Wanted to share this about our AIDS WALK and the danger of apathy....
Unfortunately, a number of cities have seen their AIDS Walks diminish or disappear altogether....these events not only raise money, they raise awareness......
.FULL PIECE
Link to full story at EDGE
In its 23 years, the walk has grown from an event that raised $710,000 from 4,500 walkers in 1986 to the largest AIDS fundraising events in the world last year with 45,000 participants who raised an estimated $6.8 million. It has raised roughly $98 million throughout its history to help fund vital health and social services to those living with the virus.
Craig Miller, founder of AIDS Walk New York, told EDGE he feels the event’s evolution has been a lesson in the history of AIDS politics and activism.
"Back in 1986, AIDS was not on the political agenda of the Reagan Administration," he said.
As the epidemic quickly spread among gay men during the mid 1980s, those living with HIV and AIDS faced an increasing climate of often cruel prejudice and hostility that was openly directed towards them. Some labeled the virus as a "gay plague" or a modern leprosy that left many of those living with it socially and economically ostracized isolated. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell and a number of other outspoken social conservatives began to categorize the epidemic as "God’s wrath" upon gay men. Miller, who also produces similar walks in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale....