Tag Archives: biking

Doing More/ BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2026

Posted on by
Reply
Pickle juice, the replenishing choice of champions. Don’t knock it until you try it.

In five weeks, I’ll be riding my bicycle, The Blue Streak, from Philadelphia to NYC again for BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2026 in support of Housing Works.

What’s different this year? I’m committed to raising more money—because Housing Works has been doing more. And Housing Works continues to step up and do more because it’s necessary.

Last year, thanks to over 180 steadfast, kind souls, I raised nearly $29,000—and as a bonus, I can say that I’ve raised $310,000+ since my first AIDS ride. This year, I’m committed to increasing my fundraising goal to $32,000. 

Donations of all sizes are welcome, but a gift of $175 or more will go a long way toward reaching my $32K goal and enabling Housing Works to do more of the amazing work they do.

If $175 is a financial reach this year, it’s okay: Believe me, I get it. Many of you are aware how challenging the last 17 months and counting have been for our household. What I’d ask instead is that:

1) you give whatever you can and then

2) share this with one to three loved ones, friends, colleagues, etc.—asking them to make up the difference.

Every donation helps, and we’re all in these many, many fights to do what’s right together.

We live in TL;DR times, so here’s the donation link to help me get to that $32,000 goal:

give.housingworks.org/Mika2026

For more on what Housing Works has been up to this past year, read on below.

How Housing Works is Doing More

Fighting to save PEPFAR. Housing Works continues to fight to restore PEPFAR funding, which focuses on expanding access to HIV prevention, treatment, and care interventions. Launched in 2003, PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which reflects the largest commitment by any nation in the world to address a single disease, has saved an estimated 26 million lives and changed the trajectory of the global HIV epidemic. In 2024 alone, PEPFAR supported 67 million people receiving testing and counseling, including pregnant women and young children. Predictably, the PEPFAR cuts by the current administration have had a devasting and lethal effect. During the first half of 2025, across nine countries, 3.4 million fewer people were tested for HIV.  And in the last year alone, the dismantling of PEPFAR has resulted in the closure of approximately 1,700 HIV service sites worldwide, the loss of more than 16,000 jobs, reductions in critical HIV services, and significant harm to global public health. In the year and a half since these PEPFAR cuts began, Housing Works has worked tirelessly with partners, both publicly and behind the scenes, to call attention to these cuts, restore PEPFAR funding, and hold DC decision makers accountable. Your support will help Housing Works fight until every dollar is restored.

World AIDS Day 2025 in DC. Housing Works protested in front of the White House lawn, displaying bright red banners that showing the number of lives that will be lost around the world as the Trump administration decreases HIV/AIDS funding.

World AIDS Day 2025 in DC. Housing Works protested in front of the White House lawn, displaying bright red banners that showing the number of lives that will be lost around the world as the Trump administration decreases HIV/AIDS funding.

Protecting housing and health care, locally, regionally, and nationally. In the last year, Housing Works has mobilized across New York City, Albany, and Washington, DC, with more than 80 protests, civil disobediences, rallies, and press conferences—direct boots-on-the-ground action that has helped protect housing and health care services. The unrestricted funds raised by BRAKING AIDS® Ride have helped preserve $90 million in the state matching fund for public health programs and saved $100,000 in funding for community health centers from state budget cuts. In New York City, Housing Works restored more than $5 million for HIV programs like The Undetectables, the signature health initiative that empowers people living with HIV to achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load—and boasts an impressive 92% success rate. 

Continuing comprehensive lifesaving services to those living with HIV/AIDS. The above advocacy efforts are in addition to the crucial services and programs Housing Works provides to its clients every single day: HIV testing, diagnosis, and treatment services, affordable housing, health care (HIV-specific services as well as primary care, dental, and mental health), job training, free legal help, substance use treatment, and more.

As I have said before, Housing Works has shown up for what’s right since its 1990 founding—and I trust them to show up for all the important fights ahead.

I will ride this year, as always, in memory of family friends Dennis and Curtis, who both died of AIDS in 1987 and 2003, respectively, and also in honor of my many loved ones who live with HIV and the countless HIV/AIDS activists who continue to make the world a better place. 

Please donate to BRAKING AIDS 2026 today! 

BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2025: I’m Still Showing Up to Fight

Posted on by
Reply
My favorite cheerleaders at an oasis during BRAKING AIDS RIde 2024

It’s late August. BRAKING AIDS® Ride is coming up in two and a half weeks, and I’ll be riding my bicycle, The Blue Streak, from Philadelphia to NYC in support of Housing Works. With your help, I’ll raise at least $20,000 again this year, and as a bonus, I’ll also exceed the $300,000 milestone on my individual fundraising for this cause over the last 17 years.

If you’re a past supporter and having a TL;DR moment, here’s the donation link to help me get there: give.classy.org/mika2025.  Donations of all sizes are welcome, but a gift of $250 or more is especially helpful and will go a long way toward helping me reach my $20,000 fundraising goal. If a donation isn’t feasible, sharing this blogpost with 5 or 6 people in your network would be fantastic.

Me in my happy place, BRAKING AIDS Ride 2024

Otherwise, here’s what I can share about BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2025:

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay—and Still Show Up To Fight

I’ve gotten questions from some folks about whether I’d be riding this year. As many of my friends know, my job at a youth non-profit was among the casualties of federal funding cuts and other draconian political maneuvers. My partner was laid off a month later from their non-profit job under similar circumstances. We’re hardly the only ones. We hear about more mass layoffs every week.

It’s been one of the most challenging years of my life. I don’t have the wherewithal to be falsely stoic and say it’s fine. It’s not fine. I’m not fine. And yet.

At the same time that JL and I get up every day to look for work and to try to figure out how to boost our spirits and stretch our finances, I’m also keenly aware every minute of every day: We’re among the lucky. We’re safe. We have a roof over our heads, food, water, decent health, savings to live on for a while until we find work. So many people have no housing, no savings, no resources to fall back on, no sources of help and support.

We’re also barraged, terrified, outraged, exhausted each day by reports of war and suffering, by constant attacks on the human rights that should protect all of us. People who support fascist, autocratic thinking and beliefs have been here among us, all along, but they’re newly re-empowered by the bullies in power who are running what’s left of our democracy into the ground—and they know it. Even when I stop reading the headline horrors of the day, I see visible signs of that gleeful hatred everywhere, including my own Brooklyn neighborhood.

Even as I recognize these cataclysms for what they are, I am trying to stay mindful not to let those realities eclipse my own agency and the energy of our own collective power when we work together. Showing up for the struggle in the dark is what makes the dawning of all human progress possible. Just this morning, while slogging through job postings of all things, I re-encountered this timeless bit of Frederick Douglass’ wisdom on that very notion: 

“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.”

Mr. Douglass had it right. The ACT UP AIDS activists of the early 1980s had it right, too. When it comes to defending your basic rights and the right to exist: Silence equals death. Silence amidst atrocities will not protect anyone.

We each have many choices about how we show up to fight each day. BRAKING AIDS Ride remains one of mine. I will ride and show up as best I can—because I can. Because showing up to fight the important fights is necessary, and this is what I can still do today.

Why Housing Works?

You already know from my past emails: Housing Works does EVERYHING an AIDS organization should do and then some—testing, prevention, and treatment; housing; full medical services; mental health; harm reduction; legal help; and job training and job placement. You have also heard me talk about their decades of advocacy both from within and outside the system. 

That last bit—the advocacy—is more vital than it’s ever been.

Housing Works is able to keep telling truth to power in ways many non-profits can’t because of innovations they invested in decades ago—launching creative revenue streams that secure long-term sustainability. Most non-profits rely heavily on government or corporate money for funding. Housing Works realized early on, during the 1990s Giuliani Administration, that to survive lean times and challenging political landscapes, they needed other independent revenue streams. That’s how the thrift stores, bookstore, and now the cannabis dispensaries came into being. These entrepreneurial businesses enable HW to be nimble and independent; to connect everyday retail consumers with their mission in unique ways; and to provide job opportunities for our community.

What’s more, their relentless advocacy works. The successes below are just two examples among many.

RECENT ADVOCACY SUCCESSES:

  • When the federal government tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during the first Trump administration, Housing Works fought back through civil disobedience—because none of the health outcomes for HIV and other chronic conditions are possible without affordable care. They won, and ACA remained.
  • When the current administration announced that it was freezing funding for PEPFAR, which funds global HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, Housing Works stepped up immediately to mount weekly protests in DC. It’s no accident that PEPFAR is one of the few health programs that has retained a significant portion of its funding. That was Housing Works’ activism, paid for by your donations.

I continue to support this organization and this cause because Housing Works goes where the important fights are and does what’s audacious and necessary. Years ahead of anyone else, they advocate for the innovations that then become commonsense best practices.Transgender rights and protections. Ending the AIDS epidemic plans. Harm reduction. Affordable care for all. And so much more.

Housing Works has shown up for what’s right for decades—and I trust them to show up for all the important fights ahead.

Please donate today! 

We’re all in this together.

DONATE NOW!
Me, after a training ride a few weeks ago. I got caught in a torrential thunderstorm on the way home.

Why BRAKING AIDS®, In Less Than 30 Seconds?

Posted on by
Reply
DONATE NOW!

Join the BRAKING AIDS ® 2024 Movement!: Support Mika, The Blue Streak, and Housing Works

Posted on by
Reply
A rainy training ride last weekend.

It’s August. BRAKING AIDS® Ride is coming up in less than five weeks, and I’ll be riding my bicycle, The Blue Streak, from Philadelphia to NYC. The route is new, but my goals are the same: to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and homelessness and to raise at least $20,000 to support Housing Works and its lifesaving services. 

I’ve been doing BRAKING AIDS® Ride since 2008, in memory of two family friends who died of AIDS-related illnesses—Dennis, who died in 1987, and Curtis, who died in 2003. In that time, I’ve raised $260,000, and with your help, I’ll hit $280,000 or more this year.

For anyone having a TL;DR moment, here’s the donation link to help me get there: https://give.classy.org/mika2024

For all you readers out there, here’s the rundown for BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2024:

Why Housing Works Again and Again

I keep showing up to support Housing Works because they provide transformative services to over 15,000 of the most vulnerable New Yorkers among us every single year—housing, job training, health care (including primary care, dental, and mental health, not only HIV-specific services), free legal help, substance use treatment, and more. I trust this organization to do what’s right, regardless of who is in the White House or in Congress and irrespective of what recent court-decision calamity has come down. Housing Works remains committed to social justice and advocacy andcontinues to fight for what’s crucial for those most in need. They’ve been fighting the fights that need fighting since their founding in 1990, and they’ll do it after election season has come and gone.

What Housing Works Has Been Up to in 2024


Here are some Housing Works initiatives from the past year:

  • Housing for justice-involved individuals, including three transitional hotels; resident access to case management, substance use treatment, harm reduction services, and primary care; help in finding permanent housing; and a broader advocacy campaign to shut down Riker’s Island
  • Rapid-response services to address the migrant crisis, such as two “City Sanctuary” hotels for migrant families with children; case management; and legal services to apply for asylum
  • Developing new housing—67 units for formerly homeless individuals (59 for people with HIV) and 44 low-income units in Hell’s Kitchen, and 22 supportive housing units and 17 low-income units on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn
  • Two new health care clinics, one in Hell’s Kitchen and one in East Harlem, for a total of six federally-qualified health centers (FQHCs) in Manhattan and Brooklyn
  • Piloting new, groundbreaking tools to end the AIDS epidemic—long-acting injectable antiretroviral medications, which enable patients to shift from taking a daily pill to receiving six injections per year to achieve treatment adherence and stay healthy
  • Advocacy for Overdose Prevention Centers, a cutting-edge model that saves lives and prevents HIV and Hepatitis C transmission

Please donate today! Donations of all sizes are welcome, but a gift of $250 or more is especially helpful and will go a long way toward helping me reach my $20,000 fundraising goal. (If you can cover the 4% processing fee so 100% of your gift goes to Housing Works, even better.) Please donate as much as you’re able, and together we’ll do our part to in the fight to end AIDS and homelessness.


Some info on what your gift funds:

$250—Pays for 50 hygiene kits for homeless youth, with daily essentials like soap, deodorant, and a pill-sized tablet cloth that expands into a towel when you add water

$600—Covers the cost for 50 rapid HIV tests

$750—Feeds 375 homeless youth during evening drop-in hours at Housing Works’ East New York Health Center

$1,000—Provides 1 month of supportive housing for HIV-positive individuals

$2,000—Completely outfits 7 new single-unit apartments with household items

$3,500—Funds a bus and stipends to send 54 advocates to Albany

$5,000—Funds a bus and stipends to send 54 advocates to Washington, DC, and provides bail money for 10 advocates to take an arrest for civil disobedience

DONATE VIA MY FUNDRAISING PAGE: https://give.classy.org/mika2024

Thank you for your ongoing support and for being a part of my BRAKING AIDS® journey.

VIDEO: BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2022, opening ceremony remarks

Posted on by
Reply

BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2022 took place yesterday, and I was reminded again of all the reasons it’s always one of my favorite weekends of the year. I had the privilege of being asked to give some brief remarks at the opening ceremony kicking off the ride . My dear ride husband and fellow rider Clay Williams recorded and shared it via Facebook live (thank you, Clay), so I’m able to share it here. Below the video is a written transcript of the full speech.


Good morning,

The first person I knew who had AIDS was my mom’s childhood friend Dennis. Dennis, like my mom, came from an immigrant family, and was like an uncle to me. When he and my mom got together, the air thrummed with laughter and loud yakking in Romanian.

Those gatherings were infrequent because Dennis’ job as a journalist had him jumping from one global political hotspot to the next. But then he’d breeze into town and spark a jam session of multiple languages, dancing, eating, drinking. His laugh was a high-pitched cackle, one that would turn your head to see who had made that sound.

He confided to my mom that he was bisexual, but she believed he was gay. Regardless, his sexuality was a secret. And then, in early 1987 Dennis got sick and he stopped globetrotting. He died in December, and his NY Times obituary led with a common lie: “Dennis A. Volman, a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, died of cancer Monday at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. He was 37 years old and lived in Washington.”

Dennis died a horrific death of physical agony from AIDS. If he had a partner, he took that secret with him. Only Dennis knew how much his soul suffered from shame and fear. I can only imagine it made a difficult dying process far lonelier.

This next bit I’ve never shared publicly. In 2012, I launched a blog about the ride, and I wrote an entry about Dennis. The blog’s main audience is my network, so imagine my surprise in 2013 to get emails from two strangers. One was a former girlfriend of Dennis’ who found the blog through a google search; she shared the post with the other stranger, an old friend of Dennis’s mom. They each emailed me to debate the historical record: Dennis had died of pneumonia while battling cancer. And why did I think Dennis was gay? The family friend was especially insistent it couldn’t have been homosexuality or AIDS. She cited his affairs with women, his poor health in childhood, his chronic pain from a back injury. From these women, I learned that Dennis had kept his illness secret, too. Only his nearest and dearest heard he was sick with “cancer” shortly before he died.

Our email exchanges ended quickly in a stalemate, but they unnerved me enough to ask my mom how she knew Dennis had AIDS. Apparently, she saw he had KS lesions when she visited him in the hospital.

I don’t judge Dennis for keeping secrets. Homophobia and AIDS stigma were prevalent enough that those choices may have protected him, whatever emotional price he paid. But by 2013, he’d been dead for over 25 years. His parents were dead. He had no children. No siblings. How had stigma, fear, and homophobia re-emerged, overshadowing sense and reason, when those lies protected no one anymore?

So why share this fucking heartbreaker of a story?

Because the shadow side of people’s humanity isn’t the only story. That is never the only story. Seeds of social justice were being planted even then. While Dennis was dying in March 1987, the first meeting of ACT UP was held in the West Village. Three years later, Housing Works was founded out of ACT UP’s housing committee. Both organizations demanded action from a government that ignored AIDS for years. These fiery activists didn’t wait for a grand utopian future; they acted with courage in a seemingly hopeless present, defying the cruelty and ignorance around them. They used civil disobedience to demand better drugs today, not tomorrow. They won those fights and saved countless lives.

Today the fight goes beyond medication; it’s a social justice battle—fighting the racism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny that fuel the AIDS epidemic in spite of our medical progress. For over 30 years, Housing Works has fought for social justice, anchored by this belief: that whether we are dying or healthy or somewhere in between, all human beings are deserving of housing, food, healthcare, and basic dignity and respect. Whether it’s AIDS, homelessness, the opioid crisis, COVID-19, or the next challenge, I trust Housing Works to lead with compassion, doing what needs to be done.

All of you are full of those same passions. The same courage, kindness, fierceness. The same miraculous blend of love, laughter, grief, and audacity. I see it every time Beth mentions Ira; when Clay passes me on a hill, again; when I see Cheyenne’s dazzling smile; when Amelia or Amy shouts something lewd at me on the road; when Linda envelopes me in a hug; when Wendy makes a bacon joke; when I see Jim stopping on the road to tell someone why we’re riding and when they say, “I don’t know anyone with HIV or AIDS,” he says, “yes, you do. I live with HIV.” What I see all around me is love—and I see it in every one of you.

These stories, our stories, are worth writing, sharing, expanding, and retelling. We come together on this ride to commemorate our dead and honor our best selves by showing up for those in need, and for one another. This ride is citizenry of the highest order. We have been writing that narrative together as a ride family for years, and the time I spend here with all of you every year heals my own soul on its darkest days. So let’s go write the next chapter.

VIDEO: BRAKING AIDS® Ride thoughts, gratitude, a story & hopefully a little inspiration

Posted on by
Reply
At the Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge, during an August 14, 2022, training ride. Photo by Beth Shapiro.

I shared the video below last Saturday on social media—one of my favorite stories from when I worked at Housing Works, the BRAKING AIDS® ride beneficiary, and I’m only just getting around to posting it here now. My hope is that it lends some new insight into what’s special about Housing Works as an organization, as well as some inspiration for these lifelong journeys in pursuit of greater social justice, particularly when those roads feel long and rough.

As of this writing, thanks to 120 supporters and counting, I’ve raised 45% of my fundraising goal and am still aiming to reach my audacious $50,000 target in support of Housing Works and the fight to end AIDS and homelessness.

PLEASE DONATE TODAY, and LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT!

DONATE NOW!
Me talking about Housing Works and HIV/AIDS progress in The Amazing Garden, Red Hook, Brooklyn, August 27, 2022.

An important correction and follow-up about language (mine, in this case) :

Well into the video above I try to say something about a statistic—69 individuals with HIV transmitted via injection drug use (IDU)—and underscore that the small size of that group could fit into a Housing Works conference room. In my haste to make that point about data and HIV progress, I end up referring to the statistic—69 IDU-transmitted infections—rather than the human beings, in effect verbally conflating the two. That kind of shorthand happens all the time, and I want to call attention to it here as a mistake on my part. My apologies. I should have said “69 people living with HIV who acquired it through injection drug use,” or something along those lines.

If this language distinction seems like hair splitting, it isn’t: In point of fact we all ought to avoid that same kind of mistake when talking about people living with HIV or any other infectious disease for that matter. The language we use matters. It’s reductive and dehumanizing to frame people only in terms of a disease they live with. People are not mere vectors for disease and illness. People are multifaceted human beings with many rich aspects to their identities, and the language we use when we talk about people living with HIV should reflect that. I misspoke here and endeavor to do better. I decided to post the video with the mistake anyway rather than re-recording it because it was a chance to use my own error as a teaching moment. We all misspeak at times, saying thoughtless or insensitive things that can potentially hurt people or fuel stigma even if that isn’t our intention. The terms we use for racial and ethnic groups change over time; we discover we have been mispronouncing the non-English name of a close friend for years without knowing it; people we have known for decades change their names, pronouns, or both, and at times we may slip and use the words we’re more familiar with; some of us have trouble adjusting to “they/them” being used in multiple contexts, sometimes as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun, sometimes as a plural, gender-neutral pronoun. And on and on. Language is organic and evolving, and sometimes we struggle to evolve with it in our own speech patterns, and we make mistakes along the way. Life and progress calls upon us to rethink and relearn our own first language. The only way people get better about these language nuances is through practice, which is why it’s important to acknowledge when we’ve made a mistake and set an intention to do better next time. I made a mistake here and no doubt I will again—and that’s okay. Like everyone, I’m practicing. As I do, I get better, and the more likely that I’ll say it right next time.

PLEASE DONATE TO SUPPORT ME FOR BRAKING AIDS® 2022 TODAY!

BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2021 & Some Sunflower Audacity

Posted on by
Reply

This spring, a friend emailed a photo of me, taken in September 2008 during my first BRAKING AIDS® Ride, that I had never seen before. In the months since, I have found myself returning to what it does and doesn’t reveal.

Me, during my first BRAKING AIDS® Ride, September 26, 2008

The first anomaly is that it doesn’t appear to be raining. The downpours during that 2008 ride from Gettysburg, PA, to Manhattan were near-constant all three days. Throughout the weekend, I recall only a handful of brief respites during which it wasn’t wet, and this photo must have been taken during one of them. All I remember of the moment itself was taking a break with two other first-time riders to drink in the vibrancy of that gorgeous field of sunflowers. While we were stopped, the ride photographer—who was probably psyched to be able to take some pictures that weren’t rain-soaked—urged us to go stand in that patch of floral sunshine with our bikes. I no longer recall if the photo was snapped on Day 1 or Day 2 of the ride; my instinct says the sunflowers were a Day 1 sighting. What I am certain of is that it was early enough in the ride that I hadn’t reached the halfway mark yet.

Beyond the setting and the weather, what strikes me about the image is that it exudes the joy and excitement I had doing this ride for the very first time. 

What’s not visible are all the expectations and fears I had going into the ride.

I was deeply invested in riding every single mile, all 300 of them—a goal I’d never attempted much less achieved at that point. Nothing in this photo reveals how scared and anxious part of me was of falling short of that desired milestone.

I was entirely uncertain I could raise $3,500, much less $10K, or $15K, or $20K. Quite simply, I had never asked for that kind of help—and so I was ignorant, both of my own tenacity and of the deep generosity and kindness of my family, friends, and colleagues.

I was also nervous about fitting into the ride family, worried that I’d feel alone. When I registered for the ride in April 2008, I didn’t know anyone. I’d met and trained with a handful of folks during the summer, but I knew we wouldn’t necessarily stick together throughout the actual ride itself. So I went in to the ride weekend excited—searching for and hopeful about a sense of connection and belonging—but I didn’t know how any of that would play out. 

None of that is apparent in the look on my face in this photo. Looking at it now, I seem to radiate an inner confidence and solidity. Those qualities may well have been burning deep beneath the surface, but if they were there, I wasn’t yet aware of it. I look grounded, and I know that isn’t how I was feeling at that point. I was open to what the road was going to bring, but uncertain about almost everything except my desire to attempt what felt impossible, even a little crazy.

This photo of me hollering my way up a hill is visually more in line with how I felt going into my first BRAKING AIDS® Ride.

Housing Works: 30 Years and Counting of Compassion, Healing & Audacity

Housing Works has been dedicated to doing audacious, necessary work that often feels impossible, even a little crazy, since its founding in 1990, providing lifesaving services to mostly poor, disenfranchised communities. In the early 1990s, that meant finding housing for homeless people with AIDS who had been cast to the margins by the rest of our society; it meant practicing harm reduction methods like needle exchange for drug users—then new and hugely controversial but now long proven to be one of the most effective HIV prevention interventions and indeed one of the most effective public health interventions, period.*

* (The proof is in the data: In 1993, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, 50% of the 15,000 new HIV infections experienced every year in NY State were transmitted via shared needles; by 2018, as a result of harm reduction programs, fewer than 70 new HIV infections—yes, 70; you read that correctly—were transmitted via shared needles annually across NY State.)

Since 2014, Housing Works has been leading the charge in the effort to end AIDS as an epidemic in New York State by 2020, with CEO Charles King appointed by Governor Cuomo to chair the Ending the Epidemic Task Force that drafted the state plan. New York State was the first jurisdiction to create an end-AIDS plan, and that bold vision has led dozens of other states and local government to follow suit.

As you all know, just a few months into 2020, the goal year, we were hit with a new, fatal, global pandemic and public health emergency. Housing Works did what it always does in a crisis: They sprang into thoughtful, intelligent, and immediate action to meet the needs of the most vulnerable who are always hit hardest. Rather than cutting back on their lifesaving AIDS, housing, and advocacy services, the organization both adapted existing programs to the new remote conditions—providing housing, healthcare, advocacy, case management, substance use treatment, legal assistance, and job training—and took on a leadership role in meeting the COVID-19 pandemic head on. A fuller summary of Housing Works’ COVID-19 initiatives, most of which are ongoing, can be found here, but highlights include:

  • supplying and distributing PPE to frontlines workers
  • opening COVID-19 homeless shelters
  • providing free COVID-19 testing and vaccination, including a mobile vaccination initiative at NYC HRA shelters
  • serving as a steering organization for NYC’s COVID-19 working group.

Perhaps one of their most important ongoing roles in the COVID-19 pandemic is the one Housing Works has always played in its relationship to government: as advocates and activists pushing our city and state to do more and do better for those at greatest risk, especially low-income people and the homeless.

For 30 years and counting, Housing Works has stepped up to face and solve whatever crisis comes their way.

That’s why I ride every year to support this important organization. This September will be my 13th BRAKING AIDS® Ride (12 rides as a rider, one as a volunteer crew member)—a one-day, in-person group event. Since that first ride in 2008, I’ve ridden tens of thousands of miles on the same blue bicycle I held overhead in that field of sunflowers, and I’ve shown up every year to do my part to create awareness and raise money—over $148,000 to date—to end AIDS and homelessness.

How You and I Can Help

In support of Housing Works’ ongoing dedication and audacity, between now and September, I remain committed to raising $20,000 to support their life-saving programs.

My personal wishes and goals for this year’s ride are similar to the ones I have more generally coming out of a year and a half of deeply fraught, uncertain pandemic living:

Please DONATE TODAY. Donations of all sizes are welcome, but a gift of $200 or more will go a long way toward reaching my $20,000 goal.

I want to enter it grounded in the spirit of self-renewal and self-compassion, with rejuvenated and deepened commitment, vitality, passion, excitement, joy, and above all, gratitude. I want my spirits to thrum with the bright audacity of field of sunflowers—so that my thoughts, feelings, and pursuits glow with some measure of that resolute vibrancy.

DONATE VIA MY FUNDRAISING PAGE: https://give.classy.org/mika2021

Me, joyful during BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2019, the last time the group ride event took place in person

Ways to make giving easier, to make your donation go further & to help me reach my $20K goal sooner:

  • PLEASE CHECK WITH YOUR HR DEPT. & SEE IF YOUR COMPANY WILL MATCH YOUR DONATION! If so, then check the “YES” bullet in the Company Matching section of the online donation form, and fill out the related information. You may be able to double or even triple your contribution! In 2020, over $3K of the $24,000+ I raised came from company matches, so I cannot underscore enough how much this helps.
  • Recurring Monthly Gift: On the donation page, once you select a gift amount, click on the “Donate Monthly” option to set up a recurring donation of any amount over your desired period of time. I prefer to donate this way because I can give more with much smaller hit coming from my wallet each month.
  • Cover Processing Costs: Each donation incurs a processing fee that’s 4% of your gift. When the overall fundraising goal is $20K, 4% adds up: If everyone who gives covers the processing fee, that’s an additional $800 that goes straight to work at Housing Works.
  • Please forward this information to EVERYONE. Spread the word to your friends, family & colleagues! Forward this email letter or share my donation link with your own networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & other social media.

Thank you again for all of your support for this important cause. I couldn’t do any of this without you.

Please join me & Housing Works in the fight against AIDS by donating to Braking AIDS® Ride 2021 (Sept. 12)—Mika De Roo, Rider # 32.

Donation site: https://give.classy.org/mika2021

VIDEO—Taking the Way to Joy: After 12 Years, Why I Still Ride to End AIDS

Posted on by
Reply

I often get asked why I keep coming back to BRAKING AIDS® Ride and the cause and organization it supports. Most of the time, my answers take written form. This year, thanks to Black Watch, the video production company that’s been documenting the ride since its inception, I’m able to share some brief video footage from the road that gives a glimpse into what ending AIDS means to me.

DONATE TO SUPPORT ME for BRAKING AIDS® 2020

I don’t say it anywhere in the interview footage, but I’ve said elsewhere that the ride community, like Housing Works itself, embodies radical inclusion. Radical inclusion means accepting people as they are and standing for love that heals and for acts of kindness. Fortunately for me, that also means that those spaces and communities accept me as I am, however and wherever I am. I’ve shown up for the ride determined and confident. I’ve shown up terrified and exhausted. I’ve shown up elated to see my ride family together again. I’ve shown up lost, feeling like life has brought me to my knees, with no notion of what I might have to offer anyone else, much less a community or a cause. I’ve show up in joy and grief, heartbreak and euphoria. I’ve shown up juggling many of these contradictory feelings all at once.

Year after year, my BRAKING AIDS® family has shown me I can show up as I am, even mired in the doubts and dark-angel whispers of my weakest, most critical selves and still be accepted, loved, and useful. That openness in and of itself is a healing presence. The most important part is the showing up itself.

The same is true for Housing Works, which has been showing up for 30 years and counting to create hope for the most vulnerable among us, whether that’s through its long-standing, innovative HIV/AIDS and housing services to its recent Covid-19 emergency response efforts.

In this way, the ride and its community embody how prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba describes hope: She talks about hope as a practice, a discipline, a process rather than an external outcome, force, or destination. Hope is created from how we each choose to live and act every day.

The ride engenders that practice of hope for me. The collective spirit it creates and inspires enables me to “take the way to joy,” as my brilliant musician-songwriter-podcaster friend Sam Shaber says in the lyrics to the song playing in the video above.  I hope you’ll join me in supporting that journey.

Please DONATE TODAY.

Donations of all sizes are welcome, but a gift of $200 or more will go a long way toward reaching my $20,000 goal. 

De Roo1 REV

118042772_10224102180242512_9080644113985084544_o

From left to right: me, with friends Rodney Newby and Blake Strasser on a recent Saturday ride. Photo credit: Mikola De Roo.

Housing Works Covid-19 Emergency Response, BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2020 & Me: Your Help Needed

Posted on by
Reply

This isn’t going to be my usual, annual AIDS Ride fundraiser. A lot has changed since last September. For five months and counting, we’ve been in the midst of a raging global pandemic of a potentially lethal and highly contagious virus, the likes of which none of us has known during our lifetimes, and we’re experiencing the economic and community upheaval that goes with that. We’re also seeing a huge wave of nationwide and global demands for long overdue racial and social justice. To say that our world is facing ongoing volatility and uncertainty is putting it mildly.

2020: Not Your Typical AIDS Ride Year

In my 12 years of doing this ride, I’ve often written about the importance of showing up over the long term for the important causes and ideals we believe in. With so many challenges amidst so much chaos, it’s been hard to know what showing up means and requires in our present circumstances. Here’s what it means to me right now: Together, we can still take some actions that assuage some of those uncertainties and help address some of the existing societal inequities that Covid-19 has illuminated more widely, and I hope you’ll consider helping and supporting me in that endeavor.

Me, riding with my friend Brian Carroll on Day 1 of last year’s BRAKING AIDS® Ride. Photo by Alan Barnett.

Housing Works & the Covid-19 Crisis

Since 2008, I have participated in BRAKING AIDS® Ride in memory of Dennis and Curtis, two family friends who died of AIDS-related illness in 1987 and 2003, respectively, and for many close friends who live with HIV. In that time, donations from people like you enabled me to raise over $125,000 and counting to support services for those living with HIV as well as its efforts toward ending the AIDS epidemic once and for all.The life-saving HIV services and healing community that Housing Works has provided to the most vulnerable among us are still crucial, but because of the tremendous progress we have made toward ending New York State’s AIDS epidemic, that need is a little less dire than it once was.

What is urgent, as you likely know from the headlines you see every day, is supporting those hit hard by Covid-19, particularly in the most vulnerable communities among us. Many of those communities are the same poor, disenfranchised populations that Housing Works, BRAKING AIDS® Ride’s beneficiary, has been serving since its founding 30 years ago in 1990—those who are homeless or incarcerated, and those struggling with severe physical illness, mental illness, and/or addiction. As with HIV/AIDS, these communities have been particularly vulnerable to Covid-19.

As someone who worked at Housing Works for five years, I know firsthand that when a new crisis arises, no matter how daunting, time and again, the organization rises to the occasion to meet that challenge right away. After the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Housing Works responded with immediate emergency aid, helping rebuild three health clinics for those displaced by the natural disaster. Throughout 2017 and 2018, Housing Works galvanized an ongoing national movement of concerned citizens to descend on the Capitol to save the Affordable Care Act and oppose the many GOP attempts to repeal it and eviscerate affordable health care for all.

So I wasn’t surprised that as soon as Covid-19 shut down New York this past March, Housing Works sprang into action and became a crucial player in the city’s coronavirus response.In addition to their ongoing work as the largest community-based AIDS service organization in the country—providing housing, healthcare, case management, substance use treatment, legal assistance, and job training—since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Housing Works has opened two COVID-19 homeless shelters and partnered with a major NYC-based PPE supply operation to distribute PPE to frontline workers.

Those who are interested in more details about Housing Works’ innovative interventions can check out this post.

What’s most important to understand is this:

None of these endeavors was in the budget. But it is essential emergency response work that needs to be done. These remarkable Covid-19 emergency initiatives were launched in a matter of weeks, all while Housing Works has simultaneously faced a massive revenue deficit—estimated at $8 million by the end of June—as a result of the need to shut down its retail locations, which provide so much of their financial support, as well as the April cancellation of its largest annual fundraising event, and the suspension of a number of revenue-generating programs.

How You and I Can Help

The Covid-19 crisis isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and no doubt Housing Works will continue to provide emergency services for our most vulnerable residents. Housing Works doesn’t hesitate to act and provide solutions when new problems arise, and we shouldn’t either.As of this writing, for safety reasons, the biking portion of this year’s BRAKING AIDS Ride will likely only span one day—a 62-mile, masked and physically distanced group ride beginning and ending in Manhattan. In the week leading up to the ride, I am also committed to doing two 100-mile (century) rides on my own while I’m in Cape Cod. More important, whatever the physical ride does or doesn’t look like, between now and September, I remain committed to raising $20,000 to support Housing Works. The graphic below highlights what your generous donation can help to fund right now.

Please DONATE TODAY. Donations of all sizes are welcome, but a gift of $200 or more will go a long way toward reaching my $20,000 goal. $200 provides two weeks’ worth of gowns for five residence managers; $250 pays for emergency food for 10 Housing Works shelter residents for a week.

DONATE VIA MY FUNDRAISING PAGE: https://give.classy.org/mika2020

Ways to make giving easier, to make your donation go further & to help me reach my $20K goal sooner: 

• PLEASE CHECK WITH YOUR HR DEPT. & SEE IF YOUR COMPANY WILL MATCH YOUR DONATION! If so, then check the “YES” bullet in the Company Matching section of the online donation form, and fill out the related information. You may be able to double or even triple your contribution! In 2019, nearly $5K of the $24,000+ I raised came from company matches, so I cannot underscore enough how much this helps. 

• Recurring Monthly Gift: On the donation page, once you select a gift amount, click on the “Donate Monthly” option to set up a recurring donation of any amount over your desired period of time.I prefer to donate this way because I can give more with much smaller hit coming from my wallet each month.

• Cover Processing Costs:  Each donation incurs a processing fee that’s 4% of your gift. When the overall fundraising goal is $20K, 4% adds up: If everyone who gives covers the processing fee, that’s an additional $800 that goes straight to work at Housing Works. 

• Please forward this information to EVERYONE. Spread the word to your friends, family & colleagues! Forward this email letter or share my donation link with your own networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & other social media.

Thank you in advance for your support for this important cause. I couldn’t do any of this without you.

Me, on the morning of Day 1, Braking AIDS® Ride 2020. Photo by Alan Barnett.

Please support me & Housing Works by donating to Braking AIDS® Ride 2020 (Sun., 9/13)—Mika De Roo, Rider # 32. DONATE: BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2020

Help Me Raise $15K for Housing Works & an AIDS-Free NY 2020

Posted on by
Reply

It finally feels like summer in NYC again. For me, a June heatwave means it’s long past time that I jumpstart my training and my fundraising for BRAKING AIDS® Ride.

Over the past decade, past donations from hundreds of generous souls have been essential in helping me raise over $90,000 and counting to support Housing Works’ many life-saving services for those living with HIV as well as its efforts toward ending the AIDS epidemic once and for all. 

I’m counting on that support again this year to raise at least $15,000 to end AIDS as an epidemic in New York by 2020.

WHY I KEEP RETURNING TO BRAKING AIDS® RIDE


Me, with some of my amazing Housing Works Advocacy colleagues and friends, who inspire me every day (L to R): Valerie Reyes-Jimenez, Legacee Medina, me, Felicia Carroll. 

For the first time since the AIDS crisis began, we have the tools to end the epidemic. More than six years ago, when the audacious goal of ending AIDS as an epidemic in New York, even without a cure or vaccine, was first proposed by Housing Works, Treatment Action Group, and other allies, many people thought it was impossible, and the Governor’s Office and the State Department of Health were not yet sold on the idea. Since then, Housing Works has provided unparalleled leadership to get New York to adopt a plan that makes full use of the tools we have to end AIDS as an epidemic statewide by 2020. At the time of the state plan’s launch in 2014, in the course of educating people about the plan and its feasibility, we said, “an AIDS-FREE New York is closer than you think…” We weren’t kidding. This past December we marked major milestones in the state plan to end AIDS: unprecedented city and state decreases in HIV diagnoses. In 2016, NYC achieved a record 11% decrease, and NYS achieved a corresponding 8.7% decrease. The legislation and policy changes we’ve been fighting for to end the epidemic are working, and we are on track to do it by 2020! And it’s not just New York: Since 2014, more than a dozen additional U.S. jurisdictions have committed to end-AIDS plans, and the U.N. has established 2030 as its target date to bring global infection rates below epidemic levels.

This will also be my 10th year participating as a rider in this annual 3-day, 300-mile journey by bicycle. People sometimes ask me how and why I keep coming back. As someone who has now worked in Housing Works Advocacy for going on five years, I truly believe in the Housing Works lifesaving services this ride supports—because I see those programs and services in action and how much they’re needed and the difference they make firsthand every day. But the truth is, as much as I truly believe in those programs and the organization’s mission, many of my reasons to keep showing up to ride are self-serving.

BRAKING AIDS® is unique because it isn’t only a ride, it’s also a family. The experience of being part of that family and this shared experience for over a decade has challenged me to be my best self, which is to say that it challenges me to be not necessarily my strongest or surest but to be willing to show up even as and at my most vulnerable and uncertain. To show up as myself even when I’m tired, depleted, demoralized, struggling, plagued by self-doubt. It’s taught me to show up and try even when I’m stretched thin and fairly certain I haven’t got it in me. It’s shown me it’s not only okay but healthy and necessary to ask for help at times, a tough, recurring lesson for me because I’m private, and I’m stubborn and fierce about my sense of self-reliance and independence (and even with years of practice, I will be the first to admit I’m still *terrible* at asking for help!).


Me, with my friend and fellow rider Jamil Wilkins, during BRAKING AIDS® Ride 2016, getting a hug after the first 60 miles of riding. 

BRAKING AIDS® is also unique because like Housing Works and the work it does, it’s a movement. Both these communities and movements understand we cannot end AIDS as an epidemic in our state, nation, or around the world unless we collectively address the social and economic drivers of HIV—homelessness, unemployment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and sexism, addiction, and mental illness. In the dark and divisive times in which we are living today, we are faced daily with acts of hate in every manifestation, and much of what we see, hear, and read reflects a diminishment of empathy in the public sphere. That makes it more important than ever that Housing Works and BRAKING AIDS® have both always stood for what we at Housing Works call “Radical Inclusion”: for accepting people as they are. We stand for love that heals and for acts of kindness, especially those directed to strangers.

Movements don’t and can’t sustain their work based on the efforts of any individual. As poet Mayda Del Valle wrote, “a movement is not a flash of light— it is a flame, a torch passed from one…to the next.” For that reason and in that spirit, I am asking for your help again to support my efforts. Together, we can end AIDS.

How You Can Help

Please consider DONATING TODAY! Here’s what your gift can help support:

$1,000 sustains one month of supportive housing

$500 provides 100 hygiene kits for homeless youth

$250 supports 30 days of mental health and substance use counseling

$150 covers a one-night stay at a Single-Room Occupancy for 2 homeless youth in need of emergency housing

$100 feeds 25 homeless youth during evening drop in hours at Housing Works’ East New York health center

DONATE VIA MY FUNDRAISING PAGE: 

https://fundraising.housingworks.org/participant/mika2018

Ways to make giving easier, to make your donation go further & to help me reach my $15K goal sooner: 

• PLEASE CHECK WITH YOUR HR DEPT. & SEE IF YOUR COMPANY WILL MATCH YOUR DONATION! If so, then check the “YES” bullet in the Company Matching section of the online donation form, and fill out the related information. You may be able to double or even triple your contribution! In 2016, over $3K of the $23K I raised came from company matches, so I cannot underscore enough how much this helps. 

• Recurring Monthly Gift: On the donation page, once you select a gift amount, click on the “Monthly” option to set up a recurring donation of any amount over your desired period of time. I prefer to donate this way because I can give more with only a small hit coming from my wallet each month.

• Cover Processing Costs:  Each donation incurs a processing fee that’s 7% of your gift. When the overall fundraising goal is $15K, 7% adds up: If everyone who gives covers the processing fee, that’s more than an additional $1,000 that goes straight to work at Housing Works. 

• Please forward this information to EVERYONE. Spread the word to your friends & colleagues! Forward the link to this blog post or share my donation link with your own networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & other social media.

Thank you in advance for your generosity, friendship, kindness, encouragement, and support! I couldn’t do this without you.

Please join me & Housing Works in the fight to end AIDS by donating to Braking AIDS Ride 2018 (Cooperstown, NY, to Manhattan, Sept. 14-16)—Mika De Roo, Rider # 32. Donation site: https://fundraising.housingworks.org/participant/mika2018