“We need an ACT UP constantly and always. ACT UP at its peak of success had several hundred chapters all over the world, and it’s because of ACT UP that every single one of those AIDS treatments is out there. We hammered and protested and put our lives on the lines and stormed the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and broke into drug companies. And we taught ourselves everything there was to know about how the system worked, and we worked it. And that’s how those drugs are out there. And as soon as we got the drugs, ACT UP sort of folded its tent, and we really need the equivalent of something like that that’s on guard every single day against our enemies, and we don’t have that.”
— Larry Kramer, legendary AIDS activist, playwright and author,
to the Dallas Voice, 18 September 2009
(tip: Rex Wockner’s Quote Unquote column,
22 September 2009)
Comments
One Comment so far. Comments are closed.Larry seems to have forgotten that many of the people who once marched with him during the ACT UP days are now marching to a different tune. And he’s also forgot that he’s been asleep at the switch for the past twenty or so years.
When he made a similar motivational speech back in New York a couple of years ago, he discovered himself among a bunch of old bitchy queens just trying to hang on to whatever they had left, a bunch of new bitchy queens telling Larry and company to stop holding them back. Know what he did? He walked away, preferring instead to be in the company of the Log Cabin Republicans, complaining about the people he was motivating.