'Keep the Promise': AIDS march on Washington, July 22

The Quilt will be on display at various locations around DC, and you can still add a panel or share a memory. You can search and view the panels online.

We promised we would not forget lovers, family, friends, and neighbors who have died.

We promised we would fight the silence.

We promised we would support those who are infected and affected.

We promised that we would keep fighting.

HIV/AIDS activists around the globe and here at home have kept that promise.

So now we ask that you join us'once again'to remind elected officials, governments, world leaders and our neighbors that the fight against HIV/AIDS has not yet been won.  

On July 22, 2012, people living with HIV/AIDS, supporters, friends and family will gather once again in Washington DC for a Keep the Promise march on Washington. Thousands of researchers will also be in DC for the XIX International AIDS Conference, July 22-27. The conference will take place in the U.S. after 22 years of struggle against U.S. travel restrictions.

In 1990, as the AIDS epidemic hit a crushing crescendo, researchers from around the globe gathered in San Francisco for the International AIDS Conference. That year, researcher Paul Volberding served as the event's co-chair. 'AIDS was still an absolute death sentence,' recalled Volberding, now an AIDS researcher at UCSF. 'We had bomb threats at the conference organizing site -- almost every day.'

It turned out to be the last international AIDS conference held on U.S. soil, as the global research community refused to return to the United States because of its travel ban on HIV positive people. That law was revoked by the Obama Administration in 2010. 'It took us 22 years to change the U.S. laws to allow people to come to our country without declaring their HIV status,' said Volberding.

Victories have been won, but we still have a long way to go before AIDS is defeated.

I sit and remember.

I remember living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, when the first realization hit that something was very wrong. Too many of my neighbors were dying. This was during the days of GRID (Gay-related immune deficiency) in 1982. But some of my neighbors were not gay, and they were dying too. Some were or had been IV drug users. Some were their wives and lovers. The ranks of Narcotics Anonymous and other 12-step program meetings started to thin out as one by one those who struggled and won the battle against addiction were struck down, dying clean and sober.  

I see faces.

I see Santos whose goal was to achieve 10 years clean. He did. Then he died.

I see Awilda, from the Bronx, who helped found Women Healing Each Other, a support group for women who were being ignored by those who had started to fight back against AIDS. This disease was not the sole province of men'gay or straight.

I see my young brother-in-law, Barry'who was allowed no dignity in the hospital, where frightened nurses wearing face masks refused to bring his food into the room where he lay too weak to get out of the bed. They left it outside on the floor. I see the face of Maritza, the hospital omsbudsperson who fought back for patients rights and got him the care he needed.

I see Greg. My lover, poet, friend. One of the early ones to go.

I see teenaged Gabriel, whose family put him out into the street, and Douglass whose family let him stay at home, but who bought separate dishes and silverware for him to use and jugs of bleach to incessantly clean around him.

I see the babies at Hale House.

My list is too long to type here. Each day I pray I will never have to see another name added to the quilt.

But the quilt still grows.  

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