APICHA — the Asian/Pacific Coalition on HIV/AIDS — has educated and counseled hundreds of Asian Pacific Americans stricken with the disease since the organization’s founding in 1989.
But some contend the organization is failing its clients.
On Aug. 13, the Ad Hoc Committee for a Happier APICHA — a protest group comprised of activists and former employees, clients and board members — stormed APICHA’s offices denouncing what they called APICHA’s poor quality of services, poor management and excessive workloads.
In response, APICHA filed a lawsuit against Ad Hoc Committee for a Happier APICHA in January. The suit — which names Don Kao, a former APICHA board member, and Fay Chiang, a Chinatown activist — alleges the Ad Hoc Committee has trespassed, threatened employees and endangered clients. The suit seeks $500,000 in damages and an injunction to bar the group’s members from entering APICHA offices. A preliminary hearing is expected at the end of the month.
“This lawsuit was the epitome of silencing the community and it’s not going to work,” Kao says.
But board member and APICHA co-founder John Chin says they had no choice but to file the lawsuit. “We really needed to demonstrate to staff that we would protect them,” he says. “I spoke to some of them. They were really shaken up. Part of it was it got really heated. There were physical threats that were made.”
It wasn’t the first time the Ad Hoc Committee protested at APICHA headquarters, according to the lawsuit. APICHA alleges the group interrupted or protested its meetings and events five times between May 2002 and August 2003.
Formed two years ago, the Ad Hoc Committee members say they never trespassed, but have simply protested the decline in the quality of services. They also claim APICHA has too few HIV-positive staff members and refuses to listen to input from clients.
Milyoung Cho, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee, worked as an acupuncturist at APICHA for five years before resigning in February. She wrote in her court affidavit, “Poor management, lack of constructive supervision and training and excessive work-load has caused the entire staff of case workers to change completely about three times over in the past five years.”
Cho says she tried to raise the concerns of clients with her supervisor, but “I was told on at least two different occasions regarding the clients, ‘If they don’t like it here, they can leave.’ ”
The lawsuit comes after APICHA sent a letter in October to four HIV/AIDS-positive clients, who are members of the Ad Hoc Committee, informing them that they were dismissed from coming to APICHA for “severely disrupting” services and safety at APICHA.
In the latest protest in October, Ad Hoc Committee members videotaped the incident. APICHA’s Board of Directors Chair Kevin Huang-Cruz says the videotaping jeopardizes client confidentiality.
“There could be a person’s name on some paper on someone’s desk that’s photographed,” he says. “This is a serious federal and state offense. In order to protect our clients, we had to do something to get the tapes back.
“There were people there for counseling and testing. A case manager took them onto the fire escape so they wouldn’t be seen but we don’t know if it was before or after the video camera went by.”
But Don Kao says no clients were in the main office at the time except for one who came to support the protest. He adds that they videotaped to protect themselves in case of an incident. The entire protest took less than 10 minutes, he says.
“We were very careful not to lean into any offices, only public walkways,” he said.
Kao and other Ad Hoc Committee members argue that since APICHA comes out of a history of activism and empowerment, the clients should play an active role in the organization. Ad Hoc Committee members say APICHA also does not have a sufficient representation of HIV-positive staff and board.
Huang-Cruz denies the claim, adding, “We don’t even collect that information. We don’t even know who is HIV-positive.”
BAD BLOOD FOR A GOOD CAUSE
The distressing thing, for all sides concerned, is that the energy that has gone into the organizational struggle could have been directed to address the larger concern. HIV/AIDS in the APA community is largely invisible, a problem that APICHA has been s&Mac253;eking to change since its founding in 1989. Despite the perception that APAs are a “model minority” and do not contract HIV/AIDS, 980 cases of APAs with AIDS and 271 cases of APAs with HIV were reported to the New York City Department of Health as of March 2003.
Because of the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, as well as the predominant homophobia in APA immigrant communities, those who contract the disease don’t often seek services.
To counter the taboos of AIDS/HIV, APICHA has outreached to the community through ad campaigns, workshops in schools and community groups ,and education in clubs and parks.
“The peer educators are a big part of the process. They help devise the curriculum and do the outreach,” says Jih-Fei Cheng, who coordinates APICHA’s Gay Bisexual Transgender Project.
APICHA has also over the years developed an array of services for people living with HIV/AIDS. Its clinic has tested 1,400 people since May 2001 and its case managers have referred 180 HIV-positive people to medical and social services, says Huang-Cruz. In April 2003, APICHA opened its own primary care clinic for people with HIV/AIDS in its Chinatown office. The clinic currently gives medical care to 20 people.
&Mac253;“People can be referred directly to health care now,” says Huang-Cruz. “Instead of people coming into care at a very late stage in the infection when they can’t work, we can bring people into care. They can live a long, productive life and be monitored.”
SHUTTING DOOR
APICHA has grown from a small activist group in its founding in 1989 to what is now a relatively large $4 million-per-year agency. Both sides acknowledge that the rapid growth, with concomitant obligations of government funding, plays a factor in the conflict.
But both sides also say that the individuals and their decisions are behind the problems.
The entrance to APICHA’s new office, which opened in 2001, is a wide open reception area, with a set of rattan chairs and Indian-style pillows, which were intended to be a comforting and welcoming space for clients seeking counseling, support or services, says Aleli Alvarez, media coordinator at APICHA. In addition to an attractive glass wall on one side of the room, feng shui design plans include a small waterfall to be installed on an adjoining wall.
The large double doors, which lead into the space from the elevator, used to be open during business hours. Now they’re closed.
“We decided for the protection of clients and staff to close it,” Alvarez says. “Hopefully one day we can open it.”