S: Is for Striking Back at AIDS

One of my favorite places to go rummaging is a thrift store and what better than a thrift store with a cause. When I moved to NY I got my couch at this great store that was trying to stop the spread of a little known disease called AIDS. I know it seems that a lot of my columns are pertaining to this subject, maybe it is because it has touched my life so personally. Maybe it is because of Rudy Giuliani running for president. In 1998 members of Housing Works, a nonprofit group that had challenged Mr. Giuliani's AIDS policies, marched near City Hall. The police placed snipers atop City Hall during the march and monitored it by helicopter. Giuliani literally and figuratively took aim at Housing Works and poor New Yorkers struggling with AIDS and homelessness. Why the show of force? Giuliani was retaliating because Housing Works had dared to criticize his administration's backwards AIDS policies.Ironically, Giuliani's brutal tactics helped Housing Works grow. They forced the non profit to focus on entrepreneurship. Opening new Thrift Shops, they expanded their client services. They have helped over 10,000 poor people living with AIDS in the decade since. They have won numerous groundbreaking lawsuits protecting the rights of people living with AIDS. Today their earned income accounts for 84 percent of their annual budget, while government contracts only account for 12 percent. Whether you shop at their numerous Thrift Shops, go to concerts at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, hire their catering company The Works to cater an event, volunteer, advocate or write a check, you are one of the reasons Housing Works remains independent and strong.

Housing Works strives to ensure that homeless and low-income people living with HIV/AIDS and their families have adequate housing, food, social support, drug treatment, health care, and employment. Housing Works is especially committed to serving those who have difficulty obtaining services elsewhere because they struggle with mental illness or chemical dependency.
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." Aggressive advocacy in opposition to policies and institutions harmful to people living with HIV/AIDS and aggressive advocacy in support of policies and institutions aimed at improving the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS.

This is an epidemic and we have turned our eyes away if we are not effected. Like H&M and other organizations, it is not hard to give when it also provides a needed item. AIDS is a F.A.C.T. and it is not going away.