Rough Start for New San Jose AIDS Walk Event

An attempt to revive San Jose's Walk for AIDS under a new name, AIDS Walk San Jose, is off to a rough start after a chaotic fundraising event that saw the departure of the principal organizer and the remaining ones getting a lesson in damage control.

What began as good intentions has led some of the performers at the recent benefit seeking accountability from the organizers of the group calling itself AWSJ and the resignation of two of its members.

Robert Delgado, the founder and now former president of the de facto board of AWSJ, and one of its members, David Carlos, quit after Delgado's alleged erratic and unprofessional behavior during the group's first fundraising event February 15 and in several Facebook posts.

According to Delgado, the event raised $1,435 in online ticket sales. Of that, Delgado initially said that the plan was to allocate $800 for AWSJ to get its nonprofit status; $500 to the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center, where the fundraiser was held; and $135 to AWSJ. This week, Delgado revised the financial figure as being $2,018 from both online and door tickets and said he was owed $1,376.39 of that. Those figures could not be verified by others connected with the group.

Kevin Cristobal, a 34-year-old gay man who is the new interim board president of AWSJ, said in an email that he has changed password information on the Brown Paper Tickets account but has yet to receive the online ticket portion of the money. He said that Delgado did not show up to a meeting last week and has not provided documentation for his expenses.

For his part, Delgado said his involvement in the fledgling organization is over.

"... I have decided that I personally am going to just walk away from this whole thing," Delgado said in a February 17 email to the Bay Area Reporter. "The whole thing we were trying to do for a good cause was turned into a mess."

Drag queens Pollo Del Mar, Camille Tow, and Gerrick Malicdem were to emcee the benefit. Performers Honey Mahogany, Jade Sotomayor, Laganja Estranja and others were lined up along with DJ Cisco Mejia and Xavier Toscano.

"The AIDS epidemic has been one of the most devastating and unifying events in history," said Del Mar, who has been performing in San Jose for the past two years in addition to his regular gigs in San Francisco.

In an interview prior to the event, Del Mar said he believed it was a great opportunity for San Jose's LGBT, drag, and ally communities to come together to support San Jose's HIV/AIDS community. In a February 18 statement, he said that he now refuses to be a part of any future AWSJ events because of what he perceives as "mismanagement and misappropriation of funds."

The performers are demanding that Delgado not participate in AWSJ; issue a public apology to the performers and community; and to return money raised to donors, said Chad Norcia, the group's spokesman.

Upset drag queens

Delgado dropped some of the performers from the show while others threatened to pull out the night before the event after five of the 19 entertainers began questioning the legitimacy of AWSJ and how the monies being raised by the event would be used.

Delgado said that AWSJ never claimed to be fully established as a nonprofit and did not say donations were tax deductible. He accused the performers of ruining the event and claimed that people connected with Health Trust sabotaged the group's fundraising efforts.

Health Trust operates a separate AIDS walk-type event.

The B.A.R. obtained screen shots of the Facebook conversations between the performers and Delgado. The performers questioned Delgado's sobriety the night of the event and afterward and said that he outed some people close to the event as members of Alcoholics Anonymous as they attempted to put him in check.

Delgado proceeded to publicly disparage the performers who pulled out of the show and shouted to Health Trust CEO Frederick J. Ferrer, "FUCK U!" in a Facebook thank you to the performers who came out and pulled off the show with little guidance, said Norcia.

Ferrer was vaguely aware of the attacks through some of his friends but he long ago blocked Delgado from his Facebook page, he told the B.A.R.

He denied Delgado's claims of sabotage as both organizations declined to endorse each others' competing HIV/AIDS fundraisers, he said.

The performers are attempting to distance themselves from the affair.

"The majority of the same people are looking at it as such an insanity they don't want to get anywhere close to it. They are like, 'Leave me out of it,'" said Norcia. "It's kind of a train wreck. It's like watching Jersey Shore. You know it's awful, [but] you can't stop, right?"

Reviving AIDS fundraiser

The original Walk for AIDS, which was produced by AIDS Coalition Silicon Valley, shut down after it wrapped up its 20th event in 2009/2010 due to a combination of high production costs and lack of community and corporate support, said former board member Teresa O'Neill and staffer Dane Dugan.

Dugan, 31, who declined to disclose his sexual orientation, is the former director of the Walk for AIDS and has since moved to Idaho.

O'Neill is a 58-year-old ally who was a longtime volunteer and served 10 years on the board of directors of the AIDS Coalition Silicon Valley until the end when she handled the dissolution of the agency. She is currently a Santa Clara City Council member.

Dugan and O'Neill both said they were candid with Delgado about the struggles they experienced when he approached them at the beginning of this year about reviving the Walk for AIDS as AWSJ.

Yet, they gave Delgado copies of their guides and other materials for producing the event, they said. However, donor information wasn't provided.

"I didn't feel like I could ethically pass on donor information and ... other financial information," said O'Neill, pointing out that even when the walk was in operation that type of information was kept confidential. "I just didn't think that would be appropriate."

After several months of meetings to plan rebuilding the AIDS walk, AWSJ has been denied fiscal sponsorship by at least three organizations. The group then decided to obtain its own nonprofit status, said Cristobal.

Cristobal recently made the career transition from retail management to the nonprofit sector.

Then there's the competition with the Health Trust's popular re-envisioned HIV/AIDS walk, the Hike and Bike event held in November. Both events were originally planned within weeks of each other, but AWSJ organizers were reconsidering their date, said Cristobal.

Last year's Hike and Bike garnered $30,000 from an estimated 400 participants, said Paul Hepfer, vice president of programs and director of healthy communities of the Health Trust.

The AWSJ group members believe that HIV/AIDS is still a relevant issue and that San Jose's HIV/AIDS community and organizations need support.

"It is something that affects my community, me being gay I've known people who have been sick," said Cristobal. "HIV/AIDS really hits home for me."

Currently, there are 3,342 people living with HIV/AIDS in Santa Clara County, according to the Santa Clara County Public Health Department.

AWSJ's goal is to reinvest in San Jose's community organizations that provide services to health care and social workers providing preventative education and treatment.

"The goal is to keep any funding that we get within our local area," said Cristobal, who plans to move forward with building the organization. "I really believe that San Jose is missing out on funding that can help the community."

He also offered an apology.

"We definitely would like to apologize to the community and anybody who may have witnessed or had something said to them coming from Robert," said Cristobal, who is already making personal apologies to people involved with the event. "It definitely isn't anything that we stand behind."