Activist Paul Kawata talks to U.S. News about the potential to stop HIV and AIDS.
When he came to Washington in 1985, Paul Kawata was a young man on fire. A new gay rights activist from Seattle, he had dedicated himself to battling a deadly threat to his community: a menacing new disease known as AIDS.
After “passing the hat” to bury a dear friend who was ravaged by the disease, and whose family had abandoned him, Kawata joined the crusade against it.
“I told my family I’d be here for five years,” says Kawata, executive director of the Washington-based National Minority AIDS Council, a health advocacy and social justice organization. When he got to Washington, Kawata says, “Margaret Heckler, the then-secretary of health and human services said, ‘We’ll have a vaccine in (two) years.’ And I said, ‘OK – then we’ll go home.'”That was more than three decades ago. Kawata’s still in Washington, carrying on the fight.
There has been progress – HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is no longer automatically fatal, but is still incurable. “I never thought I would be here this long and I never thought that it would take this much work,” Kawata says. “I think what keeps me here is the possibility that we can end it in my lifetime.”