New York State Senator Tom Duane’s blistering speech on behalf
of people living with AIDS and HIV (video: NYSenate at YouTube)
Grab a cup of coffee or a glass of something cold, because you must sit down, get comfy and watch this 22 minute video from start to finish.
This is oratory of the highest order. It is passionate, fiery, riveting and, at times, so deeply personal that it is nearly unbearable to watch. The speaker is a New York State Senator who is also an openly-gay man and HIV-positive. His name is Tom Duane and he delivered this speech last Friday at 3:00 in the morning in support of a bill that provides a break to people living with AIDS and receiving public assistance. The bill would cap the costs of shelter (rent and utilities) at no more than 30% of the individual’s income and, thus, free up a little money for things that most people take for granted — toilet paper, band aids, or some insignificant little extra something that might just improve the quality of one’s life.
When you begin to think the speaker is on the verge of becoming unhinged, keep listening because the man is speaking the truth from his own experience, and it might be a painful and disquieting truth for those who didn’t share that experience. For those of who did or do share that experience, I can’t imagine there won’t be tears.
From nowhere AIDS, hit the gay community like a blitzkrieg, and, in little more than a decade, a significant segment of an entire generation was lost. Wiped out. Decimated. Gone. For those too young to have lived through the worst of the crucible of AIDS, Senator Duane provides a damn fine history lesson about what you missed:
Let me take you back to the early eighties. Visiting friends in hospitals. We’d go in. We’d go in one night, in the morning they’d be dead. I’d bring them food. My family, bring them food. My friends bring someone food. But whoever was in bed would be dead before they could eat it.
We’d leave it – maybe the nurses would take it home. No! They wouldn’t eat it! ‘Cause it’s contaminated. Contaminated! Wouldn’t touch it. Wouldn’t go into the room. Wearing masks. Gloves! Gowns! Someone gets sick in the afternoon. They’d be dead the next day. Dead! And that went on for months, and then years. Dead! Dead!
You think if you got sick and your friends were dying that I would sit there and do nothing? No. But that’s what happened. That’s what happened. Every cold. Every virus. Every temperature. I thought I’d be dead, and so did so many people that I knew. Dead! You think you scare me? You think you can make be back off? Nothing scares me.
At one point in his speech, Duane dared the Republicans and others to vote down his bill: “You think it’s funny? ‘We’ll kill Duane’s bill.’ No, you’re not killing my bill. You’re killing people,” the senator bellows at 16:24 in the video above.
When Tom Duane finished, the New York State Senate erupted in a standing ovation. The vote on the bill was 52-1. Only one Senator, Republican Kemp Hannon, voted against it.
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Rex Wockner is probably the most widely read and among the most respected journalists writing about GLBT news and issues today. Yesterday, we did San Diego Pride and Senator Duane’s speech came up again and again. At his blog, last night, he wrote:
I’m old enough now to realize that many of you who read me didn’t experience the gay holocaust from 1980 to 1996 — the year that drugs finally emerged to keep HIV from automatically killing.
Guys my age, we all say that we lost half of our friends. I did too. Some of us got infected before we knew any better, and somehow managed to hold on until 1996, and survived, and are here today. Some of us did the same things in 1981 and 1982 (before we knew any better) that the people who died did, and that the people who got infected and survived did — and because of nothing other than random dumb luck, we did not get infected. I’m one of those people.
I think guys my age who got lucky in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when HIV was there but we didn’t know it was there, have a particularly special obligation to make sure that younger generations of gay men know what happened between 1980 and 1996.
Rex suggests people not only “watch this [video] — but pass it on to your straight friends and to your families too. We can’t forget, both because it is our collective history and because people are still getting infected, and even today, having HIV is no walk in the park.”
(emphasis: mine)
That’s a bit of an understatement.
Forget the slick pharmaceutical ads that, since the mid-nineties, have conveyed the frequently erroneous message that living with AIDS or HIV is all about bicycling through the California Wine Country or climbing a mountain peak or enjoying an ocean cruise with your shirtless, buff buddies. For some perhaps it is, but, for many of us living with any degree or stage of HIV infection, it is a medical, emotional and psychological roller coaster with downs you don’t even want to imagine. The late AIDS activist, author and entertainer Michael Callen once wrote, “I am struck by the intractable gulf that exists between the sick and the well.” Take a few minutes to read the rest of Callen’s remarks from 1983, because that gulf seems to be widening — even, incredibly, in the gay community. And, for many of us, it’s still all about basic survival: Can I pay my rent? Will I have enough for groceries at the end of the month? If I tell him I’m positive, will he simply walk away?
These days, some ask why people living with AIDS merit the type of exceptional measures proposed by Senator Duane and, at least in my perception, a declining number of like-minded others. The answer, in a word is stigmatization. As a commenter at Towleroad notes:
[N]obody really blames cancer patients, stroke victims, folks with renal failure, for their illness — they are usually recipients of only compassion, not bias, discrimination and hatred. That still happens today with folks living with HIV/AIDS, and is a very good reason to have the kinds of measures in place Senator Duane so bravely and passionately advocates.
Veteran AIDS activist and AIDSmeds.com founder, Peter Staley offered this theory about Tom Duane’s “unprocessed rage” at his blog last Friday:
All the pent-up rage from what people with AIDS lived through in the 1980’s and early 90’s, and even some of the shit we all live through today, can be heard in Tom’s voice. I’ve always felt we’ve never processed all the pain we went through back then. And we’re all capable of snapping from it — letting it spill out at any moment. There’s a Tom Duane lurking deep down in all of us, waiting to be heard.
I sincerely hope Staley’s right, because AIDS is far from over and we need every courageous advocate like Senator Tom Duane we can get.
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Help get this video seen:
If you’ve got a blog or an account on a social networking site, please share Tom Duane’s passion. Post this incredible and important video, or link to it, and encourage your friends, family and co-workers to watch it. No! Don’t encourage, insist they watch it.
NY State Senator Tom Duane’s contact info:
District Office
322 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1700
New York, NY 10001
(212) 633-8052 Fax: (212) 633-8096Albany Office
Room 430
State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12247
(518) 455-2451 Fax: (518) 426-6846Email: duane@senate.state.ny.us
More about Senator Duane’s speech:
- Rex Wockner: We have an obligation
- Towleroad: NY State Senator Tom Duane gives gripping, angry speech on AIDS
- Peter Staley: Unprocessed rage
- Outcome: Tom Duane stands up and is not afraid
- Blabbeando: NYS Senator Tom Duane at 3am this morning …
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