26 AIDS activists arrested in Capitol rotunda - and HIV travel ban TO FINALLY BE LIFTED

by: Keori

Thu Jul 09, 2009 at 14:33:02 PM EDT

UPDATE: Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) had some choice words in support of the cause, and there is good news concerning the HIV travel ban.

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This morning AIDS activists from all across the northeastern U.S. effectively shut down the Capitol rotunda around 10 a.m. EST while protesting the Obama Administration's lack of action on the global AIDS crisis. 15 women and 11 men chained themselves together, and chanted "clean needles save lives," shocking visitors and prompting arrests. Capitol police had arrested everyone by 10:45. From the press release:

The activists decried the Obama administration’s failure to make good on a range of AIDS campaign promises including his pledge: to lift the federal ban on funding syringe exchange, to fully fund lifesaving global AIDS programs, and to fully fund AIDS housing programs in this year’s budget. The activists demanded Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Congressional leadership fix President Obama’s flawed budget proposal.

“HIV is not in recession,” said Omolola Adele-Oso of DC Fights Back. “So why are we bailing out the bankers with $9 trillion, but breaking promises to fund life-saving AIDS programs in the US and around the world at a fraction of that cost?”

This is how it's done. 26 people got arrested in an effort to call attention to the continued marginalization and passive genocide of our brothers and sisters with HIV/AIDS.

The activists also denounced the administration’s failure to lift the ban on syringe exchange funding. “Thousands of people have died in the past decade because clean syringes aren’t available,” said Jose De Marco, an HIV+ member of ACT UP Philadelphia and Proyecto Sol Filadelphia. “President Obama, who many of us worked to elect, promised to follow the science and lift the federal funding ban on needle exchange, but his budget explicitly included the ban. Now it’s up to Congress to show real courage where the President has not.” (emphasis not included in original)

These folks came from Health GAP, Housing Works, DC  Fights Back, and ACT UP Philadelphia. Amanda Hess at the Washington City Paper got details on the legal support available to the group.

A call to the D.C. Housing Works offices found all three regular staff members currently tied-up in the legal scuffle. Intern Summer Sterling, who is “just here for the summer,” was on-hand to answer the phones. Sterling confirmed that Larry Bryant, who serves as a co-chair of DC Fights Back and a National Field Organizer for Housing Works, was under arrest; two other Housing Works employees were busy monitoring the process and handling media inquiries. Though Sterling wouldn’t comment on how involved she was in the planning of the protest, she did say that she “one-hundred-percent expected [the activists] to be arrested.”

Housing Works’ Christine Campbell, who had accompanied the activists to the protests, confirmed that at least four locals were among the 26 arrested activists. She, too, registered little surprise with the Capitol Police reaction. “We took that risk,” she said. “We knew we were going to be chaining ourselves together in the Capitol, so.”

Campbell says that the arrest “went very smoothly”—especially after police realized that Campbell was on-hand as “legal support for the group.” At that point, Capitol Police cleared the rotunda, issued a warning to the protesters, and then arrested them.

According to Jessica Brady at Roll Call, the Rotunda remained restricted during the early eleven o'clock hour; tour groups were being diverted around it, and Capitol police sent out an alert at 10:35 a.m. advising all staff to avoid the area.

Not only has the Obama administration spat on these AIDS-related campaign promises, travel restrictions on those with HIV STILL have yet to be lifted despite the change in federal law. We know President Obama is a coward, and that the Dems are just as spineless. SHAME ON THEM!

**UPDATE: HIV TRAVEL BAN REPORTED TO BE LIFTED BY THE END OF THIS YEAR. Details below the fold.**

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a session for mark-up of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee budget this afternoon, followed by a floor vote. QUICKLY call your Senator's office and tell them to VOTE TO UPHOLD PEPFAR AND SUPPORT THE GLOBAL AIDS FUND!! Call 202-224-3121 and ask to be put through to your Senator's office.

Rick "Hawaiian Shirt" Warren can get his congregation to donate money to burn condoms and persecute gay men in Uganda, courtesy of his BFF "Pastor" Joe Ita at Ukpabio's Liberty Gospel Church, but Congress and the Obama Administration can't manage to carry out their promises to fight AIDS? WTF?

Rep. Jim McDermott's response below the fold, along with some good news. This man deserves our gratitude.

The Hill has more reporting seven hours after the protest. Jim McDermott's words cut right to the core of conservative thinking on HIV/AIDS patients, and by extension, LGBT people. Since, you know, AIDS is Gawd's way of killing queers.

“I don’t know if that’s the most effective way to do it, but it does draw public attention to the issue,” said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a longtime proponent of HIV/AIDS-related causes and funding for needle-exchange programs, in an interview...

McDermott stressed the importance of overturning the ban on funding needle-exchange programs, saying that such a program is cheaper than the cost of treating HIV/AIDS patients who contracted the disease by using unclean needles.

“I think with the cost involved with someone getting AIDS, needle-exchange programs are actually cost-effective,” he said. “So conservatives ought to be for it. What they’re really saying is that we want them to die. And we want them to spend a lot of money while they’re dying.”

"...we want them to die. And we want them to spend a lot of money while they’re dying."

That, ladies and gentlemen, is it in a nutshell. Conservatives want HIV/AIDS patients to die, because well, if they weren't gay or black women or IV drug users, well, God wouldna smote them with AIDS in the first place! There's your compassionate conservatism. OWN IT, bigots.

Now for the good news. According to BBC reporting, the travel ban on HIV+ people coming into the U.S. is set to be lifted by the end of this year.

Well. About goddam time. Here's how it happened:

Paul Thorn, a British AIDS expert who himself is HIV+, was barred from entering the United States last month when he attempted to come into Seattle for the Pacific Health Summit, where he was scheduled to speak. Mr. Thorn admitted his HIV+ status on his visa entry form, and was subsequently denied entry into the country. He wrote a heartfelt and impassioned statement which was read in place of his speech, a letter which was heard by Rep. Jim McDermott. Rep. McDermott wrote to the Obama Administration's HHS secretary calling for a repeal of the ban. Last week HHS began the work of actually changing federal regulations to comply with the Federal Code.

The US Senate voted to overturn the rule, which has been in force since 1987, in July last year [2008].

The provision lifting the ban was part of a bill granting some $50bn in funding for the fight against HIV/Aids throughout the world.

"What we wanted to do was get it moving in the right direction," Mr Thorne, 38, from Brighton, said.

"If the US wants to hold events like the Pacific health summit, and the International Aids Society wants to hold its conference in Washington DC in 2012, you need people from the HIV community there."

With the help of Congressman McDermott and Results - an international lobby group - the ban is set to disappear by the end of this year.

Mr. Thorn's statement included the following words: "The US government gives people who have HIV one of two choices. The first is to actually be dishonest on the visa application or visa-waiver form, commit a felony by lying to US immigration, and become a criminal. The second choice is to be honest, and have a visa rejected because you are considered an undesirable person, and unfit to enter the US. To my mind either being a criminal or an undesirable isn't much of a choice. I don't want to be either."

Criminal. Undesirable. Many of us here know how it feels to be tarred with that brush. I'm VERY glad that Mr. Thorn and other HIV+ people are finally being treated as the law-abiding, decent human beings they are. I'm so very grateful to Rep. McDermott for fighting for this. Pam, does this constitute a teeny tiny percentage of equality at the federal level once it happens?

I'm taking this news of the ban lifting with a grain of salt and a heaping dose of cynical caution. This is the Obama Administration we're talking about. I'll believe the ban is lifted when I see the regulations change accordingly. Still, it gives me some hope. Finally, some true, concrete action from this Administration on one of the LGBT community's main concerns. Now, on to fulfilling those other campaign promises on lifting the ban on funding needle and syringe exchange programs, funding AIDS research and prevention programs, housing and treatment for those with AIDS, and supporting PEPFAR and the Global AIDS fund. Let's have some common sense and some dignity for all people.