Description of Evening Dialogue on AIDS Awareness

October 25 Dinner Conversation

Thank you for participating in this evening's October 25 dinner conversation at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Oak Park. Tonight we ask and answer the question, “How can the community work together to fight AIDS?”

This is the third in a series of annual October dialogues asking that question, and will altogether have 40 people maximum around one dinner table. Start time is 7 p.m. We plan to conclude no later than 10.

Of the entire 40 people here, some 20 are to make 500-word presentations during the first two hours. Each will address one of the barriers to good public health—the so-called “isms”—including ageism, sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, and homophobia. These presentations, along with the supplementary supportive materials, will be disseminated broadly across Chicagoland, to a network of 400 civic, public, and nonprofit organizations focused on social justice and advocacy in well-being and heath.  

The remaining 20 attendees—those who have made an RSVP to the invitation—will be interested observers or active respondents at the subsequent hour-long period of discussion and reflection. Those who RSVPed received a series of guiding principles to help focus their questions this evening.

Among the group of 40 will be a half-dozen journalists from the Oak Park and metro area. They have agreed to disseminate the evening’s results, each in whatever way he or she chooses. The media representatives have themselves, as journalists, been asked to prepare a 500-word presentation, addressing one of the “isms” from a public-service perspective.

The gathering at one table—in an atmosphere of simple elegance and civility—will be deliberately low-key in order to mirror the subject’s complexity by maximizing the opportunity to surface multiple and pluralistic perspectives. Thank you to Dr. Helen Bishop who has generously agreed to serve as facilitator.

The perspectives will range from students to adults, from consumers of HIV services to R.N., Ph.D., and M.D.-level practitioners. The media reps will have a chance at evening's end to talk with any of them and to get a copy of the presentations, along with receiving brief presenter biographies, all prepared ahead of time.

I am deeply grateful for your interest and participation.

Rickey Sain Sr.
 

Back