History
APLA has four founders—Max Drew, Nancy Cole Sawaya, Matt Redman and Erv Munro.In December 1982, they held the first APLA fundraiser, which raised over $7,000.
Many early fundraising events were held in gay bars and discos, as the gay and lesbian community mobilized to fight the disease. A fundraiser at Studio One in March 1984 featuring Joan Rivers raised $45,000 for APLA and other new AIDS service organizations.
Then, on July 28, 1985, APLA held the world's first AIDS Walk. AIDS Walk Los Angeles is now the largest HIV/AIDS fundraiser in Southern California.
Days before the first AIDS Walk, it was disclosed to the world that movie star Rock Hudson had AIDS. In response, Elizabeth Taylor helped to spearhead a drive by the entertainment community to confront the disease. This helped ensure the success of the first Commitment to Life event. The event, held at the Bonaventure Hotel honored former First Lady Betty Ford, raised $1.3 million. The Commitment to Life benefits, much like the AIDS Walks, became a major annual event.
Read more about this topic: AIDS Project Los Angeles
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)