Even as we are touched by the poignancy of the Names Project-AIDS Memorial Quilt, it is a reminder of how public art influences public policy. It is also a further reminder of the way in which the AIDS crisis and issues of social justice are inextricably intertwined. The voices of intolerance arrayed against the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women's movement and gay rights are the same voices restricting the civil liberties of people with AIDS. For me the rights of these groups are all connected threads that weave the fabric of a much larger quilt. That of a just society.

Progress in the Federal response to the AIDS epidemic has stalled in recent months. Even as new evidence indicates that globally the number of people infected with the virus is far larger than originally believed and growing rapidly. This further underscores the overwhelming need to control. Unfortunately large segments of some populations do not have access to recent therapeutic advances. Blacks and Latinos continue to be disproportionately affected by the virus. On average people with HIV infection in the US are poorer today than they were ten years ago. HIV continues to increase among women and people of color. Lack of affordable, adequate housing has become a crisis within the larger crisis of the AIDS epidemic, one that is being played out within a continuing climate of racism and homophobia.

Against this setting I would like to share with you a rich and timeless quote that may be the defining metaphor of our time. This appeared in a book entitled "Understanding the Nature of Poverty in Urban America":1

"Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a neighborhood. Its bad effects cannot be escaped by the rich. When poverty produces outbreaks of virulent infectious disease, as it always does sooner or later, the rich catch the disease and see their children die of it. When it produces crime and violence the rich go in fear of both, and are put to a good deal of expense to protect their persons and property. When it produces bad manners and bad language the children of the rich pick them up no matter how carefully they are secluded; and such seclusion does them more harm than good. . . The old notion that people can "keep themselves to themselves" and not be touched by what is happening to their neighbors, or even to the people who live a hundred miles off, is a most dangerous mistake . . . though the rich end of town can avoid living with the poor end, it cannot avoid dying with it when the plague comes."

It may surprise you to learn that this is not a contemporary quote about the AIDS crisis but rather underscores a broader concept of social justice written nearly three-quarters of a century ago by the English playwright George Bernard Shaw.

As recent news reports have indicated, the epidemic's landscape has radically shifted. New and expensive drug cocktails of unknown staying power have brought a measure of relief and considerable hope to some AIDS patients. Simultaneously, the virus is exploding among populations in both America and developing nations that are beyond the reach of the old AIDS treatments and preventive measures, let alone any expensive new ones. As the center of gravity of this debate shifts, we must be mindful of fault lines of race, class and wealth. We must not retreat to our individual islands of self-interest. In the context of social justice we will not be liberated until all are cured.

1 - James Jennings, "Understanding the Nature of Poverty in Urban America", Prepared under the auspices of the William Monroe Trotter Institute, the University of Massachusetts at Boston. In cooperation with the Boston Foundation's Persistant Poverty Project."

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