Condom Distribution

 

     

San Francisco's Empty Condom Distribution Jars

SAPs Internal Battle Over Condom Supplier

Request for CDC Accountability Audit

The Former Condom Distributor: SF AIDS Foundation

Page updated September 19, 2003.

Too Empty for Individuals to Act Responsibly?

Where are the über-liberals from within the “AIDS Inc.” industry when it comes to condom distribution failures in San Francisco?

For the past two years, the East Coast über-left of AIDS Inc. has bemoaned the Bush Administrations’ restrictions on condom distribution to global organizations, claiming Dubya’s agenda targeting planned parenthood organizations unfairly keeps condoms from being distributed to halt the global AIDS pandemic.  Why aren’t the über-lefties bemoaning San Francisco’s sorry state of affairs?

AIDS Inc. hasn’t raised a finger to protest business being conducted as usual in San Francsico, despite a red herring attempt to mislabel “business as usual” as “no more business as usual.”

Condom distribution has been handled by two non-profits in San Francisco.  One non-profit distributing condoms — the Stop AIDS Project — has held several government grants for years to distribute condoms.  For FYs 99/00 and 00/01, SAP received annual $151,246 contracts from San Francisco’s General Fund for condom distribution; in FYs 97/98 and 98/99 the annual General Fund contract was $150,000.  In October 2001, SAP received notice (following competitive bidding for funds under the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s “no more business as usual” HIV prevention contract, RFP #107-01) that it would receive $212,086 for a condom distribution “special project” in each year of a three-year contract(1).  Over the years, SAP has received (at minimum) $1,238,750 earmarked for condom distribution(2).  Condom distribution — for both the lead agency receiving the main contract and the subcontractor supplying “product” — is a lucrative business.

According to its 1999 federal tax return for the period July 1999–June 2000), SAP created a program titled Condoms Now! in 1997 to distribute free condoms to gay and bisexual men at more than 90 businesses in [San Francisco].  SAP reported on its 1999 tax return that Condoms Now! has given away 2.5 million free condoms at bars, clubs, restaurants and stores in neighborhoods such as the Castro, Mission, Polk, and South of Market.” [Disturbingly, the tax returns do not note that SAP distributes condoms in the Tenderloin or Bay View Hunters Point areas of San Francisco — where HIV and AIDS rates are reportedly among the highest for injection drug-users, African-Americans, other communities of color, or the poorest of San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents.]

SAPs principal goal is to “create and maintain a community norm of safe sex,” priding itself on focusing on specific targeted populations with reminders and the resources to stay safe. Yet there’s a gaping disconnect between its stated goals and condom availability.  SAP holds government contracts to distribute condoms, and it chose to do so by enlisting the help of businesses that cater to gay and bisexual men.

Ultimately, staying HIV-negative is each individual’s responsibility to themselves, as is the personal choice to actually use condoms.  It is not the responsibility of bar owners catering to men who have sex with men to distribute condoms; their principal line of business is dispensing alcohol, not latex.  But it is the responsibility of SAP — which holds a lucrative government contract expressly addressing condoms — to ensure the condom distribution jars are filled for those who seek them in a moment of passion.  One prominent commentator wrote me, saying: “Society’s failure — and that includes the ‘gay community’s’ failure — to teach young people that they should take responsibility for their own actions is the REASON WHY safer-sex education is being ignored.”   TheLastWatch agrees whole-heartedly, because it appears that SAP is not teaching our youth to take personal responsibility for safer sex, in part by SAPs failure to keep the condom jars filled.   Sending our youth the message that an organization can ignore its contractual obligations to provide full condom jars simultaneously sends them the message that we don’t really expect our youth to assume personal responsibility, either.  Our youth — not TheLastWatch — should be raising the empty condom jar issue to the Stop AIDS Project as a matter of personal healthcare.

The point here is that the Stop AIDS Projects’ delinquency and ineffectiveness suggests that an audit is in order, not that bar owners should be held accountable for SAPs failure to keep the condom jars filled, as was contractually intended.  That said, a SAP employee claimed to me in SAPs defense that SAP provides the bars with plenty of stock, but that the establishments fail to keep the jars filled because they’re simply too lazy to pull out inventory and refill them.  TheLastWatch suggests there is a shared onus of responsibility between SAP and the bar owners.

Where are the über-left of the AIDS Inc. industry, and why aren’t they screaming bloody murder about domestic distribution of condoms as they do about global distribution of rubbers?  Is there a double-standard here, or are the über-lefties simply staying silent on this issue to aid and abet the Stop AIDS Project from becoming embroiled in yet another federal or local audit?  After coughing up $1.24 million (at minimum)to SAP for condom distribution, does the San Francisco Board of Supervisors or the CDC simply not care what happens to General Fund and/or federal monies?  Any other social services program receiving $1 million or more in funding is subject to accountability audits.  Why are contractors providing condom distribution not held to the same public accountability auditing standards?   Could it be that well-greased, insider political connections help provide SAP with being held to a different accountability standard than other public-interest funds recipients?

Until these distribution jars are filled consistently — and are not consistently empty throughout much of the year, year in and year out — the funding source (San Francisco’s Department of Public Health) cannot rightfully claim it is pursuing “no more business as usual.”  Instead, DPH is simply conducting business in the same old protect-the-status-quo way.

 

(1)  In addition to the $636,258 SAP will receive for condom distribution under the “no more business as usual” RFP, SAP also received under the same RFP two additional awards for other HIV prevention activities; those two awards, combined, bring SAP an additional $983,871 annually, for a three year total of $2.95 million.  For the three awards under the “no more business as usual” RFP, SAP was awarded a total of $3,587,871.

(2)  Much of the $12 million “no more business as usual” RFP was to have been funded using federal prevention funds.  TheLastWatch has been informed by the San Francisco Department of Public Health that SAPs awards under this RFP have been changed to local General Fund monies.  The move to local funding may possibly be a result of the ongoing federal audits of SAP, as DPH was quoted recently in the media that it if became necessary to prevent federal efforts from defunding SAP, that DPH would simply move SAPs funding from federal to local funds, ostensibly in an effort to prevent the possibility of SAPs financial collapse.

 

Empty Condom Distribution Jars   

 
Full, As Intended
A Full Jar, as the CDC Intended   This is what a full condom distribution jar is supposed to look like; up and down San Francisco’s Polk Street — which has its share of male hustlers, homeless people, and large population of men who have sex with men — the distribution jars rarely appear as in this photo.

 
Location 1: 12/27/02
Who Has The Damn Jar?   Occasionally, when this bar runs out of condoms, it simply removes the empty jar altogether.  This bar reportedly has to routinely place multiple follow-up phone calls to have condoms delivered by SAP staff, and have had to wait eight to ten days to receive refills, despite the owners’ notable dedication and determination to keep the jar stocked up.  The bar manager remarked to me in July 2002 that he had placed a call the previous week asking that the condom jar in his establishment be restocked.  It took nearly two weeks after his phone call for Stop AIDS to get off their asses to do so, and when they did, they filled the jar only 1/4 full, and only then because they were about to rent space in the establishment to hold one of their Bar Night at ... drinking events, which they bill as an “emotional and practical support” or “psychosocial” intervention aimed at reducing HIV/AIDS.               Top 


Location 2: 12/27/02
Longest Running Empty   This tavern is the most notorious for empty condom distribution jars; at this location, the jar is nearly always empty. As of September 1, 2003, the jar has been empty for fully two months, since the Fourth of July. Over the holidays, one would think the jars would be filled up for the out-of-town visitors.
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Location 3: 12/27/02
  
Nearly Empty   When this photo was taken, the jar had been nearly empty for several weeks, and had not been restocked.  Lest one think these photos are “dated” (having been taken in 2002), TheLastWatch assures you that the distribution jars frequently looked the same in 2003 as they did when these photos were taken.  Indeed, TheLastWatch has similar photos taken in 2003, but has not included them here as a simple matter of redundancy.
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Location 3: 10/11/02
Empty   This watering hole was home to male hustlers, a population targeted for HIV prevention to prevent their Johns from contracting HIV. Apparently, neither the Johns nor their hustlers voiced complaints to keep the condom jars stocked up.
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SAPs Internal Battle Over Condom Supplier
 

In 2002 a nasty fight ensued at the Stop AIDS Project over its supplier of condoms.  The fight was between SAPs Executive Director, and the SAP employee charged with actually ordering the condoms, who was prepared to resign from SAP if the Director didn’t change her errant ways.

Reportedly, Brian Brashears — a very dedicated HIV prevention worker in his 20s whom TheLastWatch admires greatly for the depth of his convictions and passion in halting the further spread of AIDS, as well as his ability to communicate and connect with young men in his age group — is reported by a source as having approached Darlene Weide, the Executive Director of the Stop AIDS Project.  Brashears informed Weide that he had done a competitive bid analysis, and had discovered that by switching distributors from an East Bay to an East Coast distributor, the Stop AIDS Project could acquire the exact same type and quantity of condoms from the East Coast, including shipping and handling, that it was obtaining from the East Bay distributor who had long held the subcontract to provide condoms.  Brashears reportedly learned SAP could save $75,000 annually [to either acquire additional condoms or return to its funding source] by simply switching to a different distributor of rubbers (if you’ll pardon the vernacular).

Weide initially told Brashears that he could not change distributors, because the East Bay distributor was an old friend of the HIV prevention community in San Francisco, that the distributor had held the subcontract for a number of years, and that the East Bay distributor had, in gratitude for the hefty contract to supply the condoms, returned annually an unrestricted $5,000 educational grant to the Stop AIDS Project to do whatever it wished with the unrestricted funds.  The source was asked whether a reasonable person could conclude that the $5,000 in question might possibly be considered a “kickback” in order to preserve a lucrative contracat for a long-time friend of the community; the source indicated that this conclusion was not without merit.

Even if SAP had to subtact the $5K unrestricted grant from the $75K identified by Brahsers’ competititve procurement analysis, SAP stood to gain $70,000 in savings annually, but that logic appears to have escaped Weide. 

Weide reportedly eventually relented, and the contract was finally changed to the East Coast distributor, but only after Brashears reportedly informed Weide he would make the information public knowledge by reporting the incident to an accountability WatchDog.  That she came to her senses only belatedly — and only under threat of public exposure and humiliation — speaks volumes about her misguided internal ethical compass, which appears to be reading “gone south,” when she ’s ostensibly trying to aim the damn thing towards the erect North Pole.

SAPs Board of Directors has an ethical responsibility to look into this matter; if Weide, possibly actively, potentially obstructed constraining expenses in favor of preserving a possible “kickback,” SAPs Board should fire her immediately.

The full story is contained in the audit request to the CDC (below).                                 Top

Request for CDC Accountability Audit
 

Learning of the internal battle at SAP over its supplier of condoms (summarized above), an audit request was submitted to the CDC.

This bears repeating:  SAPs Board of Director’s has an ethical responsibility to look into this matter; if Weide, possibly actively, obstructed constraining expenses in favor of preserving a “kickback,” SAPs Board should fire her immediately.  If they do not, they are giving tacit approval to the SAP Executive Director’s possibly unethical behavior. 
The Request … (to protect confidentiality, undisclosed recipients are not shown).     
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The Former Condom Distributor: SF AIDS Foundation    
 

A second, former condom distributor were the folks over at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF).  In its 1995 tax return for the period ending June 1996, SFAF listed it provided condoms, but did not specify the number of rubbers it distributed.  Its 1996 tax return informed the IRS that one of its program accomplishments had been distribution of 225,00 condoms; its 1997 tax return did not explain why the number of condoms it distributed had fallen to 190,000.  When its 1998 tax return for the period ending in June 1999 was released to the public in May 2000, there was not one peep of outrage from the über-lefty crowd complaining that SFAF had apparently stopped distributing condoms altogether, as mention of it as a “program accomplishment” vanished from its tax returns, and has not been reported to the IRS since its 1997 tax return.  

Apparently SFAF has traded up from condoms, dropping local and domestic condom distribution in favor of its:

  • Needle-exchange activities;
  • So-called “emotional and practical support” Gay Life programming focusing on such things as “finding sex on the Internet” workshops and “hot writing” workshops, ostensibly because success at the former (finding sex) is facilitated by possessing skills acquired from the latter; and
  • Expansion into overseas market niches via its Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation.
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