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Homeless, Continued From Page 1 appropriate shelter; enforce existing federal programs that should be aiding the homeless; and restore funding for federal housing programs to 1981 levels. Lesbians and gay men appear to suffer from a greater susceptibility to being victimized by the current landlord- government relationship. With the advent of AIDS in society, many PWA's have become homeless, with a hospital their only home while acutely ill, the streets and charity shelters their only refuge between bouts of illness. In addition to homeless PWA's, many lesbian and gay children are homeless, becoming "throwaways" upon reaching puberty. These young people continually migrate to large urban areas. The Covenant House in New York estimates that at least 10 percent of the homeless children in New York City are HIV seropositive. Chris Minor, secretary of NAPWA- Atlanta, countered that it is not just the recognized risk groups who are testing positive for the HIV. "In New York City, the leading cause of death for women between 25 and 40 years old is AIDS... (most) are homeless women with children." In a pre-march interview, Robert Hayes, Counsel for the Coalition, warns, "The states are going to go bankrupt through unnecessary, chronic hospitalization... the remedy (to the homeless problem) is one we know of, it's not a complicated technology." Despite the presence and vigorous scrutiny applied to the issues by the lesbian and gay contingent at the rally, none of the candidates chose to address the issue of lesbians and gay men on the street, with or without AIDS. -Karl Boyce and Chris Duncan Photo by Gerald Jones The World Congress Center, site of the Atlanta Journal- Constitution presidential candidate debates. The Democratic candidates left the March for the Homeless to attend the debates. Although the candidates had pledged to make "the plight of the homeless a national priority", none carried the rhetoric into the nationally televised debate. AIM Continued From Page 1 "I was having trouble with her wearing my bathrobe or making up the bed differently than I do and I yelled at her and we had to laugh." Now Sarah has feelings about everything and expresses them. She talks about having all the feelings wear her out. "Sometimes I've been feeling so much that I just want to stop for three days and rest," she says, "but I tell myself that I just have to go to work ex make a phone call or do one more thing and then I do and I feel better." When Sarah was in prison, there was no support system to help her contact her son or deal with her own guilt for having him taken away from her and his friends. Her son became one more victim of his mother's crime. There were staff counselors for the prisoners but they were overloaded and there were no groups in the prison to share the pain. There are over 250,000 children of incarcerated women around the country who are separated from their mothers, generally with no contact and generally with no understanding between mother and children.Only 25% of those children ever see their mothers during the incarceration period. Most of the convicted mothers are haunted by that separation. Sometimes their children don't even remember than by the time they are released. Aid for Imprisoned Mothers (AIM) was started in Atlanta by Attorney Sandra Barnhill. One of the services provided by AIM is transportation for children to visit their imprisoned mothers in orda to strengthen mother-child bonds. Barnhill says that 70-80 percent of the women in prism should not have been incarcaated in the first place. She goes on to say, "If they had better representation or a better understanding of the criminal justice system, things would be different for them." Sandra Barnhill, an Attorney who graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1984, is the founder and visionary behind AIM in Atlanta. There are similar programs in Boston, Massachusetts and Montgomery, Alabama. Barnhill, who has worked with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, sees AIM as "an outgrowth of my desire to be empowered and to be a change agent for the empowerment of other women. There is so much talk about justice and equality but that’s just a farce. Justice is, after all, just-us: just-us women, just-us blacks, just-us prisonas." About 50% of the women in prison in Georgia are there for property crimes; about 23% for drug sales or possession and 16% for violent personal crimes. Sixty pacent are black. The over-representation of blacks in prison is based on the fact that, according to Barnhill, "race and sex are two real important factors in who gets soitenced and what the length of their sentoice might be." The average age of women imprisoned in Georgia is thirty-one, and 78% have at least one child with two-thirds of these having sole custody. Most of the women are poor. Barnhill sees a connection between poverty and cutbacks in public aid related to property crimes. "I think it's a direct causal connection to the life circumstances. I think people who find themselves in desperate situations act in desperate ways." Supportive long-tom relationships have beat recognized as one of the few factors that can be shown statistically to influence rehabilitation and reduce the rate of return to prison. Since most mothers in prisons have little or limited contact with their children, this important stabilizing and rehabilitative factor is often neglected. AIM is providing transportation to try to address this need. AIM also provides lawyer referrals for cases primarily concerning civil matters such as divorce, child custody and public benefits. Aim also offers workshops for prisoners in parenting skills and training for volunteers to work with incarcerated women. There was no project like AIM to make Sarah's isolation and absence from her child easier. Now Sarah works with AIM as a volunteer to make sure otha incarcaated womoi have better opportunities than she did. She plans to talk with her son, to allow all those feelings to surface, to be a person who recognizes and supports ha feelings as good and healthy. Sarah now undostands that it is less painful to express ha inner feelings than to withhold them or to bury them beneath drugs and risk losing the love of a soa -Rebecca Ranson How Do They Get There From Here? The Democrats In all but two of the ten Congressional Districts in Georgia, five delegates will be sent to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Congressional District Five will send six delegates, and Congressional District Seven will send four delegates to the Convention. Those people who are eligible to be sent were elected at party sub-caucuses January 30th in their home districts when they promised to support a presidential candidate for one vote of the full Convention nominating system. When the popular vote is cast March 8th, Supa Tuesday, each candidate's percentage of the total will be tallied by Congressional District. Each delegate elected is ranked against all of the other delegates based on the numba of votes he/she received in the sub caucus. When the votes have been tallied, the candidate who wins the District by total votes will automatically send their first delegate to the DNC. A candidate must receive a threshold of 15% of the popular vote in orda to send their first delegate to the Convention. The remaining delegates will be apportioned among the candidates receiving more than 15% of the vote, in descending orda of votes received. Due to the small number of delegates and the large numba of candidates, it is conceivable that a candidate could gama 15% of the vote and not receive a delegate. EXAMPLE: If Candidate 1 receives 48% of the vote, Candidate 2 gets 20%, Candidate 3 receives 17% of the vote, and Candidate 4 gets 15% of the vote, the delegates they would send to the DNC are: Candidate 1-48% * The candidate's delegate 1 for winning the district. * Die candidate's delegates 2 and 3 fa winning approximately half of the votes cast in the district. Candidate 2 - 20% * The candidate's delegate 1 fa taking one- fifth of the district. Candidate 3-17% *The candidate's delegate 1 for taking approximately one-fifth of the district Candidate 4-15% *No delegate, since all are already taken, even though the candidate won 15% of the total vote cast. The Republicans The Republican process, like in many states, is entirely different from the Democratic process. The Republican party uses a five-step process to detomine the Congressional District delegates to the Republican National Convention. The first step involves all interested voters at the local precinct level. Delegate candidates do not pledge themselves to candidates, but ratha are elected based on personal merit. The precinct delegates go to a county convention, where they elect from among themselves the delegates to go to the Congressional Distria Convention. The Congressional District delegates then vote from among themselves delegates to the statewide convention as well as delegates directly to the national convention. At the statewide convention, the delegates to the national convention are elected. Die most impotant distinction between the two systems is that the Republicans assign only three delegates to each Coigressional Distria. Those delegates are pledged to the candidate who wins the majority of votes in the district, and are not divided between candidates on the basis of thepacentageofthe vote they win. It is a "winner take all" syston. -Chris Duncan Page 7