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Run With Us: Team Black Alphabet at AIDS Run & Walk Chicago
- adammcmath
- Jul 29
- 2 min read
On Saturday, September 26, we'll be at Soldier Field in green and purple, standing around in the cold, taking about forty more photos than anybody needs. Team Black Alphabet has walked this the last couple of years. We want you with us this time.
Two ways in: walk with the team, or send money and we'll carry your name down the lakefront.
What the day looks like
Saturday, September 26, 2026. Start line at Soldier Field, course out along the lakefront.
9:00 a.m. — registration opens
9:30 a.m. — opening ceremonies
10:35 a.m. — 5K and 10K run
10:50 a.m. — walk and roll
You don't have to run. Most of our team walks. Some of us roll. A couple of people come for the tent and the music and never cross a start line, and we count them anyway.
It's $30 to walk, $40 to run either distance, and $10 if you want your name on the team from home. Sign up on our AIDS Run & Walk page, or go straight to Team Black Alphabet on the AIDS Foundation Chicago site.
Why we keep coming back
AIDS Foundation Chicago calls this the largest HIV gathering in the Midwest — about 2,000 people. The number that keeps us on the roster is uglier. Black Chicagoans account for nearly half of all late HIV diagnoses in the city: people who learn they're positive only after the virus has had years to work. That happens when a community has good reason not to trust a clinic.
We're an arts organization. We don't run a testing site. What we do is build rooms Black queer people already want to be in — a screening, an art therapy group — and put care inside those rooms, instead of waiting for people to walk into a building that has never been warm to them.
Run & Walk is the same idea in sneakers.
Where the money goes
We raise through AIDS Foundation Chicago's CommunityDirect program, and 90% of what our team brings in comes back to Black Alphabet. It pays for the arts and media work we do for Black LGBTQ+ Chicago: the film festival, art therapy, programming at the Jamii Center in Bronzeville.
Our goals are small on purpose. $50 a person, $500 for the team. Nine people at fifty dollars gets us there. Most of what comes in is $10 and $25. Give to the team here.
Come find us
If you're in Chicago on September 26, walk with us. If you're not, give what you can — we'll post the photos either way.
Black Alphabet NFP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. EIN 46-4578118. Your gift is tax-deductible.
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