Black Leaders Call for Action Against AIDS

African American community leaders from Southern California on Saturday unveiled a three-pronged plan of attack on AIDS, a disease increasingly affecting their community.

“There is a war going on,” said Crystal Crawford, of the California Black Women’s Health Project. “In this war, HIV and AIDS are the enemy. We must employ effective battle strategies.”

Dressed in black to signify the gravity of the situation, more than 100 people, including Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, listened as speaker after speaker described AIDS as an epidemic attacking blacks around the world.

An estimated 40,000 people are diagnosed as HIV-positive every year internationally, with 80% of these cases in Africa, said Cynthia Davis, an assistant professor with Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center’s HIV program. The domestic statistics are nearly as startling, with one out of every 50 black men infected and one out of 150 black women infected with HIV. It is the No. 1 killer among African Americans ages 25 to 44.

“What is happening in Africa could happen in our own backyard if we don’t wake up,” Davis said.

Waters and members of the Alliance of Black Women Organizations are concentrating their efforts in three areas. They will organize community teach-ins; distribute condoms in hotels, barbershops and beauty salons; and form teams to reach out to residents at schools, malls and sporting events. Waters said the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C., called on President Bush last week to declare AIDS among minorities a national emergency. They’ve asked for $550 million for outreach programs, research and related projects.

Still, Parks said, community members must stop waiting for the government or “someone else” to do something. “It all comes back to when are you going to do something.”

Regina Brandon, who has AIDS, provided a reminder of what could happen if people don’t take action. Diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1986, she said she was in denial until 1990. By then, the disease had caused so many other illnesses that she has a cardboard box full of medications. The hourly doses keep her alive “by the grace of God,” she said.

“We’re still dying,” Brandon said quietly, wearing a silver cross around her neck. “Today I look at AIDS as a blessing. It’s started me on a path. I’m on my way home.”

The event ended when participants left the To Help Everyone clinic and took their message to the streets. As they marched to La Brea and Rodeo, they carried signs and shouted, “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! HIV has got to go!”

Byron “Pee Wee” Mitchell, national president of the Chosen Few Motorcycle Club and one of the few men to attend, looked on and said he wished more men had attended. He held a jug of condoms, which he planned to pass out to his motorcycling buddies.

“I didn’t think [the problem] would be of this magnitude,” he said. “I was blown clear out of the building.”