By Laura Whitehorn (Senior Editor, POZ)
This coming July, when I stand in Washington, DC, in the presence of the enormous monument that is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, I will be looking for one panel in particular. That will be the panel I worked on while incarcerated in a high security federal prison for women in north Florida.
It was 1993--three years before the advent of effective HIV combo therapy--and our AIDS education and support group wanted to make a panel, using our grief and rage to fuel our very uneven artistic and sewing skills. We had lost so many family and friends, both inside the walls and beyond. For the sister prisoners we had lost--women whom we had held and tried to comfort as they suffered not only painful deaths but also the loneliness of rejection by family and the hatred of prison officials--we wanted their names to be remembered, their lives recognized. And who besides prisoners would stitch into collective memory the names of our incarcerated sisters--already nameless and faceless to the larger society? We also wanted to honor the family and friends outside prison who had died, as we had not been able to do with our presence during their passing. We wept as we listed the names, sometimes admitting for the first time aloud that a relative had been hit by this seemingly relentless plague.
So we embarked on a long, difficult process of negotiating with prison authorities to get permission to obtain mail-order sewing supplies--and to use them (think: scissors!). We recruited other women in the prison to join and work with us. We talked about our lost ones and how our AIDS work helped to heal us. We talked about how we could reach through the bars to the AIDS activist community outside, even though we couldn't reach to touch the people we loved as they sickened and died in our communities at home.
Most powerfully, we were able to paint onto our panel the names of the women who had died behind bars at a time when most people didn't know or wouldn't admit that women were contracting and dying from HIV/AIDS. It was still a time when activists on the outside wore T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, "Say it: Women Get AIDS," because otherwise most people did not know.
Here is what we created, with us posing in front of it:
Here's a closeup of the panel:
What is most remarkable about the panel, I think, is that it is far from the only one produced in a prison. I remember vividly how grateful I was to learn that women in another prison had made a panel, and that they had added the name of my dear friend who had recently died, and whom I was mourning. I saw her name when I received a photo of that panel: "Pam/Amirah." When we made our panel, Amirah was still alive.
When you view the Quilt in DC this summer, as I hope you will, please look for the panels made inside prison walls. And please know that many members of the HIV/AIDS community, both positive and negative, remain among the more than 2.4 million women and men now incarcerated in these United States. They are fighting alongside us as we march, shout and tweet to end stigma, to cure HIV/AIDS and to stop adding names to our memorials.
For more about Quilt in the Capital, click here.
This coming July, when I stand in Washington, DC, in the presence of the enormous monument that is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, I will be looking for one panel in particular. That will be the panel I worked on while incarcerated in a high security federal prison for women in north Florida.
It was 1993--three years before the advent of effective HIV combo therapy--and our AIDS education and support group wanted to make a panel, using our grief and rage to fuel our very uneven artistic and sewing skills. We had lost so many family and friends, both inside the walls and beyond. For the sister prisoners we had lost--women whom we had held and tried to comfort as they suffered not only painful deaths but also the loneliness of rejection by family and the hatred of prison officials--we wanted their names to be remembered, their lives recognized. And who besides prisoners would stitch into collective memory the names of our incarcerated sisters--already nameless and faceless to the larger society? We also wanted to honor the family and friends outside prison who had died, as we had not been able to do with our presence during their passing. We wept as we listed the names, sometimes admitting for the first time aloud that a relative had been hit by this seemingly relentless plague.
So we embarked on a long, difficult process of negotiating with prison authorities to get permission to obtain mail-order sewing supplies--and to use them (think: scissors!). We recruited other women in the prison to join and work with us. We talked about our lost ones and how our AIDS work helped to heal us. We talked about how we could reach through the bars to the AIDS activist community outside, even though we couldn't reach to touch the people we loved as they sickened and died in our communities at home.
Most powerfully, we were able to paint onto our panel the names of the women who had died behind bars at a time when most people didn't know or wouldn't admit that women were contracting and dying from HIV/AIDS. It was still a time when activists on the outside wore T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, "Say it: Women Get AIDS," because otherwise most people did not know.
Here is what we created, with us posing in front of it:
Here's a closeup of the panel:
What is most remarkable about the panel, I think, is that it is far from the only one produced in a prison. I remember vividly how grateful I was to learn that women in another prison had made a panel, and that they had added the name of my dear friend who had recently died, and whom I was mourning. I saw her name when I received a photo of that panel: "Pam/Amirah." When we made our panel, Amirah was still alive.
When you view the Quilt in DC this summer, as I hope you will, please look for the panels made inside prison walls. And please know that many members of the HIV/AIDS community, both positive and negative, remain among the more than 2.4 million women and men now incarcerated in these United States. They are fighting alongside us as we march, shout and tweet to end stigma, to cure HIV/AIDS and to stop adding names to our memorials.
For more about Quilt in the Capital, click here.
I love this story: moving, insightful. Books could be (but aren't) written about HIV/AIDS in prison. This may be an important beginning to getting stories like this out! More, please.
And thank you!
This really hit home as I was there when this Quilt Panel was dedicated at the Prison. I worked for BASIC in Panama City, Florida and we provided HIV education and outreach support services to the Women's prison in Marianna at the time. The one thing Laura didn't mention was that these wonderful ladies also held an AIDS Walk inside the prison as a fundraiser for BASIC and raised over $2000 by having their friends and family send in pledges to sponsor them in the walk. It was an experince that had a lasting impact on me. I have many pictures of this quilt panel. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Reading your blog takes me back to the Federal Medical prison in Lexington, Kentucky where I was granted the privilege of knowing so many women living and dying with this disease. Their faces came sweeping before me in your words and I remember their creative spirit, courageous presence, love for their family and the way life was embraed in all its fullness. It was such an amazing gift to know them and their names will be forever etched on my heart.
I was able to bear witness to this courageous and beautiful project from afar because I am a friend of Laura's and was regularly visiting her in prison during this period. Though our friendship went back many years, in the early 90's I had recently started to work full-time as a physician at a facility for people with AIDS in NYC, now called HELP/PSI. The Yokahama International AIDS Conference was the first conference I attended in 1994. I heard Jonathan Mann talk about how combatting the international HIV epidemic could never be separated from the struggle for human rights. There, in the conference space, was this beautiful memorial quilt laid out. I walked around and around until I found the panel above. I wept then and I wept now as I read Laura's beautiful piece.
Thank you for this beautiful and informative tribute.
Many people on the outside don't understand or seem to want to accept the humanity of all those locked up in U.S. prisons. If people understood, they wouldn't be able to bear knowing how many people are incarcerated right now. Today I saw a photo of a little kid being fingerprinted after being arrested, and the comments under the photo said he probably deserved it. Testimonials and remembrances like this one about creating an AIDS memorial quilt panel behind bars are so powerful, I think powerful enough to break through the lies and stigma about people in prison.