Bay Area Reporter - March 30, 2001
Michael Lauro, Survive AIDS Writers Pool

"I won't even bother to describe the mess of emotions I feel as we approach this dreadful anniversary. No doubt every long-term survivor and every longtime activist feels the same. I remember all my friends and lovers who died. I remember the street battles, the funerals, the bigotry, the betrayals, the courage. I remember it all," commented AIDS memorial quilt founder Cleve Jones from his home in Southern California.

And so it is for many of us - a mess of emotions as we approach this unsettling anniversary. Twenty years of dignity and courage in face of prejudice and death. Twenty years of hope and hyperbole.

Jones went on to add: "In a few weeks we'll all be remembering, as the nation and the world pauses - however briefly - to note the 20th year of the pandemic. How we choose to mark this tragic milestone has been the subject of discussion around the country and observances are being planned by AIDS service organizations in every city. In my opinion, the last thing we need is a month of self-congratulatory black-tie galas, fundraisers for the AIDS bureaucracy, or sentimental ceremonies."

Tell that to a group of local AIDS service organizations led by the University of California, San Francisco's AIDS Research Institute along with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Shanti, the National AIDS Memorial Grove, Project Inform, the Stop AIDS Project, and others including the organization Cleve himself founded, the Names Project.

Dubbed "Marking the Milestone: 20 Years of AIDS," these groups are currently crafting a three-day event positing a theme of "remembrance, renewal, and recommitment" that has many AIDS activists exasperated. This event comes only 16 days after the San Francisco AIDS Candlelight Memorial march held annually since 1983. Does San Francisco need two memorial events held within a few weeks? Why haven't the ARI folks reached out to the candlelight organizers or even considered consolidating these two events?

Individuals from several participating organizations like Project Open Hand and Project Inform have told us that although they have some reservations with aspects of the program, they may stay in the mix for, as at least one of these organizations emphasized, these groups are not being asked to contribute financially since the ARI organizers are footing the entire bill. Still, this does little to relieve activists' fears that the event is either a pretext to pique donor interest or as Cleve Jones admonishes, simply another "fundraiser for the AIDS bureaucracy."

There's more to indicate that this event in its current form is all show with little substance. The three-day media event culminates with the mayor unveiling a GIANT RED RIBBON AROUND THE DOME OF CITY HALL. Won't that make a pretty picture. Most AIDS activists have developed very ambivalent feelings about the use of red ribbons as a symbol. They view red ribbons as symbolic of words without action and of the failure to recognize that HIV/AIDS is fundamentally as much a political crisis as a public health one. The organizers of this event should realize what a truly offensive image they are proposing. Has this community, your patients, and our work as activists meant so little to you?

The plans surrounding this anniversary event illustrate the misdirected priorities of our AIDS organizations. Millions of Africans are dying for lack of generic AIDS medications as the U.S. AIDS establishment remains largely silent about this global priority. One hopes that this silence is not related to the money these groups receive from the pharmaceutical industry. Once again, it is the activists who put their bodies on the line and in the streets who are successfully challenging the pharmaceutical lobby PHARMA and the U.S. government.

Here at home, rising rates of treatment failure, rising rates of new infections, side effects being experienced by at least 50 percent of people with HIV on medications, the decline of San Francisco General Hospital and the Department of Public Health as effective health care delivery institutions, and people with HIV on disability or with low incomes being forced out of San Francisco by rising rents are some of the issues these ASOs should be up in arms about.

There are some activists who believe that this event in particular should be buried in a deep grave with the likes of Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan. Others, like Cleve Jones, believe that any proposed event would fail to do what is really needed to appropriately commemorate this anniversary and that: "We should cancel the cocktail parties and awards banquets and start the month of June in the streets of Washington, D.C. - screaming bloody murder."

This "milestone event" sorely sacrifices its renewal and recommitment themes by serving up show over substance. If this event must go on, it must do more to fulfill its thematic promise of remembrance, renewal, and commitment. Instead of hollow media events, our leaders standing in front of City Hall, like the mayor, could lead by example and raise the issue of African medical apartheid to the same level the city once took on apartheid itself. They could proclaim that until the pharmaceutical industry withdraws its objection to South Africa providing generic AIDS drugs for its citizens as Brazil does now, the city will divest its investments from the greedy pharmaceutical rat pack of 39 companies who are placing profits over lives. Let the AIDS establishment and the mayor lead by example and provide a fitting example of action to mark this anniversary.

Now that's a worthy tribute.

Without these changes, ASOs should run from this event. Let us regain our sense of outrage, anger, and unwillingness to die quietly. Or at the very least, let's do something constructive.
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