A quilt is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of three layers of fiber: a woven cloth top, a layer of batting or wadding, and a woven back, combined using the technique of quilting, the process of sewing the three layers together.
The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt, is an enormous quilt made as a memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons, it is the largest piece of community folk art in the world as of 2016.
The White Night riots were a series of violent events sparked by an announcement of a perceived lenient sentencing of Dan White for the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and of Harvey Milk, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors who was among the first openly gay elected official in the United States. The events took place on the night of May 21, 1979 in San Francisco. Earlier that day, White had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the lightest possible conviction for his actions. That White was not convicted of first-degree murder had so outraged the city's gay community that it set off the most violent reaction by gay Americans since the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.
A patchwork quilt is a quilt in which the top layer may consist of pieces of fabric sewn together to form a design. Originally, this was to make full use of left-over scraps of fabric, but now fabric is often bought specially for a specific design. Fabrics are now often sold in quarter meters. A "fat quarter" is one square meter folded into four and cut along the folds, thus giving a relatively square piece of fabric 50 cm on a side, as opposed to buying a quarter of a meter off the roll, resulting in a long thin piece that is only 25 cm wide.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), also called Order of Perpetual Indulgence (OPI) is a charity, protest, and street performance organization that uses drag and religious imagery to call attention to sexual intolerance and satirizes issues of gender and morality. At their inception in 1979, a small group of gay men in San Francisco began wearing the attire of nuns in visible situations using camp to draw attention to social conflicts and problems in the Castro District.
Randy Shilts was an American journalist and author. He worked as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. He wrote the critically acclaimed book And the Band Played On (1987), which chronicled the history of the AIDS epidemic.
Proposition 64 was a proposition in the state of California on the November 4, 1986 ballot. It was an initiative statute that would have restored Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to the list of communicable diseases. The measure was defeated by a margin of 71% to 29%.
Sathon or Sathorn is one of the 50 districts (khet) of Bangkok, Thailand. The district is bounded by six other districts : Bang Rak, Pathum Wan, Khlong Toei, Yan Nawa, Bang Kho Laem, and Khlong San.
Robert Boyle "Bobbi" Campbell Jr. was a public health nurse and an early United States AIDS activist. In September 1981, Campbell became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, when that was a proxy for an AIDS diagnosis. He was the first to come out publicly as a person with what came to be known as AIDS, writing a regular column in the San Francisco Sentinel, syndicated nationwide, describing his experiences and posting photos of his KS lesions to help other San Franciscans know what to look for, as well as helping write the first San Francisco safer sex manual.
Donald Pinkston "Don" Francis is an American epidemiologist who worked on the Ebola outbreak in Africa in the late 1970s, and HIV/AIDS researcher. He retired from the U.S. Public Health Service in 1992, after 21 years of service. He currently lives in San Francisco, California.
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 documentary film that tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman with a musical score written and performed by Bobby McFerrin, the film focuses on several people who are represented by panels in the Quilt, combining personal reminiscences with archive footage of the subjects, along with footage of various politicians, health professionals and other people with AIDS. Each section of the film is punctuated with statistics detailing the number of Americans diagnosed with and dead of AIDS through the early years of the epidemic. The film ends with the first display of the complete Quilt at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. during the 1987 Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
Cleve Jones is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2016. In 1983, at the onset of the AIDS pandemic Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation which has grown into one of the largest and most influential People with AIDS advocacy organizations in the United States.
And the Band Played On is a 1993 American television film docudrama directed by Roger Spottiswoode. The teleplay by Arnold Schulman is based on the best-selling 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts.
The 50 United Nations Plaza Federal Office Building is a United States federal building located on United Nations Plaza between Hyde and McAllister Streets in San Francisco, California. The 1936 Neoclassical style building, designed by Arthur Brown, Jr., is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a contributing property to the San Francisco Civic Center Historic District, which is a National Historic Landmark.
Epitaphs for the Living: Words and Images in the Time of AIDS is a book of photographs (ISBN 0870742892) by Billy Howard, published in 1989 by Southern Methodist University Press in Dallas. The photographs are mostly portraits and depict persons infected with AIDS. Underneath each picture is a copy of a handwritten message by the subject, either telling an abbreviated version of the story of their illness or expressing thanks to the family and friends who have stood by them. An introduction of printed text analyzes the social issues discussed by the patients and highlights some of their more poetic lines.
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a 1987 book by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts. The book chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) with a special emphasis on government indifference and political infighting—specifically in the United States—to what was then perceived as a specifically gay disease. Shilts' premise is that AIDS was allowed to happen: while the disease is caused by a biological agent, incompetence and apathy toward those initially affected allowed its spread to become much worse.
The San Francisco Sentinel is an online newspaper serving the LGBT communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally a weekly print periodical, the Sentinel covers local San Francisco politics, news and social events, and international news of interest to the gay community.
Vincent Anthony Crisostomo is a gay Asian American HIV AIDS activist of Chamorro descent from Guam. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1995. He currently serves as the Program Manager of the 50-Plus Network at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
The AIDS pandemic began in the early 1980s and brought with it a surge of emotions from the public, they were afraid, angry, fearful, and defiant. The arrival of AIDS also brought with it a condemnation of the LGBT community. These emotions, along with the view on the LGBT community, paved the way for a new generation of artists. Artists involved in AIDS activist organizations had the ideology that while art could never save lives as science could, it may be able to deliver a message. Art of the AIDS crisis typically sought to: make a sociopolitical statement, stress the medical impact of the disease, or express feelings of longing and loss. The ideologies were present in conceptions of art in the 1980s and are still pertinent to reception of art today as well. Elizabeth Taylor, for example, spoke at a benefit for AIDS involving artwork, emphasizing its importance to activism in that, "art lives on forever." This comment articulates the ability of artwork from this time to teach and impact contemporary audiences, post-crisis. This page examines the efforts of artists, art collectives, and art movements to make sense of such an urgent pandemic in American society.
Social activism against the spread of HIV/AIDS and in support of effective treatment has taken place in multiple nations across the world over the past several decades. In terms of the complex history of HIV/AIDS in human beings, widespread criticism by regular individuals against public health organizations have escalated into protest movements due to slow treatment responses. Methods of demonstration have included the hanging of political leaders in effigy, pamphleteer activities, placard waving, public marches, sit-ins, and the like.
