San Francisco AIDS Walk sees fall-off in attendance
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sunday morning, people gathered for the 38th annual AIDS Walk in San Francisco but something was missing this year -- the crowds. With many effective HIV treatment options available, AIDS has fallen out of public view and participation in the walk has declined. Organizers say that's not such a bad thing.
Each year a tiny portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is unfurled so people attending the AIDS Walk understand why they're really there. This was the first time Ayden Shupe had seen the panel for his uncle Donald who died in 1988 when Ayden was only 3 years old.
"I was so lost in my years coming up -- when I came out -- and was just discovering myself because I didn't have anyone that I knew like me," Ayden said. "I discovered why he died and that we were the same. It was just losing that mentorship and that happened for a lot of people. We lost a big chunk of generational knowledge and people that, you know, are no longer around."
AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was and Gert McMullin, who has been at the walk since the beginning, remembers what it used to look like when people filled the meadow in Golden Gate Park.
"Oh my god, you wouldn't be able to see any grass between these people, there were so many people here," she said. "But that's, you know -- in its heyday in the '90s. It was just horrific in the city and everybody came out to walk."
At the event in 2017, there were 20,000 walkers. On Sunday, about 2,000. Kelly Rivera-Hart said he is alive because of the support programs the AIDS Walk has funded over the years. Now, he said, older HIV patients are suffering organ damage from early experimental therapies but he understands that less urgency in the public will mean less participation in the walk.
"But it's still here and I'm moved," Rivera-Hart said. "I'm encouraged that people are still showing up because, like I said, if there weren't HIV services, I wouldn't be here."
Sunday's walk still raised nearly a million dollars, with much of it coming from organized, corporate donations. Walker Troy Brunet was able to generate more than $3,000 in donations all by himself.
"It feels like something ... it matters," he said. "And it makes a difference and I'm just grateful that people are still willing to participate."
S.F. AIDS Walk money goes for life support programs, not medical research but organizers point out that keeping patients alive longer allowed scientists to gather the information they needed to create medical breakthroughs. Event director Bert Champagne said he actually looks forward to the day his job will be obsolete.
"I'm hoping for that day. I would like to retire," he said. "This is the ... 38th AIDS Walk and I'm committed to 40 so, I hope, that's the last one."