On the last day of the fall semester, under a beautiful Southern California winter blue sky, the USC community gathered to honor the 35th annual World AIDS Day on December 1. The AIDS Quilt Memorial and Life Celebration, a university-wide social justice and health equity event, included guest speakers, performers and original panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt stretched across the lawn of McCarthy Quad in the heart of the USC campus.

College-age Americans today often know little about the AIDS epidemic that began in the 1980s, or the history of social activism with regard to health equity for those affected by HIV and AIDS, largely the LGBTQ+ population in the U.S. Mere acknowledgement that an epidemic was occurring took most of the decade before resources, treatment and care for those it impacted began.

Social workers have always been a part of the AIDS story, from those who cared for the earliest patients at San Francisco General Hospital to prominent social activism groups such as ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), refusing to stay quiet in the face of a clear bias in health equity. Sara Schwartz, associate teaching professor at USC Social Work, has been active in HIV/AIDS community work for nearly 30 years. As a board member of the National AIDS Memorial, stewards of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, Schwartz was instrumental in arranging for panels from the quilt to be brought down from San Francisco to USC for the event. Additionally, she helped curate the selection of panels to share, specifically choosing panels that commemorate individuals lost to AIDS that the younger generation would recognize or identify with, including musician Freddie Mercury, artist Keith Haring, teenager and hemophilia patient Ryan White, as well as several USC Trojans.

“There’s a quote from Mark Twain that says history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” Schwartz said. “I think that we need to do a better job of educating our students about the history of social action and how AIDS activism fits within it as a response from an extremely marginalized community that was treated terribly by society and the government. For example, much of the AIDS social action in the 1980s was based on Martin Luther King's method of social organization. Students should know about what has been done in the past and what's worked and what hasn't worked, so they are ready for what comes next.”

In addition to USC Social Work, the event was sponsored by USC Davis School of Gerontology, USC Price School of Public Policy, USC Libraries, USC Lambda LGBT Alumni Association, USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health, USC Research and Innovation and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who provided free HIV and STD testing. A program included remarks by Cheryl Barrit, executive director of the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV, and USC Trustee Amy Ross, vice chair of USC’s Health System Board. Attendees also enjoyed appearances by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Among the core planners of the event was Gerontology Associate Professor Paul Nash, whose research focuses on ageism, stigma and the health inequity experienced by older adults from minority communities, specifically those living with HIV. "Research indicates that about six percent of college students are living with HIV, but about two-thirds have never been tested, so that is likely an underestimation," Nash said. "Today, we are encouraging everyone here to get tested and help break the stigma and fear associated with testing." 

The program included a tradition which has its origins in the earliest days of the quilt as the “NAMES Project,” recognizing the power of speaking an individual’s name as a form of social action. Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence read the names of each person commemorated by the quilt panels on display. 

Community folk art as a tool for social action

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the largest piece of community folk art in the world, compromised of nearly 50,000 individual panels honoring the lives of over 110,000 people who have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and weighs an estimated 54 tons. First displayed in 1987 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, each panel measures three by six feet, the approximate size of a grave, creating a literal representation of lives lost to AIDS at a time when little was being done for the tens of thousands of people dying from the disease. Today, the quilt remains a living memorial, with new panels added every month as AIDS continues to claim lives worldwide.  The global death toll has reached 40 million people since 1981.

While medical advances in recent years have changed an HIV diagnosis to no longer being an automatic death sentence, there still remains no cure. Approximately 39 million people are living with AIDS worldwide today, with a disproportionate number of those representing marginalized groups who have unequal access to treatment or resources for medical care, both in the U.S. and around the world.

Steve Gratwick, adjunct lecturer at USC Social Work who helped organize the event for World AIDS Day, teaches a course on LGBTQ2SIA+ psychological, social and political issues. He noted the important role that social work has played in the history of AIDS.

“Social workers are and were central and essential to the response early on,” Gratwick said. “AIDS is not something you can treat and respond to through prescriptions and medical care alone – you need that social work lens.”

As AIDS becomes more treatable, awareness of the disease and a focus on prevention has decreased. As a result, new HIV cases have actually increased in recent years, particularly among young adults and people of color. The younger generation tend to only associate AIDS with gay men or Africa and think it will not affect them if they do not fit into one of those two categories. Yet, the CDC reports that male-to-male sexual contact was responsible for just 67 percent of transmission in new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. in 2021, while 22 percent was through heterosexual contact.  College-aged populations often have no idea what their HIV status is.

For John Blosnich, assistant professor and director of the Center for LGBTQ+ Health Equity, while progress made with HIV is remarkable, he still reflects on feelings of sadness and anger for the millions who were shunned and failed by multiple local, state and federal systems for decades due to homophobia, racism and classism.

“It's hard to consider that the public health disaster that HIV ultimately became could have had a much different trajectory [if not for rampant discrimination], which is a difficult thought experiment to sit with,” Blosnich said. “I think the quilt reminds us that communities can come together -- even in times of intense grief and fear -- to advocate for change, honor legacy, and support each other through connection, even if that connection starts at a place of loss.” 

 Schwartz teaches a unit about the quilt as part of her Visual Social Work course, which blends cross-disciplinary strategies from social work, anthropology and visual arts to understand and communicate about complex social justice issues.

“People tend to focus on the quilt as folk art and forget that this is actually a form of social action,” Schwartz said. “Social action is a key part of social work and students need to know about this history. These panels were made to lay down on the Washington D.C. mall to demand a response from the government to HIV and AIDS. My hope is that students will become familiar with this history, and the history of other movements and social action, and to understand that the quilt is just one story and there are many others.”