NYC World AIDS Day Event: So Nice to See all 100 of You!

if that...

The NYC World AIDS Day Event entitled "Out of the Darkness" included a meet- up at GMHC and a candle light vigil march down to a church in Greenwich Village where speakers, activists and performers were all part of the program.

To say the turn-out of the event was a disappointment would be an understatement. It was downright frustrating, angering and embarrassing. Granted a lot of this comes from the personal investment I put forth into getting the word out on the event and also a gaining of hope that it might yield big numbers. It was, to say the least, less than I expected. Please note that I thought the speakers, activists and others part of the program were stellar, heart-felt and their stories powerful and complete with a sense of raw-felt reality. It was the turn-out that angered me - the program itself was great.

Ok- So I created the Facebook page for the event a little later than I should have. I'll take the fault for that. After receiving a call from a friend involved on Saturday I asked, "Is there a facebook page for this?" They responded that there wasn't and immediately I took to my keyboard to create one. By Monday late-afternoon there were 26 "confirmed guests" who had clicked "attending" on the event page.

It would have been one thing had 5, 10, 15 people showed up. 5 would have been fine. Instead there were zero. I did not notice nor recognize any of those who clicked "attend" at this event, but that's ok, in the end it's a facebook page and sometimes people just click on buttons without any intention or knowledge of what they're doing. I'll let that one slide.

What I can't seem to let slide is the fact that out of the, oh- let's be generous, 70 people who were part of the candlelight vigil I may have been, at the age of 27, one of the youngest, if not the youngest person there. Making the punch to the gut even harder was the fact that out of those 70 people at least a quarter to half worked or were a part of GMHC. I kept looking around and dropping to the back of the march hoping that I'd see someone who was visibly younger than I am to be there. There may have been, but there was nobody there whose face wore the signs of good, energetic youth.

When I arrived at the Church the program had already started and several speakers were at a podium reciting names of victims we lost to AIDS. Names we know, household names, iconic figures of art and history: Keith Haring, Arthur Ashe, Perry Ellis, Willy Smith, Ryan White... But the only people whose ears these names fell upon are the same people who have been attending World AIDS Day events for the past 20 years. The same people, year after year, showing support and remembrance for those who passed. Sure, there may have been people there who were first time attendees but the vast majority were certainly people directly affected by the AIDS crisis.

My only sigh of relief came when I noticed two young little raver-esque boys. Maybe 19, maybe 20, could be 22 show up in their Christopher St. fashioned rainbow gear. One boy, in particular, had baggy pants with a giant rainbow-colored upside down triangle sown into his pant leg. I was happy they were there. Two new faces in a sea of prehistoric fighters.

The Reading of Names was followed by a group of flaggers who proudly got on stage and unraveled their multi-colored, bright flags and began dancing to the song "Together in Electric Dreams" written by Philip Oakley/Human League. "We'll always be together/how ever far it seems...Because the friendship that you gave has taught me to be brave/No matter where I go I'll never find a better prize." It was my first time hearing the song but it sounded much like the early morning music I've heard countless times on the dancefloor. The light, fluffy, feel good music that both celebrates life and tragedy to the same degree. The type of music where you look around the dancefloor and find that all the riff-raff has gone home except for those few who dance because it makes them feel good, who dance because this is what the party is all about, celebration, nostalgia, and the realization that life is so damn short that it's important to savior these few moments where we're reminded of being alive. The type of music that breaks your soul and pumps tears from your heart to your eyes. One of the dancer's flags had iconic Keith Haring illustrations on them.

As a Jew I am constantly reminded of my people's Holocaust of the 1930's and 40's. The words "Never Again!" are tattooed to my brain like the numbers to my ancestor's wrists. The Holocaust ended 63 years ago yet several times a year, every year, "Never Again!" is uttered countless times throughout countless services. But here we are, on just the 20th Anniversary of World AIDS Day and the outcry of our community's Holocaust is little and muffled and being spoken, still, by the very same voices who were affected at the start of day one. Their voices are hoarse and their throats wear proud wrinkles and they are tired and growing old yet nobody has come forward to relieve them of their heart-felt duties.

My hand and heart salutes those who made this event possible. Who come out year after year- decades, despite the dwindling audiences, to pay homage to lost friends and a tragedy that still affects 30million people world wide. As the organizer of the event, Brent Nicholson Earle, an expert runner who, to get the word out on AIDS, decided to literally run the entire perimeter of the continental United States said, "I ran three quarter's of this nation's perimeter before Ronald Reagen uttered the word AIDS on national television." 20 plus years later, who is doing the running and why haven't we been running alongside him?

There were 100 people in that audience. 75% I'm sure are year after year attendees. Where are we in all of this, in New York City, one of the ground-zero hearts of this epidemic? Where is the outcry "Never Again!"? And where is my generation in all of this?

Oh right, we're at our local gay bars, free of police brutality, throwing back beers and whiskeys while we are stripped of our rights and bareback porn plays on the plasma screens behind us.

Yawn and Tase: The New Protect and Serve!

"Come on he was naked and holding a fluorescent light at us!"

For cops who have never heard of a ladder or applying effort in their jobs this article should come as a relief! When in doubt and feeling lazy or fed up, just tase!

Police fired a Taser at a naked Brooklyn man armed with only a fluorescent light tube yesterday, sending him falling to his death from a second-floor ledge after he went on a 40-minute rant.

Iman Morales' mom begged cops not to hurt her son, telling them he's sick - then watched in horror as he plunged from the top of the roll-down gate on which he'd been perched.

An Emergency Services officer, acting on the orders of his boss, fired at the 35-year-old man at around 2 p.m., as he waved the 8-foot fluorescent light tube, police sources said.

"His body froze up and he fell face-first," said Sean Johnson, who witnessed the drama at 489 Tompkins Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Morales, who crashed 10 feet to the pavement, died a few hours later at Kings County Hospital.

Asked if police followed the proper protocol for using a Taser, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said, "That's being reviewed."

Kudos Cops! You totally just caused that man's death!

You know, before tasers were invented and permitted to be in the hands of any or every ESO or Cop, the police team on the spot would have had to try to get that man safely down from where he was standing. Sure he would have been detained for awhile but afterward he would have been returned to his mother and the day would carry on. Killing him wouldn't have been an option nor an accident.

What a shame.

Funding for Global Aids

Via the New York Times

Congress and the White House are preparing to ramp up spending on programs to combat AIDS and related diseases around the world while removing some of the ideological blinders that have long undermined the effort to slow the spread of the AIDS virus. It will be a welcome strengthening of a foreign aid program that was already one of the shining accomplishments of the Bush administration.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee this week approved a bipartisan compromise, crafted in negotiations between House leaders and the White House, that would authorize a hefty $50 billion over the next five years to support campaigns against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. This represents a huge increase over the $19 billion appropriated in the first five years of the program and a significant increase over the new funding requested by President Bush. The president had originally proposed $30 billion over five years, primarily to fight AIDS, whereas the new bill would authorize perhaps $37 billion to $41 billion to the AIDS struggle.

The administration’s program started small five years ago to meet a perceived emergency as the AIDS epidemic spread out of control. It has already provided drug treatment to almost 1.5 million men, women and children and supportive care to millions of others. The focus for the next five years will be on making some of the initial gains sustainable.

In one farsighted move, money will be used to train some 144,000 new health care workers over the next five years to care for people infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. That is at best a start on easing the severe shortage of health care workers in the developing world, which some estimates peg in the millions. Other donor nations will need to contribute to the training effort as well.

The most troublesome ideological constraint on the program — a requirement that one-third of the funds used for prevention services be spent on abstinence education — has been greatly eased. The bill calls for a balanced prevention program that would promote abstinence until marriage and fidelity thereafter, as well as condoms. It requires countries to report if abstinence and fidelity funding falls below a certain percentage, but it sets no firm percentage that has to be met.

The House is expected to pass the bill in the near future, and the Senate is considering its own version. Although some Republicans are grumbling over the amount of money proposed, it is important that Congress appropriate the full $50 billion if possible. Even that sum would almost certainly not provide universal access to treatment for all people infected with H.I.V., a goal that the major industrialized nations claim to be pursuing.

"Perceived emergency" (?!?!!?!?!?!?!)
So what were the last 27 years? A ride on the fucking carousel?!

Wonderful to hear that there will be more money and more training and, thank goodness, less abstinence only programs but of course republicans are "grumbling" over the amount of money spent, because after all, to them, this is still a "sex disease" only affecting homos and minorities, which in their wealthy white way-of-thinking is preventable for everyone!

To hear that this is a "perceived emergency" and the fact we're still debating over how much "abstinence" should play a part and because this is largely affecting Africa it all reeks of sexphobia, homophobia and general racism. This issue always has! 50 Billion is a great thing but only if used with realistic platforms of sex communication, sex education and prevention techniques.

Kramer's View

Larry Kramer's quote about the upcoming elections, courtesy of The New Republic.:

"I cannot support any of the candidates thus far running for president because none of them supports me and my people in the ways we need to be supported. This is not just about gay marriage, which has become a nonspecific red herring for non-specific maybes. (Why do you hate us so that you will not permit us to legally love?) Of course we want gay marriage, but that is not all we want. We want safety. (We are the only people in America that it is socially and legally acceptable to hate and discriminate against.) We want no more taxation without representation. (When I die, our government gobbles such an unconscionable amount of my estate that my partner will no longer be able to afford the house we both have put so much of our money and energy into.) We want the approximately 2,000 benefits our government provides to heterosexual married couples. (Why don't we get them? We pay the same taxes they do.) In other words, we want equality. We want everything straight people have and get and are entitled to. And there is not one candidate who has come anywhere near offering anywhere near any of this. In fact, I am afraid that there is not a one of them who, when push comes to shove, would not continue to sell us down the river. In fact, I have come to believe that forbidding us all of these things we are entitled to is based on hate, pure and simple. There are, by some estimates, 20 million of us. But we don't make as much noise as our enemies do. In fact, we don't make any noise at all. More fools we."