Call for One Hundred Heroes

August 9, 2005

an open letter to the Los Angeles community:

My name is Richard Kearns. I am the first rider on the Los Angeles Caravan of Heroes traveling to Washington DC in October with the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA).

I have AIDS. I was infected in 1980-81, diagnosed in 1987. I have seen too much. None of that matters.

I have the resolve to end AIDS. Our leaders in Washington do not. I must go to them. I must move them. The reason I am alive today is to take this message to Washington with C2EA in October.

While I am capable making the journey to DC by myself, I am also resolved not to go alone.

I need one hundred heroes.

One hundred caravan riders. One hundred hearts with a common resolve. One hundred voices reporting back to Los Angeles as we travel. One hundred stories, told from the road in blogs (weblogs) and e-mails on the Internet. About the state of AIDS in our nation. About the state of AIDS in our world. About the state of AIDS in ourselves. One hundred tales. One hundred truths. One hundred heroes.

One hundred watchers speaking about the state of AIDS in our nation’s capitol, where one in seven adult black men of any sexual orientation is HIV-infected, according to a C2EA analysis of statistics released in the Washington DC Department of Health HIV/AIDS Administration EPI Profile. This infection rate is higher than infection rates for adult black men in many sub-saharan African countries. The EPI Profile also showed that one in three gay black men in d.c. is HIV-infected.

One hundred voices speaking about the July, 2005 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report on AIDS as a National Security Risk, which describes the AIDS epidemic as “still in its infancy,” and notes “39 million people now infected with HIV are expected to perish over the next five to ten years.”

AIDS is killing “parliamentarians and political leaders,” according to the report, as well as ‘ lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, financial planners, managers, engineers, and technicians.” Soldiers and police, too.

The CFR report continues: “this depletion of elite workers, professionals, political leaders, and managers is expected to reach crisis proportions in many countries by 2010, challenging the ability of the state to perform even rudimentary aspects of governance.”

The report also notes where AIDS has become a weapon of war in the world, in situations “in which rape is used as an instrument of battle or ethnocide.”

One unique journey. One hundred heroes talking with one hundred thousand internet readers in Los Angeles. on the road.

One hundred thousand virtual riders.

One hundred thousand virtual heroes.

Volunteers. Sponsors. Ground crew. Students. Aunts and uncles. Bus drivers. Grocers. Coffee-shoppers. Knitters. HIVers. Nons. Dogwalkers. Dreamers. Meditators. Thinkers. Weepers. Brothers and sisters. Writers. Readers. Riders. Heroes. Angelinos, every one.

You and me.

We are the Campaign to End AIDS. We are the new coalition, a new generation of AIDS activists. This is our cause. This is our time.

From the C2EA national press release:

“We're gay men who have survived this disease for 25 years and African-American "church ladies" who didn't think we could possibly be at risk – but were. We're divorced seniors and recovering drug addicts. We're rabble-rousing ACT UP veterans and Godfearing Southern Baptist ministers. We're people with hemophilia, infected since we were children, and our HIV-negative wives. We're folks struggling with drug addiction who were infected with HIV because we didn't have access to programs offer ing clean needles, which the U.S. government refuses to fund. We're young black men kicked out of our family homes for loving other men. And we're the mothers of those men who want our sons to know we love them just the same. We're people from all walks of life, who share the challenges of people around the world facing a disease that is threatening not just ourlives, but our families, communities and societies. We're your neighbors. We're America. And we're calling one another to action, finding the strength in our differences to fight for an end to AIDS in the United States and around the world.”

The Los Angeles C2EA Caravan of Heroes will depart LA on Saturday, September 24, 2005, and, after fifteen stops in eleven states, will arrive a hundred thousand hearts strong, a hundred thousand minds informed, in Washington DC on October 8, 2005, for five days of political activism.

Heroes by the hundreds.

Join us. Donate. Volunteer. Ride. Read. Travel with us. Be a hero.

Find a way. We need you. I need you. You need you.

Send a copy of this open letter to whomever you think appropriate.

namasté,

Richard Kearns

c2ea@aids-write.org

FOR MORE INFORMATION

contact:

Cedric Smoots

National Field Organizer, C2EA

Toll Free : 877-202-8044

IN 2005, WE URGE LAWMAKERS TO...

1. Reauthorize and fully fund the Ryan White CARE Act.
2. Keep Medicaid strong for people with HIV/AIDS and all other beneficiaries.
3. Strengthen the global fight against AIDS by fully funding the Global Fund and backing 100% debt cancellation.
4. Restore and revive effective HIV prevention worldwide based on the best science.

WE DEMAND THAT OUR LEADERS...

1. Fully fund quality treatment and support services for all people living with HIV everywhere in the world.
2. Ramp up HIV prevention at home and abroad, guided by science rather than ideology.
3. Increase research to find a cure, more effective treatments and better prevention tools.
4. Fight AIDS stigma and protect the civil rights of all people with HIV and AIDS everywhere