Veteran AIDS Advocate Takes Leave

Michigan HIV News, Fall 2000 Issue 

 “If you want to be in a leadership position, you also have to know when to let somebody go and when to make decisions that people don’t like making. I was letting myself go, because I knew that it was the right thing to do.” - Rene Meave

While AIDS activism has turned into a finely oiled machine, there are still those who have not stopped squeaking. Telling your truth rarely makes you popular. Few people are willing to do it if the inevitable price is their job.

Rene Meave is one of those people. He has been on a mission for the past decade to prevent an HIV epidemic in the Hispanic population in west Michigan. If you look at the rate of AIDS among Hispanics in Michigan, which is 26% of the national rate for Hispanics, you can see that his work may have paid off.

For the past ten years, Meave’s home base has been Kalamazoo, where he was Community AIDS Resource Education Services’ (CARES) Prevention Education Coordinator up until October 1. Meave has also been a key to the success of the American Red Cross Hispanic HIV/AIDS Education program in Michigan, one of the founders of Hispanics Against AIDS in Grand Rapids, and for many years an at-large member of the Statewide Community (prevention) Planning Group (SCPG).

At the same time, he has had – what he considers – a complementary life as a musician. He has traveled nationally with his band “Los Bandits.” This name exemplifies Rene Meave. Bi-lingual and bi-cultural, he can speak with familiarity and ease to migrant farm workers or make his point clearly to a large statewide gathering of administrators. He is a man forever trying to bridge the chasm that divides us into political camps.

He would not, however, back down in the big power struggle for resources when it came to claiming a slice of the pie he felt was rightfully belonging to Latinos. And in his position at CARES, his concern always extended to include all minorities.

By the time he left CARES, 100% of his staff was minority. “And it happened,” he said, “because we realized we needed to be more in-tune with the community we served. As we did that, other communities started asking our help.” CARES had requests from Regions 3,5,1 and 7, he said.

In this recent round of 3-year HAPIS prevention funding, CARES’ funding matched the needs of Region 3 planning to provide services there. But the reduced award for this round does not provide for extending services into other the other regions they had been providing services in.

Still the second largest prevention grant recipient in Michigan, the cut in CARES’ funding worked out to be the equivalent of one administrator’s job. Meave took it upon himself to be the one to go rather than asking his staff to take salary cuts. “Because I was the only one totally funded by prevention dollars,” he said. He felt it was the right thing to do to preserve the prevention program at CARES.

“If you want to be in a leadership position, you also have to know when to let somebody go and when to make decisions that people don’t like making. I was letting myself go, because I knew that it was the right thing to do.”

Meave doesn’t think that enough prevention resources will now go to agencies that he believes are capable of reaching minority populations in Region 5. Clinical Santa Maria, the Hispanic Center and now HAA are together in Grand Rapids, and this is where the Latino community comes for services, Meave said.

“Most people in the community will listen to you if you are involved in the community,” said Meave. “Once you get to know the community, people start telling you things that they can’t tell others, about behaviors that are causing the problems in their lives.”

Historically, one of those behaviors is injection drug use. “(In 1991) the University of Miami wanted to do a study of how migrant farm workers were dealing with issues of injection drugs,” said Meave. Through a contact of his, who was then at the University of Miami, they came to CARES, which embraced the Miami Project. At that time they were not able to do needle exchange programs due to paraphernalia laws, but “education was never a problem.” And after the Miami Project was completed, MDCH provided a small grant to continue to educate IDUs. By 1995-96 the TIDES Foundation provided small grants to do needle distribution in southwest Michigan where there were no paraphernalia laws.

During 1996-97 Meave said he began realizing that the face of the epidemic was “more brown and more black.”

The American Red Cross also began to recognize the need to be culturally specific and have people within the community provide the education. Red Cross developed both the African American and the bi-lingual Hispanic HIV/AIDS Education Program and began instructor trainings in 1990.

While having issues with the Red Cross over its early denial of responsibility for the safety of the blood supply, Meave saw the offer of training as a real opportunity. He and Juan Luis Merced realized that “of all the programs, Red Cross is the one our community will be more accepting of.” And even though they went to the training somewhat skeptical, they returned very impressed with the flexibility that program gave them as instructors. “Before you knew it, it took off,” said Meave. At that time there were more presentations being made in Hispanic communities in Michigan than anywhere else in the U.S. except Puerto Rico, he said. “People had (friends and family) who were dying and they wanted to prevent this from happening to other families.”

Meave worked with three Red Cross chapters in west Michigan providing training and education through the Hispanic HIV/AIDS Education Program. He started in Kalamazoo but then worked in Holland and Grand Rapids. “I worked with all three of them because I thought they each had a vested interest,” he said, and he was willing to help each gain access into the local Hispanic community. “But they would also have to commit to the community.”

It was through training others in the program that they met Theresa Cruz, who would become the Hispanics Against AIDS first program coordinator. “Theresa was one of the people who got fired up,” said Meave. “She was such a quiet person and such a shining star. It was a very exciting time. People would talk to one another.”

Hispanics Against AIDS, Inc. (HAA) rose up out of a need to be recognized by community planning. Merced was on the Region 5 committee for African Americans and Hispanics and, said Meave, “saw the issues of Hispanics being put on the back burner.” So the group led by Merced asked Meave to help them start a 501c3 agency.

Along with the organizational help came some political advice. Meave told the group that this new status would make other agencies see them as competitors for resources. He said, “don’t let these hard times make you quit. Let them fire you. Two people lost their jobs in the process.

“And I would say in meetings, ‘How dare you give money to people for Hispanic issues and HIV and ignore HAA. HAA is the only Latino organization specially created to deal with HIV – the only one!’

“My sense was to create community among people, but the reality was HAA was reaching out for a piece of the funding pie. It took us three years to receive our first grant – from Michigan AIDS Fund.” So in 1997 Meave went to the Red Cross (in Grand Rapids) and said they needed a fiduciary and up until last year, HAA was housed there.

Meave is proud of his accomplishments at CARES. “We have been able to maintain a 94% rate of return in the counseling and testing program. I think that is because 90% of our work is in the field.”

He has an interesting psychological approach to counseling terminology. He refers to being positive as ‘reactive.’ In Red Cross terms, reactive is what you are if your ELISA test is positive, but not confirmed positive by the Western Blot. “I started using the terms ‘reactive’ or ‘not reactive’ rather than ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ because positive in our world usually means well or good and negative means not good. Among reactives we have had a 99% return rate – one got away from us.”

Meave feels that politics had to do with the reshuffling of funding in west Michigan. “I knew we could not win the political war,” he said. “You should talk about the successes and why we were not funded at the level we were at,” he said about this article.

“CARES exemplifies leadership and, of all of the organizations I have known, CARES has been the most willing to train others – to share, to collaborate. We understand the connection of multiple needs of people.

“The importance of a community-based organization is that the community buys into it. When we did the migrant program for the first time, it was the only project that was unanimously voted for funding by the statewide planning group.” Eventually, he said they were working collaboratively with health departments and Red Cross chapters in Allegan, Ottawa, Kent and Berrien counties. “And that took a lot of doing,” he said.

Meave said CARES tried very hard to work with the two Grand Rapids organizations but that the communication was one way.

When asked how he became involved in the statewide community planning process, he said, “I was invited by (former HAPIS manager) Randy Pope, because Randy Pope realized that he needed a Latino who could find areas that we needed to address. He told me he didn’t feel (at that time in 1994) that (community planning) had someone who could take on a fight. And he said ‘I have a feeling that you will argue with me. I need someone to tell me when I am wrong, and I need you to convince me when I’m wrong or I’m going to take your head off.’ And you know how he was. I said ‘O.K. – I’m your guy.’

“And I agreed only because it would open doors. My point was to create an association, an affiliation between the different communities, so we can work together. And I was hoping he would find statewide dollars for empowering people and opening doors.”

Meave said that Pope asked a lot in return for the funding given to CARES, but that there was a mutual respect between them. Just before Pope left the state, Meave said he saw him at a conference and Pope asked him, “We’ve come a long way haven’t we?” And then said, “You did good,” and got up and walked away.

“I know (HIV) is devastating our community and I know that we can do something about it. So, I urge everyone that I know to stay the course even though we do not have the resources.”

As for Meave, his course along with his job may change. While he will offer his assistance to HAA as a consultant, he is taking time out to think about where he will go from here.

Editorial Note: Per HAPIS, MDCH funding decisions for the 3-year prevention awards were based on an objective review of proposals and an analysis of the extent to which needs identified through the community planning process were met. While CARES’ award for this round of funding was a reduction over the previous year’s allocation, this was reflective of the total amount available within Region 3 and that priority needs in Region 5 were addressed by other providers. All resources awarded in Region 5 were awarded in a manner consistent with the regional prevention plan. The RCPG 5 provided a statement of concurrence with the MDCH federal funding application to this effect. Clinica Santa Maria/McCauley and HAA are both supported by HAPIS. HAA actually received increased funding over previous years, and HAPIS provided resources and technical assistance to HAA in developing their capacity as an AIDS Service organization.

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