November, 1996 Feature Alexia Clarke: |
AIDS Quilt in D.C. Reveals Love and Hate Sewn Together
By Shanna Melton
I was one of eight students from Central to travel to Washington D.C. to view the AIDS Memorial Quilt and participate in the Candlelight Vigil and March on Washington on October 12.
The Quilt stretched from the Washington Monument to the Capitol Building, encompassing 45,000 panels and 75,000 names.
Parts of the Quilt remembered babies no more then a year old and many other panels were sewn for adults who never reached middle age. Yet, protesters held signs reading "THANK GOD FOR AIDS" and "FAG DEATH MARCH."
Yomara Santiago, Arelis Cintron, Shakira Bendolph, Alexia Clarke, Shavonne Dewitt-Smith, and I joined Marta Lincoln of Fairfield High School on the trip to Washington. We are involved in TAP, a peer counseling group combating the spread of HIV. Linda Greene and Lisette Gonzalez from Family Services Woodfield served as our chaperones.
Looking over the quilt was like looking into the faces of the people who were being remembered. Reading an individual panel was like talking directly to the person being remembered.
At the end of the march the crowd met at the Lincoln Memorial, where Chaka Kahn sang "Amazing Grace." Speakers who were living with HIV or AIDS explained how they contracted the virus and announced they were the face of AIDS. One of the speakers was a five year old boy.
The experience affected me a great deal. For the first time in my life I realized I was in a situation where love and hate were being expressed at the same time. The protesters holding hateful signs were revealing their anger, prejudice, fear, and lack of education about the subject at hand.
Since I came back I asked a lot of my friends how they felt about homosexual people. Some said they hated them and they felt homosexuals belonged on a separate island by themselves, away from all the normal people. Others said they would disown family members and even their children if they found out they were gay.
AIDS is not a gay disease. It is a human disease. HIV infection is spreading quickly among heterosexuals, many of whom have failed to take precautions to avoid contracting the virus. Right now, AIDS is spreading fastest among African-American and Hispanic teenage women and adolescents. Knowing how I feel when someone judges me, I would be one of the last people in the world to cast judgement on someone because of their sexual preference. If people stopped for a minute to expand their minds they would see how beautiful the differences in people really are.
