Transcripts For CSPAN2 How To Survive A Plague 20170402

Thank you for coming out tonight. It is my pleasure to welcome you here. Before we began just a few housekeeping notes. Take your time not to silence your cell phones, very important. While your funds are out there is no need to turn them off you can follow kramer books on facebook, twitter and instagram. We do have social media which is exciting. If you visit our website you can sign up to find out about events like tonight. My name is emma and im pleased to out them you and to welcome david tonight to discuss his book how to survive a plague the inside story of how citizens and science tamed aids. His work is considered the definitive history of a successful battle to halt the aids epidemic. The documentary film was a finalist. In one of the Directors Guild award and the peabody award and nominated for emmys. Im sure a lot of you are familiar with the documentary. We are thrilled to learn more about this new release book. Please join me in welcoming david france. [applause] thank you. Thank you for coming. How to survive a plague. I arrived in new york city for the first time from michigan in september 1978. It was for an internship at the United Nations and a chance to explore this firstrate than the mountaintop of gay life. At 19 i was not comfortable with the longings of my heart but manhattan struck me as a city of promise that once was grimy and magical and an enormously place where people could hide and be found. A committed to book city after collecting my degree in june 1981. My College Roommate brian and i took up in a tiny one room apartment in midtown sleeping chastely on opposite ends of a narrow and lumpy bed. Brian had grown up in a large catholic family in a rural part of michigan yet, he possessed an innate cosmopolitan sensibility which i lacked thoroughly. And easiness with being gay. And a strong admission as an artist. I envy brians ability to create beauty from nothing. Which suited our finances. On are also on his paintings. Mostly of faraway places only imagine. One feature terminates and punctuates which he entitled, egypt. Another depicted an idealized living room scene that he called home. We were part of the largest influx of gay men and lesbians in new york history, invest gay reverse diaspora born into exile and separated from her own kind. We were reassembling a place that only existed in the imagination. The new city of friends hundred by walt whitman 100 years before. Home was an ambition as plentiful as the pyramids. Our timing was unfortunate. Just two weeks after unpacking on the front of a long july 4th weekend, the New York Times carried the first news of the play. Rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals in the headline. The cases were concentrated in manhattan with a few in the San Francisco bay area as well. Consistent consisted of violent covered spots appearing on the body even mistaken for bruises because they were sometimes raised in textured. The cancer was not just skin deep. It killed by spreading to the lungs, liver or spleen. One in five was already dead. The article noted that most cases involve homosexual men that had multiple and frequent sexual encounters with different partners. As many as 10 sexual encounters each night up to four times each week. Many of the stations had also been treated for viral infections such as herpes, hepatitis b as well as parasitic infections like many patients also had reported that they used drugs such as in all nitrate are lsd to heighten sexual pleasure. I later learned that men who read paper on the berries to fire island that weekend had been immediately recognized themselves in those demographics. Spent a long weekend examining one anothers flesh. They found the purple lesions by the dozens. It was possible to stand on those boardwalks and fulltext and beaches that we can and foretell the whole terrible future. But none of the signs appeared among our acquaintances in the city. He thought for a while and that our economic place but is this. The Beautiful People of the Fire Island Pines as a popular ad describe the niche. Although a dr. Called the outbreak rather devastating, i was more annoyed than alarmed by the news. The story seemed like a make slander on the Gay Community which had none. Every dance is met by an extreme and paranoiac counterforce. The 1970s produced the fiercest round of antigay legislation the nation had ever known. Hammered into place in the name of protecting children of all things. From us. Dozens of states and cities documented preemptively blocking gay rights ordinances. A runnerup and leader will exercise considerable National Influence on that july morning when the rear cancer story hits. It was impossible to read the news outside of this context. It seemed like just another lie. A baltimore hatred. A fierce about anyone could see prejudice and what was, what ms. Us was or was not being covered on the day in 1980 when the Us Senate Candidates debated their gay rights plan for citywide gay democratic club, a first in world history, and at the suggestion of coming political clout, the times instead registering entitled restrooms shut to foreclose use by homosexuals. The toilet in question being in suburban westchester county. A few months later kim one of the most hideous antigay crimes of the nations history. When a madman drove through the village emptying a submachine gun into crowds of gay men. He killed two and seriously injured seven. For the community it was a devastating watershed. For the New York Times it married only a few paragraphs in size with no mention of other rampages in the week and months leading up to it. No quotes from advocates. No background stories about the victims. No followup coverage in the coming days of the large candlelight vigil outside st. Vincents medical center. Or the communities to Memorial Services with thousands and thousands of gay men and lesbians. I did not bother to check. I never contracted a venereal disease. The potential for unlimited sexual exploration is what brought me to new york in the first place, i had had fewer than a dozen Sexual Experiences in my life. A number of them, women. And i struggled with selfconfidence. My childhood had been a difficult one on account of my gayness. I paid a steep price every day for being feminine and soft. Not just a pack of gunmen separated me from my friends behind the auto shop at school and left me broken on the ground. Or bury me in a dozen effects on the Basketball Court properly my cheek under the supervision of the coach. Her locked eyes on me and rejected my pleas for help with a bemused smile. I feared him the most. For his authoritative complicity, proposing official appeals to the likes of me. I was seized with fear almost every moment. I felt at the marathon gas station. In the 7eleven parking lot. Outside the woodland mall. Every time the eyes of exchange afflicted with recognition. My innate demeanor betrayed me. I was incapable of getting away with. Vomiting park that had just had to part of sexual interlude with men. One was a middleaged mexican gentleman who gently unjustly on new years eve. And the other, scared straight 21yearold motel clerk from canada. Responding to my bed to demonstrate the multiple Disgusting Things that he had learned from other guests. Those two men were the first evidence that i was not alone. Had i been more resourceful, or less isolated, my december the form and works of james baldwin, Gertrude Stein but the first dozen or so nonfiction books already published. Instead, i went to the card catalog in the School Library to look up homosexuality. My heart pounded with fear of being caught. There, just past homogeneous, and homo sapiens was the card that said homosexuality. See sexuality deviant. Moving through the literature i learned that oral regression and paraphilia had caused my personality disturbance, the American Psychiatric association. I was fairly ill. Counterfeit sex, one third sex, and intermediate sex with precluded any expectation for happiness. Doctor stanley the director of the National Institute of mental health, part of the United States Public Health risk was broadened parental understanding will eventually decrease. I was discouraged. I was something to be eradicated. I entered counseling at 19 and let a psychiatrist for me. Discredited regimen called reparative therapy. Alleged to making straight. I do not know how, but i eventually dismissed the entire public discussion about my condition. And by the time i relocated to new york i rejected every authoritative thing that was said about my kind. It was into this category that i put the times article about the disease that somehow distinguished ones sexual orientation. I fumbled my copy of the paper and discuss. In any case, officials from the centers for Disease Control said it was contagious. I started my project looking back at the plate years in america. In 2008, i am a journalist. I was working, at the time in the new york magazine. And i had stumbled upon one of the top aides receptors from the time. When medication is finally available and became possible to survive this. Aids care was at st. Vincents hospital in the very epicenter of the epidemic in new york city. And he had been just a tremendous figure and people would applaud him when he went to room. He was that kind of character could 2008 i found him shockingly homeless. Drug addicted, facing multiple felony charges for selling drugs and practicing medicine without a license. It turned out he lost his license. He had fallen as far as anybody can imagine would have fallen. And i said how could this have happened . How could it have happened that someone who was such a hero, who had saved so many lives, could have fallen without a safety net . Without anyone looking after him . I wrote the story and in the story i expend a small amount of time discussing the old days of aids. In the plate years. I was surprised that those paragraphs drew the most common to the magazine. People do not remember. People who were not there. People who never knew what had happened. People who thought that hiv was a mysterious virus which somehow killed a lot of people and was eventually wrestled into some sort of control. They did not remember the people that get us there. They did not remember immunities that efforts to building movement. The fourth institution of government and find medicine and pharmaceutical research into action. And i thought, how did that responsibility to pass information along as minor ours. I started with a documentary film and followed up with this book. I will read a little more from it and then open up for discussion. 1982. Year two of the epidemic. On a crisp fall afternoon doctor josip found his way to the back, through a noisy coffee shop in the village. Richard berkowitz could see he was angry. His temper had a tendency to further crumple his appearance and by his tongues more than usual. He had been watching at the help bulletins talking about money. Any change physician should know how to prevent such a fate he felt. These doctors are not delivering that just windbags. He handed the most recent department of Health Briefings across the table. Berkowitz thumbed through the papers not quite understanding. In my view is the distinction he underscored with sarcasm of having the largest number of patients by virtue of their advertising and they are doing nothing but keeping all of these patients it means theyre keeping them from people who know what to do. Berkowitz, who was his patient interjected timidly. Like immunologists . Yes, they have not proven that they are competent to do this work . Who is this doctor . He is certainly not equipped to get into this kind of stuff. Diners from the surrounding boots could make out every word. These people have and he is not equipped to deal with it. So they are dealing with skin cancer. They grab all of the patients, their phone number of his patients. He is a skin doctor. He was even more venomous about doctor linda levin seen. She was not out of medical loan why would you go to someone who has no experience . She is fooling around with these people. I would never let any of my patients go anywhere near nyu. He shook his head. The pages ive had there i have taken away. One patient thank goodness he went there is still alive. He wouldve been pumped full of chemotherapy and would be quite dead by now, there is no question. For all of his assertiveness while checking his vitals, he was timid in his selfpromotion and terrible advocate for his own ideas. This is partly due to his shyness but also because he saw himself as a perpetual minority of one. A leader incapable of getting followers. This frustrated berkowitz and another one of his patients. He often complained that his faulty communication skills his disease models from gaining wider traction. And left other patients and other practices unaware of his thinking about treatment and prevention. Berkowitz had asked for the meeting to propose a role for himself and as the doctors mouthpieces. Taking his theories public so that doctors and patients can judge for themselves. They planned an article in the new york native. A Gay Community weekly. Telling patient much expected the doctors. They agreed to be bakeries the arrangement. There are new agents that are not as devastating he said. Interferon he asked . He shook his head, his experience has shown that it often offered little hope. Because fevers and inhibited development of white blood cells. Especially cd4 cells give the parties elite disease fighting squadron. The massive in people with aids appear to contribute to the disease. Yet numerous plumbing receptors including those at the nih were indenting even more interferon into immune depressed patients believing his Antiviral Properties might simultaneously write whatever was present illness. I wouldnt have anyone of my even smell the stuff he said. There is one treatment rational in that is. It was used for lupus and other autoimmune diseases in which the body produces excessive antibodies. Just as aids seems to be doing. The procedure remove the antivirus mechanically by reviving blood out of one arm passing through a centrifuge and return it to the other on my list the antibodies. He had sent michael to austin for the procedure noting that he felt much less after. But other doctors not offering in some had openly criticize him for being the champion. In other words it cleans your blood . Yes hes not the patient. And what tentatively, it might save lives. Berkowitz looked up from his food. If a person has immune deficiency but does not have any of the debilitating diseases he wondered aloud, describing himself, what do you think the chances are that the immune deficiency can reverse itself . He answered carefully, i think if you got plasma you could be a candidate for example. I would like to get you this to see if we can reverse your parameters. Berkowitz was numb for the recommendation. He thought that the parameters the cockeyed did not merit dramatic intervention. At least not yet. Since the trauma producing gland biopsy, he doesnt totally settle bit to protect against any challenges to his immune system. Consequently, he was also off of cocaine. Being a sex worker, that was the mainstay of his life. They went together like tea and crumpets. Only cigarettes and marijuana remained in his regular routine. And and dramatically reduce quantities. He was sleeping better and hope that this would help his body to heal from this virus and hepatitis a. Obviously his dr. Was less confident. There was a Plasma Center in new york of the director had so far refused aids patients. I have to call gordon for you infection to take you he said. Adding another identity is impossibly long agenda. He sighed, is being denied people because doctors and great experts he did not finish his sentence instead for the waiter. He looked exhausted. I had to get to the office. He sat in silence waiting for the check. Every time he tilted his head toward a tape recorder that berkowitz brought with him. While this is happening there really is no one of substance to chronicle this. The tragedy of all of this. A person who knows how to write. Presently most people. There is such a person . This is new york city and nobodys chronicling . If he was asking berkowitz to create a record, he did not say so directly. Nor did he have. In the early days of the academic, or anyone who entered into displayed years, personal responsibility to take on some task to do something. Many people, it was to help take care of the sick to join buddy groups, Health People with hiv and people with aids get to the doctors, get to storage to get food and help them walk their pets for example. Some people work of the lullabies is to help people get their wills together. Richard berkowitz and Michael Callan were very unusual duo. Michael callan being a selfdescribed and berkowitz a sex worker. Took it upon themselves to the first aggressive journalists in the two chronicle what was happening and to become a public face for the often chaotic scrambles Trent Gilbert was happening in the community. They are central figures in how to survive a plate. An amazing, historical figures as well. They are the duo that invented six sets the example. Which has been, it was singularly responsible for preventing hiv infections and thousands of thousands of people at this time. I also gave myself an assignment to work as a journalist, not because i wanted to advocate for any doctors opinions. With that it did not know any doctors nor did i know their opinions. But because i felt i was naturally nosy and it was the one skillet that i could bring to bear. And i also wanted to keep in arms length from what was going on critical like a kind of journalistic name would allow me to do that. I began working for the new york native which was as i said, a community newsweekly that gave itself to the epidemic and reported on aids even before it was called names. And became the most aggressive of the lightning rod journalists outlets. Do that kind of reporting. I did not have serious concerns my own health but i worried about brian after his Winter Health scare. I checked them frequently. Neither of us brought up is directly or himself specifically about what sent that he resented my calls as reminders of the scare. Like characters in a novel we talked about anything else. The news is generally good. He resumes the physically taxing work attending to the vertical jungle of ficus trees and bushes that build highrises throughout the city. He confided that the east village gallery scene had been fultons work but reported that the good news that he was back with his College Boyfriend and had never been happier. I do not want to overstate our sense of impending doom, the truth was that the storm clouds math near the horizon not overhead. Unless you are personally admitted into what was called the kingdom of the sick, it was not hard to put the growing epidemic out of mind. It took two years and almost 600 dead before the New York Times story on the front page. Except in passing some Television News programs may mention. There was a feature called the danger overblown and was nearly silent otherwise. You have to be the new york native for any news on the disease. Brian would pay less. I know he saw the first major report on together on my small black and white. The 80s newsman Geraldo Rivera flamboyant and hyper that he was, broke the nearcomplete media blackout with the First Network broadcast. It is the most frightening medical mystery of our time rivera said. Leaning toward the camera. There is an epidemic in the land. So far incurable disease which killed his victims in stages. And then appeared the face of a man test medical distress. The first play second man that we had laid eyes on. He was a freelance lighting designer named ken, age 27. In an old photograph he looked as polished and angular as a shampoo model. The difference between then and now shopping. His head appeared swollen nearly to the point of pumping. His eyes vanished behind swollen flesh. Purple marks covered his skin. Confined to a wheelchair he hung his head. A friend handed him a glass of water. Which was almost too heavy for his trembling arms. I thought i was a pretty good looking guy he said. And now i actually see myself fading away. He said he had just returned from the hospital where they offered him neither medicine and least of all, pity. One night i heard two nurses aides i believe, not the actual nurses. They were standing outside my door sort of laughing he said. What did they say exactly rivera asked . He blinked his eyes and looks down at his fists. I wonder how long it back into a weight is going to last . Four days later i opened the paper to find that he was now dead. When i read that a public memorial was planned in central park i asked brian to go with me. He was taking a different strategy. Im just saying out of the whole thing he said, meaning age. Its not good for your help and does nasty things to you. Instead i went with another friend. A Graphic Designer in the his name was ian. There were statuary and the scene in front of us could deposit was part of the 1500 mourners cupping candles against the darkening sky. As our eyes landed on one man after another, it became obvious that many of them were seriously ill. A dozen men were in wheelchairs so wasted that they looked like caricatures of starvation. I watched one young man twisted in pain that was because apparently by that gust of wind around us. In new york there were just 2200 cases reported. Half of the nations total. It seemed they were all there at this time. My friends mouth hung open. It looks like a horror flick he said. I was speechless. We had found the place. From there, it was an avalanche. I find it you later a colleague ran out the door for a weekend of social commitments to look as healthy as a soap opera star many hospital workers felt the same way out of fear and out of prejudice. Doctor robert gallo of cell biology at the National Institute of health was disgusted when he first heard the joke that pancakes were the only food fit for a patient because they would slide under a door. In this environment even doctors justify the hippocratic oath in one survey over half admitted they would refuse medical should. The patients indignities across new york the global epicenter. Even in the plains of europe there were tasks when collecting remains and the novelists called him those who for profit or otherwise braved the corrupted the indigenous to convey but in new york at the bond only the funeral home operated continuously since the spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. Yet its owner is buried to keep their kindness as a secret for fear of boycotts by the community in Greenwich Village to bulk up their business. Until that time i was doing mostly editing and after that i dove right into reporting to try to fight aids was before anybody else got them for anybody that was hungry for any sort of answer. This post 1983 going into eb for the epidemic started in 1981 until 1980 there wasnt one pill that would make any difference for people with hiv infection. There was a 50 plus in the community so we all behaved as though the days were numbered. It was a call to help. How many hundreds of times with a walk past that when they were oblivious to the small dramas and acted there. Its the luck as w look as we wg it, sparse hair, eyes that showed fearcommission orders that banned in pain. They dont need to close their eyes to sleep. In the operation as precise as origami. I held open the hospital door and they passed without a nod. That was my experience with wite early plaseverely plague and i n the sidewalks. He was the assistant art director at the native and closest friend bear. He swung from health to sickness with disorienting southern ms. As though he were recounting the events of the film and how he drenched his bed with his wife which emptied from him violently and the oxygen how he had in told his parents and could never tell his parents he was born to immigrants and all that that entailed a. They never let me go to another kids house and i celebrated my birthday is there. They adjusted to the stoicism outscores required and he stared into the window for a long time. He didnt lack the ability and the epidemics as the unforgiving timeline who do you think will be next he speculated about the advertising and grew in the arts department. He is getting skinny did you notice, hes got the look but that was his usual appearance he never did contract a. How about peter, hes been out sick a lot. If he escapes this is not contagious. I would never see tom again to my lasting shame later i heard he left the hospital and returned to his family in the suburbs having told them the truth i found he slid into demand china and it took more than two years to die but i passed the hospital as if he were already gone as the old hands in auschwitz did for the dead who hadnt died yet in the mere technicality. The look in his eyes but i wasnt yet numb from death just terrified to the plaintiff hypochondria and shameful cave your. I lifted my hand with the same cold as a novelty i personalityy friend died and he feared isolated, pulled back through his American World and went back to the china of his parents home gone before he was gone. I went from his bedside and made an appointment to see a physician for a complete physical over fear. She poked my arm with a purified protein derivative test originally developed as a screen for tuberculosis. To my relief, this gave me no insight into my future but it told me i wouldnt drop dead any time soon. Back in San Francisco, the message of patient empowerment were in great demand leading to urgent invitations to address people in new orleans, miami, washington, seattle, los angeles. He appeared on nightline, the abc news program and the phil donahue show. June 28 he was a new doo in newt one of the inspirational talks and at the 15th annual pride march reuniting with leaders from around the nation and on that weekend he fulfilled his biggest dream incorporating the association of people with aids and the work they had done in the First National meeting. It opened in San Francisco on july 151984. They stood on the stage from the center with a lover at his side delivering a well paced keynote speech. He looked fragile but his connection was electric in his voicand hisvoice was strong echs the sea of fans. I have a message for the nation very often they are portrayed as isolated, alienated and alone or in search for desperate sexuality. I dont think that is true and its important for people to understand they do not exist outside of the context they exist for the people we love you and those who love us. The crowd roared. That day the whirlwind efforts took a toll on him and a few days later the shingles engulfed his head with a field of deep scars and in a few weeks he had a brain stem they found a harmful experience. When the news reached new york city they brought a car to cheer him up with a photo in a nurses uniform. How many of these have you gotten, get get well, thats an order but they never saw the note. He ended his battle at 32yearsold. There wasnt someone before they wrote on the board love after death for bobby. The city shuts down a few days later. They filled the place on the m map. Hundreds of men and women arrived followed by hundreds more. Soon down the hill past the theater into the next intersection and beyond with a thousand people. Whether it was a tireless advocate he discovered while the nightmare the leadership had touched the Community Like no one before. The eulogies were political in the militant attributes. A bit of footage from the recent speech flicked over the stage momentarily returning him to his beloved people. I had a message for the lesbian and Gay Community. Homosexuality doesnt cause disease, germs caused disease. Learn and practice safe sex. He nodded silently to his manifesto but then the voice added something they have trouble accepting. Its important for us to learn but not to panic. There is no reason to become hysterical. At that moment it seemed there was ample reason for hysteria. The aids poster boy was gone and the bad news was piling on in which healthy appearing men screened for infection showed the rate of 60 to 70 of men using conservative estimates of the number it meant 8 million were marked. The cataclysm. About a week after the service but failed to garner coverage at the new york native offices inside hed written a note Bobby Campbell died yesterday august 15 at the aidsrelated meningitis. In the course of the reporting i have spoken on the telephone but we never met. I still kept the cover which had given me such information reading the notes i went angrily. He went on to say it was signed and it seemed clear to us the letter sent was forwarded for publication. Thank you for complying. I smoothed my desktop. It carried no hint of the infection and instead it was a letter to the editor addressing the article. They are not either traitors or murderers or heroes. Level headed to the end. My hands trembled as i sat in the crisp columns of type. From tonight are some very personal passages of the early individuals to engage in the epidemic which was essentially a political disaster, not a personal disaster that began as 41 cases but is now 81 cases of hiv infection around the globe. What we learned from looking back is that there were multiple times when the Public Health principles could have contained the epidemic. They were a very Unusual Group of people mostly who were drafted into the fight by an hiv diagnosis. To take on the system and reform the system first as practice in the pharmaceutical research that is undertaken the drugs are identified and studied and brought to market and those individuals, thats what i cover in the book, those individuals are the reason we were able to bring those years to an end. They identified compounds and principles behind them. They designed the protocol which is the final drug that made a great difference and through that protocol they were able to prove the power in a short period of time and bring them to market. Today there are 18 Million People alive thanks to this wo work. This is their story of how they did what they did and what i witnessed from the margins that was happening. Thank you very much and thank you for coming. [applause] i would like to open up for conversatiotheconversation if yk about the book or ask me anything. The book is very chronological and brings us from 1981 to 1986 and the customers from the period after that about two of the principal players in the revolution, one a former kind of club kid and the other a bond trader that got together and built a powerful organization that pushed towards this miraculous medical breakthrough and thereafter they fell apart. In fact many who pushed through those years together working in concert with one another almost all of them doing it as volunteers for the entire stretch of the epidemic. Once the clouds begin to clear in the sky when we realized we were not dying we realized we were sick of each other and that makes sense to me having witnessed all those years these people were not drawn together because they had an affinity for one another. They were mostly type a personalities, mostly assholes of the highest degree is who are Just Brilliant and found a way to harness their unpleasantness enough to be able to hold these coalitions together until the work was done. They turned their backs on one another and never spoke again and its that many people that did survive those years once 96 world around him o their load wt undetectable and they realized they were going to have to find a way into the future that nobody expected. Some describe that period when i started talking about the narrative of his collapse at the end of the epidemic many people just didnt know how to process it and prepare for the ongoing mess. Theres one that left the battle victorious and who was sometimes harder to recover from. Dot speech reminds me and i wonder what you think which is prior to the plague there were small communities of men, and in a few places around the country the remarkable thing that happened is we became what we now know as the Key Community and im just wondering what you think about that. That may be the one Silver Lining on all of this. It comes from bobby came all speech with a recognition that before the first 11 or 12 years after the rebellion in 1969, there were pockets of gay communities including washington and new york and most of the major cities that have ghettos and we call them that because they were geographically defined spaces and they were hard ones in these areas which people might feel comfortable walking down the sidewalk Holding Hands but they wouldnt feel safe because the neighborhoods were attacked constantly so the village was the place that we do one another and we didnt hide that we werbut we were always po run when need be. I discussed this demographic shift like none other in history and those ghettos became more teeming and what happened when aids it is the realization that the walls around the ghetto that we thought we had built to protect ourselves we had to tear down. Because we couldnt do it ourselves. We couldnt solve our own problem. We had to go back to be authority as we turned our backs on and demanded them to pay attention. This is what you were asking about is citizenship which we didnt have before, and thats the reason you see it at every stage in the years when nothing was happening. No research was taking place, no pharmaceutical benches are closed to us, hospitals were rejecting the sick because we were not citizens and we were barely human in the eyes of many people back then so the campaign to bring them up to where they are today dot turbo charged in the early 80s out of necessity so is it a Silver Lining, yes and i think we will look back over the next few centuries and thats twentyyear period and see the more cultural change happen in that short amount of time then we can recognize in any other communities to struggle for recognition and their role in civic life. So some good did come of it and thats when i started working on my documentary i used that line. Then i found myself saying im going to try to make the first feelgood aids documentary and about didnt win too many friends there is a lot to feel good about from that time. Th the elements of the Family Research council and the administration [inaudible] given the return and resurgence of the sentiment especially in the new administration, can i say what that i but that is alli wish i could. I thought we one, but i guess we hadnt. I think ultimately we will prevail, but it is surprising that we are confronting this ideology that we thought was gone from the 80s and there it is back again just brazenly as it was before so if anyone has an answer to this backlash, please speak up but im afraid i cant answer your question. Anybody else . The question is did i choose not to interview larry kramer, and if there is a short answer and a long answer and over many years having known them both when i sat down with larry kramer, he is a major figure that i sat down with him and asked him to let me go over this history with him from the start and he had a shyly demure record of those years in the two volume history at the time so his volume which is yet to be written is where hes going to present his impression that he is a good friend and i sat with him two weeks ago for him to tell me what he was doing. So its been a time capsule for the future again bums. The publisher was my boss for many of these years. Hes the person that created this incredible historical machine to force out news of the epidemic and train a generation of reporters myself included on the basic tools of journalism although none of us had. But something happened as we talked about in the book she began to suffer a kind of paranoia about what was happening in the epidemic that he took on very personally. He came to various conclusions about the disease and who was covering it up. They were entered by authorities and he suffered. He suffered from having seen what we all saw. It came in a different directi direction. We did reach him by email and he rejected my request. I was sorry not to reunite with him, is living in boston now and he wouldnt talk to me about that either. [inaudible] the question is does the story of aids activism present itself as a blueprint for activism today against the unfolding drama coming out across town. Surely, it does. It is a story of triumph and victory against all laws so it is a community that is entirely disenfranchised and was able in a short period of time to create all this change and convince people to become scientists in a way that the nobel priz prize ws are not doing it right and convince the government officials they had a selfinterest in changing by promising them there will be money there and convincing them that its in their selfinterest to do it. They one and they were celebrated for having done that. I think the blueprint is one about how that happened and how the organization started in the years it took the epidemic. How they did what they did is an amazing story. In the prodemocracy movement in moscow, the story of how to survive a plague and underground screenings for discussing strategy and coherence and how to get to the end goal and victory. Now we find ourselves with a frightening challenge ahead of us. The form in a unified strategy where masses of people are willing and ready to train in civil disobedience to close. They are scaring people into a small elite group through the door. Then the selfdeclared experts would climb and. Would i follow most is the people that were working with scientists and actually won for the First Time Ever a spot at the research for the Disease Community but they had to take on so much else. All of the laws against homosexuality at the time it first hit. In some states it is a felony to be gay. People were asked at the border to sign a piece of paper declaring they were not gay or other categories of people that were allowed in. So we had a lot of catching up to do so the elite forces were using the power to push open those doors. The media wasnt covering the epidemic. There wasnt a single out gay reporter major or minor mainstream news outlet in the country. That is a shocking statistic. People that were in those places in the clothes that were in the style section on the drama desk or someplace they wouldnt automatically be targeted for dismissal. My first mainstream job was at the post once when they figured out i was gay i was fired because it was perfectly legal to do that back then so theres a lot of work to be done on that, on housing issues, prevention issues. No one was doing hiv prevention issues. They did clean needle exchanges and about the studies that proveproved extinction needles r drug users actually worked at preventing or reducing the spread of disease in 1980 so you can take those areas and parallel them in todays struggle to say how well we strategize that immigration band that looks at the people who were the dreamers. I know people are looking to try to gain courage and strong ideas of what to do do next. [applause] i am working to develop a series with the producer of everything youve ever seen. Thank you for asking for that. I am very excited to be working with him and for most of his career he never spoke himself and shied away from the projects at least thats what it seemed to me as an observer from the outside and now hes been throwing him in a big way and wants the world to know what the elitist view is and be activists in the community how so much of what we take for granted was given to us and he wants the legacy to be recalled which i appreciate. Every new generation of gay men are ashamed of themselves and hide in the dark and that is going to lead to all kinds of alcohol and drugs and depression and suicide and with the rise of homophobia and people in the Administration Im worried about that because of a great deal of whats been done. I would say the epidemic hasnt been contained yet. We have nearly the same number every year here in the United States that weve had since 1986. We havent found a way to keep people from catching hiv. Technically, we know how to do it. All we have is a condom and all those early years were the fear and sexual repression. Now we have pills that block transmission. Its 100 effective as far as anybody can tell. You will not catch hiv. Its amazing. Also anybody that has hiv if they go on medication they can suppress it to the point they can become noninfectious so we have these kind of biomedical ways to block hiv and other tools but we are not getting that information out to people. You look at the states where we have these leaders like mike pence and indiana of all places are rolling back publichealth campaigns and any information that would allow people to protect themselves and give them the information they would need so in this struggle that is what we have to take on again and the people we have to be sure are those that are transmitting the disease and that is the young people from 13 to 24 mostly people of color a large number of them lgbt. We have to find the kids and tell them they can love one another and of themselves and we are off the grid again but we know that it can be done. [inaudible] what was it like to go from that documentary to the writing i will admit i started on the book first and i wrote a book proposal the way that one does and i carried it around new york in 2008, 2009 and i found nobody willing to publish it. The story had already been told that none of those books chronicled activism in fact all of them were published before the rise of grassroots activism and it was published in 1987 but the reporting ended in 1985 so it chronicled not what the community did in response but in 2009 you may remember this is a bad year economically for print and general but i went back to the videotape and having been shut out from publishing i thought i never made a film before so it took an act of hubris to try it and im glad nobody gave me any counsel without it otherwise i would abandon it. It was a ridiculous thought of a film that covered 15 years without having any talking heads to try to explain it to us. Two and a half years later and many gallons of vodka later, we finally finished. By then, the film proved there was not an untold story of this tremendous movement and i was invited to return to the book as a scholarly history. The film itself was complete and i realized what i wanted to write as a witness account and it was the first time id ever written anything about myself but i wanted the reader to know who witnessed this and who was making the judgment about what was important and what room to enter and with room to lead. Once i settled on my own journey the time in closing living my including losing my lover in the period of time it was a different story altogether but not at all novel lies in the film, but a deep dive into those years and the narrative of those that brought us to the present day [applause] [inaudible conversations]behalf on the behalf of the womensme National Republican club i would like to welcome everyone this evening for what is going to be a terrific program. We are excited to have with usth this evening craig shirley. [applause] and i might add his wife is with