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The Anniversary of the Red Ribbon

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4 Comments

David Paul Jobling

Read the material and comments - much appreciated as I put a piece together for Australian Broadcasting Commission's current affairs site The Drum - sadly Australian politicians (leaders?) wear many ribbons,but not the red ones these days.

December 2, 2012

Nelson Santos

It's true that many people were involved in the creation of the Red Ribbon, but it was the Visual AIDS Artists Caucus that created the Red Ribbon in 1991. The Visual AIDS Artists Caucus was a group of 12 artists who first meet in April of 1991 and together created the Red Ribbon. The Red Ribbon (know as The Ribbon Project at the time, because it was the first of the awareness ribbons as we now know them today), was designed as a way for anyone to show compassion and support for people living with AIDS and their caretakers. It was created without a copyright, so that anyone could easily create, wear and distribute ribbons (without commercial profit involved). The Visual AIDS Artists Caucus also strongly believed that the individual artists/creators of the Red Ribbon should remain anonymous as individuals and instead to credit the Visual AIDS Artists Caucus group as a whole in the creation of the Red Ribbon Project. To that end, Patrick O'Connell was the Executive Director of Visual AIDS at the time, but was not the individual "creator" of the Red Ribbon. The first group "production" of Red Ribbons were created in "Ribbon-Bees", where many of the same Visual AIDS Artists and additional individuals gathered together to fold and pin ribbons to be distributed. As more request came in, it was encourage to have other groups (including a charity group working with homeless women) to produce the ribbons. Visual AIDS and Broadway Cares/Equity Fight AIDS worked closely together to promotes and distribute the Red Ribbons at the first award ceremonies. Tom Viola was an early champion in getting the ribbons out nationally, and as David above mentioned, it certainly took many dedicated volunteers to "make it all happen" You can read more about the History of the Red Ribbon on Visual AIDS website. http://www.thebody.com/visualaids/current/ribbon_project.html Sincerely, Nelson Santos Associate Director Visual AIDS

June 8, 2011

David Michaels

The articles about the Red Ribbons showing up are not completely factual. Although Patrick at Visual AIDS did come up with the idea - Tom Viola took the ball and ran with it. He and the Equity Fight AIDS staff, started having them mass produced and after a woman named Susan Simons and I, thanks to the help of Dick Clark, got them on the Daytime Emmys, and Ed Asner told the world on TV for the first time what they meant, Tom asked us to take them to the west coast. With a dedicated team of volunteers, we got them on all the major awards shows - they did not just "start showing up." It was always a fight - and a difficult effort, but worth it. After a big struggle, when we got them on the Golden Globes - they then started becoming an international symbol. There are hours of stores to be told about how all this was accomplished, but believe me, it didn't "just happen," and those of us who made it happen are very proud of the accomplishment.

June 3, 2011

Keith

Sorry, but you're wrong. I was present when the red ribbon was 'invented' for AIDS. Actually, it was for what we called ARC which was considered some sort of precursor to AIDS. It started in 1986 in San Francisco as part of the ARC/AIDS Vigil of which I was one of the instigators. A small band of activists chained themselves to the federal building in San Francisco to protest the federal response to AIDS, long before NYC was doing much of anything in terms of activism. A tent camp to support those chained sprang up overnight. The ribbons came about that week, too.

June 2, 2011

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