San Francisco leaders aim to remember lives lost, educate next generation on World Aids Day

SAN FRANCISCO – On World Aids Day Sunday, there was a commemoration at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. 

The event honored the lives lost to the disease, and celebrated the progress made. Attendees also hope to continue the conversation around HIV and AIDS, as a way to educate the younger generation. 

Speakers shared memories from the 80s and 90s when the AIDS epidemic took hundreds of thousands of lives. 

“It is those lives that were cut short because of stigma, discrimination, otherism and the lack of action of a government and of a community and of a nation, that need to be honored,” said John Cunningham, CEO of the National AIDS Memorial. 

“(They were) beautiful people, all special, and I will never forget. I’m shaking now as I think of them,” said Miki Ilaw.

Ilaw was a nurse at the time. She cared for patients through many years of HIV research and clinical trials.

She and many others gather each year on World AIDS Day to remember those who have died, support people still living with the disease, and honor the leaders who helped get us to a place where one pill a day can help prevent the disease and even make patients undetectable. 

But as time has passed and research and medication have improved, many believe it’s still important to remind the younger generation just how horrific that time truly was. 

“They don’t really think about this as being a death sentence anymore. They just think, ‘Oh, if I get HIV I just take one pill, and I’m good.’ So we need to educate,” said Bert Champagne, the event director of AIDS walk San Francisco. “We lost an entire community to HIV and AIDS.”

Percy Vermut is helping to bridge that generational gap. The Carlton College freshman who came out as transgender at the age of 14, was part of a panel on how people of different backgrounds experience HIV.  

“I have had a lot of conversations with long-term survivors, and it is a very different world today than it was, in a lot of great ways, but also the knowledge around AIDS, the acknowledgment of the epidemic is kind of fading,” said Vermut. 

At the event, there were reminders of just how painful the epidemic was and how many lives were lost. There was an altar set up with skeletons, and pieces of the AIDS Memorial Quilt were displayed. The whole quilt, which is 50,000 panels, was represented digitally.  

But the work is not over. Guests such as State Sen. Scott Wiener spoke about the expected healthcare challenges up ahead with the Trump Administration entering the White House soon. 

Wiener said he is hopeful that, like with the AIDS epidemic, San Francisco will step up to confront whatever issues arise, even without federal help. 

“This community absolutely enveloped each other, came together and said, ‘We are not just going to sit by while people die. We are not going to sit by while people get sick, we are not going to sit by while people are stripped of their basic human dignity’,” said Wiener.