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Title: This is War Author: Vito Russo Date: May 9, 1988 Language: en Topics: drugs, Queer, gay liberation, insurrectionary , Source: Retrieved on 11/14/2021 from https://untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2013/10/this-means-war.pdf
VITO RUSSO was a film historian best known for The Celluloid Closet, a
history of gay representation in film. He was actively involved in the
gay liberation movement and ACT UP. After being diagnosed with HIV in
1985, he died on November 7, 1990 of AIDS-related complications.
This speech, often titled “Why We Fight,” was originally given at an ACT
UP demonstration in Albany, NY on May 9, 1988.
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A friend of mine in New York City has a half-fare transit card, which
means that you get on buses and subways for half price. And the other
day, when he showed his card to the token attendant, the attendant asked
what his disability was and he said, “I have AIDS.” And the attendant
said, no you don’t, if you had AIDS, you’d be home dying. And so, I
wanted to speak out today as a person with AIDS who is not dying.
You know, for the last three years, since I was diagnosed, my family
thinks two things about my situation. One, they think I’m going to die,
and two, they think that my government is doing absolutely everything in
their power to stop that. And they’re wrong, on both counts.
So, if I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from homophobia. If I’m dying
from anything, I’m dying from racism. If I’m dying from anything, it’s
from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are
preventing an end to this crisis. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying
from Jesse Helms. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from the
President of the United States. And, especially, if I’m dying from
anything, I’m dying from the sensationalism of newspapers and magazines
and television shows, which are interested in me as a human interest
story — only as long as I’m willing to be a helpless victim, but not if
I’m fighting for my life.
If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from the fact that not enough
rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS for anybody to give a
shit. You know, living with AIDS in this country is like living in the
twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is
happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches. Every
time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you’ve lost
more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn’t happening to
them. They’re walking the streets as though we weren’t living through
some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the screams of the people
who are dying and their cries for help. No one else seems to be
noticing.
And it’s worse than a war, because during a war people are united in a
shared experience. This war has not united us, it’s divided us. It’s
separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people
with AIDS from the rest of the population.
Two and a half years ago, I picked up Life magazine, and I read an
editorial which said, “It’s time to pay attention, because this disease
is now beginning to strike the rest of us.” It was as if I wasn’t the
one holding the magazine in my hand. And since then, nothing has changed
to alter the perception that AIDS is not happening to the real people in
this country.
It’s not happening to us in the United States, it’s happening to them —
to the disposable populations of fags and junkies who deserve what they
get. The media tells them that they don’t have to care, because the
people who really matter are not in danger. Twice, three times, four
times - The New Yorkhas published editorials saying, don’t panic yet
over AIDS, it still hasn’t entered the general population, and until it
does, we don’t have to give a shit.
And the days, and the months, and the years pass by, and they don’t
spend those days and nights and months and years trying to figure out
how to get hold of the latest experimental drug, and which dose to take
it at, and in what combination with other drugs, and from what source.
And, how are you going to pay for it? And where are you going to get it?
Because it isn’t happening to them, so they don’t give a shit.
And they don’t sit in television studios, surrounded by technicians who
are wearing rubber gloves, who won’t put a microphone on you, because it
isn’t happening to them, so they don’t give a shit. And they don’t have
their houses burned down by bigots and morons. They watch it on the news
and they have dinner and they go to bed, because it isn’t happening to
them, and they don’t give a shit.
And they don’t spend their waking hours going from hospital room to
hospital room, and watching the people that they love die slowly of
neglect and bigotry, because it isn’t happening to them and they don’t
have to give a shit. They haven’t been to two funerals a week for the
last three or four or five years, so they don’t give a shit, because
it’s not happening to them.
And we read on the front page of The New York Times last Saturday that
Anthony Fauci now says that all sorts of promising drugs for treatment
haven’t even been tested in the last two years because he can’t afford
to hire the people to test them. We’re supposed to be grateful that this
story has appeared in the newspaper after two years. Nobody wonders why
some reporter didn’t dig up that story and print it 18 months ago,
before Fauci got dragged before a Congressional hearing. How many people
are dead in the last two years who might be alive today if those drugs
had been tested more quickly? Reporters all over the country are busy
printing government press releases. They don’t give a shit, it isn’t
happening to them — meaning that it isn’t happening to people like them,
the real people, the world-famous general public we all keep hearing
about. Legionnaire’s Disease was happening to them because it hit people
who looked like them, who sounded like them, who were the same color as
them. And that fucking story about a couple of dozen people hit the
front page of every newspaper and magazine in this country, and it
stayed there until that mystery got solved.
All I read in the newspapers tells me that the mainstream, white,
heterosexual population is not at risk for this disease. All the
newspapers I read tell me that IV drug users and homosexuals still
account for the overwhelming majority of cases, and a majority of those
people at risk. And can somebody please tell me why every single penny
allocated for education and prevention gets spent on ad campaigns that
are directed almost exclusively to white, heterosexual teenagers, who
they keep telling us are not at risk!
Can somebody tell me why the only television movie ever produced by a
major network in this country about the impact of this disease is not
about the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS, but of the
impact of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family? Why, for eight
years, every newspaper and magazine in this country has done cover
stories on AIDS only when the threat of heterosexual transmission is
raised?
Why, for eight years, every single educational film designed for use in
high schools has eliminated any gay positive material before being
approved by the Board of Education? Why, for eight years, every single
public information pamphlet and videotape distributed by establishment
sources has ignored specific homosexual content?
Why is every bus and subway ad I read and every advertisement and every
billboard I see in this country specifically not directed at gay men?
Don’t believe the lie that the gay community has done its job and done
it well and educated its people. The gay community and IV drug users are
not all politicized people living in New York and San Francisco. Members
of minority populations, including so called sophisticated gay men are
abysmally ignorant about AIDS.
If it is true that gay men and IV drug users are the populations at risk
for this disease, then we have a right to demand that education and
prevention be targeted specifically to these people. And it is not
happening. We are being allowed to die, while low risk populations are
being panicked — not educated, panicked — into believing that we deserve
to die. Why are we here together today? We’re here because it is
happening to us, and we do give a shit. And, if there were more of us,
AIDS wouldn’t be what it is at this moment in history. It’s more than
just a disease, which ignorant people have turned into an excuse to
exercise the bigotry they have always felt.
It is more than a horror story, exploited by the tabloids. AIDS is
really a test of us, as a people. When future generations ask what we
did in this crisis, we’re going to have to tell them that we were out
here today. And we have to leave the legacy to those generations of
people who will come after us. Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over.
Remember that. And when that day comes, when that day has come and gone,
there’ll be people alive on this earth — gay people and straight people,
men and women, black and white — who will hear the story that once there
was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that
a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave
their lives, so that other people might live and be free. So, I’m proud
to be with my friends today and the people I love, because I think
you’re all heroes, and I’m glad to be part of this fight. But, to borrow
a phrase from Michael Callen’s song : all we have is love right now,
what we don’t have is time.
In a lot of ways, AIDS activists are like those doctors out there:
they’re so busy putting out fires and taking care of people on
respirators that they don’t have the time to take care of all the sick
people. We’re so busy putting out fires right now that we don’t have the
time to talk to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave,
and the next day, and next month, and the next week, and the next year.
And we’re going to have to find the time to do that in the next few
months. And we have to commit ourselves to doing that. And then, after
we kick the shit out of this disease, we’re all going to be alive to
kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again.