Introduction
A New Chapter in AIDS. Will It Be the Final Chapter? The Future Is in Our Hands
Welcome to Exit Strategy: Ending the AIDS Epidemic in Black America, the Black AIDS Institute’s eighth annual State of AIDS in Black America report. It’s hard to believe that I have been personally engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS since the beginning. I was infected in 1980 just as the epidemic
was emerging; I spoke at the first AIDS candlelight vigil in Los Angeles in 1982; and I was diagnosed with HIV in 1986. I’ve lost too many friends and loved ones to count. I don’t remember how many hospital rooms I’ve visited, death beds I’ve sat beside, or eulogies I’ve delivered. Through it all I’ve dreamed about and talked about the end of the epidemic.
“The day will come when this epidemic will be over. And when it does, it is important for them to know we were not all cowards. We were not all monsters. Some of us dared to care in the face of it. Some of us dared to fight because of it. And, some of us dared to love in spite of it, because it is in the caring, fighting and loving that we live forever.”