February 8, 2008
KICKING A. VS. GETTING YOUR A. KICKED
likely funding and policy victories
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Who's kicking, who's getting kicked?
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Opinion article by Christine Campbell, Director of National Advocacy and Organizing at Housing Works
As you may have heard, President Bush released his FY2009 Federal budget last Monday. Many of us have read a whole bunch of press releases (and if you haven't, see the article below) that detail how disappointed the HIV/AIDS community is with what the President is recommending for domestic AIDS, while the global support appears to be a bit more promising.
We've seen the analysis: Flat funding for Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS and the National Institutes of Health, hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, even cuts to front-line HIV prevention initiatives. Ryan White got a token $1 million funding increase but was targeted for drastic cuts for treatment and the AIDS Education Training Centers.
But I've got one question: Where were domestic AIDS activists when the budget was being developed?
Domestic-focused groups did polite visits to budget and legislative offices in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, our colleagues in the global AIDS community were spread out all over the country, bird-dogging influential lawmakers from both parties—whether they happened to be running for President or not.
Domestic AIDS activists did polite sign-on letters on funding, but only gave tepid, verbal encouragement—no bodies—to the Rally to End AIDS in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last month.
Global activists—after months of begging for on-point domestic questions they could add to their bird dogging efforts—were with us in force, marching in the bitter cold.
The result: Global activists are getting more of what they ask for, and more of what they need. And domestic AIDS programs are suffering a seventh straight year of savagery.
Next week the House Foreign Affairs Committee will mark up the U.S. Global HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008—and it's a remarkable victory for global AIDS activists and their allies.
The bill includes $50 billion in funding over five years—20 billion more than President Bush had sought—and improves existing law in a number of ways, including increased flexibility for developing country programs and a better focus on the vulnerability of specific populations, including women, youth, and men who have sex with men. The bill provides dramatically increased technical and financial support for strengthening health systems and supporting training of health care workers; increases funding of scientific research for new vaccines, microbicides and other prevention technologies, and calls for stronger coordination of efforts across U.S. agencies on HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria programs.
You seen anything like that lately on the domestic AIDS side? Oh, the last reauthorization of Ryan White? Puh-leeze. No new funding, less accountability, new barriers to efforts to fight AIDS in minority communities: That's not improvement. The Early Treatment for HIV Act? Nope. Hasn't been taken up by either house, hasn't been publicized by the leadership, and doesn't look like a priority.
We domestic AIDS activists and advocates need to change our strategy. We need to get our message out: We need to make sure that the voices of people living with HIV/AIDS are heard everywhere in the country. We clearly can't rely on professional inside-the-Beltway groups that aren't getting results and aren't making progress.
I believe it's time to go back to our roots and employ the strategies that got us some the early wins that changed history and saved millions of lives. It's time to take the fight to legislators and policymakers all over the country, and it's time to ramp up demands for real progress in Washington.
When's the last time you staked out a key decision maker and demanded accountability from them on an important issue? For hundreds of global AIDS activists, the answer is just last week, or just last month. Those events were just the latest in a structured, sustained and successful multi-year advocacy and organizing strategy that includes a broad range of key constituencies and powerful links between activist groups in the field and DC-based advocates. And that's why they're celebrating the prospect of real victory in Congress next week.
People, we can't do this from our desks. If you want a national strategy to end AIDS in the U.S., if you want real action on HIV prevention and treatment funding and policy, if you want universal health care, you're going to need to get out there and build a movement to get them. Domestic AIDS folks don't have one right now—but global AIDS folks do.