HISTORY

On World AIDS Day 2004, the UCLA AIDS Institute launched “Knowledge Is
Power,” a campaign to de-stigmatize HIV testing and encourage all sexually-active adults to get tested. Like the disease itself, testing for exposure to HIV is still thought of as something that need concern only men who have sex with men and IV drug users — even though the epidemic has moved well beyond these risk groups. In actual fact, in the United States today AIDS is disproportionately a disease of women, particularly women of color, and more particularly young women of color. African-American women are 23 times more likely to be infected with HIV than white women of the same age, and teenage girls of color account for 85% of the new infections in that age group, even though they represent only 27% the population.

The Centers for Disease Control estimate that some 300,000 Americans are HIV-positive and don’t know it. Some of these individuals are men who have sex with men, and some of them are IV drug users. But many are not. Less than half of all adult Americans have had an HIV test — and a third of those who are tested for HIV fail to return for their test results. Identifying these individuals — through widespread, voluntary, anonymous, free HIV testing — and then getting them into treatment, will help control the spread of HIV in their bodies… and control the spread of HIV in our country.

The formal launch of the “Knowledge Is Power” campaign took place on the UCLA campus on December 1, 2004. More than a thousand students participated in the event; several hundred students waited for up to four hours to be tested at one of the two mobile testing vans set up on Bruin Plaza; and hundreds more had to be turned away when the vans exhausted their supply of non-invasive, ultra-quick, highly accurate, completely confidential tests. All those who were tested got their results — and appropriate counseling — on site.

More than a dozen student organizations — among them the AIDS Awareness Committee of the Student Welfare Committee, the Undergraduate Student Association Council, and Dance Marathon — rallied hundreds of UCLA undergraduates to help the AIDS Institute inaugurate “Knowledge Is Power.” The participants gathered at three collection points on campus, and at a prearranged signal began a slow march to Bruin Plaza that was timed so that the head of each column arrived exactly at noon. The marchers filed into the plaza, in silence, hundreds strong, as the bells of Powell Library tolled the hour.

Although the AIDS Institute provided the student-organizers of the World AIDS Day rally with posters, stickers, and Tshirts — all emblazoned with the distinctive red-and-black graphics of the “Knowledge Is Power” campaign — many of the participants carried hand-made placards that bore sobering statistics about the impact that AIDS has had worldwide in the past quarter-century.

The “Knowledge Is Power” rally drew its audience from all corners of the UCLA
campus, thanks in large part to the efforts of Professor David Gere. Gere sees artists of all stripes as under-appreciated, underutilized and, potentially, immensely effective partners in AIDS education and prevention campaigns — and students from Gere’s “MAKE ART /STOP AIDS” class at UCLA were prime movers behind the Bruin Plaza rally.

Adam Stern, the lead vocalist of the band Grizzly Peak, is also one of half a dozen UCLA students chosen to represent the AIDS Institute, on campus and at events in greater Los Angeles, as one of our AIDS Ambassadors — and on World AIDS Day he fulfilled that role in spades, providing not only intros but vamps, bridges, interludes, and several full-out songs. “I know that the AIDS epidemic seems a long way away, on a day as beautiful as this, in a place as beautiful as this,” Stern said,” but AIDS is everywhere. It will be part of all our lives, all our lives.” Among those Stern introduced was a fellow student, Hani Rosenfeld, whose poignant report on her work with HIV-infected women in Africa ended with the haunting words of a woman Rosenfeld describes as “my Tanzanian sister, Amina.” “Mtoto yangu, anahumwa,” Amina says — “My child has it too.”

Dr. Kathie Ferbas, who leads an AIDS vaccine development project at the AIDS Institute, noted that “no viral epidemic in history has ever been effectively contained without a vaccine.” Until the advent of such a vaccine, our best hope of containing the epidemic is widespread testing, and effective treatment of those who carry the virus. Actress Jasmine Guy (above) sounded that note, on behalf of the AIDS Institute’s testing campaign, in her closing remarks: "Getting tested for HIV is a responsible act, a moral act, a wise act, a life-affirming act. Know your HIV status. Knowledge is power."