2009- Waheedah Shabazz-El's Testimony

By Waheedah Shabazz-El
3/25/09

(*Editor’s Note: This reflection testimony was given at the IRG/Ford Conference in France by Waheedah Shabazz-El, who was a participant along with WEAP’s Executive Director, Ethel Long-Scott.)

I leave here rich with information, connections, determination and new found friends and networks in global spaces  ..., that is having arrived with a narrow perspective of the importance, the significance and the profound impact that international decisions have on local issues and my life.  Decisions that deny communities the rights to dignity, rights to safety, rights to water, rights to dwell,  health care, economic growth & development.   The right to fundamental existence and the right to pass those legacies and truths on to our next generations.  

I arrived with my head held high yet all the same...deep down ....feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders.  What will it take to end AIDS? Must I work my entire life to that end?  Does the US Positive Women’s Network have a role to play outside of the United States?   What I got in touch with over these past few days through the case studies, the materials, the participants, the presenters, and our sponsors was that if I were to hold my head just a little higher...that I would be able to see beyond the horizon and into trans global spaces where there lies a reservoir of resources through alliances based on the values of fundamental human rights.  A space where we all can exercise our rights and our duties as global citizens, that goes beyond all of our own borders.  Operating in these Trans global spaces may also have the potential of increasing our democratic spaces at home. As someone so vividly stated earlier in the week: the global is in the local and the local is in the global, and we all benefit when we are able to integrate the two on multi-level scales.

How do we do this without losing our own identities? How do we identify ourselves in global spaces?  Through trans- global networking, we can focus on our similarities, not our difference and when we are in those spaces... we are able to draw collective power from one another through linkages that will benefit our own countries.  Having had the chance to speak to at least one member of each network here, I have found that HIV has a definite presence in all of the movements and the interception seems to be poverty, scarcity of resources, and gender inequities.  Guiding principles of basic human rights.  I have also learned that access to a wider audience (trans-scaling) can result in a boomerang affect and create a way of gaining more local support upon our return to our own regions and provinces.    

As a result of this training I feel confidant I can return home and articulate how networking works and use the analogy that was used here of the forest fire that does not consume every tree...because the trees are not touching. But when a message of human injustice comes along our connected network, we can respond with a civil chorus of disapproval.

My experience over the past several days has given me a clearer understanding of the powerful mission of the US PWN.  To move the 300,000 women living with HIV in the US and around the world from being perceived as only beneficiaries of services to being recognized as experts who can identify not only the gaps that exist in HIV prevention and services but who are able to frame the solutions through the expert eyes of those women who are most impacted and at risk for HIV.

I believe I heard over our time together that the  U.N. ought to be persuaded to stop supporting sovereignty of governments and re-center its basic principles of “We the People”.  They (UN) are said to have a lack of political will to include marginalized communities and are slow moving and bureaucratic.

Although I heard some frustration around many issues, what resonates with me was the dissatisfaction that limited or no funding is available for PWA’s who must volunteer in order to be involved in the healing of their communities.  I can even see this concern as a conjunction for networking.

Thank you all for articulating your issues so well and passionately, and bringing them to life in a way I can share your bona fide concerns with my community and networks in my region and share how our causes connect with common threads.

As we nourished ourselves and networked in the course of our meals, I was humbled by the compassion and want to thank those of you within earshot who listened so intensely to my story...that reminded me how painful it is to have to live with HIV and that bought me to  an emotional meltdown ....long overdue.  As a result of your caring spirits, I leave relieved of blame.  And we all should relieve ourselves of blame as we find ourselves fighting for existence, living in scarcity, dwelling in slums, fighting for rights to materials and lakes abundant with fish, being Muslim women who live under man made laws spawned in inequity....and contracting HIV ....more than a virus....the positive proof of socio and economic injustice continuously fueled by the narrow approaches of world governments toward addressing stigma.

Working on our issues alone resembles the folklore model of holding a finger in the dam to hold back the water.  But thanks to the conference organizers for supplying us with a Networking tool kit and a blueprint laying out ways we can repair or rebuild the dams, that threatens our very existence.

Finally, when the session began, Marty asked us to think about “something I have learned in the last year that I wished I had known”.  To that I could say “All the Above” But what I understand is that what have learned today was pre-ordained for me to learn today.  Every day before this prepared me for this day.  The day of the countdown ....  The launching.  The orbit into Global Spaces.