A Saturday demonstration outside of a Lowe’s home improvement store in a Detroit suburb brought out more than 150 local residents and religious leaders and even one state representative — all of whom were protesting the chain’s decision to pull its ads from the TLC reality show All-American Muslim after receiving numerous calls to do so by the Florida Family Association.

The group demonstrated outside of the Lowe’s in Allen Park, a Detroit suburb adjacent to the city where All-American Muslim is filmed.

The protestors chanted and held signs that read, “Boycott Bigotry” and, “Remember, All-American Muslims Shop” during the rally, which was attended by Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups.

Via the Huffington Post:

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat and the first Muslim woman elected to the Michigan Legislature, said it was “disgusting” for Lowe’s to stop supporting a show that reflects America – the conservatives, liberals and even “the Kim Kardashians” in the Muslim community, she said.

“We’re asking the company to change their mind,” said protester Ray Holman, a legislative liaison for a United Auto Workers local. He said he was dismayed that the retailer “pulled sponsorship of a positive program.”

A local rabbi extended his support to clergy at the protest and local Arab Americans, saying he and other Jews would have been at the protest had it not fallen during the Jewish Sabbath.

“I hope that they would likewise stand up and demonstrate should something outrageous like this take place against another religion,” Rabbi Jason Miller said in a statement.

Lowe’s spokeswoman Karen Cobb said Saturday that the company respected the protestors’ opinion.

“We appreciate and respect everyone’s right to express their opinion peacefully,” she said.

According to a press release sent out by People for the American Way,  a handful of counter-protesters — including armed members of the Michigan Militia — came out to defend Lowe’s.

Critics have blasted Lowe’s for pulling its ads, saying that caving to a fringe group like the Family Association sets a negative precedent.

In a press release sent out last week, in which the group called on a complete boycott of Lowe’s, People for the American Way said that Lowe’s “should have ignored the canned emails and gone about its business,” but instead chose to cave “to a group of fanatics who want to make everyone live in accordance with their narrow and rigid religious beliefs.”

(Photo: Flickr Getty Images/Dave Delay)

Michigan is one state that has been host to repeated violations of HIV-positive persons’ rights, as has been frequently documented by The American Independent’s former sister site The Michigan Messenger. And a recent study into the application of Michigan’s HIV disclosure laws has uncovered policies in some local health jurisdictions that experts say are troubling in their implications to reproductive freedom and personal privacy.

Trevor Hoppe, a Ph.D. candidate in women’s studies and sociology at University of Michigan, has been conducting extensive interviews with local health department officials about how they have been applying state laws related to HIV. In the course of that study, Hoppe identified several health departments that are using pregnancy, partner-notification services, and sexually transmitted infection (STI) reports to initiate what’s known as “health threat to others” actions (HTTO). To ensure the anonymity of the respondents, Hoppe’s study did not identify specific health departments or counties where these policies were uncovered.

HTTO is a state law that allows health officials to intervene in the private lives of people who have serious infectious diseases. The initiation of an HTTO starts with a formal cease and desist letter with a demand for the person in question to appear at the local health department on a specific date. From there, health officials can do anything from prescribing counseling to seeking a court order to civilly confine a person for as long as six months.

Issuance of an HTTO order is also documented in a statewide database. That database is coded, but it is names-based and accessible to any health official in the state. A person remains in that database indefinitely – until the HTTO order is lifted by local and state health officials. And sometimes it’s never lifted.

Hoppe presented the results of his (currently unpublished) study in August at the 2011 National HIV Prevention Conference (PDF), held in Atlanta. Among the results, he found that two health departments were starting HTTO actions against HIV-positive women after knowing only two things about these women: They were pregnant; they were HIV-positive. The assumption underlying the HTTO actions against them was that the women engaged in behavior that would lead to a significant risk of HIV transmission in others.

What makes a human a ‘health threat’?

Joshua Moore, who runs Detroit Legal Services, a law firm focused on HIV issues and the law, told The American Independent that the policy of labeling people as ‘health threats’ with insufficient evidence is problematic for many reasons.

“The obvious concern is that the pregnant HIV-positive woman is not a ‘health threat to others’ based on the fact that she is simply HIV-positive,” Moore said. “This concept is just outrageous. Many HIV-positive women are choosing to have children safely and are not putting anyone at risk for contracting HIV. The fathers of these children are either HIV-positive themselves or are aware of their partners’ HIV status.”

These health departments have taken up this HTTO policy against pregnant HIV-positive women in spite of recent studies that have shown that in serodiscordant couples (where one partner is HIV-positive and the other is HIV-negative), the use of successful antiretroviral treatment reduces the risk of infection by 96 percent. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta reports the risk of HIV transmission to newborn babies is reduced to less than 2 percent for pregnant women who are on successful treatment during pregnancy, labor, and delivery and if babies are immediately treated with the medications. Even starting treatment only at labor and delivery reduces the risk of transmission to under 10 percent.

Nicole Seguin, of the Positive Women’s Network, told TAI that the kind of policy highlighted in Hoppe’s study is troubling. As an HIV-positive woman who chose to have a child while positive, Seguin said she worked very closely with her doctor and staff to ensure a safe pregnancy.

“The circumstance of a woman’s HIV status should not allow for an initiation of a ‘health threat to others’ action and diminish the responsibility doctors have to adequately explain medical choices to his patient so that she is comfortable and can consent to all procedures and interventions during pregnancy and birth,” Seguin said. “It erodes women’s reproductive rights by taking away the medical choices that every person is entitled to simply because the woman is living with HIV, and pregnant.”

Similar actions occurred in Mississippi until the U.S. Department of Justice intervened and ordered the state to stop directing people with HIV not to have children.

“Pregnancy in and of itself is not a sufficient reason to define an individual as a ‘health threat,’” said Angela Minicuci, spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH). “Local health departments carefully evaluate individual cases in order to determine whether they should be considered ‘health threats,’ as defined by statute, and if they are, appropriate action to be undertaken. We are not aware of action being taken against HIV-positive women for getting pregnant.”

Violation of privacy

In addition to the pregnant women being targeted, a more dangerous activity from public health officials was uncovered by Hoppe. Under Michigan law, the names of all people who test positive for HIV are reported to the MDCH. They are kept in a centralized, coded database. While the move to the names-based reporting was mandated by the CDC and fought by those living with HIV, the state assured the database would be used only as a list of those living with the virus.

What Hoppe discovered was that health officials were comparing the names of individuals named in partner services counseling with the state database. Partner-notification services are voluntary, and the state mandates only that the assistance to contact partners at risk be offered. The counseling session often happens at the same time a person is diagnosed with HIV or another STI. That period can be one of deep trauma, and many advocates have argued the counseling programs can turn coercive.

Hoppe found that when a person tests positive for HIV, health officials in at least three jurisdictions will solicit names as part of partner-notification services. With a list of names in hand, health officials will compare that list to the state database, and if any name on the partner-notification list pops up on the statewide list, health officials will initiate an HTTO action against that person.

“Anytime a government agency uses names inappropriately, it is a threat to the civil liberties of those with HIV, as well as those who are not infected with HIV,” said attorney Moore. “Often, partner notification laws are abused by individuals. Issuing an HTTO to a person simply because they were mentioned in a partner notification and are in the state database would not mean that individual is an automatic HTTO. To suggest that anyone would automatically be a HTTO under these circumstances is an extreme scenario.”

Perpetuating the criminalization of HIV-positives

The final stunning discovery from Hoppe’s study is that some local health departments have begun initiating HTTO actions against HIV-positive persons who test positive for other sexually transmitted infections.

Hoppe quoted “Fern,” an anonymous disease investigator from a local health department, in his PowerPoint presentation at the HIV conference earlier this year.

“Well, usually it’s all the sudden their name appears with another STD… So… if the [syphilis coordinator] has any syphilis cases where they’re also showing that they’re HIV-positive, then her and I work together and we – you know, if I’ve got a case report – then it goes to a ‘health threat to others,’ more or less. Because if they come up with syphilis, they’re having unprotected sex.”

But that’s false logic. What distinguishes syphilis from other STDs is that it can be spread by skin-to skin contact. Thus, contrary to Fern’s conclusions, a syphilis infection does not necessarily indicate unprotected sex.

Minicuci, of the state health department, said Hoppe’s findings in relation to STIs and partner-notification services are accurate.

“Under the Michigan Public Health Code and Administrative Rules, public health is permitted to use available disease reporting records to aid in disease investigation and to support prevention,” she told TAI. “Michigan’s Public Health Code grants public health the ability to prevent and control disease, including collecting information, case investigation, and action to prevent the spread of disease. Confidentiality of all reports, records and data pertaining to testing, care, treatment, reporting, research, and information pertaining to partner notification activities is, however, protected by law (MCL 333.5131 (7)).”

This news comes as some states are seeking permission to use results of viral load tests and immune function tests to track down people with HIV who may not be on medications or who have developed resistance to their HIV medications. Such a proposal in New York state has activists there rattled. The Obama administration’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy called for the monitoring and collection of these test results with the theory that reduction in community viral load will lead to reduced new infections.

Though Michigan has collected these results for years, Minicuci said the results are not used to track down individuals.

“Currently MDCH collects HIV viral load, western blot, and CD4 results for epidemiological surveillance of HIV disease in Michigan,” she said. “Physicians will follow up with their patients on any positive HIV test results (such as a detectable viral load and reactive western blot) and will then report that case to the MDCH for the epidemiological surveillance. Additionally, viral load (detectable and undetectable) and CD4 results are aggregated and used to identify areas of the state where there may be gaps in service for persons living with HIV. This helps us to make well-informed funding decisions.”

Mark Peterson, a director of the Michigan Positive Action Coalition (MI-POZ), said the study’s discoveries are “disturbing” in how they malign people with HIV but not people who regularly contract other STDs.

“How often does public health in Michigan apply health threat measures against someone who has repeated STIs that don’t include HIV?” Peterson said. “Conversely, how often are the same measures applied when HIV in present?

“Our public health messages have stated that people with HIV can live long and happy lives, that HIV is no more of a health consequence than diabetes, yet continued stigma related policies show that this is not actually the real case,” he continued. “If presence of HIV is the main reason that health threat cases are begun, then what we’re doing is criminalizing HIV and those living with it. We can’t say something is ‘chronic and manageable’ and then go to the extremes in health threat cases. People with HIV need comprehensive and compassionate care that includes individualized education, counseling and skills building on how to keep themselves from getting another STD because it is bad for their health. They don’t deserve to be labeled as imminent public threats simply because they have a virus, while the individuals who continually get other STIs are held harmless.”

Peterson was not alone in raising concerns about the local health departments’ actions.

Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the Center for HIV Law & Policy in New York, told TAI that the discoveries highlighted in Hoppe’s study have troubling implications.

“All women retain the constitutionally protected right to reproductive choice, including the right to bear a child, and this right is not affected by an HIV diagnosis,” she said. “Similarly, a policy that treats evidence that a person with HIV is sexually active as tantamount to positing a HTTO, without more [evidence], likely is a violation to the related right to sexual expression and intimacy. The fact that cooperation with partner-notification services can lead to intrusive government actions against a partner raises serious public health and privacy issues.”

Sean Strub, founding publisher of POZ Magazine and a board member of the Global Network of People with HIV North America, echoed Hanssens’ concerns.

“This is about punishing people with HIV for being sexual – that’s the real agenda here,” Strub said. “These are horrible, but increasingly typical, examples of how people with HIV are increasingly treated as a problem population to be tagged, regulated, controlled and criminalized. … Using the excuse of public health to oppress people is not new. The Nazis were pioneers in this regard. It is unfortunate to see Michigan officials following their lead.”

Photo: Flickr/Monifoto.net

In a conversation with the Detroit News Bing said that he would seriously consider taking the job if the governor asked him to become Emergency Manager.

“I think whether it’s me or somebody else, it’s going to probably happen.

“Now, would you rather deal with the devil that you know or the devil that you don’t know?”

As mayor Bing could ask the state to review the city’s finances. This would initiate a process that could lead to appointment of an Emergency Manager.

Bing has been unable to implement a deficit-elimination plan that relies on cutting pensions and employee benefits.

Residents of the Oakwood Heights neighborhood — part of the most polluted zip code area in the state — have long complained about emissions from the Marathon refinery and some have fought the plant’s expansion as an environmental injustice.

The Detroit News reports that Marathon wants to buy out nearby residents and tear down their homes to create a buffer area between the plant and other residential areas.

Homeowners will be offered the average price of two appraisals or $40,000 — whichever amount is greater — as the base purchase price.

Owners will receive a premium bonus amounting to 50 percent of the average appraised price.

A $5,000 allowance of miscellaneous expenses will be available for owners.

Those who sign up for the program within the next four months are eligible for a $1,000 bonus.

A $500 allowance for owners to seek real estate advice.

Up to $1,500 in assistance for new mortgage assistance.

“Someone with a $30,000 appraised home is going to walk away with $61,000,” said Tracy Case, a division manager with Marathon Petroleum, on Wednesday.

City and state officials have expressed approval of the buy-out program.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has expressed concerns about the health impacts that tar sands oil refining may have on local communities.

MLive.com reports that the disease Leptospirosis has been identified in 20 dogs in Detroit. The disease is caused by the bacteria leptospira. Once the bacteria infects an animal, it lodges in the kidneys. Some animals do not become sick from the infection, but spread the bacteria through urine, while other animals develop fevers, vomiting, and ultimately the shutdown of organs.

The disease is usually found in stray dogs, but in this outbreak experts from Michigan State University say it has been found in animals that are family pets. Ten of the dogs have died or been euthanized as a result of the infection.

The Senate Economic Development Committee, which is considering legislation to create a public authority to take bids on the new bridge, will hold hearings Tuesday and Wednesday and vote on the two bridge bills at the end of Wednesday’s session, said Mike Murray, chief of staff to committee chairman Sen. Mike Kowall, R-White Lake.

Gov. Rick Snyder is pushing the project, dubbed the New International Trade Crossing, and wants the Legislature to deal with it by the end of October.

It’s not clear whether there is support in the Legislature to pass the bills. Republicans have generally opposed the public bridge, while Democrats have supported it.

Canada has offered to finance the $550 million needed to pay for the Michigan portion of the bridge, and the project is supported by a broad range of business and labor groups because it is expected to provide jobs and improve trade over the border.

Gov. Snyder has also worked out an arrangement with the U.S. Dept. of Transportation that would allow Michigan to use the $550 million from Canada as matching funds to secure $2 billion in federal road dollars.

Billionaire Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Maroun has blanketed the state with ads in opposition to plans for the new publicly-owned bridge.

The Detroit News reports:

Kwame Kilpatrick’s longtime fundraiser, Emma Bell, pleaded guilty to two counts of tax evasion Monday and has agreed to testify against the former mayor in the City Hall corruption case in hopes of getting a shorter prison term.

Under a plea deal, Bell has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors and could spend 18-24 months in prison. If she provides substantial assistance, the government will ask a judge to cut the prison sentence in half to 9-12 months.

Federal prosecutors have convicted 18 people in a years-long investigation into corruption in Detroit city politics.

In Michigan, the poverty rate among college grads is 4.3 percent, well below the 11 percent for those with some college and just a fraction of the 15 percent for high school grads.

Yet funding for higher education also was cut, potentially slowing the rise in the percentage of residents with a college degree; 25.2 percent of adults over 25 have a college degree, well below the 28.2 percent nationally.

“There’s been no wage growth and more importantly, there’s not expected to be any wage growth over the next five years,“ National Poverty Center director and University of Michigan professor Sheldon Danziger told the News.

Michigan should give kids a better shot at being able to earn a living by finding ways to help people afford to go to college, he said.

One option could be a privately-funded program to give all public high school students a free college education.

In 2009 state lawmakers eliminated the Michigan Promise scholarship which offered high school seniors up to $4,000 for doing well on state standardized testing. The program cancellation went into effect mid-semester and affected nearly 100,000 students.

[Gov. Rick Snyder] and business groups say the new bridge would clear a border bottleneck because it would have direct freeway connections on both sides of the river. Trucks that use the Ambassador Bridge must go through more than a dozen traffic lights in Windsor, Ontario, before reaching the freeway.

Another selling point is the backers’ insistence that the new public bridge will cost Michigan taxpayers nothing. Canada has offered to front Michigan’s $550 million share of the project costs and recover the money from the state’s share of bridge tolls.

The state Senate is considering legislation to authorize the bridge deal, but so far Republicans in the legislature have been generally unsupportive of the plan — missing a July 1 deadline set by the governor.

Shoshana Shebshi, daughter of a Saudi father and a Jewish mother, is a housewife from Ohio and an American citizen. By sheer coincidence she was seated on the plane next to two men of Indian descent from Michigan, none of whom knew each other or even, she says, spoke to each other on the plane until after it landed.

By that point, Shebshi says, they were all wondering what was going on as the plane was taken far from the gate and was surrounded by law enforcement personnel. They were shocked when several heavily armed police officers boarded the plane, handcuffed them and took them to the airport police station for several hours of questioning — including a strip search.

The police had been called by airline personnel, apparently after passengers on the plane reported seeing them engaged in “suspicious” behavior. Shebshi says there was nothing that could arouse genuine suspicion:

The male agent proceeded to ask me a series of questions about where I had been, where I was going, about my family, if I had noticed any suspicious behavior on the plane. The other agent took notes while I talked. They asked if I knew the two men sitting next to me, and if I noticed them getting up during the flight or doing anything I would consider suspicious.

I told them no, and couldn’t remember how many times the men had gotten up, though I was sure they had both gone to the bathroom in succession at some point during the flight.

They had done some background check on me already because they knew I had been to Venezuela in 2001. They asked about my brother and sister and asked about my foreign travel. They asked what I did during the flight. I told them I didn’t get up at all, read, slept and played on my phone (in airplane mode, don’t worry). They asked about my education and wanted my address, Social Security, phone number, Facebook, Twitter, pretty much my whole life story.

Again, I asked what was going on, and the man said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn’t say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?

All three were later released without charges and, according to Shebshi, with apologies from the officers. She concludes her long recall of the incident:

In the aftermath of my events on Sept. 11, 2011, I feel violated, humiliated and sure that I was taken from the plane simply because of my appearance. Though I never left my seat, spoke to anyone on the flight or tinkered with any “suspicious” device, I was forced into a situation where I was stripped of my freedom and liberty that so many of my fellow Americans purport are the foundations of this country and should be protected at any cost.

I believe in national security, but I also believe in peace and justice. I believe in tolerance, acceptance and trying–as hard as it sometimes may be–not to judge a person by the color of their skin or the way they dress. I admit to have fallen to the traps of convention and have made judgments about people that are unfounded. We live in a complicated world that, to me, seems to have reached a breaking point. The real test will be if we decide to break free from our fears and hatred and truly try to be good people who practice compassion–even toward those who hate.

I feel fortunate to have friends and family members who are sick over what happened to me. I share their disgust. But there was someone on that plane who felt threatened enough to alert the authorities. This country has operated for the last 10 years through fear. We’ve been a country at war and going bankrupt for much of this time. What is the next step?