Diallo, Dazon Dixon. “Reflections of a Human Rights Educator.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 4, no. 2 (May 2004): 124–28. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/meridians/v004/4.2diallo.html.
Annotation
Dazón Dixon Diallo draws on personal experience to talk about the complex interrelationships between HIV and various forms of social oppression. Dixon Diallo argues for a human rights approach to organizing, mobilizing, and educating, as it offers a lens through which to recognize rights violations and their connections to global systems of oppression. The article focuses on SisterLove, an African-American women’s AIDS project, which takes a human rights approach to its work. SisterLove offers a number of support services and educational interventions, recognizing that HIV is the tip of the iceberg, often with poverty, violence, drug abuse, and histories of trauma lurking right underneath. SisterLove takes a holistic approach, working in HIV prevention and treatment, addressing HIV as interrelated to other aspects of sexual health, reproduction, and wellbeing.
This article offers inspiration, guidance, and the foundations of a human rights framework for activists and educators involved in social justice and sexual health work. SisterLove and its group-level intervention, the Health Love Workshop, have changed lives and engaged hundreds in healing self-examinations of their relationships and love lives. This short piece, written in first person, simplifies the complexity of a human rights approach to organizing and offers resources for further reading on the subject.