Larry Kramer's Speech marking ACT UP's 20th Anniversary

[Peter Staley]

What do folks think about his speech?  You can read it here.

Is it time to ACT UP again?  Should activists broaden their scope to gay rights and/or national healthcare?

Peter

[Jody]

At this past Thursday's planning meeting for the demo on Thursday, March 29th it was debated whether to expand issues to include gay rights and national health care for all that Peter is alluding to.

Some folks argued that people are still being buried and that it was not a good idea or central to ACT-UP to get off the main topic which was to eradicate or end the AIDS plague, that branching out to include other issues was a failure to keep our eyes on the prize so to speak.

On the other hand one might consider that it is necessary to be inclusive of other issues of great importance to ACTing up against current policies with regards to the crisis as it still exists, national health care being an especially important and much related issue...Gay rights is probably going off a bit on a tangent though since so many young gay men may still be contracting HIV due to a lack of respect for themselves or equality in society, a problem so many gay men still face.

Anyway one could include in the pot women, youth and people of color with HIV, the world-wide epidemic, poverty and hunger, joblessness, and the difficulties in getting insurance coverage as topics to be inclusive of all the issues we face.

Jody

[cammycam]

There are still active issues within the core of PWA rights.

1.) de facto discrimination in the work force in the name of reducing health insurance costs

2.) the growing criminalization of AIDS - criminal transmission and the like.

3.) prison access to treatment

Plus, I see a growing sex-negative trend in prevention.  Prevention should be condoms, and needle exchange or bleach kits and solely harm reduction, judgement free lossless tools to help prevent disease.
Focusing solely on IDU's and MSM behavior stops the scare campaign that is being aimed at mainstream America and has an anti-PWA backlash.  Besides, prancing out "innocent" victims of HIV betrays the old core constituency of HIV infection by suggesting underneath, that we deserve it more than they do.

That LA based action against Viagra is completely off the mark in a sex-positive, live life but do it safely campaign eighties era campaign.  Instead prevention messages want you to believe that you should conduct an inquisition of your sex partner, and sometimes don't even mention protection!  If prevention messages are going to continue to make the PWA's feel miserable every damn time, I'd rather see the ASOs defunded and forced to only engage in direct care expenses as the new Ryan White suggests.

[bimazek]

i think that for example polio... or rabies, as a disease gets more treatable the direction of citizen action must change, now it should be about one thing mostly... getting more money into Universities for research...

see my post...

actisvsm for money funds for any medical breakthrough for any major disease
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=11004.0


i totally agree with this one
core of PWA rights..... i totally agree with this one... this just happened to a friend of mine....

1.) de facto discrimination in the work force in the name of reducing health insurance costs

this just happened in Az. to a guy with TB not hiv he is in prison...
2.) the growing criminalization of AIDS - criminal transmission and the like.

very important.. i have said, until we break the idea that st8t men will have gay sex in prison as a punishment..
we will not have respect
3.) prison access to treatment

[bimazek]

yes it was ronald reagan but more so it was the greed of republicans and newly rich boomers who created the republicans, and the growing religous right, not just reagan, he was just a puppet for 100,000 businessmen who still control the economy, will not give univ. health care, will not do this and that... all so each one of them can buy thier 9th vacation home for 5 million in aspen caribe, hawaii, etc, the greed ... ww2 was greatest generation, then came the greediest generation lead by reagan, it was not so much that reagan didnt mention the word gay but the nancy reagan syndrome the mrs. bush syndrome, the... make everything seem ok on the outside as a show, america went from be a solid country to hollowed out by these ideas and policies

why is there homo hate.. i think it is really a reflection of feminine or female hate or fear or desire to control women or anything feminine by st8t men, also the teaching of it by the religious intolerants, st8t men define themselves by what they are not, you can see this every second of every day, even when they walk down the street, they are not just a construction worker, they are not any thing else there is alot of bisexuality that is hidden...  proof is if a gay man is masculine and can pass st8t no st8t man has problem with him unless he is told... it is feminine acting men



i noticed this fact and wondered about this very very strange...
"have you noticed how fashionable it is for foundations and the two Bills, Gates and Clinton, to do AIDS good deeds in Africa and obviously much too unfashionable to do them in America? "



this i cannot agree with at all...."Who says that intentional genocide of “us” by “them” isn’t going on? They don’t want us here. When are we going to face up to this?"

never has so much been given to a group ... gays, who still act so so irresponsibily with drugs and not being brotherly to each other and using each other as objects, and degradating each other not cherishing each other
why are poppers popular in gay culture and not condemned by everyone still


the answer to many if not all larry's questions is money

money that gays spend fiviously now on themselves

money they waste on senseless things

money that the republicans suck out of our community in form of taxes for war machine

money that young gays do not have enough of to buy a fixer upper in most usa big cities like they did in SF in the day

money that gay men waste on drugs cause gay men treat each other badly

etc

[bimazek]

i think we are creating an aparthide state of poz vs. negative for the ave. new poz guy especially, for example, all the ads that say tell him your status and disclose the truth is that in 99% of male male hook ups (casual anonomous) there is no discussion of status so all the teaching of poz disclose is for naught

also

the solution is love

love for one person

it sounds like catholic or something but

love of a poz person in a long term committed relationship is the thing

look at the recent study of 200 st8t couples, one poz one neg, all poz were undetectable, they all wanted and had babies, they all had unprotected sex many times to create the babies, the study showed that not one of them transmitted to the baby  not one of them transmitted to the other partner

imagine if this was gays... they would be saying... find another woman you cannot do that that is wrong...
there is some deep love between that poz st8t and the neg st8t married etc

if i would have picked on poz person to be in relationship with long term maybe i would not have got the disease

but i think the safe sex campaigns and the constantly shifting what is safe and what is not and the fact that nothing was really every ocmpletely safe

what we need is

focus on love

love is the solution

love between two men