December 9, 2005
MEMORY AND MOMENTUM
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TELL THE WORLD: HWers and friends chant on City Hall steps during 24-hour vigil |
Nathaniel Adams. Sammy Adorn. Gladys Algarin. Maria Aviles.
So began the names, as the clock struck midnight on Thursday, December 1—World AIDS Day—at the bitterly cold southern tip of New York's City Hall Park. For the twelfth year in a row, Housing Works (HW) had organized the 24-hour, non-stop vigil during which agency staffers, invited guests and impromptu passersby stood at five podiums and read from a half-dozen lovingly kept books containing over 100,000 names of those lost to HIV/AIDS.
"The names come from all over," explained terri smith-caronia, head of New York City advocacy for HW and the main organizer of the event since it began in 1994 to protest the indifference (at best) toward the AIDS community of the then-new Giuliani administration. Since then, the tone of the vigil has softened a bit, its target broadening from the mayor's office to the city (and world) at large, but the names keep on coming. "People send them in from all over the city, and all over the world," said smith-caronia, "and we just keep adding them to our books."
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CHILDREN WILL LISTEN: Young people came to read the names. |
For the three dozen or so HWers there at that first stroke of midnight, though, the first hour was often the hardest, as it was filled with the names of the several hundred HW staffers, clients and friends who have died since the agency's founding in 1990. "William Cuevas. Heriberto Cuevos. Alvin Cumberbatch," read HW cofounder and CEO Rev. Charles King, who symbolically begins and ends each year's reading of the names.
The solemn crowd, many within it quietly crying for memories of lost friends and colleagues, held its breath. King was coming up on the name of HIV-positive HW cofounder (and his former life partner) Keith D. Cylar, who died in April 2004. "Last year—the first vigil after Keith's death—Charles broke down when he came to his name, and we all cried with him," murmured smith-caronia.
"Keith D. Cylar," read King stoically. "Loxie Daley. Timothy Damon." Only then did his voice break—briefly—before continuing with the roster. The crowd exhaled in collective relief, and the reading of the names continued on deep into the night until dawn, when the desolate park slowly came alive again. But amid the growing morning bustle—and all day long, then again into the night—the reading of the names didn't stop.
DAY TO REMEMBER
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SOLEMN ROSTER: Listeners meditated (and many wept) as names were read. |
In the whirlwind, end-AIDS-now (or, preferably, last week) world of HW, the Reading of the Names may be the closest that the bustling, hydra-headed agency comes all year to a symbolic collective stand-still, 24 hours devoted almost entirely to honoring the memory and worth of those lost to the epidemic. And every HWer who stood vigil to read names for shifts of two or four hours was remembering someone in particular they'd lost to the disease.
For Olivia Brown-Dawson, an HW communications staffer living with HIV, it was her three sisters Kathryn Hawkins, Gail Yancy and Cynthia Yancy, and her brother, Bruce Hawkins, all of whom have died of AIDS. "It's emotional for me tonight," she said, bundled up in the cold, "but I'm glad I'm alive to represent them." For HIV-positive transgendered HW staffers Barbara Cassis and Arlene Hoffman, it was late transgendered activists Lori Mills and Sylvia Rivera. "Why did they die and we live?" asked Hoffman. "That's why it's so important for us survivors to keep doing AIDS activism."
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FULL CIRCLE: HW leader Charles King began and ended the vigil. |
Much, much later that day—at about 3pm, when HWers and friends rallied to sing and chant anti-AIDS slogans on the nearby steps of City Hall—New York City Councilwoman Letitia James (who represents the HIV/AIDS-impacted neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn) said that she had shown up to honor the memory of "friends, family and community activists" lost to the disease. Patrick McGovern said he was thinking of the late Willis Green, Jr., his predecessor as executive director of Harlem United. And a bit later, back at the Reading of the Names, where dusk was falling, Susan Enahoro, MD, medical director of HW's facility in East New York, Brooklyn, said she was thinking about the 20 or so patients she had lost to HIV/AIDS since coming to the job four years ago. "There was no need for some of them to die," she said. "They gave up thinking there was no reason to carry on."
A number of dignitaries showed up through the course of the day to read from the Books of Names, including outgoing City Council speaker Gifford Miller, public advocate Betsy Gotbaum, the mayor's representative in D.C., Bob Nickerson, and Housing Works board member Rev. Errol Harvey. Especially moving was the annual arrival of several dozen 10-year-olds from the Upper West Side's Goddard Riverside after-school program. Asked why her group had shown up, Jamyla Miranda, 10, said simply, "To read the names of people that died of AIDS." Added Goddard staffer Alexander Allen: "People in our community are affected by HIV/AIDS, and these children know who they are, because they're family and friends."
During business hours, countless workers streamed through City Hall Park, some seemingly oblivious to the intent behind the constant cacophony of names emanating from loudspeakers. But many others stopped to listen—and ponder—as did Derrick Henry, 36, an MTA bus driver who lives in Mansfield Township, New Jersey, where, he said, a man in his church congregation had died of AIDS. "It's sad," he said, listening to the endless stream of names. "It makes me realize just how many people have died."
DAY OF ACTION, TOO
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SPREADING THE WORD: In Miss., Robin Webb (back to camera) initiates newcomers to C2EA on World AIDS Day (photo: Thabi Moyo) |
But this year's HW vigil was also the first to incorporate the Campaign to End AIDS, the nationwide movement that HW has put so much time, effort and money behind in 2005. Fittingly, C2EA signs dotted the vigil area, and C2EA's mission of pressuring world leaders to do more to bring the epidemic to an end was incorporated into this moving statement that was read in both English and Spanish at the top of every hour.
Elsewhere, HW observed World AIDS day with an activism-oriented C2EA twist. In Jackson, Mississippi, where HW has embarked on a C2EA-guided partnership with the new group AIDS Action in Mississippi (AAIM), AAIM founders (and HW's new southern staffers) Robin Webb and Shannon Reaze led a state health-department sponsored session that linked the federal government's preferred "prevention for positives" message to the more policy-oriented demands of C2EA. The two talked up C2EA to about 40 people, many of them nursing students who "had never heard HIV coming from a political perspective," noted Reaze.
[The next day, Webb and Reaze led a statewide conference call of about 18 people focused on making Mississippi the first fully organized state within the Campaign to End AIDS. "We're going to make stigma and discrimination one of our front-burner issues," noted Reaze, adding that elections for C2EA state offices will take place next week, shortly before AAIM hosts an open house/Christmas party in its new downtown Jackson digs—and even as it attracts new members like Jackson middle-school teacher Donovan Scott, 28, who says he wants to be AAIM/C2EA's prevention liaison to the schools. "I want to try to get literature in there," he says. "We have 12- and 13-year-old students having sex—and having kids."]
Meanwhile on World AIDS Day, Larry Bryant, HW's new national organizer in Washington, spoke to eighth-graders in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, shocking them when he disclosed that he had been HIV-positive for two decades. And HW top dog King left the New York vigil for a few hours that day to speak at an event in Delaware, a state that orgnanized itself well for the C2EA caravan that came through the state early last month en route to Washington, D.C.
But King was back at the vigil by 11pm that night, when the final hour of the vigil was again devoted to the names of those within the Housing Works family lost to AIDS. As dried leaves danced in the frigid midnight wind, five readers eventually dwindled to one, King, who recited the final names: "Shannon Wilson. Edward Wrighton. Joseph Wydner."
"We will end AIDS," King had said, away from the mic, a few moments before. "Probably not by next year's World AIDS Day vigil, or even in five years. We'll end it, though. But even when we do, we'll still gather here to read the names."
Back at the podium: "Joan Young. Yolando Zeno. Maria Zinberg." Like playful spirits, the last names danced away into the cold night air.