West Hollywood, California (November 30, 2007) Beginning at West Hollywood City Hall with a photo exhibition at 5:00 pm, World AIDS Day will be commemorated by the annual candlelight vigil and a celebration of people who have made contributions to the HIV/AIDS community.
Paul Starke Warrior Awards recipients 2006. Photo by John Stewart. |
The commemoration, the Paul Starke Warrior Awards, will be held at Metropolitan Community Church Los Angeles (MCCLA) for the final time, as the church will be moving outside of WeHo in April 2008.
The award ceremony will honor people who have shown outstanding support to those living with HIV/AIDS in West Hollywood.
The photo exhibit is titled “Silence = Death: Los Angeles Activism 1987 - 2007,” starting at 5 p.m. at the West Hollywood City Hall Lobby.
The exhibit was premiered earlier this year in June, and WeHoNews ran the following press release about it.
One of the images from the SILENCE = DEATH: Los Angeles AIDS Activism 1987–2007 photographic exhibit by Chuck Stallard. Photo Copyright © Chuck Stallard |
They stopped the Rose Parade. They shouted down elected officials. They negotiated the building of an AIDS Ward in a public health system that left people with AIDS suffering in hallways due to lack of a dedicated place for them.
They were members of ACT UP.
Commemorating the 20th anniversary of ACT UP/Los Angeles, the exhibition features the work of Chuck Stallard, who documented one of the most dramatic and successful protest groups in recent history.
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) became a national and world-wide movement, with one of its most effective chapters in Los Angeles.
ACT UP/LA's quite effective strategy was to mix angry street activism with hometown media-savvy.
The group was known for its smart graphics and catchy slogans (“He Kills Me” read the caption for a poster of President Ronald Reagan, who failed to act on or mention AIDS in the critical earliest years of the pandemic).
The blessings being given by MCCLA pastor Rev. Neil Thomas at AIDS Day 2005. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
ACT UP worked nationally as well as locally, initiating such federal programs as compassionate access to drugs still under FDA review, and demanding universal healthcare as the first step to responding to AIDS.
With its core of gay male activists, ACT UP formed progressive coalitions to press for a women’s right to choose, fair labor practices, and a diversion of tax dollars from foreign invasions to domestic healthcare.
Silence = Death revives some of the most dramatic moments captured by a photographer never afraid to put his lens in the fray.
Chuck Stallard, a member of ACT UP/LA as well as its photographic chronicler, had access to the calm and the storms of AIDS activism.
Silence = Death Exhibition curator Stuart Timmons, historian and author. |
Because the group had to fight for the attention of mainstream media, and because many of the actions carried out by ACT UP members were crafted to provoke authorities, Stallard's work benefited not from distance but from proximity.
Possessing both the trust of his fellow activists and the fearlessness to step towards charging police instead of away from them, he managed to capture history.
Exhibition curator Stuart Timmons writes about Los Angeles, gay life, and his own imagination. His biography of gay movement founder Harry Hay was a Book of the Month Club selection, and his recent book, Gay L.A., made the Los Angeles Times best-seller list.
At 6:15 the annual Candlelight vigil progresses down Santa Monica Boulevard to the MCCLA Church, where the reception and award ceremony will take place at 7 pm.
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