ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS: Broad Museum Screening and Discussion

The Los Angeles premiere screening of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS at The Broad was followed by a discussion with Grissel Granados (Positive Women's Network – USA), Ayako Ochoa (Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center), Naomi Wilding (Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation), and Phill Wilson (Black AIDS Institute), moderated by Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art Project Manager Kyle Croft.

Speaker Biographies:

Grissel Granados is Program Manager for HIV Prevention Services at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and currently a member of the Board of Directors of Positive Women's Network - USA. She works primarily with young gay and bisexual men and transgender youth of color. Locally, she co-chairs the LA County Commission on HIV and was a community co-chair for the Los Angeles County HIV/AIDS Strategy. She served on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS for three years until she stepped down due to the non-responsive and oppressive administration. Grissel is a Mexican immigrant and has been living with HIV since infancy. She co-directed and co-produced We’re Still Here, a documentary depicting the stories of the first generation of people born with HIV who are now adults. When she’s not doing HIV work, Grissel enjoys spending time with her two cats and binge watching TV shows.

Ayako Miyashita Ochoa is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare. She also serves as Associate Director of the Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center. Prior to joining UCLA, Professor Miyashita directed the Los Angeles HIV Law and Policy Project, a legal services collaborative dedicated to addressing the unmet legal needs of primarily low-income people living with HIV in Los Angeles County. Professor Miyashita’s interests focus on HIV-related health disparities at the intersection of race/ethnicity, sexual and gender identity, and migrant status.

Naomi Wilding’s grandmother was actor and activist Elizabeth Taylor. Wilding became involved with the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) soon after Taylor passed away in 2011. Her advocacy work for the foundation has included lobbying on Capital Hill, and in Sacramento, to educate leaders about the discriminatory, and unscientifically founded nature of our HIV specific laws, as well as to promote comprehensive sex education. Naomi resides in Los Angeles, and together with her husband, Anthony Cran, runs Wilding Cran Gallery in the downtown Arts District. The gallery serves as a platform to support local and universal social causes, through arts education programming and philanthropic work. In 2017 they partnered with Congresswoman Barbara Lee to host an HIV is Not a Crime event, in an effort to reach out to, and engage their community on this issue.

Phill Wilson is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV/AIDS think tank focused exclusively on Black people. Prior to founding the Institute, Mr. Wilson served as the AIDS Coordi­nator for the City of Los Angeles (1990-1993), the Director of Policy and Planning at AIDS Project Los Angeles (1993-1996), co-chaired the Los Angeles County HIV Health Commission (1990-1995), appointee to the HRSA AIDS Advisory Committee (1995-1998), and served on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) (2010-2014). Mr. Wilson has published articles in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Los Angeles Weekly, Es­sence, Ebony, VIBE, Jet, POZ, and HIV+.

Commissioned Organizations:

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) NY (New York, NY) is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. ACT UP was formed in 1987 in response to social neglect, government negligence and the complacency of the medical establishment during the 1980s. Soon it found itself needing to fight corporate greed, lack of solidarity and various forms of stigma and discrimination at home and abroad. ACT UP fights for: sustained investment in research for new medicines and treatments for HIV/AIDS and related co-infections; equitable access to prevention and care for HIV/AIDS and healthcare, in general; tackling the structural drivers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, such as stigma, discrimination and poverty.

Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN) is a national membership body of women living with HIV and allies that exists to strengthen the strategic power of all women living with HIV in the United States. Founded in 2008 by 28 diverse women leaders living with HIV, PWN-USA develops a leadership pipeline and policy agenda that applies a gender lens to the domestic HIV epidemic grounded in social justice and human rights. Every day, PWN-USA inspires, informs and mobilizes women living with HIV to advocate for changes that improve lives and uphold rights.

Sero Project is a national network of people with HIV and allies fighting for freedom from stigma and injustice. Sero is particularly focused on ending inappropriate criminal prosecutions of people with HIV, including for non-disclosure of their HIV status, potential or perceived HIV exposure or HIV transmission. Sero co-produces the biennial HIV is Not a Crime conference, which provides advocates from across the country with training on strategies and best practices for repealing laws that criminalize people living with HIV.

Safe Place Over Time (The SPOT) (Jackson, MS) is dedicated to providing services and opportunities for wellness, empowerment, and leadership to young men in Jackson, Mississippi. The program aims to improve health outcomes and reduce new cases of HIV among African Americans who are disproportionately affected by the epidemic. The SPOT strives to be a safe place for young men to openly discuss issues and challenges and to work to improve their quality of life and to promote the concept of self-worth. The SPOT is housed in the Jackson Medical Mall, a former shopping mall that now provides healthcare for the underserved and promotes economic and community development.

Tacoma Action Collective (Tacoma, WA) is a partnership of Black community organizers working in grassroots action and education in Washington State. TAC works to to eliminate systemic oppression and structural violence while empowering the people to build autonomous communities rooted in equity and justice. In 2015, the collective staged a die-in at the Tacoma Art Museum in response to the white-washing of the exhibition Art, AIDS, America.

VOCAL (Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders) (New York, NY) is a statewide grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, the drug war, homelessness, and mass incarceration in order to create healthy and just communities. VOCAL accomplishes this through community organizing, leadership development, public education, direct services, participatory research and direct action.