AIDS and Disability Rights: You Can Help

Congress will soon consider the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark bill to protect all disabled persons against discrimination. Disability activists have commendably insisted on including all disabled persons equally, instead of allowing different disease constituencies to be split by political trade-offs. The AIDS community owes a debt to the larger disability community, which has refused to abandon persons with AIDS to appease bigots. We can begin to repay the debt when the Act is introduced, by working all-out for its passage.


However there are still attempts to exclude persons with HIV from legislation to protect other disabled persons. To resist these attempts, the delegate from NAPWA (the National Association of People with AIDS) to the Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities wants to hear about cases of AIDS- or HIV-related discrimination--in medical care, employment, public accommodations, or otherwise.

If you or anyone you know has experienced such discrimination, write a short account--half a page is usually enough--and send it to David Bodenstein, National Association of People with AIDS, 2025 I St. NW, Suite 415, Washington, DC 20006. Please include a phone number or address where you can be contacted. Your name will be kept confidential; or you can write anonymously if you prefer.

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