Transitions: The Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^® Campaign
Volume 14, No. 1, October 2001

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By Brian Vincent Griffith, Online Peer Educator for YouthHIV

I have often found myself wearing many different hats as I make my way through life and its various activities. In high school, I was known as Brian, the "Band Geek," and Brian, the "Speech & Debate Nerd." These were boring labels, I often found, and I looked forward to the days when I could attach classier labels to my name. Brian V. Griffith, Attorney at Law, always had an amazing ring to me; or, to please my parents' secret desire for a scholar, Dr. Brian V. Griffith, professor of English; but Brian Griffith, Youth Activist? No way! This, however, has become my most recent incarnation of identity. This field is not a lonely one either, as I am only one of many youth working towards the goal of inclusion.

To borrow from a well-known cliché, it all began when I, and many others, walked through the front doors of the downtown Atlanta Hyatt for the 2000 United States Conference on AIDS. I was among the youth invited to attend by Advocates for Youth. I would be focusing my energies on an online peer education training session and on attending conference workshops, institutes, and plenary sessions. Within the first day, I became highly aware of the way in which youth were being "tokenized " on every level at the conference. Few workshops addressed the HIV/AIDS epidemic among the youth of the world. Even more disturbing was the fact that many of the conference participants were unwilling to permit youth even to participate in discussions held during workshops. We were young and didn't know what we were talking about. We were nineteen and didn't hold degrees. We represented the youth that account for 50 percent of all new HIV infections, and we were being silenced, time after time, by adults. We could not stand for this!

Immediately, not to my surprise, a group of concerned young participants began organizing, meeting to set out a list of concerns about the lack of youth's involvement in the conference. We met in hotel rooms, and our group of concerned youth began to grow and grow and grow. By the second and third days of the conference, we had made enough waves to be granted a meeting with the Executive Director of the organization sponsoring the conference. After this meeting, we drafted a letter to the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) and other partner organizations that had participated in planning the conference. In the letter, the youth at the conference laid out complaints, concerns, and suggestions for the future improvement of the United States Conference on AIDS.

We did not stop mobilizing at this point either. We would not settle for a nod of the head and a cordial "thanks for the letter." We continued our efforts after the conference. We set up an Internet listserv so we could keep in contact with each other as we brainstormed more ideas to present to NMAC. When it became apparent that we were not the kind of individuals who would easily fold up and go away, NMAC started giving our movement a little more thought. We organized conference phone calls to discuss pertinent issues, and we continued to circulate our letter of complaint to member organizations of the NMAC. We met youth at other conferences, including the Ryan White National Youth Conference on HIV/AIDS, and made our case more and more widely known.

Although this story continues to play out, there is definitely happy news about youth empowered activism. NMAC, after our continued prodding, recognized the weaknesses in its previous planning and is taking steps to improve future conferences. Youth have been given more opportunity to influence the future direction of the conference through a seat on the planning committee created for a youth representative. NMAC has also promised that more youth will be able to attend future conferences through scholarships and has pledged more youth-oriented, and youth-led workshops.

I am now able to sit back and admire, with some amazement, the accomplishments of a group of determined peer educators that were able to sway the system. I am proud to have been among the youth who were not willing to take a back seat and accept the pat on the head that adult conference attendees tried to hand us. I am glad to see that progress is being made, albeit slowly, towards recognizing the importance of youth in the battle against HIV/AIDS. Brian V. Griffith, Youth Activist, is a label to hang proudly on my bedroom door, and my chief concern for the time being is finding a cute pair of shoes to go with this brand new hat!

Next Chapter: Making Waves at the United Nations
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Transitions (ISSN 1097-1254) © 2001, is a quarterly publication of Advocates for Youth—Helping young people make safe and responsible decisions about sex. For permission to reprint, contact Transitions' editor at 202.419.3420.

Editor: Sue Alford