Audio Interview, Michael Beatty, July 6, 2012

EVELYN BAILEY: There we go.

Mike, were you born in Rochester?

MICHAEL BEATTY: No, I'm from Detroit.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Originally.

But I moved here from just south of Syracuse.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

And what brought you to New York?

I mean--

MICHAEL BEATTY: The job at AIDS Rochester did, actually.

I was in nursing in a hospital just south of Cortland,

and I had two friends who died from AIDS.

And so I volunteered at the Southern Tier AIDS Program

and ended up getting on their board of directors,

and heard that there was a change in leadership

at AIDS Rochester from the executive director

of the Southern Tier AIDS Program.

And so one thing led to another.

And the next thing you know, I was packing my bags

and moving to Rochester for the job.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

KEVIN INDOVINO: What year was that?

MICHAEL BEATTY: That was in 1990.

EVELYN BAILEY: And that change in leadership

was from Jackie to Paula.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Correct.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you were here at the beginning of Paula's--

MICHAEL BEATTY: Paula started two weeks before I did.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

Can you give us a picture of what the climate was

like at that point in terms of AIDS

being on the increase, funding the position

that the agency had in terms of providing services?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Sure.

We were located on Chestnut Street at the time

and had a small staff of about maybe twenty.

Funding was just starting to get momentum from New York State.

As you know, in 1983 is when AIDS Rochester was founded,

and some money was being released.

But as the AIDS epidemic started moving outside

of New York City and Upstate, funding increased nicely

over the years.

Back then, I remember during my interview

the ACT UP in Rochester had a few members,

and they were doing some protesting

around town for more services and more needs

for people with HIV and AIDS.

And I think, also, concurrently at that time,

Dr. Valenti was preparing to open up his clinic, Community

Health Network.

And coincidentally, right after I

began working at AIDS Rochester is when CHN opened its doors.

Back then, when people became infected,

we did a lot of crisis management with people,

because usually, within six months to a year,

they were dead.

So it was a lot of end of life.

A lot of supporting staff who were helping people--

young, healthy people-- who became ill very quickly

and died.

We had a house at the time, a duplex house,

here in Rochester called the ARIES house,

and we were able to house six people there

to help them sort of offset the high cost of housing.

And that was a wonderful thing.

EVELYN BAILEY: Can you tell us where that was?

MICHAEL BEATTY: That was on Hayward Avenue,

right behind the bus garage where RTS is on Main Street.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

MICHAEL BEATTY: It was right behind there.

EVELYN BAILEY: At the time, did you have funding?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: I mean--

MICHAEL BEATTY: We did.

We did.

There were some issues with the transition in leadership

around the state re-investing in AIDS Rochester

because of some things I really can't

get into for legal reasons.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

MICHAEL BEATTY: But we were able to, within six months

to a year, reestablish our credibility with New York State

and become pretty solid with the funding.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you ever lose funding in that transition?

MICHAEL BEATTY: We did not.

EVELYN BAILEY: And was it from New York State,

or was it from the Fed?

MICHAEL BEATTY: It was all New York state funding, primarily,

and local donations.

I think some foundations had invested in AIDS Rochester.

We weren't yet a United Way agency.

Paula and I, soon after starting,

became friendly with United Way, and we started

getting funding from them.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

Do you remember when federal funding started?

MICHAEL BEATTY: That was probably in the mid-90s

when housing opportunities for people with AIDS

became available through HUD, and that

was pass-through money.

New York state handled some of the money and the city

of Rochester handled some of the money,

so we were able to get money for Monroe County

and also money for the rural areas that we served.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was HPA in full swing?

MICHAEL BEATTY: HPA was in full swing then and going

to Dining for Dollars.

They were very, very helpful and generous to us

in those early years.

Very supportive.

And Jeff Koss was our first development director,

so he was very closely affiliated with Helping People

with AIDS.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

Do you remember who was in charge of HPA?

Besides Jeff's involvement, was it Tony Green?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Tony Green was--

I don't know if he was in charge of it,

but he was certainly high up on the ladder with them.

Tony was also on our board at AIDS Rochester.

In fact, we named our housing services, and to this day

it's called green house services.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Green housing services.

EVELYN BAILEY: Talk to us a little bit about Tony.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Oh, Tony.

Well, Tony was pretty larger than life

in terms of his community involvement.

He had, I think, once been a bar owner

or a bartender here in town, and he knew everybody.

He was like the mayor.

And unfortunately, he was HIV positive also

and went through a lot of health issues because of that,

but never really lost his drive and his advocacy

for people with HPA and with housing services,

and stayed active with AIDS Rochester

right up until the end.

In fact, I believe Paula was with him shortly

before he died, or the day before.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Larger than life.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Indeed.

Indeed.

EVELYN BAILEY: Can you say a little bit more about that--

MICHAEL BEATTY: About Tony?

EVELYN BAILEY: --experience?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Tony was his own ACT UP.

He wasn't politically correct.

He was not shy about telling people exactly what he thought.

One of his things was if people didn't

put AIDS in all capital letters, he became vocal about that.

He was a friend to everyone.

He was a big softy on the inside,

but hard as nails on the outside.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

Jim Black?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Jim Black was also on our board at that time.

And Jim was involved at the Forum quite a bit

and did a lot of fundraising through the Bachelor Forum

and with HPA also, and was a good friend to AIDS Rochester.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

Share with us a little bit about your own--

MICHAEL BEATTY: I get teary talking about Tony.

I'm sorry.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: I still miss him.

EVELYN BAILEY: I know.

He was a incredible human being.

MICHAEL BEATTY: He really was.

EVELYN BAILEY: Talk to us a little bit

about your own reactions, your own sense or reason

why you had two friends that died from AIDS.

What did you find here in Rochester

in terms of community, in terms of people who were connected

to the AIDS crisis?

How did that impact you?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Well, I had a lot to compare it to.

You know, being involved with the Southern Tier AIDS

Program, which was in Binghamton,

a much smaller community than Rochester--

and when I came here, comparing the two,

Rochester seemed to be leaps and bounds ahead.

They had an organized fundraising committee, made up

of mostly gay men who were throwing

these fabulous fundraisers, raising hundreds of thousands

of dollars for community agencies.

And the spirit of the town, in terms

of not only the gay community but others, was very involved.

Very, very vocal and wanted to get more done.

You know?

Very impatient, and rightfully so.

There were so many things happening

that it was really hard to stay ahead of anything.

And I'll never forget the day that Magic Johnson

came out and said that he was HIV positive.

We answered our hotline at AIDS Rochester until almost midnight

that night, people calling.

And it really put a face on AIDS,

where there was fear and sort of people pushing away and saying

it's only a gay man's disease.

It doesn't really affect me.

It suddenly did.

And I remember Jeff and Paula and I and some

of our prevention staff were there

talking to people well into the night about their fears

around HIV infection.

It was really quite a night.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

MICHAEL BEATTY: And then, of course,

when Rock Hudson was on the cover of,

I think, People Magazine as having died of AIDS,

that, again, generated a lot.

It was also good for fundraising.

It was good for-- people started giving money, because it really

put a face on this, that it was somebody else's problem.

Rock Hudson and Magic Johnson, these two celebrities

that sort of helped people know that it affected them too.

EVELYN BAILEY: It was OK for them

to share their experience--

MICHAEL BEATTY: Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: --because of these--

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: --figures who were so--

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: --much in people's vision, sight.

MICHAEL BEATTY: The other thing that I remember

loving and feeling so connected to here in Rochester

that I had not heard of before was Street Outreach.

And we had a staff member named Toni Obermeyer.

Don't know if you remember Toni.

EVELYN BAILEY: I do.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Another larger-than-life person

in the fight against HIV.

And she was a pioneer with Street Outreach programs.

She had been exposed to one in New York City.

And I remember it was probably--

I started in February, and I believe

it was in the summer, my first summer,

she took me out on Street Outreach.

And we went on Jefferson Avenue here in the city,

and she took me into a crack house.

And we walked right in there and she said, "Hello, everybody.

I'm Toni.

Here I am," and started passing out condoms and safer sex

information.

And testing was only by blood draw back then,

but she was-- everybody knew her.

She was this very large, white lesbian who trounced

the streets of Rochester talking to anybody and everybody about

HIV, and had a team of people with her and didn't--

she didn't care where she went or who she met.

She talked to them about AIDS.

So I just thought that was great.

EVELYN BAILEY: How did you feel going into that environment?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Strangely enough, I wasn't afraid,

because Toni was with me.

Had I been by myself, I probably would have

had a much different reaction.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Is she still around?

MICHAEL BEATTY: No.

Tony unfortunately died-- oh, god, Bill will remember.

EVELYN BAILEY: Ten or eleven years ago.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yeah.

Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yeah.

She left here, got married, and moved to New York

City, where she became--

she was a huge advocate for needle exchange

and became a pretty big mover and shaker

in New York City with the harm reduction movement down there.

Yeah, but she moved back to Rochester.

I actually saw her--

oh, god, she called me out of the blue and needed our help.

And so I went to her house and took some things

that she needed, and actually got to see her probably

about a week before she died.

It was great.

It was great to see her again.

EVELYN BAILEY: So what's your recollection of Jeff Koss?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Oh, Jeff.

Jeff was another larger-than-life guy

in my early AIDS life here.

He was so helpful to me in making connections and getting

me acquainted with the community and different people who

he thought I should know.

And he was very, very helpful in those early days.

Plus, he knew how to ask somebody for a dollar.

He wasn't afraid.

He believed very strongly in what we did.

And between Paula, Jeff, and myself,

we were sort of like the trio that

put the face on AIDS Rochester, and really got the community

to put their arms around AIDS Rochester

and support us in any way that they could.

And they did.

Jeff organized the first AIDS walk here in Rochester,

and I remember feeling so amazed by that feat.

It was an extravaganza, and we just

didn't know how it was going to work.

And he made it work, and it was great.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Michael, forgive me,

when you first started here, what was your title?

MICHAEL BEATTY: I was the program director when

I started at AIDS Rochester.

And then about, oh, five years later

became the associate executive director.

EVELYN BAILEY: And when Jeff was not working at AIDS Rochester,

Miss Laverne came out very strongly.

MICHAEL BEATTY: So I've been told.

I never saw that side of him, believe it or not.

I didn't.

EVELYN BAILEY: Really?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Uh-uh.

I didn't.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh.

MICHAEL BEATTY: I was very friendly with his partner,

Michael, but I didn't--

we didn't socialize a whole lot outside of the organization.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

Talk to us a little bit about Paula

and how she kind of moved into AIDS Rochester at a very

difficult time, and then moved the agency forward

to where it was six, eight, ten months ago.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Right.

Well--

EVELYN BAILEY: Or a year ago.

Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: It's been almost two and a half years--

EVELYN BAILEY: Two and a half years.

MICHAEL BEATTY: --believe it or not.

EVELYN BAILEY: It doesn't seem like that long.

MICHAEL BEATTY: I know.

Well, actually, it's been two and a half years.

It was two and a half years --

KEVIN INDOVINO: Since the merge?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Wow.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: It feels like--

but anyways.

It feels a little longer to me.

Well, Paula, above anything else,

was a good fiscal manager.

She believed in saving money for a rainy day,

not putting all the money in one basket,

really, really managing money well.

And that's what AIDS Rochester needed.

It was in debt.

There were a lot of people who wanted to be paid.

And so she initially started taking all of that

apart and working closely with the board

and with the board's finance committee

to sort of write the agency and get it more solvent.

That was an amazing thing.

I immediately liked her when I met her during the interview,

and I thought her ideas were very solid.

She didn't profess to have all the answers.

And she wanted somebody in a program director

that could manage the programs and grow them, grow

and expand them.

And she didn't think of us as boss and subordinates.

She thought of us as partners, and that's what we were.

And we worked really hard.

A lot of seven-day weeks and lots of lots of hours.

There were lots and lots of problems with AIDS Rochester

when we took it over.

EVELYN BAILEY: If you were to name one thing that

drove Paula, what would it be?

MICHAEL BEATTY: That drove her--

EVELYN BAILEY: To be so committed to--

I mean, a job is a job, but let's face it.

You don't put in twenty four-seven

MICHAEL BEATTY: Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: --just because you got a job.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Well, Paula, from what

I know about her before my time here,

was very connected to the theater arts

community, the dancing community,

and as a result, the gay community.

And I think she also suffered her own losses

and her own tragedies around HIV and AIDS.

And like me, you know, made a commitment

to sort of make a dent in that in the community,

to try to help people at a time when people were so helpless.

It was a very, very, very different time than it is now.

So I think that's what drove her.

And also believing in the organization and its place

in the community then and why it was

so important to make AIDS Rochester really

the center where people could come and get what they needed,

HIV positive or not.

And that's sort of the way we always

ran it for the twenty years that we were together there.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm going to just kind of cuff out something

earlier that you just said.

In the course of your time here with AIDS Rochester

and eventually into the merger, if you

were to identify one major challenge that

needed to be overcome, or a challenge that's

a constant throughout those years,

what would be the major challenge

in regards to AIDS Rochester and its impact on the community?

MICHAEL BEATTY: The stigma of HIV infection and homophobia.

Those are the two big ones that stay constant,

and I think still do to some degree.

When it--

KEVIN INDOVINO: And so then the second part of that question is

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yes.

KEVIN INDOVINO: How do you overcome those challenges?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Well, it was really, really difficult,

and I don't think we've overcome them at all.

I think we diminish them to a great deal,

because the face of AIDS has changed

over these past 20-plus years.

People aren't dying anymore.

They don't have Kaposi's sarcoma.

They don't look like they have been starved for two years.

People are living with HIV now and look healthy.

It's really difficult to tell.

Back then, anyone that looked--

if someone had cancer, immediately,

before they said, oh, what's wrong?

Oh, you must have AIDS, and wouldn't go near them.

I remember Dr. Valenti had a patient.

He knew that I was in nursing, and he

wanted his patient to go to the Cleveland Clinic for a drug

trial.

This is way, way, way long time ago.

And I would need to pick up the patient at Highland Hospital

and get on a plane with him to fly to Cleveland,

and then take a taxi to the Cleveland Clinic,

get the patient admitted and come back, and then

go get him when this was done.

And we boarded a US air flight.

And this gentleman was probably in his early twenties,

and he was so sick.

And the flight attendants were so afraid to--

and everyone on the plane just looked at him,

and it was just awful.

I'll never forget that.

And this poor young man, who was just

so desperate to get better, who had put himself

through this just horrible, horrible atrocity of having

to get on a plane with looking the way that he did,

knowing how bad he looked and feeling embarrassed by that.

But adding to that, having the people

on the plane sort of look at him aghast because he

didn't look like them.

But the silver lining in that story

is when I went to pick him up, maybe a month or a month

and a half later, we get on a US airplane in Cleveland

to come back to Rochester, and we sat down in our seat

and he was even sicker.

The drug trial hadn't done its job.

And one of the flight attendants came up to me and she said,

we're putting you in first class.

Come on.

He'll be more comfortable and so will you.

It was a remarkable thing and they treated him like a king.

And he died shortly thereafter.

But that was just how it was then.

And you can probably remember that, Evelyn.

People were just so judgmental and so afraid

because they didn't understand it.

And there was so much that, you know,

you can get it from a toilet seat.

You can get it from shaking hands or hugging,

or sitting next to someone, or if they coughed.

You It was just irrational fear that took over.

So over time, that's gotten better,

but I'm still amazed at people who

I hear about through our prevention education

department who still don't understand

how HIV is transmitted.

There are still people in this community who

have closed their ears for all these years

and have chosen not to listen.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: And I'm surprised

that people are still getting infected

knowing what they know.

No judgment there, but knowing what they know

and still getting infected with HIV.

So we haven't overcome it all.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: And we've gotten a long way.

I think homophobia has diminished a great deal

over the years with the help of the Gay Alliance

and others in the community too, and sort

of in the national movement in the LGBT communities.

I think gay and lesbian people are

more normalized than they were.

There isn't all of the fear.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Oh my god, (unintelligible)

MICHAEL BEATTY: Is that a hug?

Yeah, exactly.

How can you tell if they are one--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.

MICHAEL BEATTY: --if they're not--

anyways.

So it's been a long road, but it's gotten better,

but we've got a ways to go.

We still do.

I mean, the challenge now is to help people understand

that HIV still is a problem in the community

and that you don't want to get infected,

because living with medication for the rest of your life

is not something that you want to do.

So the message has changed, but it's still the same.

You have to take care of yourself.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

There was a point at which this disease, in a sense,

became less identified with the gay population

and more identified with the drug user--

MICHAEL BEATTY: Oh, yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: --and the criminal population.

What impact did that change in, quote unquote, causation

have not only on AIDS Rochester but on the community?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Sure.

Well, as I mentioned Toni Obermeyer

earlier in our conversation, she was a big proponent

of handing out bleach kits to clean needles and syringes

to drug users.

And we did that, but HIV infection in the injecting drug

user community was on the rise at a remarkable rate

here in Rochester and elsewhere in the country.

And a woman by the name of Lisa Perticone,

who was very much involved with the harm reduction movement

and was getting her master's degree,

became an intern of mine at AIDS Rochester.

And she started telling me about needle exchange programs that

were happening in larger cities across the United States.

Not in New York.

Mostly in San Francisco.

One in Oregon.

And so we helped petition New York State Department of Health

to decriminalize syringes in New York State

and allow them to be exchanged one for one

in programs that were heavily sanctioned and regulated

by New York State.

So eventually, New York State agreed

to do that throughout the state, but you

had to go through a rigorous community engagement

process in order to get one approved in your city.

And so Paula and I became the community ambassadors

for a needle exchange.

And I can tell you that it wasn't pretty,

and there were a lot of people who were vehemently

against this program.

And we were spit at and called the devil,

and had things thrown at us and telephone

calls to the organization that were hateful,

but we plugged on.

And we had a number of community meetings

here with the New York State Department of Health officials,

and eventually our program was approved.

We looked at seroprevalence just before the program started,

and it was very high in the injecting drug user community.

Within eighteen months, it had dropped almost 50 percent

because of the amount of clean syringes

that we were able to put into the drug using system.

And we had those results verified by Sloan Kettering

Hospital.

They came up and did some independent research.

So the program continues today, and it's

served well over 6,000 people during its lifetime.

And it has shown to not only reduce

HIV infection in injecting drug users,

but that's been a sustainable decrease.

It's a low number now, low number

of people who are becoming infected that way.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was the opposition

you experienced to this not--

was it across the board?

Was it the gay community, the heterosexual community,

the political community, the economic community?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Well--

EVELYN BAILEY: I mean--

MICHAEL BEATTY: I can tell you, early on, hardly anyone--

we had a core group of community members

that supported the program and helped us,

and one of the people that came to the very first meeting

and never stopped coming to meetings and speaking out

was Bob Duffy.

Bob Duffy was the lieutenant police chief at that time.

I remember him coming, and I had never met him before.

And he sat there and he said, why aren't we doing this?

This makes total sense to me.

Why aren't we doing this?

And so he became a very large figure

in the movement in this community

by getting Paula and I appointments with Howard Relin,

the district attorney at the time

who did not support the program, with other people in city

and county government-- some who supported, some who did not.

It was largely divided along political lines, Republicans

and Democrats.

He never missed a meeting.

He always supported the program.

And in fact, when I saw him at Paula's retirement party,

I thanked him again for the work that he did.

Because I truly believe that without him and others like him

in the community, that program would not exist.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was there any violence?

I mean, I know you indicated that you were spat

upon and catcalled, but was there any violence

that erupted because of this?

MICHAEL BEATTY: No, but I can tell you what did happen.

On our first day, we used-- we didn't have a fixed office.

We had a mobile van that we had three sites

that we were approved to do syringe exchange out

of our outreach van, and one of the sites

was on Jefferson Avenue.

So of course the media was very involved in this.

And on the day that it opened, a reporter from Channel 10

came to AIDS Rochester and interviewed Paula, I believe.

Simultaneously, they had hired an actor

with a backpack with a hidden camera that walked up

to the needle exchange site and said to the worker,

I'm thinking about shooting drugs.

I'm not shooting them yet, but I'd like to start.

Can you give me a needle?

And the staff at that time did--

the gentleman said, our staff said,

why do you want to start injecting drugs?

That's crazy.

Why do you want to do that?

And no, I'm not going to give-- that's not why we're here.

Well, they ran that story.

And we fought that pretty hard because the program's

anonymous, and the users who are coming to that site

were being filmed secretly from a different location.

And that kind of crackpot journalism,

I guess, if you call it, just--

I've never forgotten it.

And I still see that reporter on the air on the morning

news on Channel 10--

she's still there-- who sensationalized that story.

Other media were very friendly.

And we've had ups and downs with the community over the years

with it.

Mayor Johnson was very supportive.

But when the community got a little agitated,

he became a little agitated and wanted

us to help calm things down.

And we did.

But he was a wonderful partner in this.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, the reporter

smacks a little bit of the paparazzi kind of--

MICHAEL BEATTY: Oh, it was totally--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

MICHAEL BEATTY: I think still have--

KEVIN INDOVINO: I think I know who you're talking about.

She was young and just getting started. (Beatty laughs)

EVELYN BAILEY: Talk to Kevin and I a little bit

about your own experience in dealing

with the Hispanic and black community here in Rochester

in terms of support, in terms of behind the scenes,

in front of the scenes.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Sure.

Well.

The minority community, primarily African-American

and Latino, there was a huge sense

of denial in both of those communities around HIV

infection and sort of everything associated with it.

No one really wanted to talk about it.

And the few who did and who tried to, who had

emerged as leaders--

Rudy Rivera was one of them--

had a very difficult time sort of engaging people.

They were seen as leaders in the community,

yet it was really difficult for him and others

to engage and talk about HIV infection,

because that was a huge shame because of the behaviors

associated with contracting it.

As numbers started to rise in terms of HIV infections

in both of those communities, we partnered with ABC

and, excuse me, PRYD primarily and Ibero to work together

in the community to--

we had the credibility around HIV and AIDS

because we had been around for so long and ABC

and Ibero and PRYD were sort of newcomers to the HIV world.

And they received some funding and we were a lot together

in the communities to try to get the message out.

I mean, it was very difficult because no one wanted

to talk about it, and largely, I think,

because of religion and also the homosexuality and drug use.

And no one really wanted to talk about those problems

or what they perceived were problems in their community.

EVELYN BAILEY: As you look back over the past twenty, thirty

years, can you identify for us--

I usually say one, but I'll say two or three--

things that you are most proud of having been involved with,

started, begun?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Yes.

There's a lot.

I'm really, really proud of AIDS Rochester, because I believe

that originally, from '83 to '90,

AIDS Rochester lived a very different life before Paula

and I got there, and a life that was no less diminished

by anything.

It had its place, and it was a wonderful haven

for people at that time.

The problem outgrew the agency's ability

to deal with it, unfortunately, and so things happened.

And I really believe that--

and I'm very proud of what Paula and I were

able to do at AIDS Rochester and for the community.

And the other is the needle exchange program.

That was a very, very, very tough battle, and we--

it wasn't just Paula and I. It was

the engagement of a lot of very powerful people

in the community, influential people in the community, that

got that program going, and it had a remarkable effect

and reduced infections among people

who were already very fragile.

And we've helped so many people not only with

their clean syringes, but getting them into treatment

and helping them inject their drugs safely

so that other issues around injection drug use

didn't crop up for them.

So those are two big things.

And if I can say one more, I'm very proud of the merge.

I think that the time had really come for AIDS Community Health

Center and AIDS Rochester to come together.

You know, it's funny.

Early on, we had a meeting with Bill,

and Sue Cowell, I believe, was there, and Paula and myself,

and we talked about merging.

I think that was, like, in 1992.

And we thought, you know, what a great thing we could become.

And it just didn't work out at the time.

The timing wasn't right.

And so two and a half years ago it was.

And we came together again, and we

created an even more dynamic organization because of it.

And I'm very proud to have been, in large part, a leader in that

merge.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Can you speak to--

there seems to be, you know-- there

was a time where the community was very supportive of AIDS

awareness and AIDS care, and then

we kind of reached a climax, and then

it really kind of took a dove.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Right.

KEVIN INDOVINO: From your experience from the inside,

tell me what you saw and what you witnessed.

And again, how did you deal with those influxes?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Sure.

Well, the same thing.

You know, as I said earlier, I liken it to these commercials

that you see on TV for children with cancer or animals

who have been abused, and these horrific pictures

and the heart-wrenching music and reaching out

to people to give, to help these people or these poor pets.

And that's the way it used to be.

People looked so sick.

Young, healthy men and women looking like they

were a hundred years old and celebrities dying.

And then, around '95 or '96 when the new medications came out,

I literally witnessed men and women regaining their health.

They looked like they were at death's door,

and they regained their health.

Some of them went back to work.

And they gained their weight.

Their faces filled out.

They looked as healthy as all of us.

But soon, the outward appearance of somebody with HIV and AIDS

and then living longer didn't have the same emotional appeal

to the community.

Because they believed that their dollar was helping

save somebody's life or help making

them comfortable in their last hours of life,

and that retreated when people started living with HIV.

And so the way we've overcome that is that we've really

tried hard to keep the communities who

are most invested in HIV and AIDS connected

to it, because no one really knows how

long the medications will work.

There was not a lot of testing done.

Medications got approved very quickly and put on the market.

And yes, we predict people to live a long time now

with this chronic illness, but no one really knows.

If another strain of the infection comes--

I mean, anything-- a tipping point

could come again with this infection.

No one knows.

And so we want to keep people engaged not necessarily

with that message, but with them, you know,

you were there for us before.

Stay with us and help people get into care.

Because without the care, they're

not going to do well with HIV.

Have donations dropped?

Yes, they have.

We've seen that drop slightly over the years.

And I remember hundreds of walkers coming every June

to our AIDS walk annually, and this year we

had eighty-eight people there that had registered to walk.

You know, and that speaks volumes,

because the connection--

the people who used to march in memory of their loved ones,

there were very few of those.

I think time has passed and people have moved on.

And the memories are painful, and perhaps they

don't want to go back there again.

So I think there's lots of reasons.

And so one of the things we decided to do at AIDS care

in our strategic plan is not lose sight of HIV and AIDS,

but to look also in an outer circle

of care for people who may be vulnerable or at risk for HIV.

And those are substance users, people with hepatitis C,

and also the LGBT community.

And so we're moving in that direction now.

We will never lose our heart, which is HIV and AIDS,

but we will try to expand our services to people

who are vulnerable in other ways, who may be marginalized

because the health care that they need isn't there for them

without judgment.

So here we will be a health care organization

without judgment and specialized in whenever people need.

EVELYN BAILEY: The numbers are rising, though.

Aren't they?

MICHAEL BEATTY: With HIV?

Not as rapidly as they once were.

People are still getting infected.

We still have all of our grants to fight infection.

I think we're making progress there.

Our needle exchange program is still as busy as ever.

You know, that's not going away.

EVELYN BAILEY: The younger generation

under the age of thirty really does not

have a picture of this disease that

is unpleasant or difficult to look at.

MICHAEL BEATTY: Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: As an AIDS educator,

as the CEO now of AIDS care, what would you say to someone

who was in their twenties about behavior,

about activity that would hopefully impact their thought

process, their--

or is there anything?

Is this the age of--

I'll never die.

Nothing's ever going to happen to me.

I'm not going to get that.

I'm not-- what would you say?

MICHAEL BEATTY: Well, I would say google HIV and AIDS

in the 1980s and 1990s, and read and look at pictures

and read the history.

If you're gay, you should understand

the history of the gay community that you live in.

And you should know how many people in this community

came before you, who-- some lived and some died,

but they fought to get where we are today with HIV and AIDS.

And we should pay them respect and some homage.

But it also would help people understand

what it was like then.

There's nothing that I can say to someone that

will change their behavior.

People change their behaviors for multitudes of reasons.

Whatever myth, whatever belief system

that an individual person has, such as--

I can tell when somebody has AIDS.

If I have sex with somebody over thirty-five

I would probably use a condom.

But if I had sex with somebody a little bit younger,

I wouldn't need a condom, because they're probably

not infected.