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CHS Pics | Warming up for the 30th year of Seattle’s End AIDS Walk


Saturday morning in Volunteer Park, there weren’t many who could hold their hand up to say, yes, I was there 30 years ago for the first walk against AIDS in Seattle. Mayor Ed Murray was one of the few.

“30 years ago during the first walk, I was here — which makes me so much older than everybody else here,” Murray said. “But 30 years ago when I walked, nobody was there responding for helping those suffering from HIV/AIDS. As young gay men, we were isolated, and we were scared.”

That year, organizers say a can was passed around to collect donations for the cause. The first year’s total? $42.

Seattle’s 30th annual, slightly rebranded End AIDS Walk started with a morning of reflection before a Sir Mix-a-Lot-inspired warm-up. CHS reported on Lifelong’s transition over the years from the fight to provide comfort to the fight for health and a cure.

Seattle’s AIDS Walk reaches 30 years with health for the living and hope for a cure

State Senator Jamie Pedersen took his time at the mic to remind everybody how much younger than Murray he is — Pedersen said he was a senior in high school the year of Seattle’s first AIDS walk. He also said he came out to his girlfriend that year and had to experience her mother’s warning to stay away from him because of the fear of AIDS at the time. Pedersen said around the 10th AIDS walk, he joined the Seattle Men’s Chorus in a time when the group would still place a poinsettia during the walk’s opening ceremony for each member who had passed during the year. It’s a part of the walk’s ceremony that has thankfully been left behind.

“Here we are in 2016 and the end is in sight,” Pedersen said.

“We are going to see a day when we will have no new cases.”

Murray said the transition of Lifelong and the fight against AIDS from an emphasis on caregiving and compassion to an emphasis on lobbying and fighting for a cure has marked the changes with Seattle’s walk over the past three decades. “We got there because year after year, we walked,” Murray said.

“We will walk as we have walked for 30 years, until there is no one who is infected, no one who is ill, no one who is dying in Seattle or Africa or anywhere else on the globe. Thank you for your willingness to walk again and again and again.”

Organizers said this year’s walk had raised $231,000, around 93% of the 2016 goal. You can still give at lifelong.org.

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Tad Cook
7 years ago

Actually, the 30th annual was in 2015. This year is the 31st, assuming the 1st one was in 1986. Why? Because 1st+30yrs=31st. To say this is the 30th means that you do not count the first one.