For Maxx Boykin and Jeremiah Johnson, the fight to protect HIV funding is ultimately a fight for people — their health, their dignity, and their lives.
Together, they lead the Save HIV Funding campaign, mobilizing advocates and organizations across the country to defend HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and care. This year, the campaign organized protests, congressional advocacy, and more than 30 events during the Seven Days in June Week of Action. Johnson says their work helped beat back $3.5 billion in proposed federal cuts to HIV care, prevention, and testing.
For Boykin, the work is driven by a commitment to making sure people too often pushed aside, including sex workers, people who use drugs, formerly incarcerated people, and those without adequate housing, are heard. “I do this work for the people that do not have an opportunity to speak for themselves,” he says. “HIV knows no borders.”
For Johnson, who has lived with HIV for 18 years, that visibility is deeply personal. As HIV increasingly disappears from public conversation, he wants people living with the virus to see “examples of lives lived with HIV that are not rooted in tragedy or despair, but in strength, confidence, and love.”
Their message is both urgent and hopeful. “Technology, science, and even spirituality have given us the tools needed to create health for our communities,” Boykin says. “It is up to us to fight for our health.” @savehivfunding
