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Larry Kessler
Larry Kessler is the Founding Director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, an agency that has served over half of all people diagnosed with AIDS in Massachusetts, educated generations about the disease, and secured progressive city, state, and federal AIDS policy. About Social Activism Kessler was born in 1942 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In his time, he has been an ironworker, a small businessman, a seminarian, and a community organizer. In 1960, after high school, he briefly studied for the priesthood before getting involved full-time in social activism through a wide variety of different causes. Kessler founded and directed Project Appalachia, an poverty reduction, anti-poverty program, from 1966-1968. The Meals on Wheels program he started in McKees Rocks, PA, McKees Rock, Pennsylvania, still operates today. As co-founder and director of Pittsburgh's Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice, Thomas Merton Center from 1970-1973, he took an active role in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AIDS Action Committee Of Massachusetts
Founded in 1983, AIDS Action Committee (AAC) of Massachusetts is a not-for-profit, community-based health organization whose mission is to stop the epidemic and related health inequities by eliminating new infections, maximizing healthier outcomes of those infected and at risk, and attacking the root causes of HIV/AIDS. Based in Boston, it is New England's oldest and largest AIDS service organization. It provides free, confidential services to more than 3,500 men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS as well as prevention services to many thousands of men, women and youth who are not living with HIV or do not know their status. History In 2010, AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts merged with Cambridge Cares About AIDS into a new agency operating under the AIDS Action Committee name. The organizations joined together after nearly two years of strategic planning and stakeholder-led development. The partnership was motivated by the desire to transform the way AIDS services are d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walk For Hunger
Project Bread's Walk for Hunger is the oldest continual pledge walk in the United States and the largest annual one-day fundraiser to alleviate local hunger in Massachusetts. Project Bread - The Walk for Hunger Project Bread is an antihunger organization creating and promoting programs to help end hunger in Massachusetts. With the Chefs in Schools Initiative, the organization is changing school food. The Initiative is a joint effort with Project Bread and the City of Boston to change what kids eat in the school cafeteria. First piloted in the Boston Public Schools, the "Chef in Resident," Chef Kirk Conrad, is now working in Lawrence and Salem School districts. The Child Nutrition Outreach Program at Project Bread has partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote participation the Summer Food Service Program and the National School Breakfast Program, both federally funded programs. Making sure kids don’t go hungry when they're not in school, sites around the state ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HIV/AIDS In The United States
The AIDS epidemic, caused by HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), found its way to the United States between the 1970s and 1980s, but was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in homosexual men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. Treatment of HIV/AIDS is primarily via the use of multiple antiretroviral drugs, and education programs to help people avoid infection. Initially, infected foreign nationals were turned back at the United States border to help prevent additional infections. The number of United States deaths from AIDS has declined sharply since the early years of the disease's presentation domestically. In the United States in 2016, 1.1 million people aged over 13 lived with an HIV infection, of whom 14% were unaware of their infection. Gay and bisexual men, African Americans, and Hispanic/Latino Americans remain disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS in the United States. Mortality a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HIV/AIDS Activists
Social and political activism to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, as well as to raise funds for effective treatment and care of people with AIDS (PWAs), has taken place in multiple nations across the world since the 1980s. As a disease that began in marginalized populations, efforts to mobilize funding, treatment, and fight discrimination have largely been dependent on the work of grassroots organizers directly confronting public health organizations (often government-managed medical bureaucracies) as well as politicians, drug companies, and other institutions. Inaction from the Reagan administration in the US in the early 1980s,"And the Band Played On", Randy Shilts, p. 588, St. Martin's Press, 2007 rampant homophobia, and the spread of misconceptions about HIV/AIDS led to outright discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, especially in the early days of the AIDS pandemic. Protest movements like ACT UP arose to fight for the rights of PWAs and to work to end the pandemi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Kessler 5K Run
AIDS Walk Boston is a walkathon fundraiser hosted annually in Boston, Massachusetts to benefit AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts (AAC), New England's oldest and largest not-for-profit AIDS service organization. AAC's mission is to stop the epidemic by preventing new HIV/AIDS infections and optimizing the health of those already infected. About Event AIDS Walk Boston is always held on the first Sunday in June. It begins and ends at the DCR Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade, with the actual route following a 10K path through the cities of Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge. Concurrent with the Walk is the Larry Kessler 5K Run, a 5K race along the banks of the Charles River. Awards are given out to the winners of each age group. Upon completion of the Walk, participants are welcomed back to the DCR Hatch Shell with the Wellness Festival, a celebration of healthy living. Online Community AIDS Walk Boston has an online community to connect and communicate with part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AIDS Service Organization
AIDS service organizations are community-based organizations that provide support for people affected by HIV/AIDS. This article focuses on HIV/AIDS service organizations in the United States only. There is a huge variety of these organizations in order to provide for the wide variety of needs of HIV/AIDS patients and their families. The majority of these organizations are healthcare-based, providing assistance with testing, treatment, preventative medicines like Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), needle and syringe exchanges and more. Another prominent type of AIDS service organization is education-based, working to raise awareness and public understanding of topics like the transmission of HIV, safe sex, treatment resources, as well as eliminating rampant misconceptions about HIV/AIDS. Other organizations provide services like legal advice and/or advocacy, mental health and counseling services, and fundraising and community outreach. These organizations are vital in providing f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fenway Health
Fenway Health (formally Fenway Community Health Center, Inc.) is an LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) health care, research and advocacy organization founded by Northeastern University students and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.''Bay Windows''Hannah Clay Wareham, "Fenway Health: new building, classic message," August 6, 2009 accessed January 18, 2011 History In 1971, Northeastern University students opened a drop-in center in the basement of a building owned by the Christian Science Church. They named the center the Fenway Community Health Center and staffed it with volunteer nursing students. By 1973, demand had grown to the point where Fenway incorporated as a freestanding health center and sought a larger space at 16 Haviland Street. Today, this space serves as Fenway: Sixteen, the home of Fenway's HIV Counseling, Testing & Referrals Program, Health Navigation Services, Helplines, and gay and bisexual men's health programs. The 16 Haviland Street location h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HIV/AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual may not notice any symptoms, or may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness. Typically, this is followed by a prolonged incubation period with no symptoms. If the infection progresses, it interferes more with the immune system, increasing the risk of developing common infections such as tuberculosis, as well as other opportunistic infections, and tumors which are rare in people who have normal immune function. These late symptoms of infection are referred to as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). This stage is often also associated with unintended weight loss. HIV is spread primarily by unprotected sex (including anal and vaginal sex), contaminated blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to chi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civil Rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of society and the state without discrimination or repression. Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples' physical and mental integrity, life, and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as sex, race, sexual orientation, national origin, color, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, social class, religion, and disability; and Individual and group rights, individual rights such as privacy and the freedom of freedom of thought, thought, freedom of speech, speech, freedom of religion, religion, freedom of the press, press, freedom of assembly, assembly, and freedom of movement, movement. Political rights include natural justice (procedural fairness) in law, such as the rights of the accused, including the right ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual may not notice any symptoms, or may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness. Typically, this is followed by a prolonged incubation period with no symptoms. If the infection progresses, it interferes more with the immune system, increasing the risk of developing common infections such as tuberculosis, as well as other opportunistic infections, and tumors which are rare in people who have normal immune function. These late symptoms of infection are referred to as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). This stage is often also associated with unintended weight loss. HIV is spread primarily by unprotected sex (including anal and vaginal sex), contaminated blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Merton Center For Peace And Social Justice
The Thomas Merton Center is a non-profit grassroots organization in Pittsburgh whose mission to build and support collaborative movements that empower marginalized populations to advance collective liberation from oppressive systems. The Center was co-founded by Molly Rush and Larry Kessler in 1972. The Thomas Merton Center is named after Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani who wrote prolifically about issues related to peace and justice. History The traditional base of the Center was radical Catholic pacifists, but has since expanded to secular humanists and diverse community perspectives concerned with building a more peaceful and just world. The Center began in 1972 to protest the continuation of the Vietnam War, to work against federal cutbacks and to raise money to provide medical aid to Indochina. The Center has also protested and peacefully demonstrated against a variety of issues including world and local hunger, exploitation of workers, militar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McKees Rocks, PA
McKees Rocks, also known as "The Rocks", is a borough in Allegheny County in western Pennsylvania, along the south bank of the Ohio River. The population was 5,920 at the time of the 2020 census. It is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. In the past, the city was known for its extensive iron and steel interests. There were large railroad machine shops, and manufacturers of locomotives, freight and passenger cars. Other factories in the city manufactured springs, enamel ware, lumber, wall materials, plaster, nuts and bolts, malleable castings, chains and forgings, tin ware, concrete, and cigars. The Pittsburgh, Allegheny and McKees Rocks Railroad is located in an area along the river known as the "Bottoms". The borough is within the Sto-Rox School District, which serves McKees Rocks and neighboring Stowe Township. The local high school is Sto-Rox High School. The McKees Rocks Bridge, which carries traffic between McKees Rocks and Pittsburgh, is the longest bridge in Alleg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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