Newsletter

UU GLOBAL AIDS COALITION NEWSLETTER INAUGURAL EDITION, JANUARY 2004

Welcome to the first edition of the UU Global AIDS Coalition newsletter! We are a young organization but we have achieved an amazing amount in a short time. We started out in April 2003 as the African AIDS Task Force of the First Unitarian Church in Portland, Oregon. Our first major project was to propose an Action of Immediate Witness at the Unitarian Universalist General assembly in Boston in June 2003. The action passed and this led to Unitarian Universalists committing themselves to speak out as a liberal religious voice on the global AIDS epidemic and the need for intervention by western countries. Reviewing our mission in the Fall, we decided to change our name to UU Global AIDS Coalition and to broaden our focus to try to recruit others, especially UU congregations, in our endeavors. This newsletter is a next step in both getting the word out and providing support to other groups and individuals.

We expect to publish three times a year, in January, April and September. Each issue will address a major issue ( this time it is funding for Global AIDS), share stories of local programs and successes, and resources for information and ideas.

We work in very close partnership with the UUA Office of Advocacy. If you have not already done so, sign up for UUA advocacy alerts and encourage everyone you know to do so as well. Also please join our Coalition. Let us know you exist, and share your ideas, concerns and success.

CONTENTS:
1. The US role in the fight against global AIDS and what it means for UU's
2. Message from Amelia Rose
3. First Portland "Weighs in for Weya"
4. Did you know?
5. Contacts and links

THE US ROLE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST AIDS AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR
UU'S

January 2004 is an appropriate time to look back over a year which has seen governments and international agencies introduce major initiatives to combat the global AIDS epidemic. But we have also seen broken promises, insistence on developing separate US programs at the expense of funding the internationally acclaimed Global Fund, and restrictive amendments emphasizing ideologically motivated abstinence only programs.

The year started with the State of the Union address in January, when President Bush astonished and delighted the world by promising to provide $15 billion over 5 years to fund his Global AIDS Initiative. He included $1 billion over 5 years for the Global Fund and promised funds for programs in 14 developing countries. The initiative would provide drugs for 2 million, and care for 10 million patients and orphans.

In April the House International Relations Committee approved HR 1298 which authorized $15 billion over 5 years, specifically $3 billion per year, with $1 billion in 2004 to the Global Fund. However although the bill was passed by the full house, it included several amendments, including a requirement that third of prevention funding go to programs advocating abstinence and monogamy, and allowing funds to go to organizations opposed to the use of condoms.

The Senate originally planned its own bill, but finished up approving the House bill including the House amendments, but excluding more liberal amendments proposed by senate members, although it did include an amendment increasing debt relief in impoverished countries with high HIV/AIDS infection rates. It is of interest that majority leader Senator Frist was the recipient of a letter from 13 conservative religious groups advocating passage without further amendment.

The combined bill was signed into law by President Bush on May 27th. One reason that the president successfully pushed for the bill to be signed at that time was so that he could push the remaining G8 countries to come up with their own funding plans at the G8 summit in Evian, France in June. (Unfortunately contributions from the other members have been less than hoped, but that's another story.)

Once the bill became law, money still had to be appropriated to fund it, so attention turned to the appropriations process. President Bush in spite of earlier promises of $3 billion in 2004 only requested $2 billion, using the excuse that time is needed to "ramp up"funding programs. The House honored this amount, but Senate action added almost $0.4 billion. Skirmishing has continued until at the time of writing Congress has still not finally approved 2004 budgets, but it looks as if the final appropriation for 2004 will be $2.4 billion..

So what are we to conclude from all this? There are 4 ways in which as UU's we can have impact:

1. The total amount of funding. The Bush administration is already planning only a modest increase in funding in spite of repeated promises for $3 billion. We need to keep up the advocacy for full funding as promised.

2. Support for the Global Fund. It makes little sense - apart from to the US pharmaceutical industry- to set up new funding programs when the Global Fund already has efficient and well accepted systems fore accountability in place, and especially when the need to ramp up is used as the reason for withholding funding. We need to keep up the pressure for US support of the Fund.

3. We need to continue to advocate for support for the most effective prevention programs including use of condoms, and recognition of the huge human rights issues surrounding the role of women, which have led to the unbelievably high discrepancy between infection rates between teenage girls and boys.

4. Perhaps most important of all, we need to make our voice heard . Although we are a small denomination we are a powerful voice for liberal religion, but the larger conservative denominations are the ones who have been heard. Lets make our resolution for 2005 that UU's will get involved and speak out. In the words of rock star Bono, who has had major role in activating US interest and action in global AIDS issues in response to the question " What can we do?": "Just get involved!"

MESSAGE FROM AMELIA ROSE, UUA ADVOCACY OFFICE INTERN

As the legislative assistant for Economic Justice here at the UUA's Washington Office, part of my job portfolio includes global AIDS advocacy. In the past few months I have gone from knowing almost nothing about global AIDS to becoming a passionate believer in the seriousness of the epidemic and the way in which AIDS serves as a microcosm of all global injustices-the disempowerment of women, poverty, the increasing gap between rich and poor, and discrimination.

I work with a number of organizations on global AIDS, including RESULTS (www.results.org), a grassroots citizen's lobby that generates media and contacts members of Congress on both global and domestic hunger and poverty issues, and the Global AIDS Alliance (www.globalaidsalliance.org), both based here in D.C.

We have a new resource available from the Washington Office called the Global AIDS Action Packet that can help your congregation learn more about this issue, find links to relevant websites and organizations, and get started on legislative advocacy. See it on the web at http://www.uua.org/uuawo/new/ or contact me, Amelia Rose, at arose@uua.org for a paper copy. And please, send our office stories of actions your congregation has taken on the issue of global AIDS. We would also appreciate published letters-to-the-editor, editorials, and letters to members of Congress you have written. We want to celebrate and document all the work you've put into global AIDS advocacy!

WEIGH IN FOR WEYA

The core group that founded the African AIDS Task Force felt strongly that our church should have a project that would allow us to provide direct help to those impacted by the epidemic. We were fortunate that one of our members is Dick Adams who is also executive director of Zimbabwe Artists Project. ZAP is an amazing program that provides a market for the art work of villagers from Weya, a rural area in eastern Zimbabwe, by bringing it to Oregon and selling it in communities throughout the Pacific NW. Not only does this provide an income for the artists, but the art work is also a window into their world. Each purchase is accompanied by a picture of the artists and the story of what is being portrayed.

Things are particularly bad in Zimbabwe. It has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the world, it is in a state of economic melt down, and it was excluded from the Presidents Global AIDS Initiative.

We are very proud to be able to work with ZAP not only to pay school expenses for AIDS orphans, but also to "prime the pump" to engage Weya villagers in developing medical care and preventive services. As the project develops we hope to deepen the sense of connection with the people of Weya. They are a strong, talented, upbeat people and we have a lot to learn from them.

DID YOU KNOW?

* In Portland, OR, HIV/AIDS clients are 16% female. In Sub Saharan Africa, 55% of those infected are female and teenage girls are infected at 5 times the rate of teenage boys.
* HIV/AIDS world wide is expected to kill 68 million people between 2000 and 2020
* Lack of treatment has reduced life expectancy in at least 51 countries. The US Census Bureau projects life expectancy in 11 countries in Sub Saharan Africa will be around 30 years by 2010.
* According to the World Health Organization, the vast majority of the world's young people have no idea how HIV is transmitted or how they can protect themselves from the virus
* It is projected that there will be 40 million orphans in Africa by 2010.
* The US spends $52 billion per year on the medical consequences of obesity; that is 26 times the amount requested by Bush to fight global AIDS in 2004.

CONTACTS AND LINKS

HELP US GROW!
We currently have coalition members in the following UU congregations:
* First Unitarian, Portland, Oregon
* Michael Servetus, Vancouver, Washington
* All Souls, Washington DC
* Juneau, Alaska

To add your congregation to the coalition, please send an e-mail to apickar@cs.com. Include UUGAC member in the title line. ( If you are willing to be a contact for your congregation also send your address and size and we will send you a T shirt with our logo and motto.)

TO RECEIVE THE NEWSLETTER:
Answer this e-mail newsletter, or send an e-mail to apickar@cs.com, with UUGAC newsletter in the title line.

TO SIGN UP FOR UUA ADVOCACY ALERTS
http://www.uua.org/uuawo/new/

TO SEND A CONTRIBUTION FOR THE NEWSLETTER
Email Ann Pickar at apickar@cs.com with NL contribution in the title line.

OTHER LINKS
Global AIDS Alliance: www.stopglobalaids.org and www.globalaidsalliance.org
Kaiser network daily reports: www.kaisernetwork.org
Physicians for Human Rights: www.phrusa.org