LJ: world AIDS day
I was just a little too young and not yet really self-indentified when AIDS first started showing up, but I do remember it moving from gay cancer to GRID and finally to AIDS, with the HIV status coming along a little later. At first it was a distant thunder, not really connected to me, I thought. Yeah, I was young, a little self-absorbed and not always aware of the full diversity of people all around me.
But even in university it started to reach out: I remember the early, quick deaths and later the toxic drug cocktails that slowed it down a little, but ultimately could not stop the progression of AIDS. And now these days, when transmission between mother and newborn can be prevented, when there's evidence that drugs can be taken to prevent contraction of AIDS, when there are people who have lived with HIV status for decades -- it is still a killer world wide.
And so I take a breath and remember the people I once knew who are gone now, a quilt square I made to tour around places since forgotten, tears and petitions and vigils and campaigns, a thousand missteps and misjudgments made by a panicky and bigoted government -- even if Reagan had been the best president ever, I'll never forgive the old bastard's utter silence throughout his entire tenure -- a silence that needlessly cost so many more lives. On this day I remember all of you: who you were, what you did, where you are now; the living and the dead.
What can we do now? There's plenty to be done, still. Here's one place to start.