AIDS Issues Update: Features:
PACHA is Coming Up Rosie?
New PACHA board smiles for the camera (Perez is in white)
When the new President’s AIDS Advisory Council members were sworn in this week, the group included many well-informed and respected advocates, researchers, doctors and people living with AIDS, a welcome departure from less diverse panel from the Bush years. It also included actor Rosie Perez, who the PACHA membership list cites as “actor, choreographer and director.”
While no one questions Perez’s commitment to the cause, there was a collective, skeptical “Hmmmm?” among many AIDS advocates. Will Perez be choreographing the official PACHA dance?
“What expertise is she bringing to the table? Does PACHA need celebrity status to be effective in its work?” said Charles Long, who said he was speaking as a person living with HIV and not as a representative of his organization, New York City AIDS Housing Network.
But Oscar Lopez, a spokesperson for the Latino Commission on AIDS, which has long worked with Perez, defended the choice.
“Will she be able to offer the same perspective as as an executive director or someone in the field 24 hours a day? Probably not. Will she have some insight into what might help? Absolutely. And she can serve as an example to other Hollywood folks,” Lopez said.
The star of Do the Right Thing and White Men Can’t Jump‘s mother died of AIDS, and she has long advocated on behalf of Latinos with AIDS. She served as the moderator of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy forum. In a 2007 interview with the Update, she was well-versed on AIDS among Latinos and the crisis in Puerto Rico. “I’ve done a lot of work with the Latino Commission on AIDS, and we keep saying, ‘Why are the numbers rising when we’re trying to doing anything we can?’ I remember telling Dennis deLeon, “They have the information, but we need to change the way we deliver the information.”
And maybe PACHA needs a public relations boost. Although influential during the Clinton Administration, PACHA was largely ceremonial during the Bush years, and there is hope that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, to whom PACHA reports to, will heed the influence of the panel. PACHA’s role is to work with the Secretary and provide information, advice, and recommendations on domestic and global HIV/AIDS policy issues to the President. PACHA will also work with the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) and will play an important role in providing input for the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
Your inside source for in-depth activism news is updated daily by Staff Writer, Julie Turkewitz
