D.C. Is Dying
Activists at Friday’s rally
The grassroots AIDS organization D.C. Fights Back rallied outside Washington, D.C.’s city government offices last Friday, demanding an immediate plan of attack to deal with the District’s AIDS crisis.
Chanting “D.C. is dying!” 40 activists lay in the street pretending to be potholes, charging that the government made fixing potholes a greater priority than addressing HIV/AIDS, which hits three percent of the city’s population. The activists demanded D.C. develop a coherent response to addressing its AIDS epidemic within 40 days.
“Two weeks ago Mayor Fenty declared potholepalooza, an all-hands-on-deck approach to fix the city’s potholes,” said Christine Campbell, Housing Works Vice President of Advocacy and Organizing. “We’re just asking for the same concerted response to address the AIDS epidemic.” (The mayor wants potholes filled within 24 hours.)
D.C. Fights Back’s protest was covered on the Washington Post blog, Metro Weekly and News Channel 8.
Since the Washington Post first reported the new infection numbers last week, D.C advocates have been demanding that D.C. do more to address the rise in infections, including implementing comprehensive sex education in schools, which have already been written. Advocates also are stepping up demands that D.C. end the waiting list for housing for people with AIDS.
Not as bad as it looks?
There has been some backlash to the new report on D.C’s infection rates, including an op-ed by former Washington Post Johannesburg bureau chief Craig Timberg, claiming that comparing the rates of infection to West African countries is misleading. One of Timberg’s claims is that because the proliferation of antiretroviral medication in the U.S., people in the District aren’t dying at the same rates as people in less developed countries.
“Just because the epidemic hasn’t caused the death toll it has in Africa doesn’t mean that we’re not in crisis,” Campbell said. “Yes, we don’t have entire villages being wiped out, but we have neighborhoods and those neighborhoods are hurting.”
Posted on March 26, 2009 at 7:49 pm
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