Activists stage 'die-in' to call for more HIV/AIDS funding
ebar.comEvoking memories of earlier angry protests, participants at a San Francisco City Hall rally for increased HIV support staged a dramatic "die-in" after speakers demanded political leaders recommit to fighting the disease with increased funding.About 40 people met for the March 21 action.Several speakers addressed the audience, all with passion but some with heart-wrenching fervor, as members of wedding parties carefully slipped in among the protesters to climb the stairs to their events inside City Hall.
One lone man, protesting who knows what, stood across the street from the rally, shouting through a bright orange construction cone about the government, COVID, the EPA, the CIA, and California's non-existent fleet of stealth bombers.
His shouting continued throughout the demonstration but those addressing the rally from the steps simply raised their voices, never quite drowning him out but keeping the attention of the audience, nonetheless.Organized by Paul Aguilar, HIV chair of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, Monday's event was a call to the city's Department of Public Health to return to its earlier, pre-COVID focus on HIV.
Over the course of the pandemic, San Francisco's promising HIV statistics began to slip, and Aguilar, in an earlier interview with the Bay Area Reporter, decried what he said was the city's "lack of attention."Statistics from the city's 2020's HIV Epidemiology Annual Report, issued last year by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, show some alarming numbers concerning HIV, particularly in regard to the impact of COVID on HIV care in the city.Compared with 2019 — before COVID — screening for HIV fell by 44% from March 2020 to March 2021.
