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September 14, 2006
THE IAC BOILS OVER WITH PROTESTS
 Activists at the Women's March, Opening Day of the International AIDS Conference |
Over 24,000 people attended the International AIDS Conference in Toronto in August, but not all of us came to listen quietly to redundant celebrity speeches. After we raised the money to travel and stay in Canada (thanks for eating all that chocolate!), 50 folks from Housing Works and our allies joined activists from around the world.
We demonstrated throughout the week, highlighting critical gaps in the response to AIDS and massive failures to act despite clear evidence of what we need and what works. Spectacular occupations, demonstrations, and disruptions drew the eye of the global media to some of the most flagrant perpetrators, including Abbott Laboratories and the United States Government.
"Abbott, your booth is empty, just like your promises!"
Abbott, the behemoth pharmaceutical company, paid for a booth in the exhibition hall, but they never set up displays because they knew they would be confronted by activists demanding equitable prices for AIDS drugs. On August 15, ACT UP, Health Gap, Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) and Housing Works took over Abbott's booth. For an afternoon, the space became the gathering point for activists. Housing Works Youth Advocacy Group leader Johnny Guaylupo educated passersby from behind a pile of "AIDS Isn't Over Until It's Over for Everyone" buttons. Behind him, HW President Charles King sat at an appropriated Abbot cafe table and tall chair, typing away on his laptop. In another corner, activists in white lab coats prepared to demonstrate the need for health care workers in the fight.
A corporate sponsor of the conference, Abbott had representatives in Toronto, running sessions, sponsoring events, and spinning for the media, but at least one point they were holed up in the security offices. So- activists sent out a search part, looking high and low through large magnifying glasses, calling
"End AIDS Now!!"
SGACers joined activists from Housing Works, the American Medical Student Association, ACT UP, and CHAMP to demand the U.S. government play its role in creating universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010. On August 16th, the Toronto Royal Mounted Canadian and U.S. Consulate police escorted us to the U.S. Embassy from our home-away-from-home at Saint Paul Trinity United Church. The U.S. was not alone. The Counsulates of Britain, India, Thailand, Japan, China and South Korea also received visits during the week from activists frustrated over the lack of international progress since the 2001 and 2006 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on AIDS declarations to fight AIDS around the world.
Through negotiations, Dianne Williams, an African-american woman living with AIDS, Robert Cordero, HW Vice President for Development and Government Relations and Johnny met with U.S. Consul General John Nay laid out their concerns about the U.S. government's regressive AIDS policies.
"I told him my story," says Johnny, who tested positive at age 17 as a gay Latino Catholic school student in the Bronx whose only sex-ed had been admonishments to stay abstinent until marriage. "Around the globe there's so much money going to abstinence-only," he says. "That's one of the reasons I got infected. We need to teach comprehensive sex ed, with information about condoms."
"Don't Talk to Me about Sewing Machines! Talk to Me about Rights!"
Fresh from success at the U.S. consulate, many of the activists joined sex workers and their supporters from over 21 countries in a noisy and brightly colored (mostly from those fabulous turquoise t-shirts) march that wound its way from the Stiletto lounge in the Global Village to a small park out front of the conference center. Leading sex worker activists from India, Uganda, the Philippines and our very own New York City demanded that governments respect the human rights of sex workers. Melissa Ditmore of the Network of Sex Work Project in New York explained, "Sex workers are part of society and not adjacent to it." In addition to the fundamental rightness of it, she noted that treating prostitutes as part of mainstream society is also good public health.
Activists fought for a local safe injection site and claimed India's independence from the pharmaceutical industry and chided the Toronto Prime Minister Stephen Harper for failing to show-up at the conference at all. They took over the South African government's booth. They took over the escalators, symbolically blindfolded to demonstrate the ignorance compelled by the Bush Administration's support for abstinence-only-until-marriage programming. Overall, activists generated a hot cacophony about the most immediate and under-addressed components of the AIDS crisis. "That's where the energy of the conference comes from," said Jodi Jacobson, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), as the second full day of the meeting came to a close. "The real issues bubble to the surface because advocates put them there, not because the conference sessions reflect them."
Download video clips of actions and other news from the activist front, www.timetodeliver.org,, the independent, uncensored blog from the IAC. All week activists posted, including the Harm Reduction Coalition's Allan Clear, Community HIV/AIDS Organization's Julie Davids, the NY State Black Gay Network's Mark McLaurin, AIDS Foundation of Chicago's David Munar and ACT UP Philadelphia's Waheedah Shabazz-El.
ONE CITY, ONE ISSUE: TWO SPEECHES
Download the concluding remarks of Stephen Lewis the United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, here.
Download the concluding remarks of Gregg Gonzalves, AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa, here.