The traces of illness were unmistakable on Leigh Bohen’s face — gaunt with translucent skin, it bore testimony to 20 years of HIV infection as she spoke to a 30-person crowd surrounding the steps of University Hall.
“I’m getting very sick very quickly. I don’t have a future,” the 56-year-old said.
Bohen was one of two speakers Sunday at an AIDS candlelight memorial at The Rock. The memorial — sponsored by HIV/AIDS Literacy Organization, College Feminists and the Chicago-based Better Existence with HIV — was part of an international event organized by the Global Health Council and addressed the theme of turning remembrance into action.
“Remembrance is easy,” Bohen said to the crowd. “It’s easy to remember somebody, ‘Oh poor so and so.’ What will it take to get you to do something tomorrow? What does it take to get you to do something today?”
Bohen told her own story before urging attendees to turn words into action, “not just ribbons, not just quilts, not just remembrance — but real action,” she said.
A white woman with four children and a husband, Bohen was barely able to find testing when she first fell ill because she “didn’t fit anyone’s stereotype.” In the ensuing years, her brother-in-law and cousin also contracted the illness and died.
Senior history lecturer Lane Fenrich also spoke at the event, delivering a speech that indicted Americans’ apathy toward AIDS with a mixture of anger, wry humor and frustration.
“For most Americans the AIDS epidemic is over,” he said. “Our sense of crisis has abated.”
With the discovery of effective medicines and reduction of AIDS-related mortality, the epidemic has faded from the American consciousness and is perceived as a problem for “others,” Fenrich said.
“AIDS is like a big spotlight that shows the social inequality in this country,” he said.
The illness overwhelmingly affects minorities — poor black women and gay men particularly — so it seems removed from most people’s lives, he said.
But with about 40,000 new infections each year, the United States needs to take action and create a sensible policy that considers why certain minorities are affected, Fenrich said.
Fenrich described his anger at the U.S. government’s “idiotic” abstinence-only sex education policy and religious moralizing. After 25 years working with, knowing and loving people infected with HIV, he said, it is frustrating to watch the government adopt harmful policies.
To make change, “You have to go out and be a little angry,” he said.
Bohen agreed that today’s youth needed to be motivated toward anger and action.
“They have to get themselves angry. Everybody has to be a self-motivator,” she said.
Reach Jordan Weissmann at [email protected].
