Eastern, follow us on x and instagram. Until we meet again, as promised, Commitment To Life starts right now. Now. brooding music its difficult to remember a time when it wasnt here. Recall when the word. It is difficult to remember a time when it was not here. Harder still to recall when the word finally permeated your conscious and became real and deadly. It has infected everything. Not just the Immune Systems of those whose lives it takes, but all of us it leaves behind to try to comprehend something that is incomprehencable. We dont know who we are before it all we know is who we are right now. If we stand up, if we find strength, then we will bring honor. In the end, to remember is simply not enough. Enough. Group VocalizingGroup VocalizingGroup VocalizingGroup VocalizingGroup VocalizingGroup Vocalizing dramatic music gentle upbeat music growing up, la was a spot that you wanted to come. It was hollywood, it was movie stars,. Growing up, l. A. Was the spot that you wanted to come. It was hollywood, it was movie stars. And this is where you come to get the life that you were denied in whatever small town you were in. People come to l. A. Because they want to be part of a dream. Glamour, hollywood, blonds. I was sitting in patterson, new jersey, thinking this is where i want to be. West hollywood was a part of the town that was the gay part of town, they called it the boys town. The hills above sunset were the swish alps. [music] above sunset were the swish alps. [music] Group Chattering . Everybody dowent to West Hollywood because they felt freer to be who they were. We could walk down the street with another man who was clearly our boyfriend and see other people who looked like us. There was a community. You felt supported and you felt safe. It is wonderful to be Here Today Celebrating Gay Pride with all of you. It was a lot of fun. But being in West Hollywood, there was always the possibility of you being treated a little different. Especially if you are a person of color. Yet it still did not stop us from going. When i got to l. A. I did not know where the Lbgtq Community was. I remember i took a drive through West Hollywood and there was nothing but white boys with no shirts on. I immediately felt like i am not welcome here. And, luckily a friend of mine was like, girl, you are in the wrong part of town. You need to get over to catch one. And literally my life turned around [music] e. And literally my life turned around [music] catch one discotheque, and catch one was this Black Gay Club. Jewel thaiswilliams opened the legendary Black Gay Club catch one it was a Black Gay Club in the heart of black l. A. Catch was a community for people of color. And the kids always stayed fresh. My customers they would come to the catch one because this was a place where they could come and be. I am happy about that. It was in the early 80s. It was first signs of it. We had a drag show at my club and the mistress of ceremony did not show up for her gig on a thursday night and it is like, what . Someone came in and said she was ill all week and she gone to the hospital and they thought she had pneumonia. But, within a couple weeks april was dead. I remember it. I read about it in fronteers. It was just the report that there was a virus going on in the town with gay men in town. It caught peoples attention, it caught mine. It caught peoples attention, it caught mine. Were dealing with what medical researchers are now calling gay related immunodeficiency diseases, we are wildealing with what medical researchers are now calling gayrelated immunity deficiencies, grid if you will. It was early. Nobody knew what was going on. When it got real was starting to have friends that were getting sick and dying. It was known as the gay cancer and we started seeing people on the streets with scars. It was a skin cancer, purple or violet patches on the skin, sometimes on the face, very distressing. It was an unknown in terms of how to treat it. Tonight, 300 people attended the First Mas Meeting held within the Gay Community to alert homosexuals about the related decease that slow up exclusively in gay men. We published something. In the cdcs Journal Morrability and mortality weekly report. We were describing what we now know as aids. Lots of periods of depression and terror and just really again, the sense of hopelessness. I have gone through so many changes since it again. A lot of depression, terror, just really, again, the sense of hopelessness. A longterm friend of mine, tom mccoy, his partner of a store that i had. Within a month after we opened the store he came down with it. He did not have insurance and they put him into county. And i went to visit him. And it was everything, it was a hellhole. He was in a room with 20 other patients. At that point nobody knew how it was transmitted. And, so, nurses would not go near them. There were all of these guys that no one visited. There were people not visiting them. There was no one fighting. No one fighting for them. Growing up in the Gay Community we sort of learned a lesson by that point in our lives. The lesson was that we knew we had to take care of each other. We looked at this desperate situation and felt something needed to be done. Aids project los angeles was the first agency to be formed in Los Angeles County to respond to aids. We just would have these meetings in our living room. And, that was how apla all started being organized. Nancy is on the board of director on the Aids Project Los Angeles. I hate aids. I hate the disease, i hate aids, i hate the fact that no one has been able to really get a grip on what this is and how to stop it. Nancy called, she was a caring, compassionate person and would do anything for anybody that needed help. Nancy was very connected in the Gay Community in los angeles. All of her best friends were gay men. When we started apla we first raised 7,000. It was a lot of money in 1982 for a small charity. At the very beginning, we rented a tiny office on Cole Avenue On Hollywood avenue. We had two rooms, most of it taken up by the hot line. We recruited volunteers and trained them to answer phone calls from people with all of the information that we knew about hiv. Aids hot line, manual speaking there were so many calls and so many people. We had our share of suicide calls. Do you feel like you have been exposed . Reporter we would help them deal with their fears and emotions on the 10 that was a big chunk of what we did. We had our share of family calls where one family member, many times the father, gets to find out that not only is his son gay, but he also has a disease that from what we can tell is going to kill him. Does your family know . Yeah. What has been their response . My mother said god was punishing me for my lifestyle. Punishing me for my lifestyle. , season to season, ultomiris is continuous symptom control, with improvement in activities of daily living. It is reduced muscle weakness. And ultomiris is the only longacting Gmg Treatment with the freedom of just 6 to 7 infusions per year, for a predictable routine i can count on. Ultomiris can lower your Immune Systems ability to fight infections, increasing your chance of serious meningococcal infections, which may become lifethreatening or fatal, and other types of infections. Complete or update meningococcal vaccines at least 2 weeks before starting ultomiris. If ultomiris is urgent, you should also receive antibiotics with your vaccines. Before starting ultomiris, tell your doctor about all of your medical conditions and medications. Ultomiris can cause reactions such as back pain, tiredness, dizziness, limb discomfort, or bad taste. Ultomiris is moving forward with continuous symptom control. 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Customers now get exclusive access to wifi speed up to a gig in millions of locations. Plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free. Thats like getting two unlimited lines for Twenty Dollars a month each for a year. So, ditch the other guys and switch today. Buy one line of unlimited, get one free for a year with Xfinity Mobile plus, save even more and get an eligible 5g phone on us visit xfinitymobile. Com today. That era, it was the ugliest part of human beings visit xfinitymobile. Com today. And how they behave. That era, it owas the ugliest part of human beings and how they behaved. They blamed it on the person that their behavior was causing this. There was a lot of stigma. Back then there was very little education about aids. So people were just so cruel. This man, ford johnson, an architect, died late yesterday afternoon. He suffer friday aids. He fell down these stairs. The person said i am not touching him. Just like that. We could not get people into the hospitals. Hospitals would not take them. Mortuarys would not take them. The reality of having aids can be awful. I nearly killed myself with alcohol because i was very closeted and very ashamed of being gay. And, i got into recovery. I became a minister. And i was the pastor of the metro church in the valley. I had my first symptoms in 82. And i got sick with everything. I had hepatitis, herpies, shingles. I was horribly sick. They said i would not live to see 1985. I was the first member of the clergy to be diagnosed with aids. When i was so very sick nobody wanted to come to my house and maybe touch something or breathe something that was going to contaminate them or get them sick with aids. Reporter we created the buddy system at apla. People volunteered to adopt a person with aids and be their buddy and they would spend time with them. How are you doing . Hey, how are you. Nice to see you. Yeah. They would have lunch with them, take them on erranda. Arrange to take them to the doctor. Ours is the building of trust and a strong friendship. I can not change billys medical situation. There is nothing i can do to make that different. But i can be there when he needs a shoulder to cry on or just somebody to litch to him ramble on if that listen to him or ramble on if that is what needs to happen. Beyond buddy. Our relationship has gone farther than that. In the early days you could help take care of people. You could visit them, you could be their friend but you could not save them. You just couldnt. At apla, every thursday afternoon at 4 00 we had a Memorial Service for everybody who died that week. We had grieving counseling for staff because it was so hard. But that is knowing about a third of the staff died the first year they was there. And,um. Let me begin with the latest numbers in Los Angeles County. Today they show 56 new cases of aids diagnosed here locally last month. Brings the National Total now to about 10,000. While a lot of theories were put out there as to the cause of aids, the earliest days, though, we suspected that this was a virus. The fact that it was occurring among gay men, Blood Transfusion recipients and drug users it looked like blood born and sexual infection it is a virus, labeled at hiv. For human immunodefficency virus. Using a needle that had been previously used by someone infected. The next highest risk is associated with sexual activities we put out pasm information on it. What to avoid. I dont think there had ever been a campaign to change peoples behavior regarding health like we did with hiv and aids. And i have to say our staff at apla did a great job with mother cares. Mother wants you to be extra careful to play with your friends; she is from poltergeist. She played mother. The purpose was to educate people at risk. It was done deliberately to show gay men you need to have safe sex and this is how you can do it. Rubbers in l. A. We had clinics within the bathhouses. We did not want people in the alleys and the streets and we wanted places to educate them. One day i saw ads for Gay Health Clubs and i called them up and i asked if people were friendly. [ laughter ] and the queen on the other end of the phone said, well, sweetheart, that totally depends on you. A few weeks later i went. And i went to sit in the lounge where they were showing pornography. And down the stairs came this guy and he sat down be side me and he asked me to go up to his room and i said why do people keep asking me that . And he just laughed and he said because that is where people go to have sex. And so, we had sex in the bathhouse that night. It was my first sexual encounter. And about three months later we moved in together. We fell in love. And it was everything. My process of kind of understanding hiv personally actually took a long time. Because i, like most other people, believed the mischaracterization of the epidemic in the beginning. That it was a white gay disease. But, i was in a relationship with a white man. So it was something that was on my mind. The disease that was first perceived by the black Community Everywhere as a white gay problem is now threatening the lives of black men, women and children in l. A. In the black community, you can talk to people and they can tell you someone 20 years old or 30 years old who died of pneumonia, cancer, meningitis, it is not click that this could possibly be aids it was all over the news, it was about white folks and white men in particular. But, actually, more black people got it per capita. Black men mostly. But there were women that got it, too. This los angeles woman has aids. She says when she found out that her husband was an iv drug user she left him but it was too late. Many, plane ways for black and brown people the way it was responded to was ignore it. Dismiss it. Push it to the side and pretend it does not exist. You just dont talk about it ex. You just dont talk about it Melancholic Music with regard to the federal response, its so important who is in charge at the time of a crisis. With regard to the federal response. It is so important who is in large at the time of the crisis. That was ronald reagan. He had just become president in january of 1981. And the hiv epidemic came to attention in june of 1981. But it did not catch the attention of the president or high ranking people in hhs and people who knew what the potential was. White house official confirms the president never talked to his Surgeon General about aids or read the report that was sent to him last october. I dont know what reagan was hearing. He had been an actor in hollywood. So, he certainly knew gay people from the business. So, what was going on in this white house . It was the sway of these conservative christians. Who said, leave it alone. These are not legitimate people. This is their own fault. Let them deal with it. If the American People knew the filthy and bloody sexual events that transpire between homosexuals they would be a national revulsion unparallel in this country. It was discrimination that killed a lot of us. We were not given credibility that we were important enough to do the research and the treatment. We are here to try to help with this horrible thing called aids. We put on benefits for Service Organizations like apla. I am standing in front of the roxy theater where a special 10 00 performance of Women Behind Bars Dwts is the first performance is given as a benefit for aids. I would like to talk with a minute with max drew who is the plan that organized it. Max, why does you put on this particular benefit . Women behind bars seemed appropriate for the fun of the event. We are trying to stimulate interest in the Film Community for partic