Take the Northwest AIDS Foundation's (NWAF) posters for their annual AIDS Walk. A few years ago, these posters featured happy people in sneakers carrying balloons and walking in the sunshine. The message? "Come to the AIDS Walk! It's fun!" This year, to promote the September 24 walk at Seattle Center, unsmiling people stared out from dark-bordered posters. A white guy practically glowered out of one version. "I will walk because AIDS is still a crisis. Period. Why will you walk?" A concerned little girl stared out of another. "I will walk because I care about Uncle Rod. Why will you walk?" The message? "We're walking because we're thoughtful and serious and we care. If you're not walking, you're a heartless asshole."
This year's AIDS Walk posters were more aggressive than last year's poster. The poster for the '99 AIDS Walk featured a tattered red ribbon over a plaintive "Remember me?" Pathetic and whiny, "Remember me?" begged you to come back to the walk. Hostile and accusatory, "Why will you walk?" not only assumed you would walk--a pretty big assumption, as it turns out--it implied that anyone who wasn't walking didn't care about poor old Uncle Rod (and all the little girls who love him), or thinks AIDS isn't a crisis anymore (something even the heads of local AIDS agencies have conceded). But neither pathetic nor hostile approaches seemed to work. While 16,000 walkers raised $1.4 million back in 1995 (happy poster), 8,000 walkers raised $970,000 last year (pathetic poster), and this year's hostile posters motivated only 7,000 people to raise $700,000. At the rate the walk is shrinking, NWAF will start losing money on it in three years.
With support for the AIDS Walk dropping every year for five years in a row, the question NWAF needs to ask people is why they're not walking. It's a question NWAF probably doesn't want to ask (the foundation may not like what it hears), so as a community service I headed up to Broadway on Sunday morning. NWAF's offices are on Broadway, and posters, banners, and brochures for the AIDS Walk were everywhere. While people who think AIDS is still a crisis walked around Seattle Center, I asked people in cafes, on street corners, and restaurants to finish this phrase....
PHOTOS BY
Shawna Murphy
Cafe Septieme
"There are so many of these walk things, who can do them all? I'm not a walk-type person myself."
Aubree Holliman and Kim LeClair
Broadway & John
"We moved today."
Bryce Scott
Ileen's Sports Bar
"It's heterosexuals who have to get in tune with the whole HIV thing. I've walked before, but now they're the ones who need to educate themselves in terms of what's going on. Heterosexuals need to start putting something into it; we've done it for 15 years. It's their turn."
Danny Weichel
Broadway New American Grill
"I donate to AIDS groups when tax time rolls around."
Noemi Chaparro
and Judith Laxer
Broadway & Thomas
"I work 90 percent of my life. On Sunday, I wanna go have my breakfast and chill out. I guess I'm a lazy sort of lesbian."--Judith "I'm concerned about other things. I think a lot of people are. You see more pink ribbons around for breast cancer these days than you do red ribbons for AIDS."--Noemi
William
Vivace
"AIDS is something that people do to themselves. I'd rather spend my money and energy on cancer or something that people don't put themselves at risk for by making bad choices with sex or drugs. Don't take my picture. I have a lot of gay friends and I don't want to offend them."
Damian Pisanelli
Vivace
"I forgot."
Dennis Thompson
Manray
"I don't like hitting people up for money. I used to do the AIDS Walk in Salt Lake City, but I haven't done it here. There are people in my office who do it, and I always contribute. There are people who think it's not such a crisis anymore, but I still think it's important. But people are kind of weary of it."
William Dickie
Manray
"I thought I was going to be out of town."
Charlie Semple
Caffe Vita
"It didn't occur to me that it was this weekend. I'm a nurse, and I see a lot fewer AIDS patients than I used to, which is a wonderful thing. But not having AIDS patients around, no one was there to remind me of it."
Janna Westover
Caffe Vita
"I did the Race for the Cure instead, for breast cancer.... I didn't hear anyone talking about the walk this year."
Kenneth Mitchell
Caffe Vita
"I'm a nurse at Harborview. I've done testing at bathhouses, volunteered time for AIDS research, and worked with Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York. I feel like I've done enough, and I feel like I don't need to do walks. I'm making a significant contribution just doing what I'm doing. And with things like walks, I don't have control over where the money goes. Actually doing something, physically doing something, seems more important to me than raising money and giving it to an organization and not knowing where that money is going."
