DC

Stunning, to travel to the city where I had lived and had protested the Bush/Cheney ascension to power -- but instead to witness the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

The 8-year depression seemed to lift from the people of DC.  Around Union station and up to the Mall, makeshift stalls clustered in clearings hawking Obama t-shirts, First Family bags, a huge painting of Obama and Michelle as divine Egyptian royalty.  Friends who live there were hosting giant slumber parties of out of town guests.  Troops of kids from DC schools held hands and took each other’s photos, their teachers gleeful.  Chatty Obama-enthusiast taxi drivers.

The city is finally eager to be home to our Nation’s elected leader and the entire community of appointees, staffers and supporters who transform the restaurants, the schools, the fashions, the streets, the fabric and rhythm of the city by their doings.  The people of our Nation’s capital also suffer one of the highest HIV rates in this country, on par with worst epidemics in Africa.

Two million people were on the Mall, according to official estimates.   We walked for two hours through a tunnel and past the Tidal basin.  Three young women walked together with elbows linked, Kenyon flags flapping off their coat shoulders like superhero capes.  AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black women in America in their age group.  In their home country of Kenya, HIV rates for young women ages 15 to 25 are 5 times those of their male counterparts. 
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Wednesday, December 17 is the 6th annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, initiated by the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP).  In cities across the U.S., Canada and Europe, and in Skopje, Macedonia, and Sydney, Australia, sex workers will remember their dead and show their movement’s strength at vigils, demonstrations and film showings.  For a list of events across the country and the world, visit http://swopusa.org/dec17/locations.htm.

This year, there will be a first-time-ever national march in Washington, DC.  Sex workers and their allies will gather in Franklin Square Park (14th St. NW and I St. NW) for a rally, and march to the Department of Justice to read the names of sex workers who have been murdered in the past year.

“Sex workers experience a disproportionate level of preventable violence,” said Kelli Dorsey, director of the Washington DC community organization Different Avenues, in a press release supporting the protest.  “People of color and transgender people are overwhelmingly targeted.  This discrimination is too often ignored.”<!--break-->

Arrest, deportation and police abuse, as well as the stigma and violence sex workers often experience from clients, in their workplace and in society, also put them at risk for HIV. It’s hard to demand your client use a condom when your first priority is preventing him from raping or killing you.  It’s hard to carry condoms while working on the street if cops use them against you as evidence. 
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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.   read more »