HIV activists organize fight back
By
Gerry Scoppettuolo
Boston
Published Mar 16, 2005 1:13 PM
People living with
HIV/AIDS and their supporters gathered March 5 at the Arlington Street Church in
Boston to declare war, not on the people of Iraq or Afghanistan, but on the high
prices for drugs and government censorship of effective HIV-prevention
programs.
Call to Action, a grassroots group of activists, organized the
event to initiate a renewed, militant response to the continual under-funding of
HIV programs and the criminal redistribution of money to the war in Iraq.
Speakers and participants at the conference came from the Cam bridge Health
Alliance, the Multicultural AIDS Coalition, the Southern New Hamp shire HIV/AIDS
Task Force, the Fenway Community Health Center, Local 26 Hotel Workers Union,
the Inter na tional Action Center from both Providence and Boston, and
GayLab.
From left to right: James Adams, GayLab; Gerry Scoppettuolo, IAC; John Powell, So. NH AIDS Task Force; Gail Beverley, Fenway Community Health Center.
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Glenn Williams, an African American gay man living with HIV,
struck the key note of the meeting: “ I have had tremendous support to be
alive today. When I see these resources being cut, I see people where I was at
10 years ago and I worry about them. We can’t allow funds to be cut.
Immigration policies make it hard for some people to take an HIV test. If people
are deported, they are getting a death sentence.”
Ed Childs, chief
shop steward of Local 26 Hotel Workers, expressed greetings from the union
president, Janice Loux, and also spoke out against HIV immigration policies.
“Our members are immigrants that have come from countries that have been
colonized and occupied and are deeply affected by AIDS. “
These
sentiments were echoed by Gail Beverley, longtime HIV-prevention worker at
Boston’s Fenway Community Health Center, who runs a group for people
newly-diagnosed with HIV. “For people with HIV,” she said,
“it’s a struggle every day to pay the rent and put food on the
table”.
The Boston region received an 8.1-percent cutback in
critical federal Ryan White Title I funding just days before Call to
Action’s event. This amounted to over $1.2 million. The Boston Living
Center, which provides the most direct services to people with HIV in greater
Boston has had to endure cutbacks to its basic services, as have other AIDS
Service organizations. Bush’s Fiscal Year 2006 budget also calls for a $14
million cut in the AIDS Housing Program (HOPWA).
Many speakers at the
conference pledged to carry the Stonewall Warrior’s “Money for AIDS,
not For War” banner to the March 19 anti-war demonstration in New York
City. Call to Action explicitly condemns the Iraq war and the $10 million per
hour it steals from necessary human-needs funding. One of the workshops at the
conference documented that Merck, Abbott, Glaxo-Smith-Kline and several other
pharmaceutical manufacturers of HIV antivirals had after-tax, after-investment,
after-research and development net profits of $63 billion in just two years
(2003 and 2003).
The conference concluded with planning to organize
militant and visible opposition to the current crisis in the next few weeks
starting with a contingent at the March 19 Anti-War March in New York City. For
more info: Gerry Scoppettuolo (781) 273-1689, [email protected]
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