November 4, 2005
JUST OVER THE HILL
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NEAR BALTIMORE: This weekend, C2EA's walking caravan hit Maryland |
As reported in Monday's Washington Post, something magical will happen this Saturday morning outside RFK Stadium in Washington. Hundreds of people with HIV/AIDS and their supporters who have been making their way for weeks to the nation's capital will gather—along with hundreds more supporters, D.C. locals and fly-ins—to kick off four historic Days of Action for the Campaign to End AIDS, or C2EA.
Saturday's opening ceremony—followed by a massive March to End AIDS and rally in Anacostia Park—is the end-point for the eight C2EA caravans that have been making their way across the nation the past three weeks, bringing attention along the way to C2EA's demand for an end to the epidemic here and abroad. But Saturday is also the beginning of an exciting, energizing weekend of rallies, prayer services and demonstrations. (Click here for a press release with the full schedule—and join in if you can!) It concludes Tuesday, Nov. 8, C2EA Advocacy Day, with Capitol Hill visits that over 200 people have signed up for—a turn-out that promises check-ins with virtually every congressional office. (Click here to register for Advocacy Day...but hurry, because registration closes this Friday at 5pm.)
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99 RED BALLOONS: A C2EA roadside rally last week outside Billings, Montana |
Even more so, Saturday will mark another early milestone for a far-sighted movement that adds members and momentum every day. "We're in this for the long haul," said Housing Works CEO and C2EA co-chair Charles King, on the road from Maryland, which some 25 Housing Works staffers and clients are walking through this week as part of their 21-day walk to Washington. "This weekend will climax an amazing, challenging first year of planning. But it will also be the springboard for tremendous growth and mobilization to come. Yes, we're going to D.C. to demand immediate needs like reauthorization and full funding for the Ryan White CARE Act—but we're also demanding that leaders make a long-term promise that they'll bring this epidemic to an end."
HERE COME THE CARAVANS
The members of the walking caravan, called Paving the Way, have been bunking nights in Baltimore at an empty house that was graciously secured for them by their Baltimore host committee. Walkers posting on the all-caravan C2EA blog describe a crowded and chaotic but happy household. The walkers held an afternoon rally Tuesday in Baltimore, then disrupted a government-sponsored abstinence-education conference Thursday morning (see next story) before moving on toward the nation's capital.
But it if seemed for a while that Paving the Way was the only caravan in motion, that's hardly the case now, with all eight caravans finally on the road. The two northernmost caravans, American Heritage (originating in Portland, OR) and Northern Tier (originating in Seattle), met up briefly this weekend in Chicago before American Heritage—now some 30 people strong—moved on to Indianapolis (where it picked up some last-minute coverage from the local Fox News affiliate) and one swath of Ohio (Dayton, Columbus, Cinncinati) while Northern Tier picked up press in Michigan before it moved on through another swath of Ohio (Toledo, Cleveland, Akron).
Wrote Portland's Vaughn Frick of his American Heritage peers on the C2EA blog this weekend, "What started out as a caravan of mostly gay white men has been doubled, where the majority is now African-American. We are represented now by Latinos, Native Americans, and...women...along with those in wheelchairs and oxygen tanks."
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NINTH WARD: C2EA even made it to hardest-hit N'Awlins, complete with watermark |
Meanwhile, down in Dixie, Soul of the South, which originated two weeks ago in Brownsville, Texas, stopped for a few days in New Orleans (the pre-Katrina home of caravan rider Chris Rothermel, now living in Houston) and then along Mississippi's Gulf Coast, where it picked up riders Jessica Mardis and her adorable 3-year-old son Gabriel of Gulfport, as well as a 58-year-old African-American woman from Biloxi who simply goes by Miss Cathy. Diagnosed in 1993 with HIV, which she says she got from her husband, Miss Cathy says she's going to D.C. "to spread the word and let the congressmen and senators know we need their support to keep the Ryan White CARE Act going and help people with HIV." In Atlanta for a Monday night rally, Soul of the South moves on with nearly 10 riders to some major hoo-has later this week in the Carolinas before it hits Richmond, Virginia and D.C. on Friday.
When it hits Richmond, it will have already converged with Waves Across the Nation, which kicked off last week from San Diego and this week finds itself weaving its way through Alabama to North Carolina, where it will pick up a whopping near-50 riders in High Point, courtesy of a chartered bus paid for the North Carolina Department of Health. Also edging its way into North Carolina and Virginia this week from Tennessee is Enchantment Express, which embarked last week—significantly smaller than originally planned, but intact nonetheless—from Oklahoma City. Among its riders are longtime HIV/AIDS activist Walt Senterfit and second-generation fighter Cedric Earl Smoots, both of L.A.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST
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DAMN YANKEES: Raynald Joseph, Tom Donahue and France Sullivan embarked this weekend from Boston |
Finally, representing the eastern seaboard, the Nor'easter embarked on Saturday from Boston with three scrappy riders—Rhode Island's Raynald Joseph, Pennsylvania's Tom Donohue and New Hampshire's indomitable France Sullivan—shortly after a rousing event at the Greater Love Tabernacle in Dorchester, a largely African-American part of Boston, where city officials have recently declared an HIV/AIDS "state of emergency" among blacks. The next day, Nor'easter did a gig at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., before moving on Monday to Albany (where it earned this terrific TV-news clip, featuring Housing Works' own Albany staffer Mark Hayes) and points south.
Coming in the other direction along the Eastern coast is the all-too-ironically named Tropical Storm, whose long-planned Miami kickoff was scuttled by Hurricane Wilma. (Kudos to South Floridian Michael Rajner, who hastily relocated the kickoff to the parking lot of the health department in Ft. Lauderdale, then departed with two area women.) After a string of events Tuesday in Orlando, Tampa, Gainesville and Jacksonville, the Storm blows north for a Savannah event before slicing its own line through the Carolinas en route to D.C.
Once all the caravaners converge in D.C., they're in for a whirlwind four days that include everything from a majestic interfaith prayer service at the esteemed Metropolitan AME church on Sunday to a nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House on Monday. It's all a part of how the Campaign to End AIDS is creating a strong, empowered national network of people with HIV/AIDS and their supporters for the first time in years.