LATE NIGHT with @Visual_AIDS: #GoingViral with your Activism

This lively event during the Brooklyn Museum's First Saturdays programming used the talk show format to discuss the ways in which art and social media can be used as AIDS activism, to combat stigma, and increased awareness and esteem for people living with HIV.

The event also highlighted the Brooklyn screening of RADIANT PRESENCE, coordinated in conjunction with the 26th anniversary of Day With(out) Art, Visual AIDS' annual World AIDS Day program.

Host: Ted Kerr

Panelists: Shawn Torres, Rusti Miller-Hill and Jawanza Williams

LATE NIGHT WITH @VISUAL_AIDS host Ted Kerr interviewed each of the evening's participants.

Rusti Miller-Hill will discussed the role that social media plays in her life as a woman living with HIV and as an activist, from the power of humor to make her day, to combating stigma online.

Jawanza J. Williams discussed how social media can be a form of activism and aid in IRL (in real life) activism.

Shawn Torres, the self-proclaimed Selfie King, discussed the need for people living with HIV to be in charge of their own representation and lead the group in tips for taking good selfies.

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES:

Theodore Kerr is a Canadian born, Brooklyn based writer and organizer. He was the programs manager at Visual AIDS and is currently doing his graduate work at Union Theological Seminary.

Shawn Torres, a Philadelphia native, is a graduate of Benedict College in Columbia, SC and a current second year Masters of Divinity student at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Shawn currently serves as Youth Minister at St Luke AME Church in Harlem. Passionate about intersections of spirituality and sexuality and how that impacts young people!

Russelle Miller-Hill, affectionately known as Rusti, is New Hour’s Reentry Services Program Coordinator and their primary educational facilitator in the Riverhead Correctional Facility. She provides instruction in Health and Wellness, Re-entry into the Community, and Parenting. Rusti has been a community advocate, motivational speaker and consultant on topics of addiction, reentry, housing, correctional health and the needs of women impacted by these issues. Rusti graduated from Metropolitan College of New York with a Bachelors Degree in Human Services, She is a Certified Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor Trainee (CASAC-T) and State Certified Recovery Peer Advocate (CRPA)Rusti has been a tireless community organizer and advocate for women who have no voice. While incarcerated at Albion Correctional Facility in New York, she was one of the earliest beneficiaries of the AIDS Counseling and Education program; a prison based peer initiative, and became a Resource Education and AIDS Counseling Health (REACH) peer educator. She then went on to become the Deputy of Prison Programs at Path Stone Corporation as an advocate, providing transitional services, HIV testing and peer education. She also co-chaired the Correctional Association's Women in Prison Project’s Conditions on the Inside Committee that in 2008 led advocacy to pass landmark New York State legislation to create oversight of NYS Correction's HIV and Hepatitis C programs by the State Department of Health. Rusti has been featured in a wide variety of publications, videos, and documentaries, including the New York Times, Ebony Magazine, POZ magazine, The House on Fire, Sisters Keepers and Rusti's Story. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Positive Women's National Network NYC Chapter.

Jawanza James Williams is a graduate of Schreiner University and the Youth Organizer at VOCAL-NY. He is a native of Texas and has been living in NYC for two years. He is an anti-racist writer, activist, advocate, prison abolitionist that's committed to the liberation of oppressed people at home, and across the world. He will speak as a representative of Queerocracy and VOCAL-NY.

Queerocracy is an activist organization cultivating the leadership of queer folks and people living with HIV/AIDS in NYC. Queerocracy is especially interested in developing and creating space for young leaders of color who identify as LGBTQI and gender non-conforming who have direct experience with homelessness and/or HIV.

Voices of Community Activists and Leaders (VOCAL-NY) is a statewide grassroots, membership organization building power among low-income people directly affected to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, homelessness, mass incarceration and the failed Drug War, to create healthy and just communities.