La Voz Global

Today, POZ made the backpage of La Voz Global, the daily newspaper of the International AIDS Conference! We have a space in the Global Village where we are collecting photographs and videos of people living with, and those affected by, HIV from around the world (for those of you who are here in Mexico City at the conference...please come see us at booth #200). A very special friend of POZ, photographer Joan L. Brown, is snapping some of the most amazing photos of those visiting the conference.

Here is a snap of the coverage in La Voz Global and some shots of Joan and a subject (who is not necessarily HIV-positive - many of those who are participating in our "Project Dignity" are HIV-negative)...

The Global Village is the community side of the conference and it makes the UN look homogeneous. People from countries and AIDS organizations from around the world gather to share stories of how they support people living with HIV, or do prevention, or raise awareness, or cut hair, or dance, or rap, or rant against injustice in their home countries. The sessions, posters, press conferences and delivery of data are important, but the beating heart of the conference is unquestionably the Global Village.

POZ staff members Jennifer Morton and Keith Dupont, as well as CEO Jeremy Grayzel, are welcoming folks from around the world, recording their incredible stories (while Joan wears her arms out holding the camera at eye level for 12-14 hours a day). Though it is critical for us to cover all the breaking news of treatment and key issues of advocacy being discussed at the main conference center-Centro Banamex-the reason the entire AIDS industry exists is because of the people in the Global Village.

Rather than wax on, probably very unpoetically given my level of fatigue and given that my use of language has become stilted in my efforts to speak simply and without slang to others who are gracious enough to speak to me in English because I can not speak Swahili, Norwegian (Jarle : )), Ukrainian, Dutch, French (well, well enough for anyone to understand), Mandarin, let alone Spanish, I thought I'd just let some pictures tell the story for me. More to come, including videos of shamanistic healing, demonstrations against the price of medications in the developing world and a die-in by ACT-UP Paris.