World AIDS Day observed

World AIDS Day was observed Dec.1 in Boston at the Community Church of Boston at an event organized by Dorchester’s Healing Our Land and its director, Minister Franklin Hobbs.

Rev. Franklin Hobbs, Dec. 1. WW photo: Liz Green

Communities as diverse as Healing Our Land in Boston and National Mandela in South Africa commemorated the victories we have won and the work ahead of us in fighting and conquering the AIDS epidemic. The deadly virus has taken untold millions of lives.

Healing Our Land—a faith-based organization combating the spread of AIDS in the Black communities of Boston—has made major strides in reaching out to poor African-American communities in Boston.

It succeeded in moving the Boston City Council to declare an “HIV State of Emergency” for people of color in Boston in 2005, making it only the sixth city or state to do so. And whether it was the Rev. Keith Magee, president of Healing Our Land Inc. and Pastor of Berachah Church, or, on the international stage, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, we saw compassionate Black leaders reaching out and mobilizing the masses on World AIDS Day.

They know that if they do not, the current leaders of the world will continue a lackluster effort in stopping the spread of a deadly disease that is preventable.

Mandela’s leadership on the issue contracts starkly with that of President George W. Bush, who has reduced funding for AIDS in the U.S., despite the rising numbers of those becoming infected in communities of color.

For example, Black women represent 75 percent of the new cases of HIV infection in the U.S. Imagine if you will, Mandela as president of a socialist South Africa or a socialist U.S. AIDS would by now be a footnote in history.