Former Seattle City Councilmember and AIDS Memorial Pathway champion Tom Rasmussen is putting out a call for volunteers to help with a community clean-up next week:

We are seeking volunteers to help install new plants, and carry out general weeding and cleanup and care around the AIDS Memorial Pathway (the AMP) located at the north end of Cal Anderson Park. The event will be on Tuesday May 6th from 10:00 AM to Noon. Tools and other supplies will be provided by the Seattle Park Department

The pathway’s mix of art, history, and activism connects the north end of Cal Anderson Park and the plaza above Capitol Hill Station.

In 2015, Rasmussen, the first openly gay man on Seattle’s City Council, joined Leonard Garfield, executive director of the Museum of History & Industry, and community volunteer Michele Hasson in convening a group of stakeholders to assess interest in a memorial to recognize those lost during the AIDS crisis.

The $2.9 million public-private pathway project was powered by developer Gerding Edlen, Sound Transit, SDOT, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and Seattle Parks and Recreation along with major support from community fundraising.

Dedicated in the summer of 2021, the pathway’s centerpiece rises in the plaza above Capitol Hill Station and elegantly incorporates a large block full of transit system utilities. Artist Christopher Paul Jordan’s andimgonnamisseverybody is a giant X made from speakers, a 20 foot by 20 foot structure, designed by the artist to represent X as a positive symbol turned on its axis to erode the perceived binary between HIV positive and HIV negative people and symbolizing a solidarity between the two. Jordan told CHS after his selection that “the general attitude that a lot of folks have is, ‘Well it doesn’t really affect me, I’m negative.’ There’s a respectability culture around HIV negative status that sees itself as separate from the crisis, as some people have access to healthcare and support they need.”

The We’re Already Here installation from design firm Civilization has added colorful signs to the area around the station development with messages based on research of messages from “collective action” — protests, demonstrations, rallies, and campaigns — from activism around the HIV/AIDS crisis.

And in Cal Anderson, the Ribbon of Light works were created as a “quiet space for communal mourning and personal contemplation” along the pathway.

The pathway is now part of the City of Seattle’s art collection.

Friday, meanwhile, is the birthday of the park’s namesake. Cal Anderson, the state’s first openly gay legislator, died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 47 in 1995.

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