AfricaIs aCountry

Move Something

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Move Something

By
Caitlin L Chandler

By Caitlin Chandler
This World AIDS Day, rather than pay attention to celebrities who are “dying digital deaths,” or wearing red, do something small or big that can have an actual impact.

Learn about how the upcoming EU free trade agreement with India could prohibit people from accessing HIV treatment, and support people working on ensuring HIV medicines in India remain affordable.

Check out the new campaign from the International Planned Parenthood Federation called Criminalize Hate, Not HIV. Didn’t know that HIV transmission is a crime in some countries, even though criminalization fuels stigma and hate towards people living with HIV? Get informed.

Donate directly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria or to a local HIV organization in your community — because even if governments reduce HIV funding, people can step-in.

Think about how the country you live in could improve its response to HIV. The Uganda government is currently cracking down on the rights of sex workers to organize, the Russian government is denying citizens access to treatment, the Canadian governmenthas no plan for reducing new HIV infections, Obama isn’t fulfilling his campaign commitments on HIV and gets a bit angry when held accountable by young people…and the list goes on. But at the end of the day, political leaders won’t change unless they’re pressured to — so think about becoming politically involved.

There are many other ways to do something meaningful this World AIDS Day — just get out there and move something.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.