Presented by the AIDS Activist History Project and AIDS ACTION NOW!, please join us for a special night titled From Quarantine to Criminalization: Public health responses to HIV and our history of early activist interventions.
The purpose of this event is to capture, document and share a collective history of activist interventions to push back against public health interventions in the early days of HIV activism in Toronto and Ontario at large. There will also be space to talk about strategies moving forward and how to learn from these experiences for the future.
Together are going to be talking critically and openly about the successes and failures of Ontario’s activism of public health interventions for people living with HIV in a historical context and its implications.
To start the conversation Joan Anderson, Glen Brown and guests will share their personal stories of their own interventions and involvement highlighting the successes and failures of the late eighties and early nineties. They will speak about exciting times such as:
“…fighting for the establishment and expansion of anonymous testing; fighting for the end of mandatory reporting; fighting for the end of mandatory contact tracing; fighting for reduced arbitrary section 22 orders to restrain “risk” behaviour by PHAs; fighting for the end of linkage between STI results and prior HIV tests; fighting against the reclassification of HIV to a “virulent” disease, which would have expanded Public Health’s powers to quarantine “misbehaving” PHAs, and trying to get the Health Minister fired!…”
Then we will move forward to talk about how this impacted the present and how to make use of this history for the future.
As there were many other individuals and communities that were also doing their own organizing we encourage others to be a part of this historical documentation as well. Please note that this is a community conversation and will be run as an open forum so that together we can take advantage of a collective knowledge sharing and learning experience.
If you were involved in early activism and/or have stories and insight to share or if you want to come listen to our community activist history then please join us (and bring your friends).
Friday, February 7th
519 Church Street Community Centre
7 - 9pm
Space is limited.
The panel will be video recorded and used for future publication but no individuals will be in the documentation without their full informed consent.
