Professor Bette Dickerson encourages students to take an alternative break & work with others on issues like empowerment, rights and HIV/AIDS During the disco era in the late seventies and early eighties, the dance floor would become electric when all-the-rage hits like “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real,” “Dance Disco Heat,” and “Do You Wanna Funk” were spinning. “I was a big fan of Sylvester’s music and during that period many people lost scores of friends and family.” For Bette Dickerson, Sylvester’s AIDS-related death truly [...]

A South African Film Explores Courage and Survival Amid the AIDS Pandemic by Chip Alfred It’s called Life, Above All, but the opening scene takes place at the funeral of a baby who died of AIDS. The heartrending image of a tiny white coffin being lowered into the ground sets the tone for the film, but this isn’t a movie about death. “It’s a story about an amazing young girl who battles the prejudice of her community and fights for her mother’s love and honor,” [...]

Empowered by governments, religious ideology is shaping the aids industry in harmful ways. Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren Scanning headlines, I saw the CDC announcement that South Africa is now “a victim of its ARV treatment success.” This year S.A. hoped to treat eighty percent of its 1 million HIV-positive citizens. By 2024, the S.A. government says, it will need $4 billion for the purchase of cheap generic ARVs made available by PEPFAR and World Bank partnerships. But the extra $120 million promised by [...]

On June 17, weeks after the U.S. announced that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) would not significantly increase its funding to Africa, thousands of South African protesters marched on the U.S. consulate in Johannesburg.