“Power to the Pantry” is a fundraising event taking place on Saturday, April 26 from 1-7pm at the First Christian Church in Las Cruces. The event, featuring live music, a poetry reading, and a silent auction, will benefit The Pantry, a nonprofit organization that provides food support for people living with HIV/AIDS in Doña Ana County. Scott Brocato recently spoke with local singer-songwriter Buddy Akin, The Pantry’s coordinator; and event co-host Bill McCamley about the event.
Scott Brocato:
Well, Buddy Akin, let's start with you. First of all, how long have you been a musician?
Buddy Akin:
Oh gosh, I've been a musician probably since I was born, because I think we're born that way. But I started playing about 7; like piano and organ at 7, mandolin at 14, guitar about 15.
Scott Brocato:
Well, before we talk about your event, Power to the Pantry, what is The Pantry?
Buddy Akin:
So The Pantry is under the nonprofit wing of the First Christian Church, across the street from Las Cruces High School. And it is a dedicated pantry that serves people living with HIV and AIDS. It's been in existence for over 15 years. It was founded by my old boss, Skip Rosenthal. Our mission is to provide weekly food support for people living with HIV/AIDS, and we get referrals from the Department of Health.
Scott Brocato:
Now let's move on to the event. It's called Power to the Pantry. It's taking place Saturday, April 26th. What can we expect? And it benefits The Pantry?
Buddy Akin:
It's all benefiting the The Pantry. You can expect a great time. You can expect family fun. You can expect music, poetry, reading, a raffle, silent auction items, rather nice items from retail spots in Mesilla.
Scott Brocato:
You've been living with HIV for 33 years. You've done years of education about the topic. When it comes to the topic of HIV and AIDS, what do you feel has changed over the past 33-plus years in terms of education and people's attitudes, etc.?
Buddy Akin:
Well, I mean I was going to say the biggest thing that has changed is the quality of treatment. I mean the, the quality of treatment is excellent. When I was diagnosed back in 1992, there really weren't treatments. There were attempts at treatment; none of them were effective. So the cocktail, the combination therapies hadn't come out.
In terms of people's attitudes, unfortunately, it's kind of a little bit of an inverse ratio there, because I think people are not nearly as worried about it as they were, say, 30 years ago, which is understandable, right? It was incurable then. Now it's a long term, manageable--
Scott Brocato:
It's not an automatic death sentence.
Buddy Akin:
Absolutely not, right? No, no, it's a long term manageable chronic condition. Kind of like diabetes, although quite honestly, diabetes is sometimes more complicated than HIV. So we've made great strides in treatment.
As far as attitudes go though, I think in my personal experience in liaisoning with schools here and so forth, when I lived here the first time back in the late 90s, early 2000s, we couldn't field enough requests for presentations. I mean, I couldn't possibly do them all in a week. Now the doors are pretty much closed. And I don't mean that as an indictment on anybody. But, you know, that education needs to get out to young people, because young people need to know how to make good decisions, especially when they're in the clinches and they need to make those decisions. They need that information ahead of time, and I think there's quite a bit of denial about, do young people get in those sexual situations? And we know they do. So in my personal opinion, that education needs to restart here.
Scott Brocato:
Well, you have various hosts and emcees: Sheriff Kim Stewart will be there, Cassie McClure will be there. And our other guest in the studio will be there: Bill McCamley. Tell us briefly what you do.
Bill McCamley:
Well, I recently moved back to town, so I'm from Las Cruces. I spent a lot of time as a public official. I was a county commissioner for four years. I was a state representative for six years. I spent two-and-a-half years moving up and working for the governor, running the Workforce Solutions Office, and that was a tough job running the unemployment office during the pandemic.
Scott Brocato:
And you're part of this event. Why is this event important?
Bill McCamley:
Well, I recently moved back to town. I went and spent three-and-a-half years in Austin, and I'll tell you, for me, there's a lot of fear and uncertainty out there in a whole lot of different contexts. A lot of people are worried about what's going on in Washington DC, myself included, I live half a mile from Young Park, where obviously there was a tragedy a few weeks ago. And so I get a lot of questions: “What can I do to help? I want to take action.” And I would strongly argue for people to do things in their local community to help their neighbors. And this is one of the examples of ways we can reach out and help folks in our community who are in need, who are living with a condition that they're going to have to pay for medical bills for a long time and may need help with food.
You know, food pantries right now are going through a really tough time. I live right near Peace Lutheran Church, and once a week in the mornings I ride my bike, I work over at Milagro Coffee a lot. And there's this line of people that look like they've been sleeping there since 5:00 in the morning to be able to get food. So there is a need out there, and being able to contribute to organizations like this and efforts like this, makes me feel better about what's going on and puts me a little bit more control. So I would just say to folks, if you want to come out and have a good time and feel like you're doing something to contribute to make the community better, this is a really good way to do that.
Scott Brocato:
And where can folks find out more about it, Buddy Akin?
Buddy Akin:
Well, you go on Facebook and look at The Pantry. It's just The Pantry. We have a fundraising platform called Zeffy.
