Gina Belafonte and Sankofa: Relating Human Rights to Healthy Lives
Gina Belefonte
The Black AIDS Institute's Heroes in the Struggle Gala and Award Celebration honors, in a star-studded event and photographic tribute, individuals and organizations that, over the past year, have made a heroic contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Below, one in a series profiling the 2017 honorees.
As the youngest child of Harry and Julie Belafonte, Gina Belafonte could have rested on the laurels that her parents—a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Co. and the renowned singer-songwriter—had earned, and lived a life of privilege and leisure. Instead, she continues their influential and progressive legacy as a producer, director, actor and, of course, activist.
Living bicoastally in New York and Los Angeles, Gina Belafonte co-directs Sankofa, an organization dedicated to the ongoing work of peace, equality and social justice. Founded by her father, Sankofa connects celebrities, artists, creatives and other people of influence with grassroots organizations in order to add star power to their efforts, propel attention in their direction, and support their initiatives and communities.
Sankofa enlists public figures to create and deliver moral and political messages to support its grassroots partners—whether through theater, music, film or otherwise. The organization stages a variety of presentations, exhibitions and events and employs both online media and direct engagement to shine light on issues such as law-enforcement violence, especially against impoverished people and communities of color. It works intersectionally—whether taking on the violence that's rooted in American culture; our nation's sky-high incarceration rate; growing income disparities as the rich get richer and leave the rest of us behind; or immigration reform as a civil rights issue. Intersectional work is emblematic of the efforts needed to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
So while fighting directly for social justice, Belafonte recognizes that Sankofa is waging an indirect fight on the HIV/AIDS front. "We believe the struggle for human rights is directly related to the struggle for healthy lives," she says. "Sankofa has been in support of research and advocacy for the LGBTQ and formerly incarcerated communities of color. Our on-the-ground support of organizers, activists and protests [provides] intersectional opportunities to address AIDS in communities of color, and how women of color are especially hard hit and invisible to the greater search for AIDS awareness, prevention and treatment."
Research from the British medical journal The Lancet presented at the 2016 International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, found that mass incarceration has been driving the HIV epidemic in Black American communities—and particularly the previously unexplained high HIV rates among Black women. (Of course, Black people have strongly suspected as much.) "America spends $70 billion annually to imprison, detain and parole its citizens while our school budgets are being cut," Sankofa's website reads. "The United States is the only country in the world where children as young as thirteen years old have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole"—facts that make the organization's efforts all the more important to ending HIV and AIDS.
Sankofa's work also includes a recent collaboration with the Jay-Z-owned music streaming service Tidal to release the visual EP 17. The EP is a musical tribute to the numerous men and women, named and unnamed, who have fallen victim to police or racial violence, and features music by artists Raphael Saadiq, Ty Dolla $ign, Mali Music and Elijah Blake.
Belafonte also works with organizations, community leaders, artists and activists worldwide to promote civic, cultural and creative engagement that benefits the local, national and global human families.
"We are continuing to support convenings with artists, activists and organizations in the struggle for healthy communities," Belafonte says. "Our festivals, concerts and movement activities will continue to promote and provide spaces for holistic healing for communities of color and safety for all those afflicted with AIDS and suffering isolation because of discrimination."
The Heroes in the Struggle Gala and Award Celebration will take place Sept. 16, 2017, in the Darryl F. Zanuck Theater at 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles. To purchase tickets, become a sponsor, join the host committee or place an advertisement in the program book, click here or contact Wendell Miller at
Whitney Alese is a writer and blogger whose work has been featured in BuzzFeed and several other