4 Nights 4 Justice Looks at HIV/AIDS With Women’s Eyes

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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“Nothing About Us Without Us!” is a slogan used to communicate the idea that no policy should be decided by any representative without the full and direct participation of members of the group affected by that policy.

“Nothing Without Us: The Women Who Will End AIDS” is a documentary directed by Harriet Hirshorn and produced by Hirshorn and Mary Patierno, that looks at the AIDS epidemic from a female point of view.

Early in the film we see protesters carrying signs that say “Women Don’t Get AIDS. They Just Die From It.”

Beginning in 1982, the film traces the advent of HIV/AIDS up to the present time, documenting the struggle by women to get the Center for Disease Control to redefine AIDS to include symptoms faced by HIV+ women. Not being included in the definition of AIDS, even though they were HIV+ made them ineligible for treatment, benefits, clinical trials, and civil rights protection. Many people died while waiting for medical coverage.

Maxine Wolfe of Act Up / NY led a group to meet with the Epidemiology Department at the CDC, but she says they were met with “absolute indifference.”

At one point, Katrina Haslip, former inmate and one of the activists, sat up and admonished the CDC officials, “I hold you responsible for the death of every woman with HIV, including myself.”

Following a four year campaign in which activists protested in DC at the offices of Health and Human Services, stormed the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, and Terry McGovern and the HIV Law Project sued the Federal government Federal Health Officials announced in 1992 that they changed the definition of AIDS to include illnesses common to women.

The film examines the problem around the world. One particularly dramatic segment follows Jeanne Gapiya-Niyonzima in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. Entire families were living with HIV during Burundi’s civil war from 1993-1996.

Under economic embargo, neither HIV medicines nor medicines to treat opportunistic infections were available in all of Burundi. So Jeanne began to drive once a week to Rwanda to pick up needed medical supplies, a dangerous trek with both countries waging a civil war.

Jeanne discovered that she was HIV-positive when her baby got sick. The doctor gave her the news in a brutal way. “He said, ‘Your baby has AIDS and he will die and so will you.’”

She recalls, “It didn’t affect me when he said, ‘You too will die,’ because I couldn’t imagine living without my baby. My only concern was to take care of him until his last breath, even though I’d die afterwards.”

This was when hospitals wouldn’t take AIDS patients. They simply sent them home to die. “This is what happened to my baby, my husband, to my sister, to my brother.”

On December 1, 1994, which happened to be National AIDS Day, a priest described people who died from AIDS as sinners. Jeanne stood up and protested that “My child has just died, and I myself am living with HIV, and no one in the church is a saint.” That led to a national movement.

In 2002 pressure by activists created a global priority for universal access to HIV treatment.

“The first part of the film recounts the women experiencing unfathomable loss,” agrees Harriet Hirshorn. “But thanks to Mary Patierno’s inspired editing and the resilience and courage of the five women portrayed in the film many people find the last part of the story surprisingly hopeful, inspiring and even empowering.”

Hirshorn saw much of this firsthand. She accompanied Marie de Cenival, an AIDS activist from France on research trips to various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa before finally settling on the topic of women AIDS activists globally. She’s now based in New York.

She’s not only a filmmaker; she’s become an activist. “Yes, I guess you could say that,” she considers the description. And as such, her film is helping make a difference.

“Nothing Without Us: The Women Who Will End AIDS” is showing at 6 p.m. this Monday evening as one of the films in Tropic Cinema’s 4 Nights 4 Justice series. Director Harriet Hirshorn will be on hand for a 6 p.m. champagne reception and an after-the-film Question & Answer session.

4 Nights 4 Justice is made possible by The Michael Dively Social Justice and Diversity Endowment at the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys and the Tropic Cinema.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com