Principles

Community Power and Meaningful Involvement of People Living with HIV

We believe that our role as organizations that are comprised of and accountable to the most affected, that it is our duty to center and uplift the leadership of our membership at every opportunity.

We commit to supporting communities through the actualization of our principles and through an understanding of power that is founded in a racial and gender justice lens.
We commit to support communities most impacted by the carceral legal system–Black, Indigenous, people of color, those of trans experience, sex workers and those living with HIV–to create shared analysis of power and to build power.

We believe that the capacity for leadership lives within the people living with HIV that compose our membership and networks.

We commit to engage with the most directly impacted at every level of decision making as thought partners and experts.

We believe that the criminal legal system does not serve to provide justice in any capacity. Laws are not neutrally applied. Instead, they serve to victimize and stigmatize already vulnerable and underserved communities. The effort to decriminalize HIV cannot be divorced from a larger movement to abolish the prison industrial complex.

We commit to co-creating a world beyond punitive punishment, stigmatization and moralization of actions and through the pursuit of meaningful healing and justice to victims of harm.

We believe that racial justice is at the nucleus of our work. In order to undo the harms of centuries-old oppressive systems, we must acknowledge the harms of racialized oppression.

We commit to utilizing a racial justice lens that centers and uplifts the voices of Black and brown communities and identifies the ways that anti-Blackness has permeated our society–from institutions to interpersonal interactions.
We commit to fostering proactive and meaningful allyship, and aim to shift the strategy from divesting from harmful practices to investing in creating long-term sustainable harm reduction norms within the movement for decriminalization.

We believe in the interconnection between reproductive justice and the movement to decriminalize HIV.
We believe that all people deserve the right to inhabit their bodies as they see fit. This includes, but is not limited to, gender expression and identity, the right to necessary and affirming medical treatment, as well as the freedom to have children, not have children and to parent with all desired and necessary social supports.

We commit to uplifting the importance of bodily autonomy, affirming healthcare access and choices, and the human right to own all decisions regarding health and reproduction.

We believe ableism has created the conditions for the reliance on the carceral state in response to public health.
We believe that the lack of attention from HIV movement spaces towards the overlap and alignment with the disability rights movement is to the grave detriment of the HIV justice movement.

We commit to prioritizing and expanding HIV movement practices to center disability justice in both the content and the conduct of our movement space.
We commit to remove any accessibility barriers for disability/Deaf/chronically ill communities’ participation in the HIV decriminalization movement.

We believe that our power rests not only in our meetings and messages, but in the spiritual and emotional health of our bodyminds.

We commit to and affirm the powerful lineage of healing justice, a practice of recognizing, honoring and amplifying the role of health workers and healers.

We believe that economic justice will create the conditions needed for the liberation of our communities.
- We commit to operate from a framework that disrupts practices that maintain inequality through undervaluing the contributions and work of the most marginalized, and makes criminalization of HIV profitable.
- We commit to pursuing a world where vulnerable communities are not exploited for capitalism and profit.

We believe in the power of storytelling and creating a narrative of the criminalization of HIV that centers the experiences of the most impacted.

We commit to the work of correcting the narrative around the HIV community and HIV criminalization that misrepresents and denies the dignity and agency of people living with HIV.
We commit to prioritizing the voices of BIPOC, those of trans experience, and sex workers as not only those most impacted, but those working to bring an end to the harms of HIV criminalization.