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CHAMP and UNITE HERE Host Prevention Justice Dialogue in Providence

On November 4th, CHAMP and UNITE HERE Local 217 hosted a prevention justice dialogue in Providence, Rhode Island featuring activist Cleve Jones: "Coming Out for Justice: HIV/AIDS, LGBT Liberation, Hotel Workers and Economic Justice"

Jones, a life-long HIV/AIDS & LGBT activist and founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, led the dialogue. Discussion highlighted the links between economic justice, LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues, and marginalization and discrimination within those movements. The key question explored was, "How do we work at the intersections of these issues in our movements for justice?" Participants recognized the connections between labor, HIV/AIDS and LGBT movements, as demonstrated by:
  • Research showing that access to affordable housing can protect people from HIV infection, and economic status can independently predict who may be at highest risk of HIV;

  • The ban on immigration of HIV positive people into the United States, which forces people to hide their status or avoid HIV testing and health care, lest they jeopardize any hope of legal status;

  • The severity of HIV in communities of color that may be more related to high rates of incarceration and lack of access to health care than individual "risk behavior;" and

  • At the same time, the LGBT community has provided important support to hotel worker struggles around the US and Canada, and hotel workers and their allies participated in pride parades around the country this past summer.

Participants from PrYSM (the Providence Youth Student Movement), UNITE HERE, CHAMP and the Providence community explored these connections. As a case study, Jones described his recent work building bridges between the LGBT community and UNITE HERE's Hotel Rising campaign. This international labor organizing campaign seeks to improve wages and working conditions for hotel workers, the ranks of which are significantly composed of immigrants, people of color and LGBT people — and represent some of the communities who carry the burden of HIV in the US.

"Our campaign is about globalization and ways for ordinary folks to fight back against forces that we think are beyond our control," Jones told the Providence Phoenix. "It's also about universal healthcare, and I don't think we are going to get universal healthcare without a strong labor movement."

Julie Davids, CHAMP Executive Director, pointed out that an estimated quarter million of people living with HIV/AIDS in the US are unable to access antiretroviral drugs to treat the virus because they do not have healthcare coverage to pay for it.

The discussion was an affiliated event of the Prevention Justice Mobilization, a series of events and actions around the US that promoted unified actions and cooperation between the HIV/AIDS and social justice movements that work on intersecting issues affecting the epidemic.



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