Hope + Action: Rally in DC Heralds Obama's Promises to Address AIDS

It was cold like January in DC last Thursday—the atmosphere fittingly freezing for our community inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama as the first true AIDS president, a theatrical enactment to seal the promise of January 20th. 

More than 1,000 people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS, their allies and service providers along with leaders in public health and human rights mobilized from the cities with communities trying to heal deadly epidemics, including New York, Philadelphia and our Nation’s PEPFAR-worthy capital.  There were also representatives of the deep South, including from the CDC's hometown of Atlanta, struggling to cope with the spread of AIDS and decrepit healthcare systems. 

It was the first time in time memorable that AIDS activists rallied in Washington not to risk arrest in demand of human rights but to welcome in a hopeful time and to offer our partnership in delivering the promises made in the Presidential campaigns to create a National AIDS Strategy and fix PEPFAR.  Along with plans for this just and long over-due policy agenda, we carried with us the loving, fighting spirits of our community members lost through stigma and official neglect of this disease.  We represented the generations of this two-decade crisis and the many facets of our movements to fight it.

From the leading ACT UP banner through the thick river of folks through its straggling end of people winded, wheel-chaired and just plain chatty, chants came and went.  But as we approached the White House and again later in front of the transition team offices, people began the unmistakable drumbeat of HOPE HOPE HOPE. 

The Obama transition team rose to the occasion, sending a representative into the sea of grey skully hats with “Hope” on the fronts and the matching stickers bobbing on sleeves and chests of puffy jackets.  She took up the staticy electronic megaphone, thanking people for coming, flustered when we chanted her name.   She wavered in and out, but even those who couldn’t hear knew she was the embodiment of the promise of a meeting to deliver clear needs and priorities to the incoming Administration.

Totally worth a day of $1 hoagies and months of schedules crammed with conference calls; surely the organizers can catch up on all that sleep lost! 

Some of the videos and news stories capture other messages from the day.  If you were there then let us know what it made you hope by commenting on this blog here.  Even if you weren’t there—chime in, we want your hope too!

Love, Vanessa