Creating Change

Event Details

Purple, orange and green color blocks over groups photos with Creating Change logo and white text with the tagline: Queer power, queer action, queer joy.

CHLP's S. Mandisa Moore-O'Neal and Kytara Epps will be presenting at the annual Creating Change conference on Saturday, January 20 in New Orleans. Creating Change is an organizing and skills-building event for the LGBTQ community and our allies hosted by The National LGBTQ Task Force.

Navigating the South: Decriminalizing HIV and Ending the Epidemic
Saturday, January 20 at 11am CT: Commerce, 3rd Floor
HIV decriminalization is deprioritized within the LGBTQ+ community, despite the widespread criminalization of HIV-positive LGBTQ+ folk. Learn about the ways that organizations nationwide advocate for changes in laws that criminalize HIV. This workshop will share tools, strategies, and best tactics in navigating a conservative legislature, bipartisan resistance to the issue, and outdated science and language in policymaking. Attendees will also learn how HIV criminalization intersects with racial justice, disability rights, and sex workers rights movements.

Presenters: 

  • Kytara Epps, CHLP
    Dietz, Louisiana Coalition on Criminalization & Health
    Julie Fitch, Louisiana Coalition on Criminalization & Health

Warning: Fighting New HIV Criminalization Threats to LGBTQ+ & Black Communities
Saturday, January 20 at 1:30pm: Fulton, 3rd Floor
States are passing new types of discriminatory HIV laws, despite the success of HIV decriminalization bills. Learn how coalitions in New Jersey have successfully passed HIV modernization laws and neutralized new threats to re-criminalize people living with HIV. Join us as we investigate how HIV stigma fuels and keeps HIV criminalization efforts alive, especially in the South. Collectively we will proactively plan to dismantle these new HIV criminalization efforts, following the leadership of communities living with HIV. We will also connect attendees with resources and tools on incorporating racial justice into HIV advocacy and decriminalization efforts. Everyone will leave prepared to fight on with a regionally tailored plan of action to take home and implement in their own communities.

Presenters:

S. Mandisa Moore-O'Neal, CHLP
Mike Webb, Equality Federation
Aleyah Lopez, Garden State Equality
Kamaria Laffrey, SERO
Robert Suttle, Robert Suttle Consulting