When we talk about empowering the HIV community, we have to mention what many feel is the beginning of empowering people living with HIV. From the very beginning of the HIV epidemic, the rights of people living with HIV and AIDS have been challenged. Unlike any other disease, people infected with HIV are constantly faced with people and situations that jeopardize their rights and dignity.
In 1981, the Second National AIDS Forum at the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference was to be held in Denver. In attendance were several HIV activists and people living with HIV whose attendance at the conference was being sponsored by the activists. A group of these activists and people with AIDS (PWAs) got together in a hospitality suite and drew up a sort of manifesto for the self-empowerment of PWAs everywhere. Empowerment of PWAs was an important step in the fight against the very inflexible healthcare industry. As it turns out, this meeting and manifesto enabled PWAs to make real change in the development of HIV medications. For instance, the empowerment that arouse from this meeting in Denver changed the way the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tested and approved medications and made certain women were included in the drug trials that led to HIV medication approval. In essence, this meeting and the principles, the Denver Principles, that were set forth led to grass roots efforts to secure the rights of people living with HIV. Let's look at the Denver Principles.
The Denver Principles
We condemn attempts to label us as "victims," a term which implies defeat, and we are only occasionally "patients," a term which implies passivity, helplessness and dependence upon the care of others. We are "People With AIDS."
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ALL PEOPLE
- Support us in our struggle against those who would fire us from our jobs, evict us from our homes, refuse to touch us or separate us from our loved ones, our community or our peers, since available evidence does not support the view that AIDS can be spread by casual, social contact.
- Don't scapegoat people with AIDS, blame us for the epidemic or generalize about our lifestyles.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH AIDS
- Form caucuses to choose their own representatives, to deal with the media, to choose their own agenda and to plan their own strategies.
- Be involved at every level of decision-making and specifically serve on the boards of directors of provider organizations.
- Be included in all AIDS forums with equal credibility as other participants, to share their own experiences and knowledge.
- Substitute low-risk sexual behaviors for those which could endanger themselves or their partners; we feel people with AIDS have an ethical responsibility to inform their potential sexual partners of their health status.
RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WITH AIDS
- To as full and satisfying sexual and emotional lives as anyone else.
- To quality medical treatment and quality social service provision without discrimination of any form, including sexual orientation, gender, diagnosis, economic status or race.
- To full explanations of all medical procedures and risks, to choose or refuse their treatment modalities, to refuse to participate in research without jeopardizing their treatment and to make informed decisions about their lives.
- To privacy, to confidentiality of medical records, to human respect and to choose who their significant others are.
- To die — and to LIVE — in dignity.
Source:
Senterfitt, W.; "The Denver Principles: The Original Manifesto of the PWA Self-Empowerment Movement"; Being Alive - Los Angeles; 1 May 1998.
