AIDS quilt creator’s speech at Pacific outlines attitude change
Friend of murdered public official Harvey Milk brings a message of tolerance
Every October for the past six years, a large quilt has been displayed in the main foyer of Pacific University’s library.
The quilt is composed of a patchwork of names and images that appear to be a collage rather than a single piece of art. But despite the seeming disorder of panels, the Pacific quilt is just one of many throughout the world that are collectively working toward the common goal of AIDS awareness.
Cleve Jones, founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, visited the Forest Grove campus Oct. 26 to speak about his life, AIDS awareness and the fight for full equality among the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) community.
Jones said he became a political activist through the encouragement of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California and the subject of the 2008 Hollywood film “Milk,” featuring leading man Sean Penn.
After moving from Phoenix, Ariz., to San Francisco, Calif., Jones was urged by Milk to study political science at San Francisco State University and became an intern in Milk’s office.
Jones said Milk’s murder in San Francisco in November 1978 was one among many in the LGBTQ community that served as his inspiration for the AIDS quilt. Jones recalled the first time he read about AIDS in June 1981. He was working for the California State Assembly Committee on Health when he read an article about a disease that would later become known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
As the AIDS epidemic progressed during the 1980s, Jones said there was such a stigma attached to the disease that very few obituaries stated the cause of death as AIDS. By 1985, more than 1,000 people had died from AIDS in San Francisco.
In an effort to raise awareness, Jones asked people to write the names of loved ones who had died of AIDS on placards during the annual candlelight march to honor Milk. Jones and his fellow marchers taped the placards to the San Francisco federal building as a visual representation of the epidemic.
When Jones saw the placards taped to the walls of the federal building, he thought it looked like a patchwork quilt.
Jones said this event inspired him to develop the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which he claims is a symbol of “traditional family values” that enables family members and friends alike to create a visual representation of the love they had for those who have died of AIDS.
When he first came up with the idea, Jones said that “everyone told me it was the stupidest thing they ever heard of,” but he forged ahead and created the first panel of the quilt to remember his close friend, Marvin Feldman.
Over the last two decades, the quilt has accumulated more than 46,000 panels and 91,000 names. In 1989 the AIDS quilt was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is widely considered to be the world’s largest art project.