Worldwide Reflection on December 01, 2015

      This day will have special significance as I reflect on its impact on my life and millions of others. I grew up in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

It had manifested itself in my first partner as far back as 1981 when there wasn't even a name for the disease. Though we were no longer together, the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28th, 1986 he was diagnosed with full blown AIDS. A little over a year later he died.

In the early '90's I chose my battle and devoted myself to HIV/AIDS-infected women and children. By the mid-'90's I was on the Board of Directors of Northern Lights Alternative, a non-profit committed to HIV/AIDS-infected children and their families. Aside from this work, I provided respite to two families who had infected children. The first child beat it, but the second one to whom I was a Big Brother from the age of five, died in 2000 two months shy of his 13th birthday ~ I was devastated.

Where are we today? Some people think it's OK to have unprotected sex in casual relationships because there is a cocktail of drugs to ward off AIDS, but they don't know the medical and physical challenges that HIV-infected individuals undergo. The numbers in the Latino and Black communities are still growing in the U.S. and from Russia to Africa there are alarming high numbers and those afflicted in underdeveloped countries find drugs exorbitant in price or medical care unattainable.

This is why once a year we must stop collectively, as individuals and governments, and reflect on how to develop a tangible strategy in beating this monster of a virus and provide sustainable medical support for millions across the planet.

RISING GLOBAL INEQUALITY & INCOME DISPARITY

A U.S. Case Study

A sign of the times:

• $180 million check to AOL's chief should the Verizon merger go through.
• $1 billion in just one week of art sales for Christie's.
• Rents for a two-bedroom apartment in the historically Bohemian, West Village neighborhood of Manhattan -- where 50 years ago a starving young artist by the name of Bob Dylan once strummed a guitar -- start at $5,000/month and go for $6,500 -- easy.

Yet U.S. federal guidelines for minimum wage is $7.25 per hour -- rendering a family of two or more, with one wage-earner, below the poverty line at a little over $15,000/year. Need I say anything further in advocating an increase to the minimum rate for low-wage earners and its positive impact on society as a whole? To go otherwise is counterproductive to healthy and collective social growth when one strata of the population is the sole beneficiary of economic gains.

Are we blind to the parallels of social inequality via our unsustainable economy as previously demonstrated in the 20th century that contributed to a severe worldwide depression? Nearly 100 years ago the Roaring 20's were a similar era wrought with income disparity feeding unbridled wealth. Right before the Wall Street Crash it was a decade of gluttony and voracious appetite for profit and heightened speculative activities, which gave an illusion it would last forever – we know all too well how history played itself out. Thus the times we live in now hark back to lyrics from a popular 1921 song that still ring true, "the rich get rich and the poor get poorer ~ ain't we got fun?!"