World Aids Day Panel: Raising Our Voices

Funding for direct service and research for HIV has been decimated, AIDS denialists have a champion leading the Department of Health and Human Services, and international programs like PEPFAR have been destroyed. How can allies use their voices to convince the general public that these developments don't only affect people living with HIV, but everyone?

This World AIDS Day, join us for a panel discussion featuring Tracy Baim, Rebecca Makkai, and Victoria Noe and moderated by Rosa E. Martínez Colón.

Tracy Baim is executive director of Press Forward Chicago, a pooled fund for community journalism based at The Chicago Community Trust. Baim is co-founder and owner of Windy City Times. She is former publisher of the Chicago Reader newspaper. Baim has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Chicago Headline Club and the Chicago Journalists Association. In 2014, she was inducted into the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame. She is also in the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. She has won numerous LGBTQ community and journalism honors, including the Community Media Workshop’s Studs Terkel Award in 2005 and the Lambda Legal Bon Foster Award in 2023. Baim has written and/or edited 14 books, her newest is Liberating Healthcare, a biography of Howard Brown Health.

Rosa E. Martínez Colón is a dedicated public health advocate and a founding member of CALOR, which supports Latinos affected by HIV in Chicago. She is currently the Vice President of Housing Strategy at the Center for Housing and Health at AIDS Foundation Chicago. With over 30 years of experience, she has led various local and national initiatives, including serving on the Chicago Board of Health and co-chairing the Latinx Institute at the U.S. Conference on HIV/AIDS. She earned degrees from DePaul and North Park University.

Rebecca Makkai is the author of five books, including New York Times bestselling I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU and THE GREAT BELIEVERS, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

Deep into her fourth career, Victoria Noe is a Chicago-based award-winning author, speaker and activist with two degrees in theater. Her Friend Grief series - the result of a promise she made to a dying friend - recognizes the importance of friendships in shaping our lives and illuminates an often disrespected form of grief. Noe’s long-time HIV/AIDS activism then led her to write F*g Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community, the groundbreaking book that honors the women who changed the course of the epidemic. Her 2023 book, What Our Friends Left Behind: Grief and Laughter in a Pandemic, shares the challenges faced by people who grieved a friend during COVID. With Unstoppable: Straight Women on the AIDS Frontlines, Noe shares more stories of women in the HIV/AIDS community, and how they’re responding to the shock and awe of 2025.

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