Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga

Bolivian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS
La Paz, Bolivia

2007 International AIDS Activist Award

A rape survivor who is fearlessly open about being HIV positive, Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga overcame stigma and silence around AIDS and women’s rights in her home country of Bolivia to co-found its first PWA organization, RedBoL, the Bolivian Network of People living with HIV/AIDS. Her outspokenness launched Ms. Quiroga onto the global stage: She spoke at the XVI International AIDS Conference and served as Community Program Committee co-chair. She is on the steering committee of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS and is the South America facilitator for the Global Youth Coalition against AIDS. She also co-organized the London-based International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS.

Michael Rajner

National Secretary of the Campaign to End AIDS
Fort Lauderdale, FL

2007 U.S. AIDS Activist Award

As National Secretary of the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA), Michael Rajner has played a major role in growing a two-year old coalition dedicated to ending AIDS stigma and discrimination into a thriving national network of activists. C2EA already boasts 12 robust statewide chapters, including one in Louisiana, where the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina threatened that state's AIDS infrastructure. In 2005, Mr. Rajner, who has had HIV since the mid-'90s, spearheaded C2EA's "Tropical Storm" caravan, a three-week activist pilgrimage from Florida to Washington, D.C. In 2006, he secured a "Pledge to End AIDS" from major Florida elected officials.

Deborah Small

Executive Director of Break the Chains
New York, NY

2007 Virginia Shubert Courage Award

Deborah Small is the executive director of Break the Chains, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build a national movement within communities of color against punitive drug policies. Given the high incidence of HIV among the incarcerated, people of color and intravenous drug users, Ms. Small has opened a vital front on the war against AIDS. She is the former director of public policy for the Drug Policy Alliance, and former legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. The latter post exposed her to the problem of young African Americans incarcerated for drug offenses and helped transform her into an ardent drug-policy-reform advocate.

Mark Hayes

Statewide Organizer, Housing Works
Albany, NY

2007 Housing Works AIDS Activist Award (Posthumous)

Mark Hayes passed away on April 3, 2007. A long-term survivor of AIDS, Mark was diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer last June.

Mark came to work for Housing Works in 1999, but his AIDS activism started much earlier than that. He was the Albany-based community organizer for eight years but was an AIDS activist for much longer than that. He was passionate about advocacy, not just about AIDS, but about injustices of all kinds. Mark went to jail on numerous occasions for participation in civil disobedience. He fought particularly hard to get legislation passed in Albany to protect transgendered people from discrimination, first through inclusion in the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act and, when that failed, through the Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Act. He also helped to organize the Nor’easter Caravan for the Campaign to End AIDS.

Mark continued to work long after he could no longer eat or drink and could barely walk. In fact, last November, he got himself appointed to the Albany Human Rights Commission so he could fight for better protection for people living with HIV and AIDS and for transgendered people.

Mark was a true AIDS warrior, and we miss him very much.

Thomas Cai

Guangzhou, China

2006 International AIDS Activist Award

Since testing positive for HIV in 2000, Cai has been one of the few people living with the disease to step forward publicly in China, where some estimate the AIDS rate could reach 10 million by 2010 if not aggressively addressed. Braving stigma and government persecution, Cai has reached out to others in China with HIV/AIDS by founding a website, a residence and an advocacy group, AIDS Care China. Last year, Cai played a key role in convening people with HIV/AIDS from across the nation for a meeting to help ready patients for AIDS medicines to be provided by the Chinese government and the U.N. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

Karen Bates and Stephanie Williams

South Carolina

2006 U.S. AIDS Activist Award

Karen Bates and Stephanie Williams (1962-2007) are activists living with HIV/AIDS in South Carolina, where about 1,000 new AIDS cases are diagnosed each year. One of every three new cases are women. African Americans in South Carolina are more than nine times as likely to get HIV/AIDS as whites.

Karen Bates was a paralegal in Columbia, South Carolina, until a stroke felled her in 1998. She advocates for people like herself who are HIV positive and receive Medicare and Medicaid.

Stephanie Williams worked with the South Carolina HIV/AIDS Council. For years, Stephanie advocated against Medicaid cuts to drug access which would impact poor South Carolinians living with AIDS. AIDS advocates around the country mourn the death of Stephanie Williams, a longtime AIDS activist, cochair of Campaign to End AIDS/South Carolina and winner of the 2006 Keith D. Cylar U.S. AIDS Activism Award.

Paul Zeitz

Global AIDS Alliance
Washington, D.C.

2006 Virginia Shubert Courage Award

Zeitz is cofounder and executive director of the respected and influential Global AIDS Alliance (GAA), which advocates for the political will and financial resources needed to halt the world AIDS pandemic. GAA has played key roles in the creation of President Bush's PEPFAR initiative against global AIDS. In fiscal year 2005, GAA helped ensure an unprecedented $2.9 billion in funding to fight AIDS, TB and malaria worldwide—a more than 240 percent increase over fiscal year 2003. A public-health specialist, Zeitz saw first-hand the devastation of AIDS while working in Zambia and is a vocal critic of trade agreements that threaten the availability of affordable, lifesaving medications in developing nations.

Julie Peña

New York, NY

2006 Housing Works AIDS Activist Award

Peña is a native New Yorker and ex-prisoner whose 1995 HIV diagnosis led her to Housing Works' Job Training Program. Upon completion of the program, Pena, who had never finished seventh grade, attained degrees culminating with her master's in social work. Today, she heads Housing Works' Women's Transitional Housing Program, where she works with women newly released from prison. After clearing her criminal record in 2004, she plunged into AIDS activism, participating in civil disobedience actions during the Republican National Convention in New York City and at Bush/Cheney campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. She also played a key role in organizing Housing Works' Campaign to End AIDS walking caravan to Washington, D.C., last fall.

Paisan Suwannawong

2005 International AIDS Activist Award

Paisan Suwannawong was raised in one of Bangkok's biggest slums. After becoming addicted to heroin and then contracting AIDS from a dirty needle, he experienced firsthand the official indifference of the Thai government towards drug users with AIDS. That experience has turned him into Thailand's leading AIDS advocate—and one of the world's fiercest AIDS activists. Paisan stops at nothing. He relentlessly works to ensure that people with HIV/AIDS in Thailand take an active role in shaping decisions that affect their lives. He also advocates for intravenous drug users and other marginalized populations to have equitable access to care, treatment, and harm reduction services in Thailand. Paisan is having a major impact on the course of the AIDS epidemic in his country.

Fatima Prioleau

2005 U.S. AIDS Activist Award

Fatima Prioleau is a determined, courageous AIDS activist. She is also a 41-year-old African American woman, mother of 5 children, adjunct college professor of mathematics at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and public school teacher. Since her AIDS diagnosis 9 years ago, Fatima has been engaged in persistent and insistent grassroots AIDS activism. Fatima recently formed the Women with HIV/AIDS Advocates Mobilized (WHAAM), a collaboration between women living with AIDS and HIV and community-based organizations, working in partnership to increase awareness of the ramifications of HIV and AIDS for women in highly impacted communities. She continues to galvanize women living with AIDS and HIV in NYC to confront those polices and systems that not only fail to see, but openly disregard, the unique challenges faced by women living with AIDS and HIV.

Virginia Shubert

2005 Keith D. Cylar Courage Award

Virginia Shubert is an attorney, HIV/AIDS activist and co-founder of Housing Works. She has devoted her life to serving society's most desperate and vulnerable members. Recently Ginny secured a historic victory in the case Henrietta D. v. Giuliani, which for the first time guaranteed the right of everyone with HIV/AIDS, regardless of their disability, to receive public services. Because of Ginny's efforts, fundamental fairness and accessibility have been secured for a generation of people with HIV/AIDS. Ginny devoted thousands of hours to litigating Henrietta D., and, with its successful conclusion, won a substantial award of attorney's fees. Recently, Ginny donated $240,000 of these fees to the Keith Cylar Activist Fund, becoming the Fund's largest single contributor.

Thomas D’Angelo

2005 Housing Works AIDS Activist Award

Thomas D’Angelo grew up in Brooklyn and took to living on the streets and doing drugs. Diagnosed with AIDS in 1988, Tommy at one point ended up in intensive care, surprised to be alive. When he got out of the hospital he resolved to put his life together. He went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting at the Housing Works East 9th Street facility, now renamed Cylar House. He actively participated in the comprehensive Day Treatment Program, applied to the agency’s Job Training Program, trained in case management, graduated, and worked as a Case Management Technician. He started to get more involved in advocacy, regularly participating in demonstrations and getting arrested over 10 times. He has great courage and unwavering love of direct action and civil disobedience and a strong commitment to his community. Thomas continues to live at the Housing Works 9th Street residence and works at the Housing Works East New York facility.