Community meeting confronts HIV, racism & war

Over 90 mostly African-American community members came out to an urgent HIV State of Emergency Town Meeting on Feb 24 in Boston to help mobilize a grass-roots movement against the spread of HIV.

Brenda Stone Browder WW photos: Liz Green

Inevitably, racism, war and class struggle were also on the program.

Faced with over 7,500 cases of HIV/ AIDS in Boston, the HIV State of Emergency Committee, headed by Rev. Franklin Hobbs, organized the town meeting held at the New Life Restoration Temple in Dorchester. Community support was at an unprecedented level in Boston as many AIDS service organizations, elected officials, anti-war organizations and longtime leaders filled the pews of the church.

Greg Eugene

Rev. Hobbs opened the program by proclaiming the need for an independent, community mobilization against HIV: “When they give you money, they say: ‘Don’t do this. Don’t do that.’ We need an independent movement that will fight to keep HIV incidence down, despite the racism, sexism, classism and phobias that are out there.”

Referring to a recent newspaper article about homeless youth, Rev Hobbs pointed out: “There are homeless youth on the streets who are even trying to get infected in order to get desperately needed housing. But we say, whatever you are—gay, lesbian, transgender, straight—we love you and value you.”

Brenda D. Larkin

Rev. Hobbs had led a grassroots movement that convinced the Boston City Council to declare an HIV state of emergency in Boston’s communities of color in March 2005.

City Councilor Charles Yancy took the microphone to declare: “Far too many people are dying of HIV and dying in silence. There should be outrage at the loss of so many people to AIDS.”

In addition to Rev. Hobbs, many other HIV-positive people of color and their supporters who had come to join the HIV State of Emergency Committee filled the church. Community leaders stood up one after the other in the church to give examples of the oppression the group is now confronting.

Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves

Malkia Hendricks, director of Women Connected Affecting Change, from Roxbury, told how their organization had “lost a house that was donated to us for homeless women because [mostly white] people in the community didn’t want women with HIV and their male friends around.”

Greg Eugene, chairperson of Boston’s Annual Bayard Rustin Day Breakfast, stood up and urged the congregation to get on the bus for the March 17 March on Washington: “We understand the war killing people in Iraq and the war on people in Roxbury!” Eugene is a volunteer with Boston’s Troops Out Now Coalition, which was a sponsor of the Town Meeting.

Rev. Franklin Hobbs

The keynote speaker, Brenda Stone Browder, addressed the particular crisis of heterosexually acquired HIV facing African-American women, who are 20 times more likely to have HIV infection than white women.

Supporters at the Town Meeting included AIDS Action Committee, Fenway Community Health Center, Womens Fightback Network, Codman Square Health Center, John Snow Institute, Whittier Street Health Center, Troops Out Now Coalition, Mayor Ken Reeves of Cambridge, Mass., Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, the Boston Living Center, Emmanuel Temple, Mount Olive Kingdom Builders, New Life Restoration Temple, the Community Church of Boston and many others.