Philadelphia health department officials plan to meet with the Black and Brown Workers Collective, a spokesperson said after the group delivered a 13-page document with anonymous testimonials from employees and former employees of AIDS organizations in the city.
“We will meet with the group,” Jeff Moran, a spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email to PGN. “However, the health department is not involved in personnel issues at provider agencies and has no authority in these matters. Provider agencies are governed by their own board of directors.”
Moran added Philadelphia FIGHT’s board of directors would most be able to help the workers’ collective address its concerns.
The collective delivered a letter June 1 to the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office, which is housed in the health department, because it had not heard back from a letter to FIGHT Executive Director Jane Shull. The May 18 letter gave a June 1 deadline for FIGHT to address what the workers’ collective said were racist practices.
Shull was added June 1 to the list of officials the workers’ collective wants fired. The group said it was because she did not respond to the letter.
After delivering the document to AACO, the workers’ collective marched to locations of AIDS organizations in Center City.
“It’s a new day,” Shani Akilah Robin, a former employee of FIGHT who was fired in March, said outside the organization’s location at 13th and Locust streets. “It is not enough to open up a nonprofit and run it. You need to provide positions of power for people of color. You need to look at your hiring and firing practices.”
Robin said the Black and Brown Workers’ Collective is interested in exploring options for collective bargaining.
The collective expanded its protest to include Mazzoni Center, GALAEI: A Queer Latin@ Social Justice Organization and COLOURS. AACO provides some funding to these groups.
Mazzoni Center CEO Nurit Shein said in a statement to PGN that her organization looks forward to having a productive dialogue.
“We will continue our work to deepen the conversation around intersecting identities and on diversity in every sense of the word,” she said. “We look forward to having a productive dialogue, internally and externally, on ways we can ensure a safe, healthy and positive atmosphere for everyone who works with us.”
Shull of FIGHT said in a statement to PGN that FIGHT “support[s] people’s right to protest nonviolently as long as it does not disrupt program activity.”
When asked if the collective’s march disrupted any programs, there was no further comment.
FIGHT cancelled its June 1 reception for the kickoff of AIDS Education Month that was originally scheduled to take place at the Independence Visitor Center in Old City. FIGHT declined to comment on the reason for cancelling the event.
The workers’ collective march through the middle of the streets included six to 12 people at various points through the hour-long action. It stopped at two locations of the Mazzoni Center — someone at the Washington West Project took a copy of the document that the collective delivered to AACO — two locations of FIGHT, and Knock, an LGBT bar that members of the collective said lacked black employees.
At one point, traffic backed up behind the marchers on Locust Street between 12th and 10th streets.