LIVING READY : documenting the lives of 5 people with HIV to help the vital flow of essential information to others

In this curent treacherous political climate in the US it is important that we share positive news and actions that the administration are determined to ban or destroy.  Sadly the treatment of people with HIV seems to be one the major causalities  I is not an issue the current administration is interested in tackling, or even acknowledging, but  that doesn’t mean it has gone away. It’s estimated that over 1.2 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and as much as 13% of them don’t know it and need testing.

Hispanic/Latino people, who made up 18% of the population, accounted for 33% (10,500) of new HIV infections. Meanwhile, Black people, who made up approximately 12% of the population of the United States population, accounted for 37% (11,900). Together, both groups made up more than half (70%) of new HIV infections.  Major kudos then to LatiNation for its brilliant new web series Living y Ready where five members from the Los Angeles’ Latino community talk candidly about the challenges, as well as some silver linings, they’ve experienced since receiving their HIV-positive diagnoses.

The first episode focuses on the day each of them learned they were positive.

“I was very angry,” José Ramos shares in the episode, “angry at me for letting it happen to me, angry at him for infecting me with HIV, and lastly I was disappointed, and I was ashamed.”

“In that moment, it feels like your world is coming to an end, like everything’s going to be over,” Dorian Klemensine remarks. “It feels like a rebirth of yourself, like you are a whole new person in this one moment because now you have something that can potentially change your life in a very drastic way.”

New short-form episodes will be released throughout the year. The ultimate goal of the series is to reframe the narrative around HIV.

PS Back in 2019, during his first term as President, the compulsive Liar vowed to end AIDS by the year 2030.

“My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years. Together, we will defeat AIDS in America,” he said during his State of the Union address.

Now he has targeted this group  by withdrawing aid,  cutting all healthcare  resources, appointing  a right-wing anti-vaccine conspirator as the Secretary of Health and  ordering the White House website and several federal health websites to be scrubbed of all LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS related content.