Red Ribbon on the White House North Portico – World AIDS Day 2013

Changes since last year…becoming an ally

I didn’t predict at last World AIDS Day in 2012 that I would take on the identity of ally. That’s new this year, I’ll be posting about that soon.

I finally saw the excellent documentary How To Survive a Plague (@SurviveaPlague) and identified with the observation that there was complacency with the AIDS epidemic early on because it affected gay men. The reluctance to care for or be around persons with AIDS by the medical profession/health system was also discussed (which was covered in my TEDTalk with Regina Holliday: ▶ The Embrace of Failure TED EYTAN and REGINA HOLLIDAY TEDxAlvaPark 2012 – YouTube).

I see similar behavior today in the health system in the way people who are transgender are treated, and I hope that health care is capable of learning from the past so that others may survive, too.

6 years ago, the red ribbon was a few miles away from the White House, in Dupont Circle. Things change.

View Whitman Walker Clinic – Miracles Happen on Flickr.com

More 2013 photographs below, all creative commons licensed, feel free to use with attribution.