User:Wikirandy/Emergence

I just was watching Studio 4 (4pm - 5pm, Keefer, Shaw TV), interviewing "Cleve Jones" (see Wikipedia entry) from S. F., close friend of Harvey Milk, and one of the Grand Marshalls in Vancouver's LGBQT's Pride Parade (2009).

'Cleve' told Ms. Keefer on the anniversary of Harvey Milk's death (November 1985?), while walking at the intersection of Market St. and Castro St., in San Francisco, he was struck by a headline on a newspaper that said 1,000 people had died from HIV AIDS. He realized that more than 90 per cent had died within a 6-block radius of Market St. and Castro St.

He grabbed a pen, and implored others to sign up one person's name on a placard, one person who had been lost to them, to HIV AIDS.

Thereafter, he and others marched up to the Federal Building in SF. Using ladders he had placed in the shrubbery earlier in the afternoon, he and others used it to place the placards up on the walls of the Federal Building.

Standing back, watching all of the placards and names of all of the people lost to HIV AIDS, it triggered a thought: this sight resembled a quilt.

This then triggered thoughts of a quilt on his bed, from his grandmother in Indiana...

He thought that a memorial HIV AIDS quilt was evocative:


 * it could remind people of middle america
 * it could remember people
 * it could be a weapon
 * it could mobilize others
 * it could do other things too....(but hey, I can't remember everything eh?)

....and began thinking....

Initially, his friends said: "Cleve, you're crazy"....

But he persevered.

The last time the HIV AIDS quilt was shown was on the National Public Mall in Washington, with nearly 50,000 patches in the quilt.