Thanks again for all of your support in 2009.  We can’t wait to see what 2010 brings!

Paige

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat  Mother Teresa

After I wrote my Thankful Tuesday post yesterday, it dawned on me how much it was focused on me,  just how easy I have it and at times just how selfish I can be. While I have certainly had some significant challenges this year, it is easy to keep going when you know the reality is you will find a job, you have a parent and friends who would always take you in and you have the skills to get support if you ever needed it.  I happened across this ad last night that I would ask everyone who reads this to watch.  Solving complex multifaceted problems is not easy, there are no magic wand, no pixie dust, no secret words you can say to make the problem go away, what we all can do though is begin to care. I’ve found the more educated I have become about the reality vulnerable people face, the more I care, the more I want to find small daily ways to help, the more I want to spend less so I can give more. Right now there are thousands of children living on the streets, thousands of children in horrific situations that are unimaginable to most of us and I would urge everyone reading this to think about ways you can help and start, however small it may feel, just start.  Okay, I’m off to phone a few places and volunteer some time!  I mean if the future King can spend a night sleeping out as a homeless person in minus 4 weather, there’s something I can do to! While we are all busy in the lead up to Christmas, it can be as simple as a phone call to a charity to make a donation, giving money and/or food to someone who is homeless or committing to volunteering some time. Small steps do really add up!

“I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ” Jimmy Carter

“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one” Mother Teresa

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Proverbs 31:8-9

I thought I’d post this email I received just a few minutes ago.  It’s worth a look, and could be a worth a good bit more if we act on it.

Hi Cause Contact,

We know that many causes have had a hard year, so we'd like to try
something new to
help Ethiopian Orphan Relief that requires your participation, but is free
and definitely easy.

iGive.com is going to attempt to donate $5,000 in just 24 hours to
Ethiopian Orphan Relief and other causes.

For each person who joins iGive using the special link below and does just
one web search on our
site between now and noon Thursday, we'll give Ethiopian Orphan Relief a
dollar.  

5,000 new members, $5,000.  No purchase necessary.  

Of course, if they search more (or buy something) they'll earn even more
money for Ethiopian Orphan Relief.
Right now, we're donating $.02 per search and a bonus $5 for that first
purchase plus the usual percentage.

Here's where you come in.  The only way Ethiopian Orphan Relief will get
new supporters and that free $1 (or more)
is if you invite them.  Send your friends, family, and colleagues the
following link in an e-mail, tweet it, chirp it, do a
Facebook posting, put up posters, shout from mountain tops (you know the
drill) and let them know you think
Ethiopian Orphan Relief is pretty cool and deserves their support,
especially since it's free!  You can even just forward
this e-mail.

This is the link:
    http://www.igive.com/welcome/warm_reg_promo.cfm?c=47153

We're really proud of our search capability, powered by Yahoo!  We've made
tons of improvements over the
past four months, so we want lots of people to try it out and put it to the
test.  If they keep on searching or
shopping after testing us out, so much the better for Ethiopian Orphan
Relief and iGive.com.

The details:
     - Offer active between now and 11:59 a.m., December 17, 2009 (Chicago
time).
     - New members only (never have been an iGive member previously).  All
the normal rules of membership, searching, and
        purchasing apply, our site has the details.
     - Once we've given away $5,000, the offer ends.

That's it.  Don't forget to try our search yourself
(http://isearch.igive.com).  You may need to login or register first
(personally, as an iGive member).  We sent you this e-mail because you're
in our records as the cause contact, not as a member personally.

From our families to yours, we hope you have a great holiday season.

Yours,

Robert N. Grosshandler
Founder

Think about it, and please join us--it's a pretty sweet deal!

Paige

Amid this season of little to no sleep, I’ve also been exposed to a lot of germs, my flatmate’s family was over this week with horrendous coughs and colds and one quite possibly had the flu! My flatmate is not a hand washer (that is a whole other issue!) and with my propensity to develop pneumonia (by age 28 I’d had it seven times) due to a lung condition, I was just hoping I would stay healthy.

Roll on yesterday afternoon and I quickly began to feel tired, within an hour I was burning up, an hour later I was coughing up  a storm, my ears were throbbing/pulsating, my throat had welts and felt like there was a knife there when I swallowed and my body could not stop physically shaking. Needless to say, instead of being kept awake due to noise, I was awake due to illness.

I began to not feel at all graceful, thoughts were running through my head about why people would come over when they had coughs, colds, flu, why people don’t wash their hands with proper soap (!), why I could hear snoring from 9pm in the next room and some people were able to sleep so soundly when they created chaos! Around 3am as my fever hit 105, I was feeling low and I realized I had to stop. These feelings of “this really is not fair” were not helping and in the grand scheme of things, it was fair. So right there at 3am I decided I needed to cope better with this situation and set to work!

Between coughing fits, being sick and shaking I listed as many situations as I could that were not fair – people who were homeless, children dying of starvation, AIDS, domestic abuse, cancer, heart disease, losing a child, becoming a widow, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, having burns, being in car accidents and brain damage. I sat there and said “God, all I have is the flu, it isn’t nice, I may have complications, but it is just the flu and one week of no sleep”. I am fine!

I then decided I needed to manage to do a few things to care for me, while I was exceptionally dizzy I decided I could make orange juice, which I did, I could drink a glass of water and I could make a compress for my ear. While none of these things took my symptoms away, they did bring some relief!

About 20 minutes later I was feeling less dizzy so I made a bare bones list of what I needed to accomplish today, I have my second (or technically third!) interview tomorrow, so I cancelled all my plans for today and simply made a simple list of a few essential things related to interview prep! Knowing I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything made me feel a lot less anxious!

Next I decided to look at the things over the last day I needed to be thankful for, one was being able to get to the shops today before this cold/flu hit, another was the fact I had orange juice and water,  finally I was thankful I live in a part of the world where pneumonia (if it comes to that!) can be treated and while the last bout left my Consultant talking about cutting out part of my lung (eek!), I have a good Dr, a good team and a lot to be thankful for!

I finally fell asleep from 5:30am until my flatmate got up at 6! And you know what? 30 minutes sleep is also something to be thankful for too :)  What a great lesson this has been!

The blogosphere was filled with terrific, thought-provoking posts on World AIDS Day . Wendy, a long time supporter of Ethiopian Orphan Relief, Inc. wrote a particularly moving piece that I asked to share here:

December 1 is World AIDS Day. Our world is sick. Our brothers and sisters and parents and children are dying.

The Body of Christ–We have AIDS.

Take the World Vision AIDS Test to see how much you know about the global crisis.

• Almost 35 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.
• 2 million people died of AIDS-related illness in 2008.
• 2008 saw 2.7 million new infections, with 1.9 million of these in sub-Saharan Africa. (Note: “Sub-Saharan Africa” means all of Africa except Northern Africa, so it includes Ethiopia, where my daughter is from.)
• 6,000 children are orphaned by AIDS every day. Worldwide, 15 million children have lost parents to AIDS; this number is expected to climb to 25 million.
• Every 14 seconds, a child loses a parent to AIDS.

Here in the U.S., where HIV is now considered a chronic condition rather than a death sentence, these numbers mean so much that to us they too often mean nothing. Who do we know who lost their parents? What town have we visited that has been socially, economically, physically decimated by the death of 10 percent of its population to one disease? No one and nowhere. But in Africa–and increasingly in India, China, the Carribean, and Eastern Europe–these aren’t numbers. They are names. They are faces. They are memories. And they are hopes and dreams that might have been.

They are counting on us.

Of the 15 million orphan-reasons to care about World AIDS Day, an estimated 4 to 6 million live in Ethiopia. Though to our knowledge our daughter did not lose her parents to AIDS, in many ways they are all AIDS orphans–for without this plague on the land would be millions more to raise the nation out of poverty, to grow crops, to give health care and education, to take all these children into Ethiopian homes to be loved and cared for. But there are too many.

I highly recommend There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene, a journalist who has added two Ethiopian children to her family. She writes of her reaction when in 2000 she encountered the UN statistics of 12 million AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa:

Who was going to raise twelve million children? That’s what I suddenly wanted to know. . . . Who was going to buy twelve million pairs of sneakers that light up when you jump? Backpacks? Toothbrushes? Twelve million pairs of socks? Who will tell twelve million bedtime stories? Who will quiz twelve million children on Thursday nights for their Friday-morning spelling tests? Twelve million trips to the dentist? Twelve million birthday parties?

Who will wake in the night in response to eighteen million nightmares?

Who will offer grief counseling to twelve, fifteen, eighteen, thirty-six million children? Who will help them avoid lives of servitude or prostitution? Who will pass on to them the traditions of culture and religion, of history and government, of craft and profession? Who will help them grow up, choose the right person to marry, find work, and learn to parent their own children?

Well, as it turns out, no one. Or very few. There aren’t enough adults to go around. Although in the Western industrialized states HIV/AIDS has become a chronic condition rather than a death sentence, in Africa a generation of parents, teachers, principals, physicians, nurses, professors, spiritual leaders, musicians, poets, bureaucrats, coaches, farmers, bankers, and business owners are being erased. . . .
….
Adoption is not the answer to HIV/AIDS in Africa. Adoption rescues few. Adoption illuminates by example: these few once-loved children—who lost their parents to preventable diseases—have been offered a second chance at family life in foreign countries; like young ambassadors, they instruct us. From them, we gain impressions about what their age-mates must be like, the ones living and dying by the millions, without parents, in the cities and villages of Africa. For every orphan turning up in a northern-hemisphere household—winning the spelling bee, winning the cross-country race, joining the Boy Scouts, learning to rollerblade, playing the trumpet or the violin—ten thousand African children remain behind alone.

“Adoption is a last resort,” I would be told in November 2005 by Haddush Halefom, head of the Children’s Commission under Ethiopia’s Ministry of Labor, the arbiter of intercountry adoptions, “Historically, close kinship ties in our country meant that there were very few orphans: orphaned children were raised by their extended families. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has destroyed so many of our families that the possibility no longer exists to absorb all our Ethiopian orphans.

“I am deeply respectful of the families who care for our children,” he said. “But I am so very interested in any help that can be given to us to keep the children’s first parents alive. Adoption is good, but children, naturally, would prefer not to see their parents die.”

I did not adopt from Africa to stand on a soapbox. I have in fact had my soapbox enough years now that I may even have learned a bit about where I should and should not set it (a child’s crib is no place for it). But I am compelled by my love of my child to remember, to consider, to speak for and to help those equally precious who have so far been left behind in her country and around the world. And so as I perhaps have your eyes on my words and your heart on my child: yes, I will speak of AIDS, I will connect the dots, I will tell the truth on World AIDS Day: Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die. I, you, we can make a difference.

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear your voice
It’s whispering
“In science and in medicine
I was a stranger
You took me in”…

I’ve had enough of romantic love
I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it up
For a miracle, miracle drug
A miracle drug

–U2

Thank you, Wendy for your voice.

Paige

Thank you for all the suggestions in the last post regarding my trouble getting/staying asleep due to noise! Today I made it very clear I needed a long nap due to 5 nights on the trot of only a few hours sleep, being woken up etc. Amazingly, though not surprisingly, I fell asleep straight away and my flatmate came home 20 minutes later shouting hello as she walked through the door! Well then I was up, I somehow fell back asleep (unheard of for me) and woke up to a loud telephone conversation two feet from my head, I was just falling asleep again when the light in my room went on so she could find something by the doorway! About 20 minutes later I was just going back to the land of slumber and she called out goodbye loudly in my room as she went out to work.

While I’m not a light sleeper and have never been, I’ve lived with people almost all my life and never had this problem before and I’m not someone who finds earplugs comfy, I have to say if possible I’ll be trying to find a late night chemist tonight.  I’ll have a good read of your suggestions before I go!

Thank you again!

It’s about noon time when you notice the sound, a dull rumbling with no discernable direction of origin. You look out the door, nothing is to be seen. You continue working, when it happens again only louder. What could it be? Then you remember, you forgot breakfast and now you are so hungry. Lucky for you, you more than likely have the funds to go grab a delicious lunch of your choice. When you are eating this lunch, or any meal for that matter, have you ever wondered about many people who do not get to eat a regular meal? By regular I mean a meal every lunch, dinner and breakfast. Have you? Well maybe you should because believe it or not many working class Americans do not even get this luxury, and yes eating is a luxury.

When you go out to a meal, how much do you spend? Does it depend on the restaurant? So 10-30 dollars? Did you know, hunger could be cut in half in the United States and worldwide by 2015 for seven cents per American per day. That is a whole lot less than the average tip. Why do we find it easy to ignore a problem this massive even when the solution is so easy? Hunger is a horrible way to die. Your body starts to eat itself, first with the fat, then with the muscle, until your body is forced to start eating its brain. Can you fathom this? Can you possibly, even the tiniest bit, see this happening to you? You may not be able to, but for 15 million people this year this is their fate.

By the time you reach this sentence, yet another human being has perished because of starvation. By the time this message truly hits home with you, yet another has gone. When will you help? If this was you and your children, wouldn’t you want help? So what’s stopping you, is it the dinner plans you have for tonight?

-A.Sanderson

Take action through Feeding America. For everyone $1 donated, 7 meals are provided to men, women and children facing hunger in our country.

The World Food Programme fed 102 million people in 78 countries in 2008. A small donation can make a world of change.

I write today in honor of my child–an AIDS orphan.  She herself is not HIV positive–but she was at birth and she carried those anitbodies around in her young body for close to 2 years.  While this is her story to share, I wanted to honor her birth mother and all the other HIV+/living with AIDS birth mothers around the world.  By 2010, there will be 20 million AIDS orphans around the world.  While it would be impossible to adopt all of those children into families–it is possible to help in other ways.

I can only imagine the fear that HIV+/Living with AIDS birth mothers live with on a daily basis–worried about passing the disease onto their children/babies.  Having to give them up/abandon them because they cannot breastfeed because of the disease and knowing that their babies will die if they don’t give them up–from lack of food.  This breaks my heart.  While I have a family built through adoption, I wish that no woman/family have to give up their children because they can’t get medical care or have access to other ways to nourish their children.

We can all help.  How will you help? What will you do?

I stared at the fork in my hand.  I stared at the steaming pan of enchilada’s in the middle of the table.  Through the steam, I saw the smiling, gaunt face of my red-headed, dying friend and his beautiful wife. I smiled back. I looked to my left and saw my husband, to my right sat my toddler, forks also in hand.

“What if the doctor’s are wrong?  What if we can catch it from a fork?” I hated the thought, even as it formed. It was 1990 and until then, AIDS had been a news story, health ed and gossip topic to me. Suddenly it was very real. It was frightening, deadly and risky.

That day, AIDS stopped being a news story and became part of my story.

Why?  Because it was killing our friend.

Fork in hand, I had a choice to make. Would I allow my fear to pile hurt on an already bloodied and dying friend?  (There were some who whispered that people dying from aids “were getting what they deserve. And had brought it upon them selves” We saw how much this re had hurt them more than the virus. itself.)

Or, would I trust in God and live the gospel I said I believed?

I swallowed my fear, I dug into the pan, filling my plate, my husband’s and son’s with enchilada’s,  sauce and cheese.

Around that table, we shared a communion of enchilada’s and diet coke. We laughed. We cried. For a few moments-we lived the gospel.

I remember his bony, scaly red hand as we held hands to pray. I remember the tinge of fear again invading my heart as I reached out to clasp it. I remember the smile and warmth that met my hand in return.

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”  Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.

It wasn’t because we were fearless or a good people. We aren’t.  We did it because we’d be desperate for touch if we were dying. And because the example we have is Christ . He touched the un-touchables of his day.

I wish I could say that prayer brought healing. It didn’t.

Our friend died.  Because AIDS kills. Every single day.

Some ask where God is when people suffer.  I think he’s eating enchilada’s and drinking diet coke with them.  I think he holds a rough, scaly, bony hand in prayer.

When we let Him.

Today is World AIDS day.

My question to you is- Will you let him?

Wondering what you can do?  Here are some ways to touch someone:

World Vision Sponsor a child affected by AIDS

Bloodwater- Donate $ to help find a cure and to help treat those who hurt.

In honor of our friend (Alan) we’re sponsoring a child through World Vision.  His name is Daniel- he is a first grader who lives in Tanzania.

As a teenager in the age of AIDS, the very notion of such an esoteric disease was both personal and scary.  When I left home for college, I applied a fairly rigid set of standards to my own behavior to avoid becoming HIV+.   That’s how AIDS affected me.

In my early 20’s, I became the director of an Extended Day Program.  I was much younger than the rest of the directors, ran a financially beleaguered program, and was new.  So popular, I couldn’t stand it!  Delightful L ran a similar program and was marginalized for other reasons.  He became a good friend and great source of comfort in that difficult first year.  I knew he was ill, but couldn’t believe it when a few months after leaving his job, he died of AIDS.  His diagnosis was kept secret from everyone, including friends, and his adoring grandmother insisted that only pneumonia be listed as his cause of death.  I, like everyone, knew that a larger scale tragedy had taken place.  That’s how AIDS affected me.

In my early 30’s, our up-and-coming neighborhood in Chicago housed a program for those living with AIDS.  I donated a few  meals, some toiletries and cash, and would wince with guilt knowing I could do more, but didn’t  as I sauntered past to my own healthy life.  That’s how AIDS affected me.

In my late 30’s I prepared to adopt from Ethiopia.  Initially terrified that I might bring home an HIV+ baby, I was comforted by the thought of numerous tests designed to assure us and a worried US government that our little one would be healthy.  AIDS could remain confined to Africa, with no residue clinging to my own life.  That’s how AIDS affected me.

Today, I spend a lot of time thinking about the plight of orphans living in Ethiopia, .  I can grieve my friend L, be thankful that my daughter is healthy, and donate money to EOR for orphan projects without ever really thinking about the insidious disease that creates chaos in homes, in families, in communities.  I have that luxury, though it is one afforded to few others in the world.  My duty is to step away from that privilege,  to really examine AIDS and its impact, and to find my own part in a solution, no matter how small the role.  EOR’s partner projects are working hard to make a difference.   People in my world are working hard to make a difference.  I must make a difference.  When I look back on my early 40’s, I want to see direction and motivation in what I do to combat AIDS.  Today is World AIDS Day and AIDS  does affect me…

Paige

*I’ll be making an additional contribution to one of EOR’s partner projects this month.  I’ll contribute an additional 1.21(1, for each one of you,21–the number of years World AIDS Day has been commemorated)  on behalf of each person who leaves a comment on this post.  Thank you for doing your part.

since i embraced Twitter in the last month or two, it’s helped this process of opening up my world and re-engaging with life, primarily in the form of staying informed on stuff that interests me, but also bringing me into contact with people from various walks of life.

i can’t even remember now how/who/when i first became aware of riding4acause.org and the guys behind it (other than via someone i follow on Twitter re-tweeting), but i was so impressed by what these guys are doing:

a small bunch of straight men, all motorcycle enthusiasts (and fathers, & i’m guessing husbands) and who’ve each had their own struggle with depression, are forming a possy (always wanted to use that word – & i mean it in the John Wayne sense) to go ride across America to raise funds & awareness for male depression in just under a year from now.

isn’t that freakin awesome!??

last week Raz Chorev called on his Twitter followers to submit their stories of depression, to be posted on the site.  for some reason, i felt compelled to submit mine.  i’d never put my story into a single canned message before/yet, so figured this might be a decent opportunity, and also help spread the word.

so for the time being (while mine is the first), here’s my sorry story of depression:

http://www.riding4acause.org/my-story/

if it helps just one guy realise that he’s not alone feeling the way he does, and to get some help & get back on track, i’ll be a happy boy.

& maybe some people might question why i’m being so open about my story, here on my blog, in person amongst my friends, & even on a “stranger’s website”?  aside from the above reason, i also think it imposes some small degree of accountability on myself.  whether that’s good motivation or bad, i’m not sure, but by putting my story out in the open (instead of hiding it from almost everyone for the last 5 years), i feel it gives me even more reason to do whatever i have to do to never find myself back in that dark place.

I recently had the opportunity to watch the film The Blind Side, an endearing movie based on the true story of an American family who found a homeless 17-year-old boy named Michael Oher and took him in as their own; he went from sleeping on their couch to being their son. Michael became a famous American footballer and currently plays in the NFL.

I cried throughout the film (in fact I was sobbing at a few parts!), it was a poignant reminder to me just how many kids there are on the streets, with no one to care for them, looking for love, attention and affection in the wrong places; kids who deserve a chance and are most unlikely to ever receive one. I’ve worked with these kids and seen how little hope they have until they realize they are something special.

We are often bombarded with bad press, images of violence and war, stories of embezzlement, fraud and greed and yet around the corner in every neighbourhood there are people doing amazing things, people  one by one making life changing decisions for the most vulnerable with no ulterior motive other than to give a kid a chance. Only the reality is, they end up being the ones who benefit from their actions, they learn and grow from being around these amazing, special kids.  As it says in the film

Friend: You’re changing that boy’s life

Mama: Nope he’s changing mine!

I came away filled with determination to see the blessings and opportunities I have to make a difference, help others and maybe through the process learn something from very special people who have more honor, courage, strength and determination than we could ever imagine.

Thanksgiving approaches, and while I spend time hunting for gluten free pumpkin cheesecake recipes and packing for the marathon drive from Ohio to Florida via Virginia, I also think about the many, many gifts in my life. When I take the time to create a gratitude list, it’s clear that I am  indeed a lucky gal. Some items loom large, like my terrific husband, and my happy healthy children, some items are basic, like my big-enough house (with a broom closet!), and great public library, and some are tiny little things that make my life complete, like Liberte‘ yogurt and my favorite new show, Glee.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day aspects of life, but when I really take time to reflect, I realize like most, I have a good deal to be thankful for.

As our second year of operation draws to a close, the board of Ethiopian Orphan Relief, inc. has a lot to be thankful for as well. 2 projects at SOS/EE, a playground at AHOPE, and a well-building project to be completed in December are just a few of our many tangible successes this year.

Before asking you to make a donation to EOR, I would ask you first to catalog the gifts that make your world a better place. After, I hope ‘ll feel compelled to share your good fortune with others—the children of Ethiopia. Whenever I feel I have too little to go around, a quick check of all that I do have reminds me that I have plenty to share. Whether your list includes a fabulous vacation, new grandchildren in the family, or your own favorite TV show, I hope that you’ll recognize the gifts in your own life, and choose to share the joy with EOR.

Those of us at Ethiopian Orphan Relief, Inc. realize our greatest gift is YOU! Without your ongoing generous support, none of the projects would be possible. You have made the world a better place for thousands of children who have access to joyful play, education, and clean water—perhaps for the first time ever.

Please  create your own list of gratitude, and consider making a gift in your name, or to honor someone else, to benefit the children of Ethiopian Orphan Relief. We all have so much to be thankful for…..

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving.

In gratitude,

Paige Chapman-Layland

Ethiopian Orphan Relief, Inc.

Annual Fund Chair

We would welcome your donation here

From the novel “Fight Club”:  “Getting fired is the best thing that could happen to any of us.  That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives.”

Now, I technically wasn’t fired; my old job was eliminated. Same difference. Losing your job, however it happens, forces you to start doing something different with your life since you’re not ‘treading water’ working at that same old job anymore. Whatever you choose to do next — network, sit in your La-z-boy, volunteer — is up to you.

THE LAZARUS EFFECT: 4,400 people die each day from a preventable and treatable disease called AIDS. We have the power to extend the lives of those who have the HIV/AIDS virus. Someone who is at death’s door can be brought back to life in as little as 90 days. The transformation is called the Lazarus Effect, and the results are nothing short of miraculous. The treatment costs around 40 cents a day. Get involved, give a Global Gift and by asking President Obama to give a gift to the world this holiday season by supporting the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.     The Global Fund has already saved 4.9 million lives in just 6 years, so we can make a difference. Also, when YOU BUY RED you can save lives, so let this one color unite us. The amount of funds generated by (RED) to date is the equivalent of providing more than 890,000 people with HIV, with lifesaving antiretroviral medication for one year. Give the gift of LIFE.

No?  Well, you’re not alone.  It doesn’t even exist.  They must be using the Bill Clinton model for dealing with important issues.

How can a politician, in good conscience, vote for a bill that they haven’t actually read?

The US might as well be on the parliamentary model for all the independent thinking that the Democrats seem to be doing.