The non-profit AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) pharmacies dominate the market when it comes to HIV and STD treatments. Serving more than 800,000 clients worldwide, published reports claim AHF, “is a $1.3 billion operation that makes about 80 percent of its revenue from selling drugs through its pharmacies.” According to its website, AHF provides a full range of pharmacological services by, “Pharmacist, Technicians and Nurses that are specialty trained, with oversight and consultation from the AHF Chief of Medicine and AHF provider staff. All are specialty trained and have National Certifications in their specialty area of expertise.” Apparently, AHF pharmacists and nurses have an unexpected area of expertise–running political campaigns supported by their CEO Michael Weinstein.
According to the “Housing Is A Human Right” website, AHF pharmacies and thrift stores are being used to promote a rent control measure in California.
The website urges readers to “Sign The Rental Affordability Act” at an AHF facility:
The rent is still too damn high in California! It’s fueling our housing affordability and homeless crises. But you can do something about it. Go to an AIDS Healthcare Foundation location and give us your signature to place the Rental Affordability Act on the 2020 ballot.
The Rental Affordability Act allows local governments to expand their rent control policies to housing that is more than 15 years old; allows local governments to limit the rent increase for a new tenant who moves into a vacated unit; and exempts the owner of one or two homes from any rent control law.
With rent control, we can rein in unfair, excessive rents — and keep people in their homes. Find an AHF location near you!
The site lists twenty-two AHF pharmacies and Out Of The Closet Thrift Stores the Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco areas. According to AHF, each Out Of The Closet houses a full pharmacy.
According to AHF, its accredited pharmacies offer culturally aware personalized services without discrimination. So why would AHF allow its pharmacies to be used to collect signatures from anyone off the street? Or worse, why would AHF allow its patients to exposed to political opponents of the Rent Affordability Act?
RADICAL CEO FIGHTING LANDLORDS SINCE HE WAS TEENAGER
As REDBROWARD revealed last December, when he was just fourteen years old, Michael Weinstein joined a “group of activists occupying” a New York high-rise development. Weinstein and friends were opposed to the gentrification of their Brooklyn neighborhoods.
According to an April 2017 exposé in the New York Times Magazine, Michael Weinstein’s an “ex-Trotskyite” who founded one of California’s first gay communist organizations. After his move to Los Angeles in 1972, Weinstein started the “Lavender And Red Union.” In 1977, a socialist newspaper reported the Lavender And Red Union, “a self-proclaimed “communist’ gay liberation group…recently embarked upon a cautious ideological turn toward Trotskyism.” The socialist paper said the group’s call for a “permanent revolution” was “a clear break with the Stalinist/Maoist/New Left milieu from which we emerged.”
Weinstein went on to become an editor for “Young Spartacus,” the official newspaper of the Spartacist League. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Young Spartacus produced the typical pro-Communist screeds. Headlines of the Young Spartacus blasted US attempts to undermine the Soviet Union or Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, while other stories praised unions and left-wing political groups.
By the late 1980s, Weinstein’s activism turned to the growing AIDS crisis. According to the NYT Magazine, Weinstein’s AHF, Inc. currently has a $1.4 billion dollar budget equaling the budget of Planned Parenthood.
According to activist Peter Staley, a Weinstein critic, AHF’s noble mission to help those with HIV/AIDS is hurt by Weinstein’s political agenda. Staley told the New York Times Magazine, “A.H.F.’s problem is that once it created the largest AIDS empire on the planet, it started using that power for nefarious purposes: Michael Weinstein’s twisted political views.”
WEINSTEIN PUSHES RADICAL AGENDA
Also in December 2018, Weinstein discussed his “radical” political agenda with Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont). Weinstein discussed his “radical” plans to change Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. Weinstein was representing his Healthy Housing Foundation, the same group seeking to build a 680 unit building near downtown Fort Lauderdale. Weinstein discussed his ideas alongside Sanders, actor Danny Glover and other far-left activists.
Michael Weinstein’s ideas were filled with the coded language favored by socialists.
Noting he is a world traveler, Michael Weinstein called Los Angeles the homeless capital of the world. “I have never seen more homelessness than in the city of Los Angeles,” Weinstein said. “It’s scandalous…shameful.”
Weinstein said, “We cannot treat shelter as a commodity.” He said housing is the number one economic justice issue and inequality issue in America. “People choosing between food and shelter…it’s scandalous.”
Weinstein placed blame on Democrats who “run the biggest cities in the country.” He said Democrat politicians have “been involved in the multi-billion dollar giveaways to the real estate interests.” Weinstein claimed a political contribution to council members or the mayor could allow a developer to build bigger towers. “All of it luxury,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein said citizens should not be happy with “crumbs” politicians give in the form of affordable housing. He said 1/3 of every new building should be set aside as affordable housing.
Weinstein spoke with Sanders about his failed plans to force rent control measures in Los Angeles.
Weinstein said we must secure “housing for Americans” and not foreign investors “who are moving their money from one despotic country.”
Weinstein admitted this “sounds radical but it’s doable.”
FORT LAUDERDALE AHF FACILITIES USED BY PROGRESSIVE GROUPS
Michael Weinstein told Bernie Sanders about his controversial micro-Housing building in Fort Lauderdale. Dubbed “Trantalis Tower,” the sixteen story behemoth is opposed by a large number of local residents. Weinstein mocked these residents:
We are attempting to build 680 micro units in downtown Fort Lauderdale right now. And you would think we’re trying to overthrow the entire government, Ok. It is so ugly and raucous, the opposition. This is in a non-residential area south of downtown Fort Lauderdale. We have to organize at the local level for sure.
Weinstein does not seemed troubled by strict Federal regulations prohibiting political activity by non-profit organizations.
In January, REDBROWARD exposed how AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) forged close ties to a local progressive group recruiting millennial political candidates. REDBROWARD exposed the New Leaders Council (NLC) role advocating for AHF’s planned sixteen-story low income housing tower in Fort Lauderdale. REDBROWARD obtained photographs showing numerous NLC events being held at AHF headquarters in Fort Lauderdale.
NLC leadership shilled for the controversial “Trantalis Tower” at a Fort Lauderdale meeting hosted Vice Mayor Ben Sorensen complete with a candlelight vigil. The vigil turned out to be nothing more than a made-for-local-television event orchestrated by AHF legislative affairs director Ebonni Bryant. She is the former NLC co-director.
After she passed out shirts and signs to the “protestors”, Bryant delivered AHF talking points to local television reporters.
In a post-meeting Facebook message, Bryant thanked several fellow members of the New Leaders Council (NLC) for their support.
Stephanie Rosendorf, another NLC alum, works as an aide for Broward County Commissioner Nan Rich. Rosendorf spread word of last Monday’s vigil via her official Broward County e-mail.
The NLC website lists Chadwick Maxey as the director of the NLC Broward chapter. Maxey, a senior property manger with Diversified Realty Development, spoke at last Monday’s meeting. Maxey said he was troubled by the lack of affordable housing south of the New River. While he never revealed his affiliation with NLC, Chad Maxey sat with Ebonni Bryant and other NLC members at the meeting.
During his 2018 campaign for the Fort Lauderdale Commission Chad Maxey received two contributions from Jason King, the former AHF lobbyist/legislative affairs director. In a December interview with the Sun-Sentinel, Mayor Dean Trantalis said Jason King introduced him to AHF CEO Michael Weinstein.
Last week, the Fort Lauderdale City Attorney declared the Trantalis Tower proposal violated numerous city rules and regulations. The local AHF director vowed to fight the City and residents. Michael Kahane told the Sun-Sentinel, “This is extremely frustrating in large part because it’s just a delay tactic, But it’s not going to result in this building not being constructed. We are going to do everything and anything that is appropriate and necessary to make sure this development gets built.”
Does this mean Weinstein will use the thirteen south Florida AHF pharmacies as the frontline in his battle against Fort Lauderdale residents?
