Monday, August 04, 2014

Protest at AIDS Health Fdtn Pharmacy for Truvada/PrEP

(Adam Zeboski. Photo credit: Bill Wilson.)

A handful of activists gathered on Thursday, July 24th at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's pharmacy on 18th Street in the Castro, to launch a boycott against the pharmacy because of the organization's falsehoods about the drug Truvada as an effective prevention tool.

Before we began our protest and filming, I spoke with the manager of the pharmacy, Dale Gluth. We know each other and had friendly chat about our plans and I appreciated the coolness of their store. It was quite hot in the Castro sun yesterday.

Ken Hodnett brought his video camera and lighting equipment to shoot footage for a video now in the editing stages. Mitch Hightower served as the interviewed and asked me questions. Bill Wilson snapped photos of our activities. We were joined by Adam Zeboski, who created the Twitter hashtag #TruvadaWhore and is on the drug as part of his PrEP, pre-exposure prophylaxis, plan.

Adam spoke about his experience on PrEP, why he promotes Truvada as prevention for HIV negative men who enjoy anal sex and don't use condoms, and addressed general questions about AIDS concerns of gay men under 30.

One central point was asking Castro area patrons of the AHF pharmacy to boycott the store until the organization's executive director, Michael Wienstein, ends his lies about Truvada, apologizes for mistakenly calling it a "party drug" and endorses it as one more prevention tool for at-risk individuals.

Unfortunately, another expected participant. Eric Leue who is Mister LA Leather, was stuck in traffic and unable to join us but he did arrive in San Francisco to speak at the PrEP town hall meeting last night at the Metropolitan Community Church on Eureka Street.

Many thanks to everyone who participated or supported our effort via social media. We'll let you know when our video is ready for viewing.

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