Silence = Death

The sun sets early in the beginning of December, even here in southern California. The first day of this darkened month also marks World AIDS Day, established in 1988 to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Just one year earlier, the National Mall in Washington, DC played host to the first display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. A patchwork of names, sewn with care, grief, and outrage, it was a clarion call to a nation that, for far too long, had averted its eyes to the worst public health crisis of its time.

I was one of the estimated 1.2 million people who were fortunate enough to see the quilt in 1996, the last time it was shown in its entirety. Panels of names for as far as the eye could see, lost, in part, through complicit silence.

"No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow." – Alice Walker