Blackout Cancels AIDS Program at UCLA

Several thousand people gathered at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion on Thursday night to whisper, chant and cry out the names of thousands of people who have died of AIDS.

But the emotional ceremony, which was to mark the beginning of a 20-city tour by the National AIDS Quilt, a patchwork of 4,000 handmade panels commemorating the dead, was canceled at the last minute by a power blackout. The show was rescheduled for 7:30 tonight.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said the campuswide blackout at 7:59 p.m. Thursday was caused by a transformer malfunction.

Emergency generators provided power for both the arena and the UCLA Medical Center, but it was announced that the arena generators could not sustain power long enough to put on the show.

While the roughly 5,000 spectators awaited word on whether the program would proceed, folk singer Holly Near, who was to have sung the finale to the program, led the audience in singing what has become a gay anthem.

“We are a gentle, loving people,” she sang through a battery-powered bullhorn. “We are singing, singing for our lives.”

More than 400 volunteers had shown up to appear in the complicated program, including an ecumenical array of religious leaders, a dozen politicians, more than 40 celebrities and a few hundred members of children’s and church choirs.

“This is a significant loss,” said executive producer Mike Mitchell. “We had families flying in just for this night, to commemorate their dead . . . We’ll do the best we can, and we will go on tomorrow.”