The 2011 U.N. High-Level meeting on AIDS kicked off on June 8 in New York, with more than 30 world leaders attending to discuss the progress and future of the global AIDS response. Outside, hundreds of AIDS activists rallied to call on the world leaders to fulfill their commitment from the 2006 meeting: providing universal access to treatment for the 15 million AIDS patients in critical need. Democracy Now! was there.
PROTESTERS: AIDS could be defeated, if the people are treated!
JENNIFER FLYNN: We’re out here today to make sure that the world leaders who are meeting across the street at the United Nations know that we want to hold them to their promises. The commitment that they made last time was that we would actually have universal access to treatment by 2010. Here we are in 2011, and we still have 10 million people who don’t have access.
TIDO VON SCHOEN-ANGERER: We are here today at the U.N. because this is a critical time for the AIDS response. We know a lot how we can respond to AIDS, and we even know that if we put more people on treatment, we can prevent the transmission of the virus. So there’s a lot of great news, how we can affect and break the back of the epidemic. But now it really comes down to governments and world leaders here at the U.N. to agree to take the right steps forward.
PROTESTERS: Keep your promise! End AIDS now! Keep your promise! End AIDS now!
LUCY CHESIRE: We just passed 2010, the year where we were saying each and every person who requires universal access to HIV prevention, care and support needs to get it. One year down the line, we haven’t seen that dream come true. So are we still just going to watch and let people die in the 21st century from AIDS, whether it’s going to be due to pneumonia, whether it’s going to be TB? I mean, these deaths are preventable. If we can spend more than a billion dollars in Iraq, we can spend $24 billion to ensure that the dream of many people who are out there waiting to get treatment will live to happen, so they can be able to continue going about their day-to-day activity without being hampered by the AIDS situation.
GUILLERMO CHACON: In the United States, over one million people are living with HIV and AIDS. And even here, we have more than 8,000 people on a waiting list. This is a crisis. And we believe that today, even though we’re going through a terrible economic crisis globally, we must keep the promise to secure treatment to these people, because without treatment, people will die. And the most important thing that I would like to remind all of us is to be in solidarity with those living with HIV. And one way to do it is to reduce the stigma, to reduce homophobia, and to raise awareness and to take the HIV test, and keep advocating until we reach the goal, that is, reaching 15 million people in treatment by 2015. United, we can.
PROTESTERS:¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Thank you!
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.