State of HIV emergency declared

When people with HIV organize and fight back, they move mountains. So it was on March 30, when the Boston City Council voted unanimously to declare HIV infection a “state of emergency” in the city’s communities of color.

The campaign for this resolution was led by a community activist, the Rev. Franklyn Hobbs of Healing Our Land, with support from many Black churches, especially the Greater Love Tabernacle Church. Additional support came from the Boston AIDS Consortium, Multicultural AIDS Coalition, Veterans’ Benefit Clearinghouse, Project U-Turn and the International Action Center.

Boston joins just a handful of other U.S. cities that have declared such a state of emergency.

Most of those living with the disease in Boston come from communities of color—where people struggling with HIV must also deal with cutbacks in food stamps, in Section 8 Housing vouchers, in homeless beds—and a recent 8.1-percent cut in basic federal Ryan White Title I medical care and support services.

Boston Medical Center’s Children’s AIDS Program, which mostly supports 74 children with HIV, lost its entire Ryan White Federal Funding this week. This program serves predominantly the children of women of color with HIV.

The day before the vote, the Rev. Edwin Burks testified at a public hearing on the resolution, saying, “We need housing, food, the basics—how are people going to take care of their own health-care needs?” He spoke openly of his own struggle living with HIV for over 20 years.

The Rev. Gene Eugene of the Multicultural AIDS Coalition spoke of his work in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood with homeless young gay men, who are especially at risk for HIV.

Boston AIDS Consortium Executive Director Ed
Rebe lin ski, who is HIV-positive, also spoke eloquently for passage.

During his time to speak at the hearing, the campaign’s sponsor, the Rev. Franklyn Hobbs, demanded increased HIV counseling and testing sites across the city, and a special line item in the city’s annual budget for HIV services.

Boston currently spends $1.7 million a year, or about $3 per person per year, to combat the disease—which infects 1,000 new people a year in Massachusetts. Last summer the city spent 10 times this amount to wine and dine delegates to the Democratic National Convention, and to construct barbed-wire pens to incarcerate protesters.

City Councilor Chuck Turner, political leader of Boston’s African American community, pointed out the severity of the problem among African American women and the need for more resources at a time the Pentagon budget is ballooning to $497 billion. He drew everyone’s attention to a banner displayed by the Stonewall Warriors demanding “Money for AIDS, Not for War” and declaring “No Pride in Occupation.”

A representative from the IAC spoke out against the $10 million an hour being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The denial of basic access to health care for the poor has brought the epidemic to a turning point in the United States. In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control released their Young Mens’ Study. The report showed that at the present rate of infection, a 20-year-old African American gay man can expect 40 percent of his peers to be infected by the time he reaches 30.

But evidence of a fight-back movement grows every day—from Boston’s HIV-positive-led HIV Call to Action, New England, to the national Campaign to End AIDS, which plans a massive March on Washington in October.

Mobilizing is under way for another “Money for AIDS, not for war” contingent at the May 1 “Troops out now, jobs not war” rally in New York City. For more information, contact IAC Boston, (617) 591-6793.