Stand in Solidarity with a Stranger — Today, and Every Day
Accompaniment, in everything from political movements to health care provision, pushes social change.
Today is International Women’s Day and, because of last year’s events in the United States, it feels more precious this time around. More personal.
Women are leading the social movements. Women lead the collaborative, distributed movement for Black Lives Matter. Women are among those brave dreamers who seek to protect recipients of DACA. Women from many generations and cultures coordinated the Women’s March — one of the largest protests in American history. Female celebrities have shared their stories of sexual abuse and raised awareness for the #metoo movement, started by Tarana Burke more than a decade ago. Now young people, women among them, are at the forefront of a political and ideological battle to end mass killings in the U.S.
Women are raising their voices, defining strategy, and changing the power dynamic — and they’re doing this again, and again, and again.
The Trump administration has open contempt for popular movements. In fact, the president and his handpicked staff of corporate cronies are committed to immediately erode the rights women have fought for over decades. These rights — from civil, to reproductive, to health care rights — are not just about women’s lives; they affect all of society. Health care is one of the most fundamental rights and a pillar upon which an equitable society is built.
The Trump administration and his Republican colleagues in Congress have repeatedly attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which has expanded coverage to the most vulnerable and ensured women access to lifesaving services such as maternity care. The administration also announced last October that companies were no longer required to offer health care policies that allowed women to purchase contraceptives without a co-pay.
This malicious targeting of women and the vulnerable doesn’t just affect those of us living in the United States. Last month, Trump released a fiscal year 2019 budget proposal that would slash foreign aid dedicated to support family planning and dramatically cut money for HIV/AIDS programs, including those that help prevent mother-to-child transmission of the deadly virus.
These attacks cannot be forgiven, nor forgotten. But they can be fought.
Women found strength in numbers last year. The Women’s March on Washington chairs — Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez — hoped to attract a decent crowd to D.C.; instead, they drew millions to the nation’s capital and dozens of other cities across the nation. And Burke was the first woman to share her #metoo story, but she summoned millions more with her courage.
Each action sparked radical accompaniment — this idea of standing in solidarity with a potential stranger. Not because of personal advantage or advancement, but because it was the right thing to do.
The nonprofit Partners In Health fights for global health equity around the world. We have witnessed the healing power of accompaniment. Individuals can help achieve simple goals, such as ensuring all children in a community receive vaccinations, or complex ones, like providing patients with the right medication to beat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
Who are the vast majority of people accompanying these patients around the world? Overwhelmingly, women.
Women compose a majority of PIH staff across 11 countries. Many are community health workers, who serve as bridges between their communities and local health centers. Their neighbors have chosen them because they are trustworthy, hardworking, and diligent. They are also, simply put, good human beings.
PIH tested its accompaniment model in Haiti more than 30 years ago with a handful of community health workers. The investment paid off in lives saved. HIV-positive patients rose from what was believed their deathbeds because they finally received antiretrovirals and — key to it all — the daily attention of a community health worker.
Now, there are 2,000 community health workers across at least 12 sites in the Central Plateau and lower Artibonite, two of Haiti’s poorest regions. HIV prevalence is less than 1.8 percent in the Central Plateau — the lowest in the country. This remains true despite the fact that staff have expanded HIV testing to more communities.
PIH has since successfully exported this accompaniment model from Haiti to Peru, Mexico, Russia, Kazakhstan, and five African countries.
On this International Women’s Day, we propose that mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, and strangers continue to stand in solidarity with one another — from the National Mall to the last mile of the most remote clinic in Rwanda. Accompany one another to the rally, ballot box, charity function, and doctor’s office. Fight for that CEO, senator, minister of health, or president who needs accompaniment when others doubt or malign the quality of her character and intellect.
From Haiti to Africa — and beyond, women accompany one another not because it is easy. They accompany because they care. It may seem like a radical act nowadays, but it shouldn’t be.
