My Reflections on Women and World AIDS Day

By Sherri Lewis
Actress/singer, writer, and nationally known AIDS educator

“HIV is a Women’s Disease.” “Knowledge is Power.” “I Know.” These were the messages of World AIDS Day 2004 on the University of California’s Los Angeles (UCLA) campus. HIV is a women’s disease. I know. I am a woman with HIV. Having that knowledge, I took care of my health. I was empowered. I know my status so HIV can stop with me.

World AIDS Day 2004 was embraced by this campus community as one thousand students marched into Bruin Plaza holding signs that said “Knowledge is Power” and with statistics of the rate of infection in women. After twenty-two years, women are finally empowering themselves by acknowledging that “HIV is a women’s disease” and letting the world know. UCLA AIDS Institute and the World Arts and Cultures Department and other campus organizations set up a series of workshops and movies and held seminars on sex education, among other topics. Red wristbands saying “I Know” were given to those who got tested for HIV. I know my status—do you know yours? With more than eighty percent of the HIV-infected women in the U.S. being African-American or Hispanic I was honored to be one of the participants in the day’s events.

Dr. Kathie Ferbas, one of UCLA’s AIDS Institute’s HIV vaccine researchers, kicked off the day’s events speaking to an enthusiastic crowd. I followed, speaking of my experiences as a woman living with HIV and the importance of testing: a responsible choice that can ultimately save your life and protect your community. By encouraging testing as a positive (and routine) action, we can move out of the stigma that was born in the early days of the epidemic. As long as we still have to endure this threat to our very existence, we can live with it much better by educating ourselves and diminishing our fears. Knowledge is Power.

As I stood out on the Plaza looking over hundreds of heads and hearing cheers at all the right places, I got chills as I was reminded of a time when young people had the courage to raise their voices for change on campuses nationwide. My dear friend Jasmine Guy addressed the crowd, many of whom were fans, shouting out “Whitley!” (her previous incarnation on the Cosby sitcom, A Different World). Jasmine’s heartfelt plea for them to protect and honor their bodies, encouraging them to know their status in the hope that, when her young daughter grows up, they can lead her to a safer world. She spoke as a mother, a concerned citizen, and a friend. Afterwards students eagerly lined up at the mobile testing trucks for free HIV/STD testing. Committed to being tested, students stood in line for up to several hours and, with only three hours allotted for testing, an estimated eighty-five students (some said almost 200) got tested and received their results, said Zella Jildon, program manager for Prevention on Wheels. Edwin Bayrd, the director of the UCLA AIDS Institute that helped organize the event, said in The Daily Bruin that he was absolutely shocked by the number of people who wanted to be tested. “I thought we’d be lucky to have ten students volunteer to take [the test],” he said. It just shows that young people do want to live. They will take care of themselves and thereby take care of each other so we can have a better world.”

A few days later Johnaline Lipkins, R.N., a teacher at Compton High School, invited me to come and speak to her classes about HIV/AIDS. Again the students were amazing, hungry for information and, given the opportunity and easy access, open to being tested. I found that idea I had on the UCLA campus to be true. Imagine having testing vans and counselors available to those students right in their parking lot, making it as routine as going to the school nurse. Testing and destigmatization can save lives.

The first World AIDS Day in 1988 saw somber memorials and candlelight vigils, tallying the mounting numbers of AIDS deaths. Those tributes were a great expression of the grief we shared as a community and a truth that needed to be seen, not just heard. I remember marching through the streets flanked by friends, my support system, holding candles with gloved hands covered with frozen wax from the blistering cold Boston wind. Now World AIDS Day is filled with music and films about AIDS, commemorative and celebratory. But at the end of the day, we are reminded—as we stand united for that one day a year when we can be recognized, be seen once again, and raise our silent candles—to remember...silently…we remember.

We who are fortunate enough to be here for World AIDS Day 2005 get to start our engines and, not just remember, but remind everyone that AIDS is still here. AIDS is not just a pandemic sweeping over Africa, India and China. AIDS is in America. Let us never underestimate the growing number of new infection rates after all these years. Complacency, misinformation and a rise in drug abuse (specifically crystal meth amphetamine) more and more contribute to our country’s AIDS cases.

This year my activities bring me back to the campus of UCLA via the UCLA AIDS Institute where I have had the honor of being the Program Director for the UCLA AIDS Ambassador Programs. They are a group of UCLA undergrads many who have already done work over in Tanzania as counselors and HIV/AIDS educators and this year are part of the movement once again on the campus of UCLA along with many other student groups. Some of the student groups are the World Arts and Cultures Department, Students for International Change, the Student Welfare Commission and the Undergraduate Students Association of the Presidents Office as well as Dance Marathon.

The theme at this year’s UCLA World AIDS Day is AIDS in Africa. The procession onto campus will be lead by African drummer Iddi, who will also address the crowd once they have all come together at Bruin Plaza. Music from Grizzly Peak lead by Adam Stern a UCLA AIDS Ambassador will rock the crowd into the workshops as students continue to share about their experiences many who have already experienced first hand the pain of AIDS and have participated in the future by providing education, and counseling. More importantly, their purpose is to show that we care and people living with AIDS are not abandoned.

Across town at Beverly Hills High School the first UCLA Teen AIDS Ambassadors are recruiting other students as volunteers to help make posters for World AIDS Day carrying their brand of messages for youth about HIV/AIDS. Poster art was an activity they learned at the UCLA Teen AIDS Ambassador Retreat in August in a workshop about Art, AIDS and Activism. They will also be selling the UCLA AIDS Institute’s red wristbands. We couldn’t be more proud of them.

The disease that has terrorized us in previous decades will not be silenced anymore. We are here, active, fearless and moving foreword into the solution, into the light, into the future where someday AIDS will be no more.

Current as of December 2005

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