There is something terrifying about the speed at which people forget a genocide that swept the globe and wiped away a generation. Perhaps it is the nature of trauma itself; once the emergency lets up, the mind just wants to forget. You want to move on, you want to breathe, you want to live—because so many no longer do and there’s no way to make sense of it. Why him? Why her? Why not me? These questions cannot be answered in the moment. We simply need to be.

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In 1981, the public reports began to hit the United States. A new disease was ravaging immune systems, causing violent, early deaths—but what was it? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control did not have a name; they referred to it by the various manifestations the virus took in those grueling early days. The CDC thought they were clever in calling it “the 4H disease,” since the syndrome was most commonly observed in heroin users, male homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. But that failed miserably. Not only was it stigmatizing already marginalized groups but it was steeped in ignorance.

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