Recorded in March, Daithi remembers marching on Washington in this amazing Video Diary.

Good morning, it’s Sunday March 24th, 2020 and I want to remember two of the national marches on Washington that I went to in support of LGBT rights, gay rights.

The first one was in October of 1987 and I was in Chicago and that was the second large, national march on Washington. There have been, the first historic one was in 1979. The one in 1987 was especially focused on, among other things, the AIDS epidemic that was devastating the gay communities across the United States. And so I remember I was working in Chicago, and I waited until the last minute really to make the decision to go. I knew that there were buses that were leaving from a parking lot on the north side of Chicago not far from where I lived. And I made the decision on a Friday, I guess it was and I went up and I bought a bus ticket for the march. I didn’t know where I was going to stay and I shared that with people on the bus and this one guy said ‘Oh, I’ve got a place to stay, you’re welcome to stay with us in Washington’. ‘OK’.

So, it was wonderful in being a part of a quarter of a million people or more. And I remember that it was at that march where they unfolded the debut of the AIDS memorial quilt which was so powerful. All of those beautiful memorials to men and women who had passed away from AIDS and HIV. My friend John’s panel will join them. He was still living in 1987 but would later pass away. His beautiful quilt panel is part of, I think it’s archived in San Francisco now.

Then there was a second march, or an additional march, in 1993 that I went to. And that one, I didn’t take a bus, I drove with my friends Michael and Wendy, and there was a second car that had some other friends of Michael’s in it. And I remember at one point, on the Pennsylvania turnpike, or wherever it was that we were driving on the way to Chicago, Michael decided that he wanted the bag of pepper charm cookies that were in the other car. So he honked for the car to come up beside him on the toll way as we’re driving at a very high rate of speed and they rolled down the windows and the were passing the cookies back to Michael. And I just knew that the two cars were going to touch and flip over and we were all going to die on our way and I’m screaming, and Michael turns to me and says ‘Oh, David you’re so fear based’. I was furious. Anyway, so there was that.

And then we got to Washington and we were staying at some hotel in Lafayette Square I think. I mean the whole city was turning gay. I mean for the big march that would culminate, I think, on a Sunday. You could feel the energy everywhere you went, not just in Lafayette Square or Dupont Circle, one of the big gay neighbourhoods in DC and all. And I remember that at one night, the night before there was a big rally in Dupont Circle, and Michael stood up on a bench and shouted ‘I just want a top man’. And then he steps down off the bench and these guys started coming up to him. ‘Hi, I’m Rick’, ‘Hi, I’m John’, just goes to show the value of putting it out there into the universe and all.

And then the day of the march we went to, I think it’s in Washington DC there’s a subway and the entrance to the subway, I think it’s at the national zoo, and it’s a very, very long escalator, I mean down into the DC’s subway system. And we’re on the down escalator and it’s very crowded, people all over assembling for the march, and Michael, from the escalator, he shouts and he points ‘Look there’s Connie Chung’. There was no Connie Chung and everybody looks. And the guy behind Michael taps him on the shoulder and says ‘You’re bad’. But that was Michael. We had a wonderful time at that march on Washington.

So those are my memories.

Be fabulous.