Blog #3

Yesterday our group went to the AIDS Walk in Atlanta. When we arrived there, we called our coordinator, the person who we were supposed to work with there. However, he had a family emergency and was thus unable to meet us there. Instead, he told us to call a lady who was replacing him. We called her several times and left her a voicemail, but she did not reply. We then tried to find Project Open Hand. There was a huge open area where tables were set up. We walked in front of all the tables looking for Open Hand, but they either didn’t have a table or they had already taken down their table by the time we got there at around 1 or 1:30. Because we were not able to get into contact with our organization we walked a portion of the AIDS walk, took a look at all the promotional booths and looked at the AIDS quilt. While we were there we met people from other groups who were at the event which was fun because we were able to share our experiences at the walk so far.
Since we were not able to contact our organization we were unable to volunteer in a way that helped Project Open Hand. However we did find a booth that was giving out granola bars which our main coordinator, Roz Tucker had spoken about at the orientation we attended at the beginning of the year. These granola bars were advertized at 100% natural as well being highly nutritious. Project Open Hand’s goal is to provide food that is safe and nutritious food to people with terminal illnesses especially AIDS. These granola bars tied in with Open Hand’s mission.
What I enjoyed the most about my experience was seeing a drag queen. In both Before Stonewall and After Stonewall, many of the photos and movie clips were of drag queens but I had never seen one in real life. It was really interesting to see an actual drag queen, and see how they act. Another thing that I enjoyed was the AIDS quilt. It was really interesting to see how so many of these quilts were sewn together into quilts. Furthermore, the material on the quilt was really interesting. There were some quilts that were somber but the large majority of them were very joyful, and comical, bringing out the personality of the person who died. This was especially important because it showed that the people there were of all sexualities, race, religion,… and did not all fall under the AIDS stereotypes. The other thing that I enjoyed while was there was trying to find how to get the free AIDS walk shirt. We literally spent at least fifteen minutes walking through the booths trying to find out how to get the shirts as well as asking people who had them on. Unfortunately we were unsuccessful in getting the shirt, but it was still a fun experience.
There were two main things that surprised me about the event. The first was how large the event was. I never expected there to be more than ten thousand people walk as well as many other people marching. There were so many different people: organizations, schools,… who attended the march. The second thing that surprised me was how joyful the event was. I expected the march to be somber considering the reason people were marching. Instead everyone there was happy, celebrating the lives of all the people who had died of AIDS or were currently HIV positive. That had a huge impact on me because the fact that many of the people who were walking probably have loved ones or know people who are suffering or who have died from AIDS can come to an event like this and celebrate those people’s lives and remember the happy moments, rather than simply mourning them, shows a lot of courage.