Some excitement came to the Rotunda at the Capitol building in the form of protest chants and arrest. On Thursday, a number of people from organizations comprising the Sound the Alarm coalition (they have great pictures of the action on their website) chained themselves together in the Capitol building rotunda in protest of the federal government's inaction of combating HIV/AIDS as well as lack of help to those who have HIV/AIDS. Twenty-six HIV/AIDS activists were arrested for trying to urge Congress to save lives, rather than continue to sit on their thumbs (common decency prevents me from describing what they were actually doing).



The video is awesome! I bet people were freaked out, which is a good thing -- sometimes shock and awe are necessary to move life-saving, scientifically based policy forward. In this case, the demonstrators were asking for three things:

1) Lift the federal funding ban on syringe exchange
2) Fund the HOWPA AIDS housing program at $360 million
3) Fund the U.S's fair share to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria at $2.7 billion and increase funding for the US global AIDS plan "PEPFAR" by $1 billion per year

Update: House Democrats just reversed President Obama's inaction when he failed to remove the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs. The House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies removed language from an appropriations bill that was the main mechanism for banning the funding. This is very good news, but there is still a ways to go (isn't there always?)