“I’m asking about leadership,” journalist Terry Moran insisted of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Chairman of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Moran was interviewing Jackson for a Primetime special on the AIDS crisis in Black America.
“There are now hundreds of thousands of Black Americans with this disease and there are activists who say ‘where were you.’ Why hasn’t there been a mass mobilization of PUSH Rainbow, of NAACP, Urban League, Congressional Black Caucus…around this crisis?”
And Jackson, through eyes that read his apparent dismay from being caught off guard, could offer no resolution.
Ironically, two years ago at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Phill Wilson posed this same question. As founder and executive director of the Black AIDS Institute (BAI), he vividly recalls the lack of Black programming and involvement that he and Dr. Helene Gayle (then director of the National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention at the CDC) observed during the gathering of HIV and AIDS advocates. “We were angry,” Wilson said. “Angry at the lack of response from the leaders of our community.”
Wilson’s anger transformed into action. He proceeded to organize the Black Mobilization Campaign, a historic movement uniting traditional African American organizations (including but not limited to civic, political, religious, social service, media, education, and civil rights), in an effort to bring an end to the devastation that HIV has wrought on the Black community.
The impact of his action was witnessed by thousands of people from across the globe during this year’s XVI International AIDS Conference held in Toronto. Leaders from several of Black America’s most revered institutions came together to initiate a plan of action to reduce HIV and AIDS rates among African Americans, increase the number of Blacks within the community who know their HIV status, and set mechanisms in place to ensure that people who are positive have access to adequate health care.
“People are going to say that Black people have gotten together before to talk about how we are going to do this,” said Phill Wilson at a luncheon held by BAI during the conference. “How is this effort any different?”
It was a rhetorical question which he proudly answers himself. “Well, we are talking about a mass coordinated movement across organizational structures. We have historical leading institutions that are leading the effort and we’ve set time-specific, realistic, and measurable goals.”
Each of the organizations has committed to appointing a national AIDS director, setting annual testing goals, and incorporating HIV and AIDS into their regular programming and agendas.
“Now is the time for us to face the fact that AIDS has become a Black disease. It has invaded our house, and our leaders must accept ownership and fight it with everything we have.” said Julian Bond, Chairman of the National Associate for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and member of the newly formed African American Leaders Delegation of the BAI.
Other delegates on the roster included U.S. Congresswomen Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), the Rev. Edwin Sanders of the Metropolitan Interdenomination Church in Nashville, Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Hughes and his wife, entertainer Sheryl Lee Ralph, Grazell Howard from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Balm in Gilead founder and CEO Pernessa Seal, Saundra Goodridge of the National Urban League, Cheryl Cooper of the National Counsel of Negro Women, and film producer and director Bill Duke.
Though both the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton were unable to attend the conference, each submitted the support of his respective agency as well as his personal commitment.
“Because of poverty, ignorance and prejudice, AIDS has been allowed to stalk and kill Black America like a serial killer,” remarked Rev. Jackson, with far greater articulation than he was able to muster during the interview with Moran.
“But we have also been a compliant victim, submitting through inaction. We have a lesson to learn from our gay brothers and sisters who fought back when AIDS attacked their communities two decades ago. They started to save themselves, in part by using strategies from our civil rights playbook. It is now time for us to fight AIDS like the major civil rights issue it is.”
Members of the delegation participated in a variety of activities and think tanks throughout the week of the conference—including a media roundtable that gathered nearly 30 Black journalists and media persons for a series of in-depth conversations and tips on covering the crisis in the media. The charge is now for all of the Delegates and journalists to take what was shared and learned back home to their respective organizations and positions, and implement the work of the group at large into their organizational frameworks.
A call to action was also made to young Black Americans by 24-year-old Myisha Patterson, National Health Coordinator for the NAACP. “We have to pull our young people into this so that when our leaders such as Julian Bond are ready to resign, we are there to step up.”
Patterson and others in attendance liken the mobilization to warfare.
“We have to mobilize and take this over as if it were a war against our people,” said Congresswoman Barbara Lee. “And we have to challenge our elected officials.” |
