Karens SC-c2ea Blog

2006 Cylar Awardees

2006-09-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

2006 Cylar Awardees Stephanie Williams, Julie Pena and Karen Bates

Open Letter re South Carolina AIDSVote

2006-09-24T23:08:00.000-07:00

[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-ChairNational Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) Outreach Work Group Co-ChairColumbia, SC 29210-6009Phone: 803-750-5259Email: scaplwa@aol.comwww.campaigntoendaids.org/southcarolina or www.c2ea.org/scAIDS isn't over until it's over for everyone. AIDSVote! www.aidsvote.org

Bio of Karen Bates

2006-09-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Karen Bates, 52, was born in Columbia, SC. Formerly a paralegal, she holds an Associate in Business degree from the Legal Assistant Program of Midlands Technical College and is three classes short of receiving a Batchelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of South Carolina. Since being diagnosed HIV positive in 1998, she has served on the board of the Women’s Resource Center, as a member of the Steering Committee of the South Carolina Women’s Advocacy Council, as a member of the South Carolina AIDS Advocacy Network, as a member of the Federal Materials Review Panel and as a co-founder/member of the South Carolina Association of People Living With HIV/AIDS. In addition to her recent work with the national Campaign to End AIDS (currently Outreach Work Group Co-Chair, voting member of Interim Steering Committee, member Media & Marketing Committee) and the South Carolina Campaign to End AIDS (currently statewide Co-Chair), Ms. Bates also currently serves on the PAIR Council of the South Carolina Protection and Advocacy for People With Disabilities and as a member of the HIV Medicaid and Medicare Working Group, the AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition (ATAC) and SAVE ADAP (a working subgroup of ATAC). Along with her pal, Stephanie Williams, Ms. Bates was a winner of the 2006 Keith B. Cylar Award for National AIDS Activism. Ms. Bates lives with her dog, Missy, in a house in the suburbs of Columbia, where she enjoys movies, reading, crossword puzzles, concerts and plays, dining out, feeding all the wild birds in her yard and trying to keep her flowers alive in the climate of South Carolina.