Chicago, IL Jan. 13, 2017 The MBLGTACC 2017 Planning Committee is thrilled to announce that HIV/AIDS activist Peter Staley, who has dedicated his career to advocating for awareness of the illness and eliminating barriers to treatment of those living with HIV/AIDS since the mid-1980's, will present the second keynote of the Conference at 6 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2017.
The 2017 Midwest Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transgender & Ally College Conference ( MBLGTACC ) will welcome an expected 2.500 attendees from across the Midwest and around the country Feb. 17-19 for a weekend of workshops, activities, and community-building at Chicago's Navy Pier.
Patrisse Cullors, activist and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, will deliver the keynote address on the opening evening of the Conference.
Staley, who worked as a bond trader on Wall Street before being diagnosed with AIDS-related complex in 1985, joined ACT UP in New York shortly after the organization's founding in 1987. In the decades that followed, Staley has been crucially involved in HIV/AIDS advocacy projects for both non-profit and federal government initiativesranging from prevention of methamphetamine use among gay men to disseminating information about treatment options to pressuring the manufacturers of pre-exposure prophylactic drugs ( PrEP ) more affordable. Staley is also prominently featured in the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague.
MBLGTACC is an annual three-day conference hosted by Midwestern colleges and universities in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. For the past quarter-century, the Conference has served to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ people, as well as their allies, to gather as a social and academic community and to celebrate diversity across all intersections of queer identity. For more information about MBLGTACC, or to register for the conference, please visit mblgtacc.org .