world aids day

Blog by Lissa Gundlach, CHAMP Fellow and Student at Union Theological Seminary

As the snow is falling in New York and colleagues are departing for the holidays, I am thinking about Christmas, faith and the beautiful World AIDS Day Celebration at Riverside Church this year.

Over 40 years ago at the Riverside Church in Harlem, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his final speech at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam (CLCV), and he opened: "A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

As we know from the ACT UP movement, silence is not only betrayal— it is death.  read more »

At this same historic church on the rainy, chilly eve of World AIDS Day—hundreds of people gathered at the intersection of these two great activist traditions and found a place of refuge in the warmth, hope, and inspiration.  Riverside’s Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise “Lead, Empower, Deliver” event commemorated the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day and the UNAIDS Joint Programme on HIV/ AIDS.  Local, national, and global leaders addressed the crowd of community members from Harlem and around the world.

On November 20, over 1000 low-income people of color living with HIV came to the 100 Days to Fight AIDS rally to stand up for the ambitious HIV/AIDS platform under which Obama campaigned for president, including his pledge for a National AIDS Strategy.

For a change, we approached the nation’s capitol in the lead-up to World AIDS Day with a spirit of hope. In the coming months, we must continue to push forward with an expectation of more – not just more resources for existing HIV/AIDS efforts, but for a more strategic and more coordinated, comprehensive response that will actually bring down the rate of infection, tackle the epidemic in communities of color and in gay men, and bring dignity and medical care to the lives of all those who are infected.

And change is what we need. Since we last commemorated World AIDS Day, it’s been confirmed that HIV/AIDS is worse in the United States than we ever knew.
 read more »