ACT-UP
Whenever difficult, terrible, and frightening times arrive again, as they are now, I drift back to the AIDS years.
I can’t help it. That’s what comes up.
So much bad news fell every day then. The sick, the dead, the lack of government concern, the indifference, the worried well, the fear, the never-ending grief of it all.
The focus, of course, was on people with AIDS, how to comfort them, how to save them, even as they slipped away.
Oh, we needed to do more, and we needed help to do so but it wasn’t coming, not that we could see, not beyond the length of our arms and hands and fingertips that could at least hold and touch and lift and carry.
The first people with AIDS began to appear in doctor’s offices in 1981, the early volunteer trainings began in 82, the AIDS organizations in 83, the HIV test finally became available in 85 and then, finally, 6 years after it all began, ACT-UP coalesced with its powerful, fierce and effective activism.
It took time for ACT-UP to begin its work, and it took our own patient and dogged determination to do what needed to be done until it arrived.
When the revised history of those “AIDS killing years” is finally written, the world will come to understand fully the real meanings of “brotherly love” and “unconditional love” through the eyes and stories of LGBTQ+ leaders and caregivers like you, dear Ed… everyday, ordinary people will finally see the base-level honesty of early ACT UP leaders like Larry Kramer, Vito Russo, and others. As always, thank you for this brief look at what was going on back in those early days… you are a jewel in the LGBTQ+ communities!