Communities win HIV emergency aid

It has taken a struggle to obtain every penny of resources to fight HIV/AIDS. As always, those most affected lead the way.

So it was that a grassroots struggle waged by Boston’s Healing Our Land organization claimed a victory on June 29 when the Boston City Council allocated a new $100,000 line item for HIV/AIDS in the city’s budget to serve Boston’s communities of color. This followed a declaration of a state of emergency over a year ago. (Workers World, March 30, 2005)

The campaign for this resolution was led by community activist Rev. Franklyn Hobbs of Healing Our Land, with support from many Black churches, especially the Greater Love Tabernacle Church. Addi tional support came from the Boston AIDS Consortium, Multicultural AIDS Coali tion, Veterans’ Benefit Clearing house, Project U-Turn and the Interna tional Action Center.

Boston joined Baltimore, New York, Houston, Alameda County in California and Alabama as one of the few areas to declare such a state of emergency.

“This is a rallying call for us to come together and to work together in a coalition to have greater collective impact,” said Rev. Hobbs.

Mia Campbell of the Women’s Fightback Network spoke for many at the press conference: “We are 25 years into this epidemic. Our people are dying day by day. We have yet to identify. I sat on the President’s National Advisory Committee on AIDS and we know what needs to be done but politics stops it from being done. I want to see this go beyond declaring a state of emergency on paper. The NAACP a few years ago said the ‘house is on fire.’ What are you going to do, stay there and watch the house burn? Hopefully my daughter won’t be coming up here 25 years from now and we are still declaring a state of emergency.”

Gerry Scoppettuolo spoke for the International Action Center and the Stonewall Warriors/IAC: “The government is spending $440 billion on the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and we don’t have enough money in Massachusetts to buy $18 HIV rapid-test kits. We could be finding dozens of new cases every day on Dudley Street. The disproportionate impact of HIV on people of color has been caused by the historic disproportionate targeting of resources.”