A cut in HIV/AIDS research was announced last week here in the US, so a bunch of activists walked into a Senators office and stripped down naked. The reporters and photographers literally had a riot trying to get a shot.
If we did that.. Im sure it would be used against us to push the mental health issue views eg look at what those crazy ME/CFS patients who are in need of CBT are doing now.
I think we need to be far more careful then other illnesses who dont have a psychological illness view hanging over their heads. We need people to release that we are mostly a bunch of "normal" people and not "extremists" doing all kinds of crazy things including death threats. We need people able to relate to us to see our real situations and not that we are crazies.
But yeah if we didnt have the psych stuff hanging over this illness.. there is all kinds of things which could be done to bring attention to us. Maybe we should start having "sleep over" protests at places where we just all gather and lay about.. BYO mattress.. we need to find good ways to campaign which are suitable for our illness.
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On the subject of HIV advocacy.. I saw got some far out advocacy info on that in my letter box the other week.. I got a leaflet inviting me to a huge gay party in which it said a couple of members of parliment were supporting and then half way down page it talked about AIDS (it was all lies well the part about the MPs anyway and the highly inflated AIDS figures.. one in 9 gay males have HIV or AIDS.. I think was a lie as I dont think it would be true here).
Anyway.. it certainly got my attention... I was in shock that these 2 members of parliament were telling everyone to come to a gay party and making it sound like one really wasnt in the in group if one didnt go (actually I thought the leaflet came from the government at first). It took me a bit to realise that the group was using these gov peoples names without obviously getting their consent (one only realises that as there was no gov links at all on the invite). Anyway..whether it was that or not I dont know but then this week (a week later).. suddenly the Australia gov has decided to put more funding into HIV as apparently there was a protest going on over here about cut backs.