TORONTO
Phill Wilson, founder and executive director of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute, is enlisting a group of heavy-hitting Black entertainers, civil rights, media, religious, civic, political, community leaders and organizations to help release the deadly grip HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has on more than half of Blacks in America.
NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, entertainer/AIDS activist Sheryl Lee Ralph, filmmaker Bill Duke, Pernessa Seele, president of The Balm in Gilead, and U.S. Congresswomen Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and nonvoting delegate Donna M. Christensen, D-Virgin Islands, were among those who stepped forward during the 16th International AIDS Conference held earlier this month, to pledge their support and accept responsibility for ending the devastation of AIDS in the Black community.
“It is only by mobilizing all corners of Black America that AIDS can be overcome,” said Wilson, who spearheaded nearly all of the programs, campaigns and activities during the weeklong conference, aimed at calling attention to the Black struggle with AIDS. He used the global stage to launch a high-visibility, five-year National Black Mass AIDS Mobilization, which he hopes will drastically reduce the number of HIV infections among Black Americans by 2011.
Said Wilson: “We know now that attention will not end AIDS any more than a smoke alarm will put out a house fire.”
Grazell Howard, first vice president of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, announced that the coalition is appointing a national AIDS coordinator. She said the move was a first among national Black women’s organizations.
“If we, as Black women in America do not decide today and every day that AIDS is our face and fight, in 2020 there’ll be no Black women in America,” she said.
