U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin got an earful from AIDS activists at the Tribeca Film Fesitval premiere of a documentary about the HIV epidemic in Washington, D.C. At a panel following a screening of “The Other City” Monday, Benjamin was heckled as some in the audience said President Obama has done nothing to help the HIV problem.
Benjamin, sitting alongisde the flimmakers and people who appeared in the documentary, said Obama had done plenty. She noted his decision to lift the ban on HIV-positive foreign travel and how a major conference will be hosted in Washington in 2012. Obama chose Benjamin for the position in part because her own brother died from AIDS.
But as Benjamin spoke, Larry Kramer said everything Obama has done is “useless!”
“Where’s your anger?” Kramer shouted at Benjamin from the audience. He also appeared briefly in the documentary, and is known for loud protests.
Benjamin, looking upset, defended herself and Obama from the stage, citing the administration’s work to implement a new law funding needle exchange programs at the state level. “The anger is there. Anger, sadness, it’s emotion, it’s there,” she said. “We’re doing things one step at a time.”
She did not mention how the president and First Lady Michelle Obama frequently talk about the importance of being tested. On a trip to Africa in 2006, Obama getting tested became international news.
After other hecklers jumped in, singer John Legend, who wrote the score for the film, stood in the audience to quiet them down. He asked what the activists would want to see politicians do about the HIV rate. One activist stood and said the government should repeal criminalization statutes that remain on the books in states like Texas. “The single biggest obstacle is stigma enshrined in the law. It’s a viral apartheid,” he said.
Benjamin told the audience the film “was hard to watch but good to watch” and told me in a brief conversation later that it had made her cry.
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