AIDS activists and Washington, D.C.-area students will be chanting “Puerto Rico AIDS Crisis, Save Lives Now” and handing out informational fliers at a vociferous legal picket outside the “Friends of Puerto Rico” Holiday Reception on December 12 at the National Geographic Society at 1145 17th St. NW from 6 pm to 9 pm. (This information is embargoed until 6pm on December 12)

The holiday party is being thrown by the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration and is sponsored by Rums of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Tourism Bureau. The picket is the latest in a series of activist measures intended to pressure the Puerto Rican government into taking immediate action to address the island’s escalating AIDS crisis.

Organizations participating in the picket include D.C. Fights Back (dcfightsback.org), the Campaign to End AIDS (c2ea.org), Housing Works (housingworks.org), ACT UP Philadelphia (http://www.critpath.org/actup/), Latino Commission on AIDS (latinoaids.org) and student groups from American, Howard and George Washington Universities.

The groups picketing demand immediate federal control of AIDS funding in Puerto Rico; an independent authority to investigate the mismanagement and come up with a plan to end it; and immediate action to provide HIV prevention tools to IV drug users, who account for the majority of new infections in Puerto Rico. The picket follows a series of grassroots events in November with the same goals, including a civil disobedience action outside the Federal Building in New York City and phone and fax zaps of the offices of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, Puerto Rico Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá and San Juan Mayor Jorge Santini-Padilla.

More than 30,000 people in Puerto Rico have HIV/AIDS, and more than 19,000 Puerto Ricans have died from AIDS. Since 2006, AIDS services and treatment in Puerto Rico have been crippled by neglect and criminal activity.

• Audit after audit by the federal government of millions in U.S. tax dollars has documented Puerto Rico’s failure to provide basic care to people with HIV/AIDS.

• In December, the FBI raided four San Juan Health Department offices, freezing millions in U.S. Ryan White CARE Act funds intended to help people with HIV/AIDS.

• The Puerto Rican Health Department claims there is no longer an AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) waiting list for medications, but advocates have documented hundreds of people who are still waiting to receive medications on which their lives depend.

• The U.S. Office of the Inspector General has recently said that the Puerto Rican Department of Health may have to return $28 million in federal AIDS funding due to mismanagement.

HHS Secretary Leavitt has the power to instruct the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the division of HHS that oversees HIV/AIDS in all U.S. states and territories, to take over the dispersal of millions in Ryan White CARE Act funds in Puerto Rico. HRSA has taken such action in U.S cities such as Washington, D.C, Baltimore and Orlando. In response to last month’s protest in New York City, HRSA has said that the Puerto Rican government must voluntarily give up control of its AIDS funding, but in the past HRSA has threatened to cut off funding to cities that refused to do so.

To learn more, visit The New York Times and the Housing Works AIDS Issues Update for in-depth articles about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Puerto Rico.

HOUSING WORKS is dedicated to fighting the twin crises of HIV/AIDS and homelessness. We are the largest grassroots AIDS organization in the U.S. and the largest minority-controlled AIDS organization in the U.S. We provide housing, medical care, job training, case management, HIV prevention, counseling and testing, and other services to low-income and homeless New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS.