Canada Dry

Frontdesk by David Waggoner

On August 13, the world turns its attention to Toronto, as the XVI International AIDS Conference begins a week-long gathering of scientists, doctors, AIDS advocates, artists, philanthropists, NGO leaders, and optimists from around the world. Optimists? Yes, that’s right. Optimistic women, children, and men who are not giving up. No more handkerchiefs, please. No more hiding behind catchy AIDS education campaigns—nine-tenths of the world’s HIVers can no longer wait for the world’s elite to take action.

Emotions are running high—motivating many of us to come to Canada, but we’re not going to mourn what we should have done since we were together two years ago in Bangkok. We’re dry-eyed, to say the least.
What is one of the most important actions that we need to take? We need to overturn the restrictions placed on HIV-positive tourists trying to gain entry into the United States. Not a single international AIDS conference has been held in the United States since San Francisco’s much ballyhooed and boycotted one in 1990. Not able to meet in the U.S., this year’s conference is the second one to be held in Canada since the international conference in Vancouver in 1996, the one famous for introducing the world to the hope and hype of protease inhibitors.

And next up as host is Mexico City in 2008. From the north and from the south, it would seem that the world’s HIV community is all but converging on America’s borders. As the leading source of antiretroviral research and drug production in the world, the United States has the technological know-how and the wherewithal to ease the suffering. Now let’s make an international AIDS conference—with full participation from the international AIDS community—happen again in America.

This so-called border crossing en masse of America’s best and brightest in the fields of AIDS prevention, education, and science will hopefully result in two things we desperately need: more AIDS meds and less moralizing. Perhaps this year’s voices and those who are added in the fight against AIDS will gladden the hearts of the millions who are living with the virus. With our voices united we will be heard by the thousands of world leaders who pay too much lip-service to the AIDS crisis. It shouldn’t be every two years that the world pays undivided attention to this disease. It should be an everyday discussion—from the boardroom to the bedroom.

Concern over the tepid approach shown by the Bush administration to AIDS is all the more reason to turn things around in Toronto. The Western world’s slowing response to a crisis growing greater by the day, because of how far we have come, and how far we have to go in the fight against AIDS is why we shouldn’t give up. And why we should listen to our kids.

Who is more ideal than this month’s cover story? Mirroring the new face of AIDS activism—the world’s youth—actor and AIDS activist Jurnee Smollett is one of the many voices that A&U is featuring in this special conference issue. Although one of our younger voices (at only nineteen), hers is not the least eloquent. Perhaps it was her early success on such hit shows as Cosby, and her ongoing star turns in films like Eve’s Bayou, that have given Jurnee the maturity to take on the role of international AIDS advocate and optimist.
Jurnee’s passion to save at-risk youth proves the point that you don’t have to be an adult to act like one. In her youth, perhaps, is her wisdom. Born October 1, 1986, Jurnee is the perfect AIDS educator for the twenty-first century. Like she says, “AIDS has got to stop with my generation.” We can learn a lot from her conviction—a very powerful weapon in the war on AIDS.

August 2006