About 50 North Carolina AIDS activists vying to shake up the nation’s capital this weekend under the banner of the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) packed their bags Thursday and prepared to join a brigade of buses and vans called the Waves Across the Nation Caravan. The caravan, which left San Diego on October 24 and has been scooping up passengers along the way, is the largest of nine meeting Saturday in Washington, DC, for a four-day extravaganza of street marches, church meetings and congressional lobbying. “We want people from North Carolina to connect with people from all over the country with like problems,” explained Thelma Wright, her state’s C2EA coordinator, who says she’s looking to the upcoming 4 Days of Action for  “ideas to make the government listen.”

Demonstrators from as far away as Oregon and Florida have boarded C2EA caravans in the past several weeks. Some stopped here and there along the highway to pass out condoms at fast food restaurants or to speak at local events about everything from refunding Ryan White and legalizing needle exchange to the effects of HIV on African-American communities and threats to Medicaid. Churches, YMCAs and rec centers offered beds and meals. One C2EA busload emptied out into a drag benefit at a cowboy bar in Laramie, Wyoming, the town where gay student Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998. The New York contingent is making the trip on foot.

North Carolina’s representation is especially big and most of the state’s Wave riders are black and HIV positive—a turnout Wright attributes in part to the endorsement of Evelyn Foust, the state health department’s AIDS director. Foust likes C2EA’s focus on bringing the battle back home when the Days of Action are over. She says, “The campaign is encouraging a dialogue that will make everyone—from people in health care to people in malls—aware of AIDS and involved in their community.”

During the year, Wright also chatted up researchers at Ivy League schools and helped organize fundraising events like the HIV “pageant” in Durham this afternoon featuring a band, a dance troupe and a speech from the mayor. The payoff was getting North Carolina’s caravan riders onboard and up where the action is this weekend—at no cost to them. Now Wright is off to DC herself, to see whether she can get the federal government on the bus, too.