Philadelphia Activist Creates a Wiki for Gay Men Who Have Died from HIV/AIDS

In Philadelphia's LGBTQ community, few men have had as expansive of involvement and engagement as Chris Bartlett. A long-time activist, historian, researcher, and educator, the 43-year-old has spent a lifetime working with the divergent and often fragmented facets of Philadelphia's unique rainbow coalition. While some leaders have worked only within their community, Bartlett has orbited through all of them: the African-American, the Latino, the Asian, the young, the old, the queer, the straight, the gay, the rich and the poor.

"There are few people who have been so involved in local and national LGBTQ movements as Chris," said Dan Giacobbe, board member of the Delaware Valley Legacy Fund, where Bartlett serves as interim co-Executive Director. "Many of us have looked to him to build bridges that we couldn't, to access communities and people who we didn't even know. He's remarkably gifted at the art of making positive and emotive connections."

Now, Bartlett is striving to bring attention to another nearly forgotten group, this one his most personal and possibly the most ethereal: the 4600 gay men in Philadelphia who died from AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Imagine who was lost," says Bartlett. "All the writers, activists, politicians, hustlers, journalists, bartenders, friends, family, boyfriends...A generation of thinkers and fighters and lovers, all gone to HIV/AIDS. I don't want us to lose their efforts and contributions."

There is over 23 thousand cases of AIDS in the Philadelphia region, with at least 16,000 people living with HIV or AIDS in the city itself. Nearly 1,400 more Philadelphians are infected each year. For a disease once dubbed the "gay plague", more than half of the new infections are due to heterosexual contact, many are African-American women. But, during the 1980s/90s, AIDS was primarily just the scourge of the gay community. This necessitated that the battle to beat the disease lay solely with some devout and determined activists.

"It was a climate of urgency and immediacy, energy and focus," says Bartlett. "All of us involved made a pact to beat the AIDS epidemic. That was our goal."

Many of the initial activists, those who stood as determined ACT-UP members or the forgotten warriors who protested and waged David-versus-Goliath battles against drug companies or government institutions; many of those passed away with their histories cut too short and their voices silenced to early.

"The quote goes something like...'Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it," says Bartlett. "It is a wise quote. Unless you steadily attend to passing information along to other generations, things will be forgotten. Especially painful things, we don't necessarily feel like talking about the battle with AIDS or the 80s over a few beers at the gay pub. These are not the things you want to talk about on a Saturday night. I don't think the gay community has really ever addressed what happened in the past anyway, and AIDS is still an issue worth being passionate about.""

Bartlett, a social media maven who's twitter profile - @harveymilk - reaches tens of thousands, decided to use the burgeoning world of web 2.0 to serve the two-fold purpose of education and memorialization. He decided to create a social networking site for the dead.

Bartlett's site, The Gay History Wiki: gayhistory.wikispaces.com has the unique goal of reclaiming the lives of thousands who died during a grim era, and connecting the fallen to one another as well as to a "living" community. With generic graphics and simple links, the site focuses on content over the pop-and-pow features found on Facebook. The simple look and feel allow users to focus on the faces of those who fought, and fell, to AIDS.

"The stories of the generation before us are always important to know," said Evan Urbania, a 29 year-old social media enthusiast. "HIV and AIDS during the 80s/90s impacted our community's social constructs, cultural institutions, businesses and our leadership. As someone who was not directly affected by HIV/AIDS, I find that these stories empowered me to be more involved in all aspects of our community - not just health and AIDS activism."

The effect on Urbania is exactly what Bartlett was hoping for.

"That is the purpose - for the young gay man in his twenties to read the story of someone twenty years ago who possibly died in their twenties - and to see parallels and to understand where our community was and how we got where we are today," said Bartlett. "There is a real hunger for any information from these decades. People want to connect, to learn, and to see that they can make the same amount of difference."

Bartlett also hopes that the wiki can help with "the diffusion of energy" around the battle against HIV/AIDS. The success of antiretroviral drugs in rendering AIDS a manageable disease, greater societal acceptance, and increased community involvement have all worked to help those afflicted with HIV/AIDS live longer and healthier lives. This "naturalization" of AIDS occurred as generations indoctrinated with lessons of abstinence and safer sex practice lost touch with a time when AIDS was stigmatized as a "gay plague." To a contemporary 25-year-old, it might seem improbable that there was ever an era when gays lost handfuls of friends and loved ones to the disease.

The wiki itself is very simple to use and navigate. Like popular wikipedia, friends and family members of the deceased are welcome to add to each man's wiki "wall" with pictures, anecdotes, and vital information about those lost. Beginning in 2005, Bartlett began assembling the names of every gay male Philadelphian who died after being diagnosed with H.I.V. or AIDS, searching obituaries and the Names Project registry, inquiring with community leaders, scanning records of social clubs and the rosters at gay-friendly churches. Bartlett built a database on wikispaces.com, the free portal that invites editorial interventions, and by the end of last summer was ready to unveil his project to the world. So far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

"This wiki project creates a vital bridge between the living and their communal ancestors in a culture where ancestors, their stories, their triumphs and failures, and what we might learn from them are often forgotten," said social media enthusiast, actor, activist and blogger James "Rudy" Flesher. "This is especially important in queer communities where our families are largely chosen and so many of the gay men who died of AIDS represent a passive genocide where people regarded as second class citizens received substandard care, minimal research money and a President who refused to acknowledge the crisis. "

Bartlett, while the originator, wants complete community involvement; and he hopes the site grows organically beyond it's current Philadelphia region border - to encompass larger and larger communities.

"The power of the wiki is that this is going to emerge from the collective users. I won't be censoring the site, I won't be changing things. I want people to post their memories and their personal thoughts. I would like the whole picture on each and everyone."

While the project is slowly building involvement from a nationwide group of users, it remains a personal endeavor to Bartlett.

"I have cried numerous times. Often the things that bring up my emotions the most are stories of everyday people and what was lost when they died. It was also heartbreaking to really get my head around the numbers. That number is incredibly moving...Most gay men don't' realize how many we lost.

Currently, the wiki features about 700 deceased gay men out of the established 4600 who passed away. Bartlett believes it will be an unrealistic goal to believe that they will ever get all the men.

"Many were under the radar screen. A significant number of them we will never know who were they were, and that to me is very sad..."