Open Letter re South Carolina AIDSVote

[Please feel free to forward or post this message to your own lists!] Dear SC-c2ea friends and supporters: As many of you may know, this week we held several barnstorming events in South Carolina while Charles King and Larry Bryant were visiting here in support of our 2006 AIDSVote initiative. Specifically, we participated with the South Carolina HIV/AIDS Council in KISS-FM's "Take a Friend to the Doctor Day" health fair at the SC State Museum in Columbia, held a Gospel Explosion at Empowerment Ministries in Orangeburg and held an AIDSVote Town Hall Meeting at Brookland Baptist Church in West Columbia, as well as conducting several radio interviews to promote these events. However, both as individuals and as a group, we must do MORE if we want our next Governor and U.S. Congress to develop, fund and implement a plan to end the AIDS epidemic in South Carolina--a plan that includes universal access to prevention, treatment, care and services by 2010. As our state's wait list for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) continues to grow, it is even more vital that we continue to improve our educational and advocacy efforts.To further this end, our state group will be developing a written plan for our actions from now until the elections in November. This plan will include continuing to collect signatures on our AIDSVote petitions, gathering all the signed petitions from around the state together and a strategy for delivering them to the candidates, including media coverage for the same. We will also be encouraging the candidates to answer a candidate questionnaire (see the "Sample Congressional Questionnaire" recently posted on this website) and publicizing their responses, in order that voters may utilize their answers as a tool in deciding their candidate preferences on election day. We will be attending as many local events around the state where the candidates will be present as possible (a/k/a "bird-dogging"), as well as organizing efforts to get people to the polls on election day. All these efforts will be strictly non-partisan and are allowable, both as individual activities and under IRS regulations as permissible activities for 501(c)(3) non-profit entities. But to make all this happen, we need YOUR help. If you have contacts in South Carolina, please ask them to volunteer by assisting their SC-c2ea elected officers and regional representatives in developing and implementing this plan. SC-c2ea (and national C2EA) is only as effective as YOU, its members and supporters, make it. To volunteer in South Carolina, please contact SC-c2ea State Chair Stephanie Williams (803-928-8474, step62will@hotmail.com) or SC-c2ea Vice-Chair Karen Bates (803-750-5259, scaplwa@aol.com). For assistance in developing and implementing a similar AIDSVote plan in your own state, please contact Housing Works field organizer and national C2EA Outreach Co-Chair Larry Bryant (202-408-0305, bryant2@housingworks.org). Our unity makes us stronger. Thank you for your continued support of C2EA Karen Bates South Carolina Campaign to End AIDS (SC-c2ea) Vice-Chair National Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) Outreach Work Group Co-Chair Columbia, SC 29210-6009 Phone: 803-750-5259 Email: scaplwa@aol.com Campaign To End Aids, South Carolina www.campaigntoendaids.org/southcarolina or www.c2ea.org/sc AIDS isn't over until it's over for everyone. AIDSVote! www.aidsvote.org