By Vaughn Frick
American Heritage Caravan rider

November 6, 2005
Washington, D.C.,Last day of action

Arriving here has become such a different story than any of us had expected. The American Heritage Caravan's cohesion has mostly evaporated. A core group of us still are camped out on the floor of a gymnasium. Across from me is a rider from the Seattle caravan suffering on the floor with a herniated disk.
My friend Ricky also from Portland started to get sick last night, running a fever from the forced condition of sleeping upon a hard, cold floor. The price of a hotel room in this capitol city of business is well beyond many of our means. Caravan organizer Lonny who boarded in Salt Lake City after flying out to join us from Ohio has scheduled a hospitalization upon his return, as he is struggling to keep it together just to survive this last day.
I had been curios as to why there was not the thousands that we were told to expect at the opening rally, why it was just us caravaners and a few people from the local community. Washington, D.C. has a large Gay/Lesbian/Bi/trans community, including one of the larger populations of those living with HIV/AIDS.
Yesterday I transversed the local GLBT neighborhoods looking for visible signs about these four days of action for what we were told was to be a major national action once we all converged here in Washington, D.C. from our many corners of America. There were no posters posted, no billboards, no flyers tacked on community billboards or taped in the windows of GLBT based businesses and establishments. I scoured from page to page the latest issue of the Washington Blade, one of the oldest and best established GLBT newspapers in the country for any mention about these four days of action.
Nada.
Zip.
No mention, not even in the calendar of events for this upcoming week. This is most queer,as the Washington Blade is one of the best for covering news related to HIV/AIDS, a goodly chunk of it's advertising base is for the very HIV/AIDS medications that we traveled across this nation to advocate for accessibility for all who need them to survive.
So I started asking questions of the C2EA event co-coordinators and the Washington, D.C. organizing committee. When my questions were answered with a lot of hostility, I knew we were in worse trouble than I had begun to fear.
I was told that the Gay community does not care any more about HIV/AIDS; The Gay community is apathetic; that there is some sort of nebulous conspiracy to silence our actions here; The Washington Blade was bought out by conservatives who are boy coting C2EA; The Washington Blade did publish C2EA related articles, that I needed to look better. All protests here in D.C. are only attended by those who come here from outside, that the locals are mostly "activist weary"; The local C2Ea organizers were to busy and overworked, that it was up to all of us to get the word out.
I heard many variations of these excuses, and just got more and more befuddled.
I walked in the Blade offices, had a friendly talk with one of the editors, was told that in the past the Blade had published C2EA elated events, but for these four days of actions no C2EA organizers had bothered to contact them with the information to publish. I was given the contact information on who to email future information to.
On Sunday night there was a youth march and rally to Lafayette park across from the White House. This event began at Malcolm X/Meridian Park with a spirited drumming and rapper session to inspire the several hundred attendees. This odd, terraced park originally plotted by Freemasons using their monumental architectural embellishments is a regular night time hang out for groups of incense-wafting drumming youth of this area. The illuminated spike of the Washington monument stabbed the sky lined up in the distance.
The messages spoken were about using condoms and clean needles, how odd that 25 years into this global pandemic that this simple message that is pr oven to save lives still has to be fought for. Forming an ordered line the marchers chanted through a tony neighborhood chanting and waving "End AIDS NOW!" signs". The chants, well practiced, also were about a supposed HIV cure that the Government has been suppressing, the same information that has buzzed this pandemic from the start. There is much good and provoking information to back up these claims available a google away on the Internet.
As the marchers led by a the flash and sirens of a police escort worked their way down the street, clouds of small birds would erupt out of the trees flying panicked into the dark. Diners in trendy sidewalk eateries would momentarily put down their fork fulls of steak.
The rally in Lafayette park was attended by about a hundred observers. The message was "not to keep youth in the dark" about how not to catch the HIV virus, and this government's complicity in the spread of the HIV virus.
Today there were two planned civil disobedience actions. The first was at the Family research council where four trained activists chained themselves to a display in the lobby featuring the traditional wedding attire of suit and dress. As of tonight those arrested are still jailed awaiting a sentence before a judge.
The second action was a march and die-in to the White House. This action had close to 300 marchers led by the obligatory giant paper mache' Bush puppet. The chant rants were such as "ACT-UP! Fight Back! We Must End AIDS NOW!"
At 1600 Pennsylvania avenue in view of the back of the White House ( as was written in the Bible when God chose to appear before Moses, only the backside was visible) 29 protesters lay ed down on the sidewalk holding cardboard tombstones bearing the messages of death and grim statistics. The practiced park police like black armored spiders lined off the protesters with yellow police tape, and one by one the protesters were dragged, cuffed, photographed, and fed into two paddy wagons as their supporters cordoned off a street away cheered their support. 29 people were arrested at this one, all released by evening with the equivalent of a parking violation.
The last to be arrested was Charlie from the Seattle caravan, wheelchair bound and veteran of the war the HIV virus wrought against his body, he was dragged and placed in a waiting medical van.
Tonight Charlie is sleeping here on a cold, gymnasium floor.

By Vaughn Frick
American Heritage Caravan rider

November 10, 2005
Portland, Oregon
After eight hours flying back over the route that our caravan traveled for fifteen days I am back home to Portland, Oregon. The crisp, clean fall air of home is a tonic, as was when Delta flight passed over Mt. Hood and the Columbia river that both flank Portland.
The last day of action for C2EA was yesterday, starting with an early photo-opportunity in front of the Capitol Dome so cental and imposing both on the hill and the land. Machine gun bearing Praetorian guard suited in black body armor were stationed about the grounds and recesses of the Capitol dome. There was a constant construction din of jack-hammer on concrete as rows of homeland security blast walls are erected as visible barriers of the 'War on Terror."
About 75-100 C2EA caravaners and their supporters showed, and we held up the state flags of the United States and it's territories, the flags from states where no one traveled from were held by stand-ins.
Several congressional supporters gave rousing speeches as this was the day we were to speak with our elected members of the House and Senate about the platform and concerns of the Campaign To End AIDS.
Those are:
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 silence 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/AIDS everywhere.
We were to talk with our representatives or their representatives about these core issues, and score them from their responses.
So away from the flags and up the hill we walked to enter through the security gates to be totally revealed through X-rays before entering the marble labyrinthine catacombs of the hive that is the House and Senate office warren.
First was a meeting with Matthew Canedy, a Professional Staff Member of the U.S. Senate Special Committee On Aging, representing the Committee Chair Senator Gordon Smith.
Each of us talked about the different platforms of C2EA trying to give them a personal spin.
My story is that I Got my diagnosis back in 1986, yet have never progressed into AIDS or suffered any opportunistic infections. Low normal T-cells, undetectable viral load, and have never had to take any medications. Even in flu season my immune system usually is able to fight off the current range of whatever gets coughed around each cycle of sickness. I was told in 1989 that if I did not take full doses of AZT that I would be dead in 6 months. Knowing the side-effects of drugs such as AZT upon our bodies, I saw no reason to take any potentially immune-compromising drug into my system. When and if I get sick, I will open that door and consider what's the best course of medications to pursue. Today if I would get sick, I would not be able to afford to open that door. I'm mostly self employed these days often balancing several jobs, none of which has any health insurance.
I was fortunate to be able to buy a house years back when the housing market here was depressed, yet one bad illness would cost me my home and throw me into a tattered and ripped social service safety net, potentially costing more money than if I had been able to afford health insurance.
There once was an Oregon Health Plan, but after a ghastly period of paring away vital services this State health plan stopped accepting new clients.
Some months I end up sharing meals at Portland's HIV Day Center as after paying all the bills we must pay to live as Americans there is little money left and I have to cut back on food.
The HIV Day Center faces closure if it's Ryan White Care ACT funds get cut.
I also told of living in San Francisco in 1981 when AIDS first virulently exploded in the Gay Community, often killing people brutally in epic personal battles with there own bodies,battles against both their own bodies and cultural hysteria. lives often snuffed out in a mere score of months. This virus mutates and adapts, and already has bred the largest pandemic in recorded human history. How odd to see all this "Bird Flu" scare with HIV/AIDS there at our doorsteps.
I talked of whole villages in Africa with most parents dead from this pandemic, such ripe fields to harvest for future terrorist interests.
For Senator Smith's Aide I also appealed to the Senator's strong support for the value of human life.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon met us next, personally in his meeting lounge, then we told our stories and platforms to Stephanie Kennan, Senior Health Policy Advisor. For this talk I added a thank-you and acknowledgment to the Senator's strong history of supporting health care, and his strong support in senior citizen lobbies for doing so. It is important to support AIDS drug assistance programs through Medicare/Medicaid.
Our next stop was at Congressman Earl Blumenhauer,s office, where and Aide rushed through our platforms while we were kept crowded in the lobby. Someone poked their head in who looked like the Congressperson, yet took one look at us and beat a hasty retreat as if opening an occupied bathroom stall.
All we spoke with acknowledged our concerns, but also spoke of the challenge of this age from the latest political wars on Capitol Hill.
I left to sit in the mist of a lovely rain-forest a block away in the National Botanical Gardens. In a multi-storied greenhouse rimmed with a catwalk where you can stroll among tree orchids and bromeliads high up in giant palm trees. Not too many people visiting this flowered sanctuary today, construction of blast walls without. Yes, you have to go through security and X-rays even to visit this urban piece of sanctuary.
The expectation of invasion goes back to when this swamp town laid out it's streets spiking out in all directions, yet leading to the blast of strategically placed cannons. These circles today have grown old-growth tributes to Gods and Generals.
This city of monuments such as the glass-black stone wall of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, inscribed with the names of Americans killed while darkly reflecting back the reflection of this wall's visitors.
The unborn monuments and memorials to honor the war-dead yet born haunt this place.
I'm reminded of Bob Fosse's "Cabaret" where people tried to live their lives and ignore the growing power and danger of the Nazis, till it was too late. "Tomorrow belongs to me....."
And today we live this life of quiet desperation.
For the last three weeks I have seen such as vast
grass lands where antelopes dance, slept on All-Souls
night in a church Sanctuary next to my boyfriend, and
heard many stories of the lives caught up with and
lost to this global pandmic, and the brave fight of
many who believe America can and should be a better
place. It is wrong to allow people to die on the
streets just because of their fate or position in life.
What ever this whole C2EA thingie was, it was an opportunity or way-station for a long and hard road to the end of this pandemic.
What do we walk away with?