Last week, Secretary Hillary Clinton's campaign followed-up with the national coalition of HIV/AIDS activists and organizations to nominate a short list of people living with HIV/AIDS to speak at the DNC 2016. Clinton's campaign selected the coalition's top pick of Daniel D. Driffin, a 30-year-old gay black man living with HIV, and a civic leader in Georgia. Daniel gives voice to the thousands of black gay and bisexual men living with HIV in America - a community that is a priority in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy due to increased HIV diagnoses and ongoing poor HIV health outcomes.
Daniel Driffin will enter Morehouse School of Medicine's MPHA program in the fall. He serves as co-chair of the Task Force to End AIDS in Fulton County, Georgia and is Youth HIV Policy Advisor for the LGBT organization Georgia Equality. Daniel was recently featured in a PBS segment on the HIV epidemic in Atlanta. He is a founder of "Undetectables Atlanta," a group of over 400 gay/bisexual men with HIV, and is also a founder of THRIVEN SS inc., a non-profit service organization serving the same population.
Daniel will address the delegates at the Convention on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 during the 4:30pm and 6:00pm block of speakers.
Since 2004, HIV/AIDS activists have been disappointed in the failure for the Democratic National Convention to include an HIV positive speaker to have the opportunity to combat HIV-stigma and address delegates from the main stage.
Previous speakers at the Democratic National Conventions were:
— Bob Hattoy was a prime time speaker at the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York.
— Phill Wilson was a prime time speaker at the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
— Jesse Milan spoke at the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles.
— Denise Stokes spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
— There was no person living with HIV who spoke on HIV/AIDS at the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver or at the 2012 Convention in Charlotte, NC.
The coalition of HIV/AIDS activists and organizations met with Secretary Hillary Clinton on May 12, 2016 in her Brooklyn campaign headquarters to discuss a detailed agenda of concerns.� While the coalition is grateful to Secretary Clinton for following through on scheduling a speaker and incorporating some of the coalition's concerns in the Democratic Platform, we are still waiting for a response from the Clinton campaign regarding specific policy requests to help end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, both domestically and globally.
For more information on the coalition's work this election, see here: www.housingworks.org/advocate/detail/meetings-scheduled-with-presidential-candidates-clinton-and-sanders/ .
www.housingworks.org/advocate/detail/aids-advocates-meet-with-secretary-clinton-at-brooklyn-campaign-headquarter/ .
www.housingworks.org/advocate/detail/notes-from-meeting-with-secretary-hillary-clinton/ .
