I attended Gay Pride in Seattle 2008 as a presenter in the non-profit section of the expo. I was representing Sanjeevani Booti as an American agent and I was trying to raise awareness and get social support for issues relating to HIV in India.
I talked about Benares. I told people that it was the holiest city in Hinduism, and because of this people come from all over the country to visit this city. I said that it was likely that Benares was a center for spreading disease because people could come to the city, take sick, and then return home. I talked about the civil war in Nepal and how that has sent Nepali people fleeing south to Benares as the nearest major city outside their country. I talked about how Benares was on the national highway used to transport Afgani heroin through India to East Asia, and how heroin was cheap in Benares while syringes were costly. Lastly I talked about social changes in India, particularly the advent of youth empowerment through employment and internet, and how this is subverting former traditions of arranged marriage. I presented all these issues as being cumulatively necessitive of creating HIV awareness infrastructure in Benares in order to prevent health crisis.
Besides talking about those things, I had for presentation reports on the HIV awareness survey and hijra interviews that Nandan did. Also I collected some newspaper articles that Nandan sent to me.
I was there for 10 hours at my table talking to people and giving out paperwork. For about half that time Jessica Gess was with me helping. She is an entirely charming girl who just graduated from UW and will be returning there in the fall to study social work. She wants to work with queer youth after she graduated and has a lot of experience working with youth in general already. She was a huge aid to me and I would not have been able to get through the day as efficiently (or possibly at all) without her.
I checked the website traffic and saw an unambiguous increase in hits for the two days after the event as compared to Mondays and Tuesdays of the past three months.
I do not know if any of the people I met will turn into long-term contacts, but of course I hope at least two will. Even if no one continues with their interest, I indulge myself in thinking that I planted some international AIDS awareness in hosting the event and I had a lot of fun doing.