L.A. AIDS Agency Plans to Speak With a Firmer Voice

A Latina doctor was there, imploring Eastside parents to put aside cultural taboos and talk frankly with their children about AIDS. A few gay activists were there, telling the hostile audience that their antipathy didn’t matter; what mattered was saving lives. The media were there too--print, TV, radio.

But when the debate over condoms and “safe sex” made an emotional stop at Roosevelt High School on Dec. 3, California’s largest nonprofit AIDS social service agency, AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), was conspicuously absent.

That has to change, said Leonard H. Bloom, APLA’s next executive director. From now on, he says, APLA will seek a leadership role in arguing why the Los Angeles Unified School District should make condoms available to teen-agers as a means of stemming the epidemic. APLA will also speak out on other issues, locally and nationally, he says.

“If APLA can’t take on a leadership role, I don’t know who can,” said Bloom, who will take over Jan. 6 as the agency’s top administrator. “I see APLA as one of the major AIDS organizations in this country and it has an opportunity, if not an obligation, to speak out on a national basis as well as a local basis.”

The 44-year-old native New Yorker is a veteran gay activist who began wearing bow ties while a young public defender to help his clients pick him out of a crowd. Bloom, a former chairman of the AIDS Action Council in Washington, is coming west at a time when public attention on AIDS has been heightened by basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson’s recent disclosure that he is carrying the virus.

With federal authorities estimating that 1 million people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) nationwide--including about 36,000 in Los Angeles County, according to health department estimates--the number of AIDS cases is expected to increase dramatically in the next few years. So far, the disease has claimed more than 125,000 lives in the United States.

“How do we prepare ourselves for these kinds of certainties? These are not questions any more, these are facts,” Bloom said in an interview at APLA’s Hollywood headquarters. “It’s an extraordinary challenge. It’s one of the things that excites me about this job and one of the things that frightens me.”

If Bloom transforms APLA into a more potent political force, it would mean an expanded agenda for an agency that has been known more for its food bank, dental clinic and an extensive volunteer program than for advocacy. By its own account, APLA provides direct services to 3,200 people afflicted with AIDS.

A new agenda, APLA officials say, would also help resolve some recent controversies. In succeeding Stephen Bennett as executive director, Bloom inherits an agency that was deep in debt only three years ago and now operates with a surplus and a $14-million budget. The reversal in its fortunes under Bennett was so dramatic that other local AIDS organizations accused it of hoarding community donations and spending too much on management salaries. Bennett was paid $150,000 in the final year of his three-year stint.

The fund-raising events and tighter fiscal controls installed by Bennett are now solidly in place, said Anthony Sprauve, APLA’s director of communications.

Bloom, who will receive a $125,000 salary in 1992, said he hopes to form “coalitions and partnerships” and end the feuding that has existed between APLA and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, as well as other community organizations.

“I don’t see AIDS as a competitive sport,” he said. “We need to work with other organizations to make sure the issue of AIDS is understood, that the information and education is available.”

APLA Chairman David Wexler said Bloom, chosen after an executive search that lasted more than six months, impressed APLA directors because of his experience as both an activist and as a former public health administrator.

From 1978 to 1980, Bloom served in the adminstration of New York Mayor Ed Koch as deputy commissioner for operations and legal affairs in the city’s Department of Health.

The years in the New York Department of Health, Bloom said, were very frustrating because of the need to cut services due to the city’s bad financial condition.

Alluding to APLA’s past financial troubles, Wexler said APLA directors were impressed by Bloom’s work in New York. “It’s one thing to manage when you have all the money you need. . . . But he operated very well under fire,” Wexler said.

In addition to chairing the AIDS Action Council, Bloom has been a board member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York. The agency is the nation’s largest community-based organization in terms of budget, staff and caseload, while APLA provides a broader range of services, Bloom said.

Bloom said APLA, while “firmly rooted” in the gay community, is well-suited to be an advocate for issues such as the distribution of condoms in schools because it has a more “mainstream” image than militant groups such as the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). ACT UP members angered many Roosevelt High parents by distributing condoms outside the school’s front gate a few days before the public hearing. A decision on the emotionally charged condom issue is expected early in the year.

“There’s a role for APLA and a role for ACT UP,” Bloom said. “I think both of us have important things to say.”