February 7, 2023—This National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Positive Women’s Network – USA condemns the racism that leads to an HIV epidemic disproportionately harming Black people globally, and honors the outstanding contributions of Black activists to the HIV movement. We see these conversations as deeply related: the gender and racial inequities in HIV acquisition and health outcomes, and the story of a movement led by fearless and underappreciated Black cis and trans women. The HIV epidemic has been propelled by racial discrimination, sustained by stigma, and will end by the hands of Black organizers.

While Black people comprise only 13% of the U.S. population, they represent 40% of those living with HIV. A recent study out of Vanderbilt University Medical Center showed that Black women continue to suffer the highest rates of mortality among people living with HIV, followed by Black men. 

Reasons for these disparities abound. Just weeks ago, Tennessee’s state health department declined to accept more than $2 million in CDC funding to local nonprofit organizations that provide HIV treatment and testing services crucial to BIPOC, queer and trans people, sex workers, the undocumented community, and people living in poverty. HIV criminalization also disproportionately impacts Black people across the U.S., with many states mandating people with an HIV-related conviction be placed on sex offender registries for decades, prohibiting access to basic human rights like work, housing, casting their ballots, and caring for their families overall. Of the 150 people placed on Tennessee’s sex offender registry for HIV-related convictions since 1993, more than three-quarters were Black.

Although systems in place were designed to exclude, overlook, surveil, police, and criminalize Black women, they continue to audaciously rise up and irrepressibly overcome, creating magic in the movement for us all.

PWN proudly and dutifully holds ourselves accountable to Black women. We seek to create a world where Black women don’t have to fight so damn hard to win. The time is long overdue for the HIV movement to resource Black leaders who are committed to anti-racist solutions—especially Black women and Black people of trans experience—with financial support, social capital, and intellectual investment.

It was on National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in 2021 that Positive Women’s Network launched our first Celebrate and Honor Black Women in the HIV Movement flagship event, paying homage to Black sheroes who are the very backbone of our movement. So today, we are sharing PWN’s plans for this year’s celebration.

Save the date for
Celebrate and Honor Black Women in the HIV Movement:
August 18th, 2023!

Celebrate and Honor Black Women in the HIV Movement will now be held every August 18th, placing this important celebration during Black August, “an acknowledgment and commemoration of the countless organizers, activists, and freedom fighters who sacrificed their freedom and lives in the struggle for Black liberation.” (Find the source of this quote, background info, and more ways to take action on Black August from Movement for Black Lives here.)

The theme of this year’s celebration is uplifting Trailblazers in our movement. We’ll be honoring the next generation of organizers who are snatching the torch, and discussing how racism and anti-Blackness have slowed down their progress.

This year, we’re also launching a new component of the work, a road to Celebrate and Honor Black Women, which reflects PWN’s commitment to honoring Black women in the HIV movement year-round. This prelude to the celebration will feature a series of community conversations leading up to the main event, examining how anti-Blackness shows up in movement spaces and how to acknowledge and combat it, and introduce inspiring Black women in the HIV movement who are blazing new trails for us all.

PWN commits to keep building on the work of Black women in this movement, supporting their vision to lead us all to freedom.

Join us by marking your calendar now: August 18th is Celebrate and Honor Black Women in the HIV Movement Day!