More than 30,000 people contract HIV every year in the United States. I have positive friends, and so do you.

Nearly three decades ago, that number was closer to 50,000 people and the San Francisco Goth community began walking in AIDSwalk. Since then, we have probably raised more than $100,000 to fight AIDS and support positive folx while we do so. I started walking with the team when I started dating Sumiko Saulson (one of this year's team captains!) seven years ago.

My (first) fundraising goal is to raise $1000. A couple years ago, I blasted through like four or five goals that I had set and was one of the top 20 fundraisers of the whole AIDSwalk iirc. I'd love to beat my personal best, of course!

Can you believe that I once had someone tell me that AIDS was over?

While COVID continues to be a pandemic and everyone freaks out over hantavirus, AIDS continues to be a quiet epidemic, with 1.7 million people living with the disease in the United States right now. Although there was a short period wherein the queer community's efforts to prevent its spread had made it a heterosexual disease, its numbers rose in our community again. We are now the most affected by it, once more. 1 in 8 people with AIDS don't know they have it, ensuring that this crisis will continue for probably the rest of my life.

Black/African-American and Latine folx account for 7 out of every 10 cases.

Please donate, if you can. I know you hear this a lot, but that's because it is really, honestly, true: every bit helps. If what you can donate is $1, please donate that! If what you can donate is $1000, please donate that! If you are a poor person, be gentle with your finances; if you are a middle-class or wealthy person, maybe stretch your comfort zone and donate a little more than your first thought.

Regardless of what you donate, THANK YOU SO VERY VERY VERY MUCH. It is **only** through community and mutual aid that we have survived this long and it is **only** by these means that we will survive into the future. I am both humbled and proud to be queer and loud about it in this world, and one of the many reasons for that is the constant reminder that, as the Radical Fairy song says, I don't have to do it alone.

Whether or not you can donate, you can help by spreading the word ~ please repost this, adding your own plea if you'd like, to help me raise money for this cause! Or join the team, even if you think you won't be able to raise any money ~ AIDSwalk makes note of the size of each team, and that matters to both us at the walk and to the overall effort.