“Of course I know he’s not here,” said Rick Garcia as he stood outside the mayor’s office on the fifth floor of City Hall. He was wearing a dapper
Having said that, Garcia took the plaque under his arm and marched into the mayor’s reception area. “I’d like to see the mayor,” he said. The security guard, who had already told Garcia the mayor was across the street at the State of Illinois building announcing the third-airport agreement, barely looked up. “You’ll need an appointment,” he said.
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The next opportunity was a mere hour later, when the mayor would present Sotomayor’s award during the annual Commission on Human Relations luncheon at the Palmer House hotel. Garcia had been a friend of Sotomayor’s. He had demonstrated and gotten arrested with him. And he just couldn’t stomach the mayor’s recent actions.
Gritting his teeth, he stood out in the windy cold with the 30 other demonstrators, listening to Alderman Helen Shiller calling on the mayor to work with her for more AIDS funding. Behind Shiller, members of ACT UP’s newest caucus, PISD (People with Immune System Deficiencies), held up a banner. PISD members were distinguished by white headbands with their acronym in black marker.
Garcia listened in disgust. “I’m furious,” he said. “But I’m not going to lose it here, not here.”
Not far from the ballroom, Mayor Daley and his press secretary, Avis LaVelle, were greeting special guests in a separate reception area. Daley, fresh from his third-airport announcement, was buoyant. He shrugged when he was told that Sotomayor’s friends were going to disrupt his speech.
By now, McPherson had been wheeled up to the front of the room by his friend Mark Schoofs. “If you want to honor Danny,” he said, “increase the AIDS budget. Pass Helen Shiller’s resolution.”
