C2EA Coming
to St. Mike’s

COLCI-{ESTER — C2EA, the
Campaign to End AIDS, is the

. focus of an intense group of young

women who are students at St.
Michael’s College in Colchester.
It’s a national campaign that
kicked off in Washington DC with
a march last May by 3500
I-IIV/AIDS activists to the gates of
the White House to place 8500
pairs of shoes representing the
daily global death toll from the
disease.

It continues this fall with a bus
tour/caravan - or more precisely,
nine of them, one of which begins
at the college — to bring diverse
voices to the capital with four
demands:

V fully fund quality treatment and
support services for all people.
living with HIV everywhere in
the world;

V ramp up HIV prevention at
home and abroad, guided by sci-
ence rather than ideology;

V increase research to finda cure,
more effective treatments and
better prevention tools;

7 fight AIDS stigma and protect
the civil rights of all people with
HIV and AIDS everywhere.

As currently planned, the cara-
van begins on September 30 at the
end of a week of on- and off—cam-
pus AIDS awareness events and
will wend its way across Vermont
on Route 15 through Johnson, with
a planned stop there, to Hardwick
before dropping down Route 14 to
Montpelier for an afternoon rally

and news confer-
ence. Another
stop is planned

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
   

adds, “is moreof a process than a
conclusion.” It encompasses the
recognition that HIV/AIDS agen— .
cies are “underfunded, under-
staffed, and overburdened.”
Vermont CARES Director
Peter Jacobs warns that
“Ryan White [Act]
cuts are coming in
2006. There will
be no funds for

for the White case manage-
River junc- ment or patient
tion area, in transport.” There ‘
collaboration might be more
with ACORN. funding for drug
The caravan _ assistance (ADAP

is due in programs), but the
Manchester. funding will be even
New more tightly controlled by
Hampshire On the federal ‘government.
Saturday. Erin McDone1l is the most

 
 
 

According
to Mike Bosia, a
St. Mike’s professor
helping to coordinate the
planning group, the object
of the Montpelier stop is to
push Republican Governor Jim
Douglas to urge other Republicans
to “move” on the Ryan White Care
Act funding. The idea of buses,
Bosia says, is to reconnect activists
who work on policy with local
grassroots supporters, service-
providers, and people with AIDS
-— those who live and work every-
day with the consequences of the
policy decision made elsewhere.
The Campaign to End AIDS, or
at least the Vermont part of it, he

 
 
 
  

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  

involved of the St. Mike’s stu-
dents - and she has brought
along other young women,
too. She identifies as
straight, when pushed, and
says she’s not involved
because a family member
or close friend has HIV
or AIDS. Her mentor
is Patricia Siplon, a
professor from
whom she took a
class on the global
AIDS pandemic. One '
"requirement for the class
is public service. But
McDonell is clearly not just
fulfilling a requirement.

Few of the students involved at
St. Mike’s “have a personal rela-
tionship to the epidemic,” Bosia
points out, “but they can see the
injustice” of how governments and
corporations treat those who have
the disease.

The week begins with the
Vermont CARES AIDS Walk on
Saturday, September 24 at 11 am
at Burlington’s City Hall.V

a

Privatizing Social

Security HurtsLG BTs

WASHINGTON — According to a new
report from the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force, lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender (lgbt)
Americans will be disproportionate-
ly harmed by President Bush’s plan
to -privatize a portion of Social
Security accounts. The plan, which
has not gotten “political traction”
among Americans generally, carves‘-
out a percentage of Social Security
taxes for each person to invest in the
stock market. It relies on estimates
of a better than average return,
increased deficits, and reduced ben-
efits, the report finds.

Selling Us Short.‘ How Social

- Security Privatization Will Afiect

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender Americans documents
that lgbt Americans, on average,
have lower incomes than their het-
erosexual counterparts, which trans-

lates into lower Social Security ben- 

efits when we retire. In addition,
same-sex couples are not eligible
for Social Security’s spousal and
survivor benefits, making the lgbt
community disproportionately vul-
nerable to the benefit cuts and risks
inherent to the president’s plan.
“There is a widespread myth that
gay people are economically advan-
taged compared to heterosexuals,"
said Sean Cahill, director of the
Task Force’s Policy Institute. “In
fact, gay and bisexual men earn
anywhere from 13 percent to 32 per-
cent less than heterosexual men.”
Selling Us Short finds that lgbt
people of color, in particular, face
an income disadvantage that leads
to lower Social Security benefits.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census,

black and Hispanic same-sex cou-
ples eam roughly from $1,000 to
$9,000 less in medianannual house-
hold income than black and
Hispanic married opposite-sex cou-
ples.

“Gay people have to report
domestic partner health insurance as
income to the IRS, but married
spouses don’t have to report their
health coverage as income,”
explained Cahill. “Not only do we
earn less, we are less able to keep '
what we earn —

Mandy Hu, author of the report,
added, “Even though lgbt
Americans pay into the Social
Security system at the same rate as
everyone else, our families and _chil-
dren receive fewer benefits, often in
times of crisis." Hu Cited the
Defense of Marriage Act as the
source of discriminatory policies.

Amber Hollibaugh, NGLTF’s
senior strategist and specialist on
lgbt elders, explained that lgbt peo-

' p1e“are more likely to age alone and

less likely to have children than
their heterosexual counterparts.”
This fact, along with lower earn-
ings, makes us more likely to be in
need of Social Security.

Selling Us Short finds that lgbt
elders could be negatively affected
by privatization. President Bush’s
privatization plan (now called “per-
sonal accounts”) was characterized
as a “gamble,” by NGLTF executive
director Matt Foreman. “Social
Security privatization is a gamble
with the lives of lesbian, gay, bisex-

~ ual and transgender elders. It is a
gamble our community simply can-
not afford.” V

Rowing for Habitat

 

BY EUAN BEAR

and emails about Gunnar and

Heather Baldwin, a husband and
wife team who were rowing from
Albany to Canada in a “modified”
Adirondack guideboat to promote
Gunnar’s company’s support for
Habitat for Humanity.

Gunnar works for Toto, which
makes low-flush toilets (“that really
work,” declares Heather). The com-
pany is donating a toilet and wash-

I n mid—August, I got phone calls

' ‘ basin to each of seven Habitat for

Humanity houses in New York (5)

and Vermont (2) along the way.
Gunnar offers that he’d be doing the
row whether or not his company
agreed to sponsor it; he’s been row-
ing since 1951. .

You’re probably wonderin
where the “gay” angle is in this
story. Well, there are two: renova-
tion and conservation. And then
there's good works and messing
about in boats.

Think aboutit: nearly every
waterway west of the Green
Mountains and north of, say,
Benson empties into Lake
Champlain eventually. Most of
those streams carry some portion

of the effluvium we all (regardless
of who we love) flush away. The

Baldwins — and anyone else swim-
ming, sailing, rowing, or otherwise

using Lake Champlain — are float-

ing on that effluvium. The less of it

there is,'the better for the environ-
ment, and the less water is wasted
moving our (ahem) movements.
And as for renovation, aren’t we
known for that? Whole neighbor-
hoods have considered inviting gay
men to move in and fix up their
aging tenements and make over

_ their defunct factories. I just paid to

have someone put in an upstairs
bathroom. Did I get a Toto toilet?

Well, no. But that was before I knew
about Gunnar and Heather.

They are not novices doing a
stunt. The pair has rowed over a
thousand miles from Key West to
South Carolina — except for 60
miles of swamp (“There were no
take-outs,” says Heather, and she
means places to land on shore, not
fast-food) — through the Intracoastal
Waterway. When we spoke, they
had already negotiated the 12
Champlain Canal locks, linking the
Hudson River to the lake.

“The greatest thing is the peo-
ple,” both rowers say at different
times during the interview. They
recount tales of strangers helping
them retrieve their car at the end
of each _day. Often, the strangers
have been Habitat volunteers. Of

them, the Baldwins couldn’t say
enough about how wonderful they
were.

The Vermont affiliates are
Habitat for Humanity of Addison
County and Green Mountain Habitat
for Humanity. Each plans to com-
plete a home this year and either has
received or will receive a toilet and
washbasin from Gunnar’s company,
Toto USA, Inc. “These are high-end
toilets,” notes Margaret Carothers,
board chairwoman of Habitat for
Humanity of Addison County. They
would not otherwise have been able
to put a Toto toilet in the house for
which they just broke ground (on
Pleasant St. in Middlebury), and are
about to select a family. This will be
the third Habitat house for the
group.V‘