FOCUS ON LORRAINE LOPEZ; Internet Radio Spokesperson Wants To 'Break Bread And Smash Stigma' Of Being HIV Positive

YONKERS GAL"S HIV ACTIVISM: You Don't Have To Be Afraid Of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

CUP CAKE CUTIE BOUTIQUE: At 8 S 6th Avenue In Mt Vernon Lorraine Lopez Is Willing To Sweetly Talk About AIDS Prevention To Whoever Will Listen

SPREADING THE WORD: #LorraineLopez implored people to take precautions against HIV. #LorraineLopez say,''In my family, we didn't listen" 

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED: Our Towns; AIDS In The Backyard, Heads In The Sand 

....When the county health commissioner, suggested a needle exchange program to combat the spread of the virus by drug users, he met a resounding silence from Yonkers officials. This, in a city with 30 percent of the county's 3,457 AIDS cases.

And when Westchester's largest AIDS service provider, wanted to open offices and a walk-in center in downtown Yonkers, he said, he was given the runaround and gave up.....

.....Lorraine Lopez, a special assistant to Mayor John Spencer and a former City Council member, said she asked the local AIDS advisory group to brief the Council during her tenure, but most members, representing districts outside southwest Yonkers, seemed unmoved.

''They gave them the courtesy, but they didn't do anything,'' Lorraine Lopez said. ''There was almost a sense that this doesn't happen in my backyard. But it does.''

If some officials look the other way, so do some people at risk. At a youth rally for World AIDS Day on Monday, Loraine Lopez implored the audience to take precautions. ''In my family, we didn't listen,'' she said......

....It would be unfair to say Yonkers shrugs off its AIDS burden. There are medical and housing programs for infected people, some subsidized by the city, as well as educational programs.

But there is a sense here, as elsewhere, that the crisis has passed since drugs made a fatal illness merely chronic, even as the disease becomes more concentrated among women, minority residents and intravenous drug users.

''We're starting all over again,'' said Charles G. Lief, president of the Greyston Foundation, which treats AIDS patients here, ''but the country is kind of exhausted with it.''

Perhaps that explains why Yonkers seems to be trying to keep #AIDS in its place.

Asked about the ban on social service agencies in the re-emerging downtown, #IanKipp, who runs the downtown business improvement district, said, ''Our experience has been that these uses are detrimental for redevelopment.'.... 
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/04/nyregion/our-towns-aids-in-backyard-heads-in-sand.html