2010 International AIDS Conference Closing Remarks
Posted by , August 03, 2010 at 11:14pm
Educating thousands about HIV/AIDS in the U.S.
Housing Works’ National Field Organizer Larry Bryant helped close the International AIDS Conference last month, criticizing the U.S.’ domestic response to HIV/AIDS. Read full coverage of the ceremony here. Below is a transcript of his speech.
Vienna (July 23, 2010)
Good afternoon. My name is Larry Bryant, and I am a native Washingtonian. I am an African American, heterosexual and HIV positive since 1986.
I am proud to call home the next city and country that will host the 2012 International AIDS Conference. I am proud that my president, Barack Obama, signed a historic this year that lifted entry restrictions allowing people living with HIV & AIDS to enter the U.S. However, that is not enough – not by a long shot.
Unless unrestricted to all, eliminating bans which are born from fear, ignorance, and discrimination then we have accomplished nothing. Ending the travel ban was supposed to be a major step in destroying the stigma engulfing individuals around the world infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. All we have done is shifted it to other marginalized and criminalized communities: sex workers, drug users and ex-offenders. This only widens the gap between respect and reason. This ban is not just misguided, but sinister and stupid.
Mr. President and the U.S. Government, you must end the ban on allowing international sex workers, drug users, and ex-offenders to enter the country now.
If you do not end the ban, we will shame you at the 2012 International AIDS Conference.
My hometown of D.C. has an extraordinary opportunity as host city for the next International AIDS Conference. As the stage and backdrop of the U.S. epidemic and its response, we have a unique and challenging task to set a global standard. Before that can happen, however, the District of Columbia, currently led by Mayor Adrian Fenty, has a severe mess of an epidemic to address. If you have visited the Washington D.C. booth here in Vienna in the exhibition area, you have seen the images and bright shiny faces of middle class D.C. strolling across the National Mall. Those images are in sharp contrast to the D.C. I know and call home.
Devastating poverty, rising living and survival costs, and under-funded, under-resourced and overwhelmed community-based organizations have contributed to an HIV avalanche of epic proportions:
- 3 percent of all of D.C. residents or 20,000 individuals are HIV infected (75 percent are African American).
- Severely reduced funding has either cut or eliminated prevention, education, care and services to women, young people, drug users and the mentally ill.
- Also, over 700 D.C. residents living with AIDS are on waiting lists for safe and supportive housing.
How dare we in the nation’s capital – capital of the free world – allow those most marginalized and most in-need to go without? What kind of example does that set for us and for all? Mayor Fenty and our city’s leaders must do better.
Mayor Fenty, if you don’t implement a comprehensive plan to end D.C.’s HIV/AIDS epidemic, at the 2012 International AIDS Conference we will shame you.
I am also proud to represent the United States, which has one of the planet’s most diverse populations. We are a tapestry woven through over 200 years of perseverance, passion and persistence. Yet despite our history—or maybe because of it—we allow social justice issues to drive wedges between us. Racism and homophobia, particularly in the South, are almost an acceptable and encouraged norm. Sexual violence, violence against women, girls and transgendered individuals go unseen and unheard. Inequities and education, criminalization, and access lead to the disparities in health, resources and hope.
These deficits must be meaningfully addressed if we are to truly end this epidemic. The Obama National HIV/AIDS Strategy must be more ambitious. Right now, over 2500 individuals wait for life-extending and life-saving medications across the country that they cannot afford. At this rate, many will die even before the National HIV AIDS Strategy is implemented. We must fully fund and end the AIDS drug waiting lists once and for all. We must also implement a plan to improve access to quality care, particularly in rural areas.
President Obama, if you do not set truly ambitious goals for your National HIV/AIDS Strategy and implementation plan, we will shame you at the 2012 International AIDS Conference in your backyard.
We as a community have plenty to do to prepare for 2012 in D.C. and in assuring the ‘delivery of accountability.’ I look forward to getting started today. Thank you.
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