March 9, 2018: National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day marks an annual moment to pause, reflect and make new commitments to advance human rights, dignity and justice for all women and girls living with and vulnerable to HIV.
Today’s political climate challenges us to think beyond conventional approaches that reform existing systems. Indeed, while parts of the system appear to be broken, many apparatuses of the State are working exactly as they were designed – to reinscribe and reinforce existing power dynamics.
When Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN-USA) formed ten years ago as a group of twenty-eight diverse women living with HIV, our goal was to support and uplift leadership by women living with HIV, especially from those communities most impacted by the domestic epidemic, in order to change the balance of power. This leadership development continues to be at the center of our work. However, as we have watched a surge of nationalism, white supremacy and misogyny turn the tide of fragile progress made under the Obama administration but also in past decades, threatening important gains in our bodily autonomy and access to such basic necessities as health care and housing, we have increasingly recognized the need to disrupt, transform and rebuild systems. We have come to understand that in some cases, having a seat at the table is not enough; the existing table needs to be flipped and a new one installed in its place.
This National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, PWN-USA commits to innovate and work more strategically and effectively than we ever have before, because our members are depending on us for their very survival. We are in the process of updating our policy agenda to reflect the new realities and challenges women living with and vulnerable to HIV and our communities face. Further, upcoming local, state and federal elections could determine the future of health care access, including Medicaid expansion; reproductive rights and access; and law enforcement policies. These elections have the potential to devastate our communities and our own lives; but they also hold the promise of forward progress. If 2017 was a year of resistance, 2018 can be a year of positive transformation. That’s why, as an organization accountable to women living with HIV in all our diversity, PWN-USA commits to integrate voter engagement and creative electoral organizing strategies to build the political power of our base. We understand the importance of achieving change through the ballot, even as we envision and work toward system changes that exceed the power of an individual elected office or body.
As we have traversed the treacherous waters of the past 14 months, we have been thrilled, encouraged and, most of all, thankful in light of the overwhelming support we have enjoyed from our members, allies and accomplices, and cross-movement organizations who share our broad visions of a more just nation. We hope that you will continue to stand with us and help us organize the HIV vote at every level—we look forward to many exciting opportunities to make our visions reality, but we cannot do it without you.
Whether you help by donating, by joining our members on the ground as they organize the vote in their communities, collaborating with us on an organization level, or just by taking action on our action alerts, your participation is an important contribution to building the world we know is possible.
Want to hear more about how the women of PWN-USA are organizing to change the world in 2018 and beyond? Join our membership engagement coordinator, Evany Turk, on Facebook Live TODAY (3/9/18) at 5:45pm EST/4:45pm CST/3:45pm MST/2:45pm PST.
