Congresswoman Barbara Lee has a history of firsts and of standing up by herself to stand for a cause or a point. This is one example:
The International AIDS Conference has a history of welcoming world leaders, including presidents and kings, greeting delegates and saluting "them" for their efforts to eradicate HIV. Year after year, one elected official has bypassed the flashing lights and cameras of the opening ceremony and joined the ranks as one of "us," contributing energetically as a presenter, moderator, spokesperson and HIV visionary all week.
Once again, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) is the sole member of the U.S. Congress to attend the International AIDS Conference. On Tuesday, I caught up with Rep. Lee to learn how her involvement builds progressive momentum globally and in the U.S.
"I saw that there was a void when I when to Congress so I started participating to get a good handle on what strategies and what policies the United States should mount."
Hers is a simple operating plan. Rep. Lee connects the House of Representatives to major themes of the epidemic, building bi-partisan support for critical issues such as comprehensive sex education, family planning and the U.S. travel ban, whose repeal she successfully engineered in the new PEPFAR bill.
"When I was in Toronto, it dawned on me that we should have one of these great conferences in my district in Oakland. Then someone reminded me, ‘you can't do that Barbara, there's a travel ban.' So I went back to Congress, wrote and introduced a resolution that would lift the travel ban. I'm proud to say that in the PEPFAR bill that President Bush signed into law, that travel ban was repealed. Now we need to implement the regulations, which we're working on."
Representative Lee understands the complicated obstacles that thwart effective HIV prevention, though not all of her recommendations are embraced. Support for family planning is absent from the new PEPFAR-a painful irony in the city that gave the global gag rule the name "Mexico City Policy."
"That is something that was left out of PEPFAR and we couldn't negotiate it with the other side. Hopefully when there is another President we can go back to the drawing board and fix that. It's absolutely essential that we have coordination between HIV/AIDS initiatives and family planning. I want to repeal the Global Gag Rule that does not allow organizations to receive federal funding to provide full reproductive health counseling, including abortion counseling. It is a shame and disgrace and does a disservice to women, harming millions of women throughout the world."
Domestically, Rep. Lee is aghast at infection rates in the African-American community including those in her Oakland, California district. She laments Congress's failure to adequately fund the Minority AIDS Initiative and was not surprised at the CDC's revised surveillance figures or the recent Black AIDS Institute report, "Left Behind."
"There's been a severe undercount. The Black AIDS Institute knew this, I knew this, members of Congress knew this. BAI is calling for a domestic PEPFAR and I fully agree with them. They want 1.3 billion to begin. I think we need billions and billions and billions more."
Of course, to be effective, that level of funding will require another sweeping policy change, an end to the abstinence-only-until-marriage programs favored by the administration. Rep. Lee has led the charge against abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and wrote a bill to allow states to devise evidence-based HIV and AIDS education.
"The Responsible Education about Life [REAL] Act, be for REAL, that's my bill, has more than 100 co-sponsors. That bill would in essence allow states to use federal funding to teach comprehensive sex education in public schools, to teach young people how to prevent the transmission of HIV and AIDS and also how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. It's got to happen."
"Hopefully with a new president we'll be able to push that policy forward."
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