The first person I ever voted for was Ron Kirk in the Democratic Primary for Texas Sentator. He won the party nomination but lost the Senate race to John Cornyn- more about this below.

Awesome things about Ron Kirk:

• He was the first African American Mayor of Dallas. During his tenure as mayor, Kirk earned the reputation of being a coalition-builder, managing to keep the always-tumultuous Dallas City Council and Dallas School Board together. Under his leadership, he proposed the “Dallas Plan,” a vision for the next 25 years, which included the controversial Trinity River Project, a $246 million plan that called for constructing a network of parks and highways in the flood plain of the Trinity River. Under his leadership he also pushed the construction of the American Airlines Center, whose opening he oversaw in 2002.
• ’94 Worked for Ann Richards as Texas Secratary of State.
• Graduated from UT Law and is now a very successful lawyer and lobbyist for Texas Energy Holdings LP
• ’04 was in the running for DNC chair

This is the letter I wrote him a while ago and he wrote me back!

Mr. Kirk,

Hello. My name is Donna Welles and i know you are a very busy man but
I wanted to write and tell you how sorry I was and still am that you
did not win the senatorial election a few years ago.

You were the first person I ever voted for. I worked on Mark Strama’s
campaign a few summers ago and I got to talk to Molly, a woman who
worked on your fundraising team. She told me you went to LBJ High
School. I did too!!

Every time I read about something Cornyn does I get frustrated,
knowing that it could have been you there doing so well. I looked you
up on wikipedia.org and it said you worked for Vinson and Elkins. I
simply wanted to write to thank you for trying and to tell you that it
just broke my heart when you lost. I hope so much that you and your
family are well.

His Response:

Donna – thank you for your very kind note, and your efforts on my behalf.  hearing from friends/suppporters like validates my decision to run for the US Senate. keep the faith and please continue to be involved.

fyi – i am from Austin and attended Austin Public schools, but graduated from John H. Reagan H.S.   thanks for your note.  rk

Final Thoughts- I just never read anything bad about Ron Kirk. He’s obviously a capable public official or he couldn’t have been elected mayor of Dallas. Dallas is notorious for being conservative and corrupt. As JFK said when he landed there, “We’re entering nut country.” My uncle worked as a lawyer in Dallas while Kirk was the mayor and said the city had never been better run. John Cornyn, the guy who won the seat, is about as disgusting as the Republicans get. Kirk’s race got lost in Tony Sanchez’s run for Governor. Sanchez spent more than anyone ever had but still lost the race because his oil roots made his motives suspect to Democratic voters.

Donna here. I am in the process of figureing out where I want to go to law school. If anyone has any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

I’ve attached a spreadsheet that shows all of the schools in the top 100 that I think would fit me right now. I’ve included their rank nationally. I have several criteria.

I want to work for the government when I get out of law school, I don’t want to work for a law firm at all. At some point I would like to work with NGO’s or PAC’s. Remember I speak Russian and like to travel and just want to serve my country and its people the best way I can.

Criteria:

1) I would like somewhere not in a big, fun city because I get distracted and want to go explore. So not NYC, not San Fransisco or Boston or anywhere I’m going to feel bad about missing out on while I’m studying.

2) God Bless them, but the Californians just drove me nuts. And by the same token I think I would rather stay in the south or midwest so I don’t have to deal with culture shock while I am studying. I don’t want to be the most conservative person in the room while at the same time being the most liberal of my classmates at UT. I think I need to be around conservatives so I am reminded why I am not one and I can’t get rid of this hatred of organic food and sushi. Also, I would like to learn how conservatives think so it is easier to outthink them. Also, I’m tired of people not caring about football.

3) I would rather have somewhere cold than really hot, but that’s not that big of a deal.

4) I am very seriously thinking about doing a joint degree, ie JD/MA in Public Affairs or Russian Studies. Maybe a JD/MBA.

-> I don’t know how much a graduate degree in Russian would help me. I already speak the language, lived there for a year, and wrote my honors thesis on current Russian politics. Although it seems like the Rand Foundation and places like that want you to have a graduate degree if you want to do research for them. Maybe I could learn another langauge besides Russian like Ukranian or continue studying Polish.

-> My dad went to the LBJ school and he’s been telling me I should do a Public Affairs degree if I want to work for the government. Indiana University has a Public Interest program that ranked higher than the LBJ school and it is especially good at non-profits. Indiana also has one of the best Lingustics programs in the country. And I have family there.

-> An MBA is appealing to me because I like how it would diversify my resume. It seems like you can do anything you want if you have a JD/MBA. I like the idea of learning how the private sector operates. I understand that they usally want you to have a few years experience in business before getting your MBA by itself. Does anyone know if that applies equally to a JD/MBA program? The websites say that it isn’t mandatory so I don’t know.  

5) I am seriously thinking about going to Tulane so I can be in New Orleans and watch it rebuild.

Schools I am most interested in are:

(In no particular order)

-Alabama

-Indiana

-Maryland

-Texas

-Tulane

-Georgetown, GW, American U

And less so in:

-South Carolina

-Wisc-Madison

-Iowa

-Vanderbilt

-UVA

Thank you so much for your time.

Yours,

Donna Welles

I got a new basset hound. I named him Singletary after the Bears Middle Linebacker. He’s a tri-color and he looks so different than walter.  he really acts like a line backer because he uses his big shoulders to push walter around. he puts his head down and charges like a bull. And his eyes are scary like Dick Butkus.

So now my hounds are Walter (Payton) and (Mike) Singletary. They’ve been working on the play book in the pre-season and today they mastered the ‘draw’. Singletary got a nutri-grain bar out of a box, and walter ran up from behind, stole it out of his mouth without it touching the floor and ran off with it. Of course Sweetness is a great blocker too but his real gift is his intelligence in running, especially the reverse around the bench. He does need to work on his stiff arm though.

I need to take a picture of them and send it to the real Mike Singletary. Remember Walter wrote me back when I was little and sent an autographed picture. Maybe Samurai Mike will too! And remember, Samurai Mike went to Baylor (that’s for you amanda!, go bears!).

“I’m Samari Mike and I’m big and bold. Give me a chance and i’ll stop em cold…..we’re just here to do the superbowl shuffle.”

Donna

Galina’s grandma comes from Bulgaria for half the year and speaks Russian and cooks. =)

So with Lauren dead, and Eliot gone, and the move back, and law school and everything else…I just haven’t been really wanting to leave the house much. I’m been having so much fun with my parents. I’ve been helping my mom on her summer school at UT.

 So I have decided to move in with a family friend, Galina, down in south austin.

      The first AIDS case in Russia was registered in 1987. By the end of the twentieth century there were only about 20,000 cases out of a population of 145 million people. (3) A superpower and member of the esteemed G8, one might have thought Russia would have been prepared for HIV/AIDS as the world watched HIV/AIDS spiral out of control in Africa and the Far East. However, “out of prudishness, intolerance, and soviet-style pigheadedness, [Russia’s] response was criminally lackadaisical.” (8) Rates have nearly doubled every year since 1998 (3) and almost overnight, a disease which was formerly confined to IV drug users and sometimes commercial sex workers had generalized into Russia’s population as a whole. Moreover, the infection rate could be up to four times that of reported figures due to various factors explained presently.

      Four factors are most adverse in putting Russians in touch with prevention, healthcare, support, and treatment.(3) First, Russia lacks an adequate administrative infrastructure to facilitate such programs. Poor understanding of HIV/AIDS is not just confined to the populace as a whole but is common also among health professionals. Further, economic and social gender differentiation increases women’s vulnerability to infection. Finally, stigma and discrimination against people with AIDS, especially against women, leaves HIV+ persons fearful of more than just the physical aspects of the disease. What has resulted is an increase by a factor of over a hundred the number of teens infected with HIV with the fastest growing HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women. (3) 
 With regard to Russia’s homegrown fight against AIDS, “political will and resources, both human and financial, are lacking.” (7) One need only take a cursory view of HIV/AIDS spending in Russia to see the large contrast between the large amount of money coming from abroad to that allocated by Russian legislators and tax payers. In 2006, funding from the Global Fund and the World Bank increased spending in Russia on AIDS programs by a factor of ten. (3) Dismal domestically generated funds result from an already overstrained Russian healthcare system that faces perhaps the worst figures of heart disease of all time, anywhere. Smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, violence, and a harsh climate are just a few factors that contribute to an average life expectancy for men of 59 and around 70 for women. Such figures resemble sub-Saharan African nations more than they do a European nation. Also, past legislatures have been reluctant to further burden the healthcare system by spending money on a disease that mostly affected drug users and prostitutes.

      One important thing to keep in mind when examining foreign aid for AIDS programs in Russia is that often social conservatives from the west find eager Russian converts when the fall of communism left a moral/religious vacuum in the region. Worker solidarity and the cry of the proletariat went silent when the cold war ended. Many Russians resented the Orthodox church for collaborating with the communists but retain its socially conservative roots. The result is that foreign donors meet little resistance when they insist upon abstinence programs instead of teaching safe sex or handing out clean needles. Also, many Russians see the United States as the leader in AIDS treatment and figure that if America’ official stance on prevention is abstinence, then it must be the preferred method.

      Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) historically have had a hard time working with the xenophobic Russian people and government. Most real work dealing with HIV/AIDS occurs at regional AIDS centers across the country. Local activists say that these regional centers avoided working with NGO’s until 2006 when they were pressured to do so by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. One of the first things President Vladimir Putin did after being elected in 2000 was to stop the Peace Corps from working within the country. The World Bank has offered Russia a $145 million loan for Tuberculosis and AIDS treatment but the loan is pending Russian approval. (7) It seems as though Russian officials are more interested in preserving the image of a powerful Russia than they are in accepting help from abroad to build one.

       The fall of the USSR prompted a major economic transition from communism. The result was a major decline in health expenditures and life expectancy. What follows is a rapid decrease in the quality of health professionals who are knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS. During a study of two regions, Nizhny Novgorod and Sverdlovsk, patients were asked to evaluate the doctors who treated them for HIV/AIDS. “Across both Nizhny Novgorod and Sverdlovsk, people living with HIV/AIDS- men and women, intravenous drug users, and [those recently infected]- universally expressed dismay at their treatment by medical practitioners in the course of the diagnosis, care and support, and treatment.” (3) Neither region seemed to provide better care than the other.

       Although mistreatment of those infected with HIV/AIDS was fairly uniform, in some specific cases pregnant women faced additional discomfort and discrimination. Personal stories of two women illustrate such scenarios. Both HIV+ women were pressured to abort their pregnancies because they were told it would be impossible to deliver healthy babies. The first woman was told her baby would be born dead. When she went to another doctor, she was told the fetus was already dead. Finally, she borrowed money from her parents to see a private doctor, who helped her deliver a healthy child. Another woman did abort her pregnancy after she was pressured. After learning of other women who had delivered healthy babies, the next time she became pregnant she waited until the fetus was eight months old before she consulted a doctor. (3)

      Poor standards for healthcare started during testing, for which regional centers claim they provide pre- and post-test counseling. In neither region did anyone report receiving pre-test counseling. As one young woman in Nizhny Novgord reported, many who tested positive went into a state of shock, 

“When I tested positive, I was completely shocked. I was told to go see a counselor. When I met the counselor, she said: ‘You are infected HIV. Please be advised that knowingly spreading HIV is a criminal offense under Russian law. If you have unprotected sex and spread the virus, you will be incarcerated. Sign this document to show that you have understood.’ That was all the counseling I got. When I got in the hallway, I thought I would faint. I didn’t know anything about ARV’s [anti-retrovirals]. I found out about them only last year when I was in Moscow.” (3) 

Unfortunately the particular hardship women face in confronting the disease is not confined to their medical treatment. 

      Until recently, the AIDS virus was largely transmitted through intravenous drug use. Throughout the 1990’s, 80-90% of people who injected heroin were HIV+ and a study taken in St. Petersburg showed that 70% of intravenous drug users were men. (1) In 1992, gay bars became legal in Russia. Women who became commercial sex workers in order to buy heroin and homosexual men acted as bridge groups into the general population. In the Siberian city of Irkutsk, a study showed that 70% of new HIV cases in women were transmitted through sexual intercourse. (1) In 2005, 43% of new cases throughout Russia were found in women and over two-thirds of those were through sex. (1)

      Commercial sex workers who service men on their commutes to and from work served as an important bridge population into the general population. Many of these men would return home to their wives after having unprotected sex with intravenous drug-using prostitutes. Condom use in Russia is very unpopular and often people don’t even have access to condoms that function properly. Among married couples, condom use is even more rare. So married women are extremely vulnerable to contracting HIV from their husbands. As has already been stated, HIV/AIDS rates are growing fastest among pregnant women. In this section, the vulnerability of women to economic and social pressures to remain in such relationships will be examined.

      There are two man ways unequal social and economic status affects women’s access to HIV services. First, their unequal earning power in the workplace makes them more susceptible to poverty. Over fifty thousand adults in St. Petersburg alone are homeless. (1) Paul Klebnikov wrote in his book, Godfather of the Kremlin, that throughout the 1990’s around three million people died premature deaths from malnourishment and poor health conditions. Poverty was a reality in Russia even before the ruble crash of 1998, when inflation invalidated the bank accounts of Russians across the board and wealth was confined to only those who possessed capital in some form besides Russian currency. Women stay with their husbands, often in the face of physical and psychological abuse, because they fear they cannot support themselves on their own. This is especially true for women with children. “In this way, economic dependence and fear of poverty drive women to remain in situations that endanger their health and restrict their access to HIV services.” (5)

      Further, women across Russia who became HIV+ reported rejection and, in some cases, violence from their husbands once the illness became known. One woman in Nizhny Novgorod was beaten severely by her husband, who soon abandoned her to raise their small child alone. Another woman, this time in Sverdlosk, said that her husband became violent and depressed upon learning of her HIV+ status until she was forced to leave. “Domestic violence and the fear of domestic violence restrict women’s options when they seek care and treatment for HIV and AIDS.” (3)

      Social stigma and discrimination affects most HIV+ people but two factors leave women particularly vulnerable, especially those who contracted the disease through sexual contact. First, many Russians associate HIV/AIDS with intravenous drug use. “The high prevalence rate among injecting drug users, the emphasis on them in ‘targeted’ HIV interventions, and the virtual absence of public awareness campaigns all contribute to the perception in Russia/AIDS that HIV is an ailment that afflicts drug users but not the general populace.” (4) Many young women who acquired HIV through sex feel uncomfortable at support groups which are frequented largely by drug users, especially when they are held in regional ‘narcological institutes’. (4) Such women also are subject to demands from their doctors for a list of all those with whom they shared needles. If doctors make such a conclusion, members of the general public can hardly be expected to act with more knowledge. Finally, the emphasis on abstinence programs instead of teaching safe sex leaves women more vulnerable to contracting a disease which is biologically four times more likely to infect women during sex than men. (6)

      So what should be done to help curb the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in Russia and to give those already infected the care they so desperately need? One idea is to make AIDS a women’s issue. There is already an effective infrastructure in place to deal with other women’s issues such as domestic violence, trafficking, female poverty, gender discrimination, etc. Such organizations may be invaluable to touching women who would otherwise be out of reach of HIV/AIDS programs. Another idea is to broaden the target of interventions to more than just drug users in an effort to ease the public perception that HIV/AIDS is a drug users’ disease. (2) Third, a national, umbrella organization should be put into place to coordinate HIV/AIDS programs which would effectively build HIV/AIDS infrastructure nationwide. Finally, doctors need to be educated immediately so the rest of the public can follow.

BIBLIOGRAPHY  

Aral, Sevgi, Janet St. Lawrence, et. al. “Commercial Sex Work, Drug Use and Sexually Transmitted Infections in St. Petersburg, Russia.” Division of STD Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dec. 15, 2004, pp. 1-16.  

Amirkhanian, Yuri A., Jeffrey A. Kelly, et. al. “Evaluation of a Social Network HIV Prevention Intervention Program For Young Men Who Have Sex With Men in Russia and Bulgaria.” Center for AIDS Intervention Research, 15, (3), 2003, pp. 205-220.  

Burns, Katya. “Russia’s HIV/AIDS Among Women and Problems of Access to Services.” Problems of Post-Communism. 54.1 (Jan./Feb. 2007), pp.28-36.  

Frost, Lizz and Vladimir Tchertkov. “Prisoner Risk Taking in the Russian Federation.” AIDS Education and Prevention. 14.B (2002), pp. 7-23.  

Klebnikov, Paul. Godfather of the Kremlin. New York: Harcourt, 2000.  

McCrae, Robert R., Paul T. Costa, Jr. et. al. “Personality Correlates of HIV Stigmatization in Russia and the United States.” Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging, NIH, DHHS, December, 2005.  

Morrison, Stephen J and Jennifer G. Cooke. “The Second Wave of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic.” A Conference Report of the CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS. Dec. 2002, pp. 39-45. 

“Sick to the Soul.” The Economist. Sept. 9, 2006, pp. 51-52.

Donna

He was a really smart guy who had a very clever sense of humor. I always liked that he befriended nice people who didn’t have many friends just because that was in keeping with his sense of justice. It also worked out for me because I didn’t have many friends back then and he was someone I enjoyed spending time with.

We would go to a movie together almost every weekend. It did not matter how late we were to the movie, Shane always wanted to stop and play a game in the theater’s arcade. I didn’t mind this and we sort of worked it out that in exchange, I always I got pick where we sat. And when we saw scary movies, he was nice about letting me hold onto him at the tough parts. We’d then go back to his house and talk in his room until his mom would drive me home. He was my closest friend for a long time.

I don’t know what happened to him, but he must have started hanging out with a bunch of losers. In 10th grade I get this call from his mom telling me that he’d been arrested. Shane and another guy had robbed a Blockbuster Video of $3200 in cash using ski-masks and knives. They’d had a friend who worked there and so they knew when to go in order to get the most money.

The trial was a long process but he ended up having to serve 2 years in the juvenile center in Gainesville, TX which is just south of Oklahoma. He was lucky that they allowed him to serve his entire time as a juvenile so that when he turned 18 he’d get out and his record would be cleared.

I think that was the worst moment of my life up until that point, when I got that call. I just could not believe what had happened. I felt so helpless and so sad and so alone. I could not understand why it would have occurred to him to even consider doing something like that.

But Shane of course didn’t physically hurt anyone during the robbery, he even said ‘Please sir’ and ‘Thank you, ma’am’ as he took the money. And he was the only of the three guys to get in trouble because Shane refused to tell on his friends, which was also in keeping with his sense of justice. It all seemed so much like Shane in a very screwed up way.

My mind is filled with so much. My memory enables me to recall virtually every conversation in detail with anyone I have ever met. This has usually been of help to me because I try to listen a lot and learn from people, I love to talk to people, all sorts of people. In Los Angeles it was so odd to me at first because nobody spoke with the homeless people. In Texas everyone talks to everyone at least to say hello and I never really stopped that when I moved away.

But now these memories, all of them - every memory I have of anything – haunts me to the point where I can barely sleep at night. I’ve been thinking lately that I wish I could just forget everything I have ever done, everyone I have ever met, just so I won’t think about it anymore.

I think a lot of what bothers me so much is how humiliated I feel for everything I have ever done or said. And I think the reason why I feel this way is that the profundity of Lauren’s death makes me realise how trivial so much of it was. I can’t believe I cared so much about the things I did when everything seems so pointless and painful now.

If I had to do it over again I would just have not said anything, ever. And the worst part is that it’s not so much that I wish I would have listened more but that I wish I would have known that nothing anyone else said mattered either.

I don’t like that I feel this way. I know intellectually that at least what other people do is not pointless, that their lives are worth the effort they put into them and that the world is better off because of this effort.

So I think what I want to do is write down what I can about my life so that I no longer have the sole responsibility of safeguarding these memories. And there certainly is no point in writing them to myself, I already remember them. All I can hope is maybe some good will come out of this.