Activist
Fisher decided to be open about her illness, and after the Detroit Free Press published her story in February 1992, she was invited to speak at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, Texas. There, she urged the Republican Party to handle the AIDS crisis and the HIV positive with compassion. In 1995, The New York Times credited Fisher – along with Elizabeth Glaser, who spoke on her experience with AIDS at the 1992 Democratic National Convention – with having "brought AIDS home to America." After that appearance, Fisher created a support group for families affected by AIDS and healthcare workers, the Family AIDS Network, and continued speaking as its representative, promoting education, prevention and acceptance of sufferers. In October 1992, President George Bush appointed her to the National Commission on AIDS to replace Magic Johnson. Fisher spoke again at the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego, California. Fisher did not return for the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; she was replaced by fellow AIDS activist (and "abstinence-only" proponent) Patricia Funderburk Ware.
In 1999, Fisher made news when she, like some other HIV-positive people, decided to stop taking anti-HIV medications which she felt were hurting her quality of life.
But she and her doctors continued to try new drug combinations and, by 2001, were able to suppress the virus without unmanageable side effects. Finding medications that could prolong healthy life marked a turning point, Fisher said in a 2007 More magazine interview: "For years it was waiting to die, and then it was turning everything around and trying to figure out how to live."
Fisher expanded her AIDS activism from public speaking into writing, art and international advocacy. She founded the non-profit Mary Fisher CARE Fund, based at the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, to support clinical AIDS research and promote public education about HIV/AIDS medicine and policy. She serves on the leadership council of the 'Global Coalition on Women and AIDS and with other HIV-positive women has toured the United States to raise awareness about the disease.
Fisher’s international work has focused on Africa and especially Zambia, where she has led fact-finding tours and has promoted income-generation projects to employ HIV-positive women. She has taught African women to create handmade jewelry which is then sold online and in U.S. galleries, with profits returned to the women artisans.
Read more about this topic: Mary Fisher (activist)
Famous quotes containing the word activist:
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
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