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Maybe it’s a new day. Rise and shine and wake up! AIDS activism just may be arising in the developing world.
People and communities seem to only respond when they are personally and directly affected. It has always been that way. We don’t get angry until something adverse happens to us. Sometimes that anger gets translated into action, and sometimes that action forces real change. Name any civil rights movement and the motivation for action is based on hatred, stigma, discrimination, inaction, and lack of political will. The women’s movement began with mobilization of women, angered by oppression. Blacks in Africa rebelled due to apartheid. History has shown that as humans we inherently know to fight for what is right, and what belongs to us, if we are directly affected.
My own experience with direct action was with U.S. gay rights and later the AIDS movement, where gay men mobilized and reacted to stigma, inaction, and early graves. The ACT UP [AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power] movement was the most passionate and powerful time of my life. I became empowered to fight for change when my friends and lovers dying from AIDS were losing a chance at life. To this day I honor those days of fighting back and recognize that the significant improvements made in HIV research, treatment, and care are certifiably due to the AIDS movement. And I see the results in my own chance at living with AIDS for 19 years. And, I am still involved because AIDS affects my daily life.
But AIDS action has been stagnant in the U.S., at least for the last decade. It is the result of people getting what they needed. Treatments, care, better drugs. It is a result of an entitlement attitude. Now is a time that those of us who have been given a chance can reflect on the impact we had and wake up to inaction and apathy. We now have the opportunity to once again become involved if we haven’t been already.
But in other parts of the world people affected by HIV/AIDS have been suffering despite the advances made in the U.S. The infrastructure and capacity is simply not what it is in the West. Groups such as the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa have mobilized and have been enormously successful. Others are now strategizing as more treatments become available and the effects of better health care are being realized.
One of the most memorable moments I had at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto was the mass mobilization I witnessed from worldwide diverse HIV/AIDS groups. At the conference the world saw a microcosm of community action from disenfranchised and forgotten communities as diverse as Thai sex workers, MSM [men who have sex with men] in developing countries, African grandmothers of AIDS orphans, European people with AIDS, Southeast Asian treatment activists, medical students, Eastern European IV drug users, gay men from the West, Canadian AIDS activists, and so many others. I remember crashing the first international conference with other activists, and now we are allowed in the door.
The groups were fighting for diverse issues that made them angry enough to take action against South Africa’s AIDS policy, worldwide prevention policy myopia, lack of health care infrastructures—including adequate funding of health care workers, generic drug access in India and elsewhere, Abbott’s continued pharmaceutical greed, worldwide AIDS apathy and misunderstanding, inadequate funding for AIDS treatment in developing countries, inclusion of PWAs [people with AIDS] in decision making, stigmatization against sex workers, reproductive rights, worldwide HIV discrimination, disclosure, women’s rights, worker’s rights, and human rights. Pick an issue!
It was a wake-up call for me to see all this activity in Toronto from people with AIDS around the world. As a veteran of ACT UP and now an AIDS treatment educator and Positively Aware reporter, I cannot begin to express my amazement when an ACT UP banner was placed directly over the gaping wall of the media center at the conference so that the world’s cameras and laptops could capture the moment. I thought back to the early days of ACT UP and a smile of pride crossed my lips as I remembered the days when I would’ve been a part of the same kind of actions. It was one of those moments where I took a second to reflect on how lucky I am and how far we’ve come. But times have changed and the issues have only gotten more diverse, and more global.
The world is waking up to the reality of AIDS. It is hitting everywhere that action is the best policy. Only when people take a stand together can the status quo be changed. Lets just hope that all this worldwide hubbub is not too little too late. There is still much more to do and much more action to take. AIDS ain’t over and only getting worse as budgets shrink and the number of cases grow. Now is the time to band together, wake up, and get off the couch. Pick an issue! |
