an election issue earlier this year. So he wasn't simply making an informed statement about likely routes of transmission in these comments, he was saying that if you're not gay, you won't get it, so let's not pay for it. In essence, "not my problem." He's largely correct about who gets AIDS, but I hope you agree that's not a reason to stop funding prevention programmes, which was the context for his remarks. Lots of money does go to cancer prevention, but it tends to be done by organizations that are regional in scope since it doesn't usually involve the more intense local and culturally specific programming and more interactive education that AIDS prevention requires because of the social context around HIV transmission. That's it in a nutshell. If someone can correct or improve my understanding of this, great, but I didn't want this question to go unanswered.
Alex, Toronto ON
12/02/10 2:09 AM EST
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Do the Math Mike.
Mike, If 56 % oh hiv infection are gay/bi men and 3% are iv needle uses, 41% are neither of the above two. So your comment makes as mich sense as Ford's.
Streel, toronto ontario
12/02/10 4:03 AM EST
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thanks alex
Alex, Thank you for the context. I did not live in Toronto at that time, so I was not sure what his statement was pertaining to. Streel, two things, first, you must be a very ignorant person. The main point of my comment was a request for context. Secondly, I think you should take a statistics class. Yes 41% of infections fall outside of the two groups mentioned. But the small size of the community that make up the 59% means that the infection rates within that community are very high. Apply the 41% to the rest of the population, and yes, the likelihood of infection is very low.
mike, Toronto ON
12/02/10 11:07 AM EST
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AIDS affects...
No problem, Mike. I've noticed that Shawn and others around the site have said things that ironically mirror some of what Ford has said, though they might slap me for saying so. For years now, the rather bland p.c. message for public consumption has been some version of "AIDS affects everybody" or some other blather intended to scare everyone into thinking the risk has become relatively equalized, so they should now take it seriously. How often did we hear that women were the fastest growing group? That might have been true, but despite the charting trend, they remain a fraction of the total caseload in Canada. What Ford and some AIDS activists have been agreeing on (!) is that AIDS remains largely - not exclusively - a gay men's disease in Canada. But they part company on the implications of that. Ford's cancer comparison doesn't work because cancer prevention is delivered differently - it really is a disease that is relatively equalized where AIDS is more localized and presents disproportionately in some communities thereby demanding a specific, targeted response. We got trained out of the "AIDS is a gay disease" mantra. But in the West, there's a good dose of truth to that incorrect observation. We stopped saying it because what could be drawn from that was the idea that we shouldn't spend money on something that doesn't affect the entire population. What we should be saying is that the specificity is not a reason to stop funding prevention. If anything, it's a reason to target it more aggressively since it is theoretically entirely preventable through behaviour modification. If you aren't a gay man or bisexual man or a woman who sleeps with bisexual men, don't use IV drugs with other people and haven't received blood products, your chance of becoming HIV+ is pretty low. We ought to be able to acknowledge that reality without Rob Ford and others using it as an excuse to de-fund prevention programmes.
Alex, Toronto ON
12/02/10 11:31 AM EST
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Men and AIDS
From CanFAR: In Canada, MSM (men who have sex with men) account for 76.1% of cumulative reported AIDS cases among adult males. MSM have accounted for 68.1% of positive HIV test reports among adult males since testing began in 1985 to the present.
CanFAR Stats, Toronto ON
12/02/10 11:39 AM EST
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Props
Alex McClelland is awesome!
Daniel Baylis, Montreal Quebec
12/02/10 3:38 PM EST
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Missed Proclamation
I am not a fan of Rob Ford and did not vote for him - and I disagree with many of his positions. But I think that Andrea Houston missed a very important and relevant fact in reporting this story. Before meeting with the head of the TTC on his first day as Mayor, Rob Ford signed his first proclamation as Mayor proclaiming Dec 1 as World AIDS Day. It doesn't undo anything he has said in the past - but it is relevant to this story and significant in that it was his first act in office, and he didn't have to do it. Was Alex McClelland even aware of the proclamation? Was XTRA aware of it ?
Brad, Toronto Ontario
12/03/10 12:37 PM EST
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2 things
The way I understood Ford's past comments about who gets HIV is totally based on its context being about city funding HIV/AIDS prevention programs, in essence Ford was saying that saving the lives and health of gay men or needle users isn't worth spending any money on, that it doesn't matter if we get HIV/AIDS and die because we're gay men. Some have taken a more generous view of what he was saying but that was my impression. Secondly Xtra stop spreading the lie that Transit City is a streetcar network, it is in fact an LRT network which is very different, the main difference being it won't run in mixed traffic like streetcars and the stops will spread further apart unlike streetcars, also LRT lines don't take away any lanes of traffic from cars. As someone who lives in the inner burbs I'm seriously hoping Ford's plan to scrap Transit City doesn't happen, it will benefit me greatly.
Rich, Toronto Ontario
12/03/10 9:52 PM EST
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