Author Archives

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

• Almost Presidents Day: Counting Down A Century’s Worth of First Losers From Best To Worst

  By Drew Gibson on February 18, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  At the beginning of the day, you stand on the verge of becoming the most powerful person on the planet; by the end of it, you’re unemployed and being forced to make a speech expressing humility and gratitude for losing… Read More ›

• Fat Tuesdays & Slim Pickins: Talking About Homelessness in New Orleans

  By Drew Gibson on February 14, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  With Mardi Gras quickly approaching, I thought it might be appropriate to post a piece I wrote last year about an experience I had with a man who come upon hard times and had reluctantly joined the class of poor unfortunates… Read More ›

• George McGovern: The Winningest Loser I’ve Ever Known

  By Drew Gibson on February 10, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  Author’s Note: When I wrote this piece in the wake of Senator McGovern’s death in October of 2012, I must admit that I was fairly pessimistic about the future of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. McGovern was for… Read More ›

• Standing Firm In The Face of Progress: Opposition To Same Sex Marriage in Alabama

  By Drew Gibson on February 6, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  To whom it may concern: The truth may not always be popular, but it will always remain the truth. Alabamans, perhaps more than any of the 49 other sovereign lands that comprise these United States of America, have possessed a… Read More ›

• The Fringe Candidate That Wasn’t: Jack Fellure & The Inexorable Rightward Drift of the GOP

  By Drew Gibson on February 4, 2015 • ( 4 )

  

  It’s half past six on the morning of November 7th, 2012. The sun has finally crept up from under the Atlantic and begins to shine down on the city of Boston. There, in the cradle of Colonial America, sits a… Read More ›

• Monsters of Our Own Creation: How Nigerian Corruption & Climate Change Gave Rise To Boko Haram

  By Drew Gibson on January 31, 2015 • ( 4 )

  

  40 years ago, the town of Baga was bustling with an industry and a commerce born of the body of water that had given its residents life for as long as anyone could remember. Nestled in the most northeasterly corner… Read More ›

• Fast Friends & High Times at The Oregon Country Fair

  By Drew Gibson on January 27, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  Every year during the second weekend of July, around 45,000 of the West Coast’s crunchiest, eco-friendliest, peace crazed Deadheads and Phish Phreaks descend upon the tiny town of Veneta, Oregon for the Oregon Country Fair, a three day celebration of… Read More ›

• But The Hate Remains The Same: Reconstruction & A Changing Of The Guard in Southern Politics

  By Drew Gibson on January 27, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  History is not a linear thing. It is not neat, nor is it ramrod straight. It’s beginning is theoretical; its end, unknowable. History—like the rotation of the earth, the orbit of the moon and the life, death and rebirth of… Read More ›

• Goldwater Runs Deep: The 1964 Republican National Convention & The Rise of Conservative Extremism

  By Drew Gibson on January 23, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  On the most southerly outskirts of San Francisco, far away from the subsidized counterculture of the Haight and the boho hustle and bustle of The Mission District, lies the sprawling, unsightly mass of asphalt and concrete known as The Cow… Read More ›

• Sins of Omission: The State of the Union & Obama’s Race Problem

  By Drew Gibson on January 21, 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  Speechmaking has never been Barack Obama’s problem. From the first time the nation heard him as a young state senator from Chicago at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, through the Hope and Change stump speeches on the campaign trail in… Read More ›