Early this year, Mike Tulloch, a member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7803 in Washington State, tended to the myriad details of setting up the local’s annual golf tournament fundraiser for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. At the same time, Cristina Pena, a student at the University of Southern California, carried on the active life of a young college woman—a life that would have been impossible without the efforts of Tulloch, the local and all of CWA.
Cristina Pena, now a student at the University of Southern California, her boyfriend, Chris, and cousin.
Pena was born with HIV/AIDS. Today, she’s one of the millions of young people living healthy lives because of the foundation’s work and the efforts of CWA members across the country to raise funds for its pediatric AIDS research. Days before her third birthday, her father died from AIDS. After that, Pena says, “it was just me and my mom, two peas in a pod. Nobody knew how to act around us. Physicians donned masks and full gowns just to speak to us. Aunts and uncles worried about sharing drinks. When my mother inquired about our future, doctors just shrugged, limited our lifespan to five years and admitted they just didn’t know enough.”
As a teen, she became involved with one of the first Los Angeles pediatric AIDS support groups. “We laughed, cried and got sick together, said Pena. “We not only learned about friendship and love but also loss and death. Over half of our young ‘group’ members eventually lost their battles with HIV.”
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Since 1990, CWA has embraced the foundation and made the effort to find a cure for childhood AIDS central to its mission. In the 21 years since, CWA union members have raised nearly $7 million and CWA Secretary-Treasurer Annie Hill says “our union’s involvement with the Elizabeth Glaser Foundation is another way for our members to act on their values as working people, another way to tap strength in numbers. Together, we can save lives.”
Foundation spokeswoman Colleen Zakrewsky credits CWA with enabling the organization to nearly eradicate pediatric AIDS in the United States. “We couldn’t do what we do without their participation,” says Zakrewsky.
“If it weren’t for [Elizabeth Glaser’s] passion and advocacy for children,” Pena says, “I wouldn’t be alive today.”
CWA Secretary-Treasurer Annie Hill describes the moment the union made eliminating pediatric AIDS a top priority. At CWA’s 1990 convention, Elizabeth Glaser, founder of the pediatric AIDS foundation, took the microphone and passionately described her fight to eradicate the disease after learning she had been infected with HIV/AIDS from a blood transfusion. Both Glaser’s children, Ariel and Jake, became infected. As she lay dying in 1988, Ariel drew with crayons the flowers and sun that became the foundation’s logo. Glaser told the CWA delegates about the shocking lack of research and treatment for children living with HIV. Glaser herself died in 1994.
In 2010, it was Glaser’s son Jake’s turn to address the CWA convention. Then 25 and healthy, he took the podium to a standing ovation and emotionally thanked those gathered in the room for their commitment to the foundation and their help in the fight to eliminate pediatric HIV and AIDS (see video of Jake’s speech here). In the 1980s, the decade Jake was born, thousands of babies were born each year with HIV/AIDS in the United States—a figure that was not tracked until the 1990s, when the Glaser Foundation got off the ground. Today, fewer than 125 are born in the United States with the illness each year, but pediatric AIDS is still rampant in countries around the world.
Local 7803’s golf tournament and raffle raised $3,000 this year, a figure Tulloch, a splicer with the telecom firm CenturyLink, says he plans to increase in 2013—and beyond. “Each year, I want more and more,” he says. Over in Los Angeles, CWA Local 9505 raises funds for pediatric AIDS by visiting each of its 1,535 members at their worksites throughout Southern California. The local’s members all are AT&T employees, and the company allows a handful to be released from their jobs to meet with co-workers to fundraise. They show videos of the foundation’s work, hold raffles and urge Local 9505 members to make the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation their charity of choice through the United Way.
“People tend to respond more when it’s someone in their work group they know,” says Local 9505 Secretary-Treasurer Joan Gifford. The local’s raffle alone last year raised $3,000, in addition to the individual donations through United Way. Up in Washington State, Local 7803 President Jeanne Stewart says the golf tournament is the union’s biggest event and members embrace the cause. “We’re a pretty family-oriented local. Kids are important, especially the safety and well-being of kids.”
Hill, who oversees CWA’s work with the foundation and serves on its board, says engaging members in this issue enables them to “understand the importance of our involvement with the community.” Dozens of CWA locals participate in the charity drive. CWA visually tallies overall fundraising efforts with a thermometer on the union’s website devoted to the Glaser foundation and recognizes locals that raise the most money, including Local 7803. Each hotdog sold, each prize raffled off, each member who takes a few minutes to donate money or volunteer support adds up to a final cure. “We will be there until there is a generation free of HIV,” says Hill.
CWA members’ efforts on pediatric AIDS go beyond fundraising, says Zakrewsky. “CWA has raised their voice along with us, to speak out for those who can’t, and let the world know that what you have does not define who you are. CWA was there at the beginning when there was no voice for children in this fight, and they are here now fighting for every child around the world.”
As Jake Glaser, choking back tears, told CWA convention delegates in 2010: “Twenty years ago, my mother, Elizabeth Glaser, stood before you with such firm conviction to let you know why we must fight this disease…why we had to work together. It was because children and families were suffering. As a mother, she said, that was completely unacceptable.” Since that time, the foundation has expanded from Glaser’s kitchen table to 17 countries and reached more than 10 million women with the medication they need to prevent HIV from reaching their babies.
I want to tell each and every one of you, as a group and individuals, that none of this progress would have been possible without you. None of it.
