Memory and Justice Site Updates Sites: 2010-07-27T15:53:39Z Copyright (c) 2009, Jon S. Connolly ExpressionEngine tag:memoryandjustice.org,2009:10:28 AIDS Memorial Quilt tag:memoryandjustice.org,2009:site/3.130 2009-06-08T17:17:52Z 2009-09-18T19:07:53Z LB lynnparr@gmail.com Discussion for AIDS Memorial Quilt
The AIDS Memorial Quilt derives much of its power from its ability to integrate individual and collective memory. Importantly, the quilt recognizes victims as individuals. Families, friends and local communities are invited to participate in the project and commemorate lost loved ones as people rather than statistics. At the same time, once assembled in full, the quilt illustrates the tragic scale of the AIDS epidemic and calls for broad public awareness and action. That is, while respecting and celebrating the diverse, private needs of victims and their families, the quilt meets a public need for collective recognition, remembrance and preventative action. In an interview with PBS, the activist Cleve Jones emphasized this multi-functionality. On the individual level, Jones suggested that “It [the Quilt] was therapy. It was something to do with your hands. It was a way to encourage people to talk and share memories.” Then, on the public level, the Quilt “was a tool to use with the media to get the media to focus on it. It was a weapon to shame the politicians for their inaction.”1

Unfortunately, however, the Quilt has not represented all groups equally. In February 2008, Essence magazine reported that, among the 47,000 panels included as part of the Quilt, fewer than 400 honor Black people.2 Responding to this iniquity, the foundation responsible for managing the project has made efforts to create more panels for African-Americans. Indeed it is vitally important that the quilt be as inclusive as possible in representing the victims of AIDS. In order to inspire political action, the memorial must endeavor to unite different groups around common commitments.

References

1 Interview with Cleve Jones. Frontline, PBS, May 30, 2006.
External Link

2 “Our News.” Essence, February 2008: 123.

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Design of Aids Memorial Quilt

The inspiration for the AIDS Memorial Quilt came during a 1985 remembrance march for the former Mayor and City Supervisor of San Francisco, George Moscone and Harvey Milk respectively, both of whom had been assassinated. Cleve Jones, an activist, asked participants in the march to write the names of AIDS victims they had known on pieces of paper, and then taped them to the outside of the San Francisco Federal Building. The resemblance to a quilt inspired Jones, alongside Michael Smith, to begin the AIDS Memorial Quilt project in 1987.

“I was just overwhelmed by the need to find a way to grieve together for our loved ones who had died so horribly, and also to try to find the weapon that would break through the stupidity and the bigotry and all of the cruel indifference that even today hampers our response,” Jones told PBS. “I thought, what a perfect symbol; what a warm, comforting, middle-class, middle-American, traditional-family-values symbol to attach to this disease that’s killing homosexuals and IV drug users and Haitian immigrants, and maybe, just maybe, we could apply those traditional family values to my family.”

References

Interview with Cleve Jones. Frontline, PBS, May 30, 2006.
External Link

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