Author Archives

Virally Suppressed is a progressive blog and outreach movement centered around matters of HIV & social justice in America and across the globe.

• You Can’t Quarantine Stupid: Ebola & Unconstitutional Health Policy

  By Drew Gibson on October 29, 2014 • ( 3 )

  

  The year was 1918. After two and a half years of uneasy neutrality, America had finally entered The Great War and had committed over 4 million men to the war effort. As one would expect—or at least hope—the United States… Read More ›

• Opportunistic Infections: What HIV’s Past Can Teach Us About Dealing With Ebola’s Present

  By Drew Gibson on October 20, 2014 • ( 1 )

  

  It was 65°F outside and Yusia was freezing. The cold and the damp of the Sudanese rainy season clung to his bones as he biked to work, the pumping of his legs over the sodden ground making thuck thuck sounds… Read More ›

• The Deep South Up North: The Struggle For American Indian Voting Rights in South Dakota

  By Drew Gibson on October 9, 2014 • ( 2 )

  

  What happens to an injustice unheard? Does it wisp skywards like warm smoke from a gun or deflate down, dissolve and be done? Does it cry itself to sleep or rage into the night then softly weep? Maybe it hardens… Read More ›

• Here Comes The Freedom Winter: The Failure of Truth to Keep Black Men Breathing

  By Drew Gibson on September 27, 2014 • ( 0 )

  

  Because that’s what the job is for. To keep a little freedom bubble From rising to the surface And spreading Everywhere Pop Pop So the job of a cop Is to stop Stop Stop Those words are 50 years old…. Read More ›

• Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: Progressive Third Party Politics in West Virginia

  By Drew Gibson on September 23, 2014 • ( 7 )

  

  It was all Nader’s fault. Never mind the butterfly ballots and the hanging chads. Forget about Palm Beach County’s sudden and accidental infatuation with Pat Buchanan(1) and Katherine Harris’s purging of thousands of legitimate black Floridians from the voter rolls… Read More ›

• A Walmart is Not a War Zone: Photos From The Journey For John Crawford

  By Drew Gibson on September 22, 2014 • ( 4 )

  

  On Monday, September 22nd, more than 100 men and women set off from a Walmart in  Beavercreek, Ohio–a predominantly white suburb of Dayton–and walked 11 miles to the Greene County Courthouse in Xenia, OH. On August 5th, a 22 year… Read More ›

• Dope Sick With Mouths To Feed: The Struggles of American Women in Active Addiction

  By Drew Gibson on September 7, 2014 • ( 3 )

  

  ~~~~~~~ Author’s Note ~~~~~~~ On the night before I was to publish this article, one of my cousins died at the hands of this insidious disease of addiction. The last time I saw her was early Thursday morning after a… Read More ›

• A Symptom of a Greater Sickness: How Ferguson’s Roots Run From Our Schools To The Supreme Court

  By Drew Gibson on August 18, 2014 • ( 3 )

  

  There is nothing that I can say about the shooting of Michael Brown that hasn’t been said before by people whose experience affords them a perspective and an authenticity that I lack for the simple reason that I am white…. Read More ›

• The Lash May Change, But The Pain Remains The Same: The Enduring Legacy of Slavery in Mississippi

  By Drew Gibson on August 15, 2014 • ( 6 )

  

  Unless you’re the churchgoing type, there’s not much sense in driving through the Mississippi Delta on a Sunday morning. Folks tend to take the sabbath pretty seriously around these parts, and a visitor who so happens to be passing through… Read More ›

• Unscientific Methods: Why Young Earth Creationists Spun Scriptural Straw Into Pseudoscientific Gold

  By Drew Gibson on August 11, 2014 • ( 5 )

  

  The pyramids of Saqqara stand in front of the Nile River Valley like weary sentinels. They act as guardians, looking over a 6 mile wide strip of fecund earth hemmed in by seas of sand. This stretch of implausibly verdant… Read More ›