D.C. Delegates Continue to Fight
Great to see our delegates to the National Democratic Convention still pushing for D.C. Statehood for citizens of the District of Columbia ["D.C. Delegates Push Agenda despite DNC Snub" September 6, 2012].
As we all know the District is changing, and with the influx of new residents, I have a strange feeling that our fight will soon be won. Congress and the powers that be can no longer use the excuse that the District is a majority one party, which I believe is a code for majority black, and therefore did not deserve to have status as a state because it would add an additional Democratic senator.
Hopefully, our new residents will join the fight for full citizenship and help to put pressure on Congress for Statehood for the District of Columbia no matter what their party affiliation. Hopefully, Statehood is as important to our new residents as it has been to those of us who have been fighting this battle for years.
Kenneth Davis
Washington, D.C.
HIV/AIDS Doesn't Discriminate
That was a great article written by Freddie Allen in your September 6th issue, "Straight Black Men Ignored in AIDS Initiatives." The most dramatic statement to me in the article was the one you highlighted by Dwayne Morrow, "What we don't want 10 years from now, if there is still an HIV/AIDS epidemic, we don't want to find heterosexual Black men facing the same epidemic that White gay men were in the '80s."
If you know anything about the AIDS epidemic, that statement can be so real. I have heard some people say the media is now trying to make AIDS a black disease, or they are inflating the numbers to spread panic in the black community, or they are saying these things to make black churches look bad. All that stuff is just talk, the real issue is that AIDS is a disease, and if you are not informed, educated and careful you can be infected regardless of your gender or race.
Raymond Stevens
Alexandria, Va.
