AFRICAN AMERICAN HIV/AIDS PREVENTION MOVEMENT
LAUNCHED AT KNOCK AT MIDNIGHT SUMMIT
from Hub City News, Volume 5, Issue 24
LOS ANGELES - To “inspire, engage, educate and mobilize” was the mantra of the “A Knock at Midnight” HIV Prevention Summit held June 4 at Holman United Methodist Church.
The purpose of the summit was to layout a community drafted plan and make recommendations for the next step in fighting HIV and AIDS in the African American community.
The title for “A Knock at Midnight”comes from a speech penned by Martin Luther King in 1958 which is based on Jesus’ illustration of a neighbors response to a persistent friend seeking bread at midnight. The sermon speaks to helping our neighbors. We have the responsibility as African Americans to help our neighbors and therefore save our children and community, stated Maisha Robinson, National Council of Negro Women inc. View Park Section.
The summit drew a cross section of community leaders, residents, faith leaders and organizations who came together to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic that is raging through the African American community like an out of control wildfire.
To date, African Americans represent more than half of the new HIV/AIDS cases in America. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), 70 percent of the new cases are among African American youth while African American women make up nearly 67 percent of the new HIV/AIDS cases and African American men make up 47 percent of the new cases.
The CDC also reports that 38 percent of the more than half a million people who have died from HIV were African American. While African Americans make up only approximately 13% of the US population, one half of the estimated new numbers of HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the United States in 2004 were for African Americans.
During the morning session, the crowd of almost 200 received valuable information through a presentation from Dr. Gail Wyatt, Ph.D., associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute, and panel discussion featuring Daniel T. Booker, health communication campaign manager Center for Disease Control, Mario Perez, director- Los Angeles County Office of AIDS Policy & Programs, Stephen D. Simon, city of Los Angeles AIDS Coordinators Office and Amelia Cobb, director the Partnership to Reduce Intimate Partner Violence & HIV.
However, it was the presentation of Professor Erylene Piper-Mandy, from the Department of Human Development at California State University, Long Beach, who stirred the group into action.
Refusing to take to the stage, Piper-Mandy preferred to walk among the audience to deliver her message.
“The reality of it is when HIV/AIDS became a serious problem it became a problem in somebody else's community, with somebody else's folk, and when it did all kinds of money went in. That's why those people, with whom the problem originated, their instances of HIV/AIDS are decreasing. It's just that yours is not. Look at the research.
“Take any problem you’ve got and tell me where you are on the top of the list. You're not on the top of the list for no problems, that’s why HIV/AIDS is on the rise in our community because everything is on the rise in our community," she said as she whipped the crowd into a frenzy of amens and applause.
Piper-Mandy told the audience that in order to fight the disease the African American community must develop a “protracted sense of struggle.”
“You and I have to engage in a protracted, day by day, year by year emphasis and passion in this area,” Piper-Mandy said urging people not to be afraid to talk to family and friends about HIV and AIDS.
Piper-Mandy implored the crowd to mobilize like in the 60’s to combat the problem because “the same process will work this time. This is how we’ve got to work,” she said.
The afternoon session was a working session where the audience was divided into four groups-men, women, youth and faith based-and charged with the task of coming up with clear workable strategies and goals to get the African American community mobilized behind the issue of HIV/AIDS. A task that was not included in the original Knock at Midnight conference held in 2003.
“We had very bright minds at that summit that came up with a very comprehensive document that said here are the challenges, here are the gaps, here is how we think we can fix it but there was no timelines, there was nothing there that said whose going to fix it,”said Carrie Broadus, executive director of Women Alive, one of the sponsors of the event along with the National Council of Negro Women-Southern California Area and the California State Conference of the NAACP, and Partnership to Reduce Intimate Partner Violence and HIV.
“This time we’re saying we’ve identified these populations or sub populations and here are some timelines when we think we can get it fix,” she said
One of the planned goals laid out was for a men's sexual health summit where African American men can come together “in a safe place to talk, share and discuss” sexual health.
“By creating that space we want to expand, deepen and inform ourselves about what we can do to help stop this crisis,” said Greg Akili, field director-Region I NAACP, who headed the men's group along with George Gant, founding member of the HOPE ministry at Holman United Methodist Church.
The men’s group plans to meet on June 16 at the Minority AIDS Project, 5149 W. Jefferson Blvd. Los Angeles, to begin laying out plans for the summit. Akili said all men are welcomed to become involved. Other actions planned include an effort to get the faith-based community more active by utilizing a new approach.
“It has been difficult to get the ministers and the faithbased community to rally around HIV/AIDS. So we plan to focus on rallying them around overall health programming (diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, etc.) of their congregations that will include an HIV/AIDS component,” said Broadus.
A poster and media campaign targeting the youth is planned along with a women's conference that will focus on getting women to advocate around the social and economic barriers to them being safe from not only HIV but also domestic violence and sexual assault.
Additionally, each person in attendance signed a “I promise to take action” pledge to get involved and engage the community by doing one or more of the following:
* coordinating a health fair featuring HIV/STD screenings at their church, business or other community events;
* distribute HIV prevention materials;
* recruit other community leaders into the HIV Prevention & the Health Justice Movement;
* actively participate in strategic planning to address HIV/AIDS in my community and/or
* conduct community outreach through education and distribution of health literature.
“I consider this summit to be a big success for the simple fact that we focused on population versus program. We focused on once again, inspiring, engaging, educating and mobilizing the African American community to address this issue.
“This is the beginning of a movement, a local effort that will be propelled to the national level. In the history of HIV and AIDS Los Angeles has been in the forefront coming up with innovative ways to deal with HIV. It just never happened in the black community. This is going to become the model to how we save black lives,” said Broadus.
To get involved and become part of the “Knock at Midnight African American HIV/AIDS Prevention Movement” contact Women Alive at (323) 965-9772.
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