Actor Danny Glover Speaks to Colorado Students About African HIV/AIDS Epidemic

Actor Danny Glover on Thursday spoke to students and others at Auraria Campus in Denver, Colo. -- where classes are held for the University of Colorado-Denver, Metropolitan State College-Denver and the Community College of Denver -- about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports. Glover, chair of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, D.C., not-for-profit advocacy organization, spoke to approximately 700 people in a "packed" auditorium about the many children in Africa who lose one or both parents to AIDS-related causes, adding that if children in the United States were orphaned at as fast a rate as in Africa there would be "anarchy." Glover also partially attributed the scale of Africa's HIV spread to gender inequality and "widespread abuse of women and girls in patriarchal cultures," and he "criticized" people who are silent on the epidemic and people who refuse to advocate condom usage to stem the spread of the virus. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Glover specifically praised the president of Uganda for "making the prevention of AIDS a priority" and for being tested for HIV himself (Jones, Denver Rocky Mountain News, 11/15).