Hey, y'all, remember this? Well, here's more information on the AIDS Quilt that will be built -- namely, that you can take part!

June 16th, from 11 AM to 10 PM SL Time on Phreak Isle, you'll be able to learn how to build your own panel for the 720-panel AIDS Quilt to be displayed during the official ceremony on the 24th. The event will feature live music, spoken word pieces, and DJs throughout. For more information, contact Nethermind Bliss, or Jase Byrne, who has written an eloquent piece on the Quilt, which I've attached after the jump. I urge you all to at least go visit this event, and participate if you can!

(Thanks, Nether!)

The AIDS Memorial Quilt returns to Second Life.

Jase Byrne, as co-leader at Montmartre hosted the first "Quilting Bee" for Olmy Seraph, founder of Second Names at the Isle de Montmartre in 2004. Now three years later, with Olmy sorely missed, Jase has taken up the torch once again.

On June 24^th, this year's Second Pride festival will open with a dedication of the AIDS Quilt Memorial build, lighting the eternal flame and remembering all those who have fallen in the battle against HIV/AIDS. Currently, there is no fixed location for the Festival grounds; Second Pride has rented 6 sims that will come available on 18 June...then the frenetic building will begin with a completion deadline of 22^nd of June.

Over 100 x 100 square meters of land has been set-aside for the Quilt, room for 720 2x2x2 meter panels. It's surrounded by vaulting cream marble observation walkways, and in the center towering over all, the Eternal Flame. The obelisk at the front of the Memorial, in dignified simplicity is decorated with a plain red ribbon and topped with a quietly overflowing fountain...a symbol of tears, comfort and life.

This quietly grand monument is a contrast to the rainbow hued tents and flashing dance floors that it presides over. HIV/AIDS, once considered limited to specifically defined behaviors, is now a pandemic not only crossing oceans but lines of gender, age, race and sexual preference.

Yearly, in the US alone, 47 people die each day of AIDS. It is the #9 cause of death for African-Americans in the US. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed an estimated 2.4-3.3 million lives-- 570,000 of them were children. The statistics are staggering, yet, so little is heard in the US regarding HIV/AIDS, except from those who believe it to be divine retribution, or the occasional movie of the week. If we turn our attention globally, the grim reality of the disease is far more chilling.

Superstition and fear are the virus' best cover, for cultural stigmata will often prevent people from receiving care or being tested. In South Africa alone, 1 out of every 3 women between the ages of 25 to 35 has HIV/AIDS. Less than 1% of the sexually active urban population in Africa has been tested, and this proportion is even lower in rural populations. In many areas of the world a woman's duty is to fulfill her husbands needs without question. Husbands have beaten and/or abandoned wives thought to be HIV positive.

More horrific still, in many places, is the superstition that sex with a virgin will "cleanse" a man who has the disease placing girls as young as 8years old in mortal danger of assault and infection.

Education, enlightenment and support both financial and social of medical advances will keep the death toll from rising. Activism is the only true cure. To be a voice, for those who would be made voiceless by fears.

The AIDS Quilt is a monument to those who now rest after the long tiring fight against HIV/AIDS. Their battleground was their own bodies. For those of us they leave behind, the battleground is the world. HIV/AIDS is already there, entrenched and fighting to survive and it has been at war with us a very long time.

The first serological proof of AIDS' existence dates back to 1959. Since it was first recognized in 1981 til 2006 over 25 million lives have been claimed worldwide. By 2021 90 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa alone will be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.

The Quilt can give us comfort in our grief...but let us not be comfortable in our grief. Comfortable people do not cry out for change. A better memorial to those we have lost, would be a day no lives are lost to AIDS at all.

Use your power to reach the world, use Second Life to send a message that you have not forgotten nor will you let the fight go on in silence.

Peace.....