Celebrity Friday: Heroes in the Struggle 2008

Maxim Thorne, former COO of the Human Rights Campaign,
read a lengthy letter from presidential candidate Barack Obama on the occasion of
National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and Heroes in the Struggle ceremony

Founder and Executive Director of the Black AIDS Institute, Phill Wilson, gace amoving speech where he talked to a future without AIDS: "And when that day comes, we want you to know, that not all of us were monsters. Some of us were brave and dared to love and care in the face of the epidemic, and it is in the loving and the caring and the fighting that we shall see a future without AIDS."
The divine Vanessa L. Williams (Soul Food) was the emcee of the evening's festivities.

Jurnee Smollett (The Great Debaters) was
named one of 2008's Heroes in the Struggle

Actor and author Hill Harper (Beloved), Harvard Law School classmate of Barack Obama,
was named a Hero in the Struggle and also donated atleast $2,000 of
his own money during the hilarious live auction. He was on his way to a red eye
flight to Louisiana to stump for Obama after the ceremony.
Black AIDS Institute Board President (2002-2007) and person living
with HIV (and never recieving an AIDS diagnosis!) for 26 years
Jesse L. Milan was named a Hero in the Struggle.

Reverend Al Sharpton spoke in place of Los Angeles County
Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who was not present to
receive her Hero in the Struggle award.

The 2008 edition of Heroes in the Struggle was a very inspiring and pleasant event, held Thursday night in downtown Los Angeles, at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Other Heroes in the Struggle named were: Julian Bond (Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NAACP), Danny Bakewell of the Bakewell Group (publishers of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper), Bishop T.D. Jakes, author and radio personality Tavis Smiley and influential African American journalist George E. Curry.