He fell face-down on the pavement of Valley Avenue. Luckily an ambulance was driving by, and he was rushed to Greater Southeast Community Hospital. Doctors told him the problem was a combination of things: the drug use, not taking his HIV meds, the general stress of his life. The doctors didn't think he'd make it, Daniels says, and started asking for his next of kin.
But which next of kin?
His 17-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son who rarely saw him? The mother of his kids, Gerildine, who was too afraid to let him in her house? His siblings, so frustrated that they allowed him in their homes only to take showers?
That did it.
"It wasn't that I felt sorry for myself," Daniels says, recounting that day. "I was a blamer for too long. Blamed my family. Blamed Gerildine. I cursed everybody out.
"When you don't face who you are, or what you're dealin' with, or what you're doing, then, yeah, you're a blamer. Because the bottom line is it all starts and ends with you."
Daniels went into detox. It wasn't the first time, but it was the last.
Organization Man
What's your first name?
What's your mother's first name?
What's your date of birth?
These are the questions the participants must answer in the 1992 Winnebago Adventurer. The information is typed into a laptop computer on the middle table of the vehicle, while Daniels or part-time health educators Henry Mallory and John Turner pack syringes and needles in a brown paper bag. Turner, a robust man at 67, usually distributes fliers outside, urging participants to get tested for hepatitis C.
The motor home is meticulously organized, and Daniels keeps it that way. Shelves are labeled and relabeled. There are bandages, alcohol pads, towelettes, lube, needles and vitamins, in addition to bag after bag of syringes, condoms, dental dams and brochures that hang next to the front dining table: "HIV Mom-to-Be," "AIDS in the African American Community," "Hepatitis C," "S Is for Speed, C Is for Cocaine." The room in the back -- with a table, VCR and color TV -- is for testing and counseling. There are clothes back there, too, and food (fried or baked chicken, mixed vegetables, soup and salad) is given out on Tuesday and Thursday.
"This is more than just an exchange site," Daniels says.
There are no freebies. To get a clean needle, you have to hand over a dirty one. The "apples" and "blue heads" are the most popular, used by addicts who've been shooting for some time, while "groins" are for addicts who've been shooting for years. With no more "good" veins, the addict shoots wherever there's an artery. The neck. The groin. "That can get real dangerous," Daniels says of injecting into the groin. "You miss. Bam! You can bleed to death."
Daniels has been with Prevention Works! since it started five years ago. There used to be a full-time driver, but finding a dependable driver is tough. So he drives and supervises the Winnebago himself.
He does the work in the only city in the United States barred by the federal government from using its local tax dollars to fund a needle exchange program. In October 1998, Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed into law, a ban on government funding for any group that operates a needle exchange program for D.C. drug users. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), the House of Appropriations Committee member who authored the ban, went further, threatening to revoke government funding to any agency that exchanges needles. Such a program, with four full-time staffers, was run by the Whitman-Walker Clinic, the largest provider of AIDS services in the Washington area. That program, exclusively funded by local dollars, turned solely private, and Prevention Works! was authorized by the D.C. Department of Health on Dec. 2, 1998. To be sure, the Whitman-Walker Clinic didn't want to endanger its government grants.
The organization's other full-time employee is Paola Barahona, the executive director, who works in the main office on 14th Street NW, busy with phone calls and e-mails and fundraising. The current budget is $393,000, "the most ever spent in this city for needle exchange," Barahona says. Inevitably, in this line of work, questions arise: Is giving clean needles encouraging drug use? Is it preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases?
"By handing out needles we encourage drug use," Tiahrt said in 1999. "It does not help the children of Washington, D.C., to take taxpayer money to fund these programs."
