(Kip Williams, sitting on his ass in the Red Room of the White House last week. Too bad he wasn't doing actual organizing for the march he is leading.)That's okay, speaking as a person with AIDS in California whose drug cocktail was jeopardized recently by the state. I doubt the thousands of low-income CA PWAs worrying about our local health care cuts would have felt any benefit from such a vigil in DC.
Cleve's mess on Washington. It can't even pull off an AIDS event.
From the latest Bay Area Reporter:
It appears that a vigil for people living with HIV/AIDS will not be part of October's National March for Equality, as one of the lead organizers told the Bay Area Reporter that no agency could be found to spearhead the event.
When he first called for a march on Washington, D.C. this spring, longtime gay and AIDS activist Cleve Jones told the B.A.R. that march organizers were trying to get use of the Lincoln Memorial site for an HIV/AIDS action on Saturday, October 10, the day before the march. Jones, who is HIV-positive and founded the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, has long been outspoken on HIV/AIDS issues.
But those plans have apparently fallen through.
Kip Williams, who has been helping Jones with organizing the equality march, said this week that the AIDS vigil had to be canceled.
"There were a number of organizations considering taking the lead," Williams wrote in an e-mail. "In the end, no one had the resources or capacity to step up." [...]
OK, "vigils" are nice and can serve to remind media and the public that AIDS is still very much here. I hope that one evolves but not just that.
ReplyDelete"AIDS action" is a much broader term, and in my not so humble opinion, particularly after the newest CDC reports on gay men and HIV/AIDS, that all the young gay men coming to DC shouldn't be allowed to leave without some kind of professional HIV/AIDS education and testing. It's my understanding that's in the works.
Second, the link B.A.R. is still confusing me, as others have about the limits on 501(c)(3) groups. Best example: if such were not allowed to lobby for specific legislation wouldn't SLDN [which collects donations as a 501(c)(3)] have lost its tax exempt status years ago?
"Substantial," of course, is the subjectively defined term in IRS regs about how much effort such groups can devote to legislation.
But if there is vulnerability, if it's just a matter of the IRS looking the other way or being too busy to "catch" all rule breakers, do people really want to draw IRS attention to LGBT nonprofits they embrace just to attack those they don't?
Like the HRC and the Task Force, Cleve Jones does not speak for all of us. When it comes to the vigil for people who passed from AIDS and those who live with it. We remember and it will gone on in front of the White House.
ReplyDeletePlease join us http://candlelightvigilwhitehouse.blogspot.com/