Bay Area Reporter - June 8, 2001
David Fraser

Their messages were pointed or poignant, but two symbols of grief and hope blanketed them: the flags at half-mast outside City Hall, and the panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt carried or hanging inside.

"I like myself better for having treated you well. Love, hugs, and kisses too," said a message on a panel remembering potter Peter Van Roy (June 26, 1950-March 15, 1994). In the middle was a scene of blue water and reeds.

Hank Wilson, of Survive AIDS, urged an audience of about 80 circled around the Rotunda to remember the "Denver Principles," a document designed in 1983 to condemn attempts to label PWAs as victims and to help them die, and live, in dignity.

"They are as valid today as in 1983," Wilson said. "We PWAs - we have Ph.D.s ... I have a Ph.D. in life - I've been there."

Lawrence Ozoa, the mayor's liaison to the LGBT community from the Office of Neighborhood Services, told the Bay Area Reporter: "I came out in the early 1990s. It was just a matter of weeks before my friends who were older seemed to be getting sick and dying. It's alarming to see it all over again.

"People forget what KS [Kaposi's sarcoma] looks like on your friend. People forget what it's like to see someone who's 170 pounds one week and the next week he's wasting ...

"That cartoon in the B.A.R. - it's the truth."

[Last week's editorial page featured a cartoon by Ron Williams on 20 years of HIV/AIDS, with the caption "The most objectionable AIDS drug side effect: Memory Loss. Never Forget."]

Ark of Refuge

The Reverend Yvette Flunder from the Ark of Refuge sang a cappella "My Living Shall Not Be in Vain." The hall stayed quiet for some time.

Standing next to Flunder and Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, Mayor Willie Brown told the audience about how the disease and the city had struggled to come to terms with each other.

Initially, he said, government was not very responsive to the mysterious ailment known at the outset as the "gay men's" disease.

As awareness and alarm increased, Brown said, "out of that has grown one of the most globally admired health delivery systems for dealing with HIV and AIDS."

Calling San Francisco's a "model system," Brown praised it "not only for providing medicine but also shelter, counseling - the highest level of sensitivity" toward people infected. "Even more incredible are the volunteers, who bring a sophisticated understanding and contribution" to the cause, he added.

He acknowledged Ammiano, often a political adversary, as laying a major role in tackling the epidemic.

With the development of antiretrovirals and other medications in the mid to late 1990s, he pointed out "the assumption of some of us was that by the end of the 20th century, we'd be talking about the light at the end of the tunnel, that we were on the road to eradicating this disease. There were new drugs, even potentially, new vaccines ... we were optimistic."

Brown said that a city health report for January and February showed that needle exchange, prevention, and education were proving their worth in the context of HIV among non-gay intravenous drug users. But the second part of the report, he said, was disturbing because it showed "on an alarming basis that the numbers [of HIV infections], which had been declining, had gone down and were now going up again, particularly among gay and bi men and particularly among African Americans and Latinos.

"At least before I leave this job as mayor of San Francisco, I want to see both parts of the report as sunny," Brown added. "I intend to see that we manage this future in the way we want. I want to get volunteers in record numbers; I want programs; I want people to wear [red] ribbons again."

The mayor talked from the Rotunda steps as several people held up a quilt panel remembering, among others, Jose Rafael Rodriguez, Andy Hall, and Patrick Tranter.

"How many of us have lost friends, mothers, loved ones to this dread disease," the mayor said, adding that recent remembrances at City Hall, the National AIDS Memorial Grove, and elsewhere "must move us to rededicate ourselves" to the fight.

"That's the commitment we need to make, a commitment that must come from all of us if we are to remember our future better than we remember our past."

The ceremony wound down; the officials returned to their work. Handfuls of people stood around the Rotunda, chatting quietly. Some looked at the hand-stitched panels of people's lives, spread out across the Beaux Arts walls.

One panel was addressed to "Bro" and made for J.C. Campbell, who lived from October 1949 until January 1991. It depicts a curving beach of white sand, empty except for a canvas beach chair and open duffel bag. Stuck between them in the sand was a sign: For Sale.

Other events

Tuesday's remembrance at City Hall capped several days of events bringing attention to AIDS as the disease enters its third decade. At Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco, health care workers were honored at a moving outdoor service last Sunday. Additionally, the church was open all day Tuesday so that people could stop by with keepsakes of loved ones lost.

"AIDS is not over," the Reverend Penny Nixon, pastor at MCC-SF, said. "The diagnosis, two decades later, is different, but nevertheless devastating.

Many of those with access to the drugs are living healthy, manageable lives. For this, and all the heroes responsible, we are grateful. For the rest, for whom the drugs do not work, we are concerned."

Other events held in the city included a service at the National AIDS Memorial Grove, which featured a performance by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, and a "die-in" demonstration on the streets of the Castro that saw people outline their bodies with chalk to call attention to the 18,600 San Franciscans who have died of the disease.
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