[Viva] HIV/AIDS Legal Network meeting

[Denise Becker]

I thought some of you might like feedback on the meeting I attended between
Wednesday and Friday.  I will try to lay it out in point form so you can
read it a little easier:

1.  HIV and the Media

There was a workshop of the media and how HIV is being covered these days.
 The people speaking were very interesting and included a CBC reporter, a
French reporter for Radio Canada, the Managing Editor for the Global
Network, the tweeter for the Toronto Star and the tweeter for Pozitive Lite,
which is a blog for positive people and is run by Bob Leahy from Ontario.
 Incidentally, I talked to Bob during the meeting and I have also tweeted to
him on Twitter.  He has let me know he would like me to blog for them once a
week so that they get a woman's perspective.

The media panel talked about the apathy surrounding HIV by the general
public these days and they also talked about how they worked with the Legal
Network to get the story out on Bill C393 and Access to Medicines in Africa.

I told them I was consistently seeing "good news" stories about research and
yet they seemed to be reporting "bad news" stories on individuals and this
makes it difficult for people to get over the stigma and get out with their
brave stories of fighting the disease.  I also told them that I felt there
is a thin line between reporting the news and making the news, i.e. when are
they actually reporting and when are they swaying public opinion?

They said they are very concerned when they report stories and see stupid
comments after them and because of their journalistic viewpoint they cannot
add their voice to comments when they know many of the comments are from
ignorant people who demonize HIV and don't understand it.

I had a good chat with the lady from CBC and the French reporter afterwards
and they wanted to keep in touch.

Bob, from Pozitive Lite and Ken Buchanan from Positive Living BC and I
discussed "coming out" with your status and we all agreed it was a very
difficult thing to do but none of us had regretted it and we felt we were
now fighting the stigma with our contributions at conferences.

I cannot emphasize enough how important Twitter is getting now and how many
people who tweet think of Facebook as "old school".  The good thing is you
can tweet with total anonymity since you can choose a false name (the term
for this is a "handle") and no one knows when you are online.  If you want
to get into HIV conversations and want to be anonymous, this could be the
way to go, just don't be put off with your first experience of Twitter and
try to stay with it.  I will be sending you all an email soon on how to get
on to Twitter, use it, make friends with people who are HIV+ and get the
latest research.

2.  Criminalization of HIV

There is an important case going on right now.  It is a case which has a
press embargo on it and so there is very little that can be said in the
media that we can hear about.  All I know is that it is a case in which the
viral load of the person is being taken into account when they did not
inform their sex partner that they were HIV+.  The court is examining
whether the argument can be used anymore that a person has malicious intent
when not revealing their HIV status if they are undetectable and whether
they are likely to pass on the virus.  There was a win for those who argued
that there was no malicious intent because there was no infection and that
it the undetectable viral load meant the person was not acting in a way that
meant to kill someone.  The Crown has decided to appeal the ruling to the
Supreme Court and I believe the case will be heard on Monday.  It is pretty
exciting to find out what will happen and the lawyer was there who was
arguing the case and discussed his strategy so far.

3.  Insite

There were lawyers at the workshop who are arguing the Insite case, where
the downtown supervised injection site has come under attack from the
Federal Government.  In addition, Vandu were at the meeting and discussing
what action they have taken and how the site is working and saving lives.
 The argument here is that the site is saving lives and doing no harm.  This
may take a while to finally get a decision but David Eby, a civil rights
lawyer was talking about how ridiculous it was that Insite is being attacked
when it will not put an end to shooting up and it is actually a point of
education and assistance for many wanting to get away from drug use.

4.  Sex Trade Workers

There was a lady from Montreal talking about sex trade work and in
particular the Pickton Trial.  This has made it a good time to start
advocating for women who have to put themselves at risk by hiding out in
order to do their work and the risk this puts them in.  She talked about how
she got involved with sex work and that she was not pushed into it but
rather started it at 26 years of age in order to put herself through
university.  She made a joke about the University actually profiting off the
avails of street work! hah!  She told of the precautions she takes when she
meet a guy and he comes to her apartment and she sounded like an extremely
clever lady who is protecting herself very well.  I was very impressed with
what a wonderful advocate this lady was for her trade and she said that not
all women want to get off the street because of the declaration of income
and freedom it gives them but others do and they should be accommodated and
not made into criminals!

That is all I can think of for now and if you want to ask me any questions
or know more, then I would love to hear from you.

All the best,
Denise
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/viva/attachments/20110611/b2e7842d/attachment.html>