Tuesday, May 1, 2012

In Occupy Movement, AIDS Activists Find Common Ground


Julie Davids, at center with sign, and other AIDS
activists joined Occupy Wall Street last week. (Photo courtesy of Kaytee Riek)
AIDS activism has a rich history of taking advocacy to the streets, into city halls and state houses, and into American consciousness.

Last week, veterans of ACT UP — the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power — joined the Occupy movement in New York to advocate for a small tax of Wall Street trades to benefit people living with HIV. Together, the 25-year-old ACT UP and the more fledgling Occupy movement made for a natural pairing, said Julie Davids, director of organizing and mobilization for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.

“ACT UP has always looked at the AIDS crisis through an economic justice lens and has always recognized that obstacles were rooted in greed and the profit motive," Davids told the Associated Press. (Here’s a link to the AP story on the protest.)

Davids, who is also the coordinator for the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, was front and center at the protest. She took a few moments to talk to answer Inside Story’s questions on what AIDS activists were trying to accomplish and why Occupy makes a lot of sense as a movement.

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