@jabronibaloney / jabronibaloney.tumblr.com
Mary Jane Rathbun - popularly known as "Brownie Mary" was an American medical cannabis rights activist. As a hospital volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital, she became known for baking and distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. 1980s
Click View on Twitter for the thread. Explains how COVID operates like HIV.
AIDS/ACT UP posters updated for the ongoing global COVID pandemic. we must know history & be able to apply it to the current moment. queer liberation, disability justice, racial justice – these struggles cannot be separated. WearAMask #CovidIsAirborne #LongCovid 😷
Images, image descriptions, and full thread with more posters by @/_copy_of_a_copy on Twitter. The thread also includes a link to a Google Drive of PNGs/PDFs to print and wheatpaste.
The artist is only on twitter, so I am sharing this incredible thread here on Tumblr.
And I have to add something that will piss a lot of people of, but many queer folks died after contracting HIV / AIDS. That much is commonly known.
I guess people just don't know what those are anymore. It is also called: human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Meaning that it wrecks their immune system. Leaving them immunocompromised.
And I see so many of the younger queer generations no longer masking, helping spread Covid everywhere, which will be another virus that most of the population doesn't care about, (just like they did with AIDS), but that survivors of AIDS will have to cautiously maneuver. This country can not take public health seriously. But you'd think the queers would. And you'd be wrong.
That is ANOTHER reason why you'll see less older queer people.
Happy pride month wishing everyone a very don’t forget about disabled queers
Especially all the elder queers who survived the AIDS epidemic, who have autoimmune issues, and could easily die from Covid. You'd think the queers would know to take a public health crisis seriously, but here we are.
the humanity of the AIDS crisis: the ward by gideon mendel
colorized by me
my night manager (who is a gay man) and i sometimes sit down and exchange stories and tidbits about our sexuality and our experiences in the queer cultural enclave. and tonight he and i were talking about the AIDS epidemic. he’s about 50 years old. talking to him about it really hit me hard. like, at one point i commented, “yeah, i’ve heard that every gay person who lived through the epidemic knew at least 2 or 3 people who died,” and he was like “2 or 3? if you went to any bar in manhattan from 1980 to 1990, you knew at least two or three dozen. and if you worked at gay men’s health crisis, you knew hundreds.” and he just listed off so many of his friends who died from it, people who he knew personally and for years. and he even said he has no idea how he made it out alive.
it was really interesting because he said before the aids epidemic, being gay was almost cool. like, it was really becoming accepted. but aids forced everyone back in the closet. it destroyed friendships, relationships, so many cultural centers closed down over it. it basically obliterated all of the progress that queer people had made in the past 50 years.
and like, it’s weird to me, and what i brought to the conversation (i really couldn’t say much though, i was speechless mostly) was like, it’s so weird to me that there’s no continuity in our history? like, aids literally destroyed an entire generation of queer people and our culture. and when you think about it, we are really the first generation of queer people after the aids epidemic. but like, when does anyone our age (16-28 i guess?) ever really talk about aids in terms of the history of queer people? like it’s almost totally forgotten. but it was so huge. imagine that. like, dozens of your friends just dropping dead around you, and you had no idea why, no idea how, and no idea if you would be the next person to die. and it wasn’t a quick death. you would waste away for months and become emaciated and then, eventually, die. and i know it’s kinda sophomoric to suggest this, but like, imagine that happening today with blogs and the internet? like people would just disappear off your tumblr, facebook, instagram, etc. and eventually you’d find out from someone “oh yeah, they and four of their friends died from aids.”
so idk. it was really moving to hear it from someone who experienced it firsthand. and that’s the outrageous thing - every queer person you meet over the age of, what, 40? has a story to tell about aids. every time you see a queer person over the age of 40, you know they had friends who died of aids. so idk, i feel like we as the first generation of queer people coming out of the epidemic really have a responsibility to do justice to the history of aids, and we haven’t been doing a very good job of it.
Younger than 40.
I’m 36. I came out in 1995, 20 years ago. My girlfriend and I started volunteering at the local AIDS support agency, basically just to meet gay adults and meet people who maybe had it together a little better than our classmates. The antiretrovirals were out by then, but all they were doing yet was slowing things down. AIDS was still a death sentence.
The agency had a bunch of different services, and we did a lot of things helping out there, from bagging up canned goods from a food drive to sorting condoms by expiration date to peer safer sex education. But we both sewed, so… we both ended up helping people with Quilt panels for their beloved dead.
Do the young queers coming up know about the Quilt? If you want history, my darlings, there it is. They started it in 1985. When someone died, his loved ones would get together and make a quilt panel, 3’x6’, the size of a grave. They were works of art, many of them. Even the simplest, just pieces of fabric with messages of loved scrawled in permanent ink, were so beautiful and so sad.
They sewed them together in groups of 8 to form a panel. By the 90s, huge chunks of it were traveling the country all the time. They’d get an exhibition hall or a gym or park or whatever in your area, and lay out the blocks, all over the ground with paths between them, so you could walk around and see them. And at all times, there was someone reading. Reading off the names of the dead. There was this huge long list, of people whose names were in the Quilt, and people would volunteer to just read them aloud in shifts.
HIV- people would come in to work on panels, too, of course, but most of the people we were helping were dying themselves. The first time someone I’d worked closely with died, it was my first semester away at college. I caught the Greyhound home for his funeral in the beautiful, tiny, old church in the old downtown, with the bells. I’d helped him with his partner’s panel. Before I went back to school, I left supplies to be used for his, since I couldn’t be there to sew a stitch. I lost track of a lot of the people I knew there, busy with college and then plunged into my first really serious depressive cycle. I have no idea who, of all the people I knew, lived for how long.
The Quilt, by the way, weighs more than 54 tons, and has over 96,000 names. At that, it represents maybe 20% of the people who died of AIDS in the US alone.
There were many trans women dying, too, btw. Don’t forget them. (Cis queer women did die of AIDS, too, but in far smaller numbers.) Life was and is incredibly hard for trans women, especially TWOC. Pushed out to live on the streets young, or unable to get legal work, they were (and are) often forced into sex work of the most dangerous kinds, a really good way to get HIV at the time. Those for whom life was not quite so bad often found homes in the gay community, if they were attracted to men, and identified as drag queens, often for years before transitioning. In that situation, they were at the same risk for the virus as cis gay men.
Cis queer women, while at a much lower risk on a sexual vector, were there, too. Helping. Most of the case workers at that agency and every agency I later encountered were queer women. Queer woman cooked and cleaned and cared for the dying, and for the survivors. We held hands with those waiting for their test results. Went out on the protests, helped friends who could barely move to lie down on the steps of the hospitals that would not take them in — those were the original Die-Ins, btw, people who were literally lying down to die rather than move, who meant to die right there out in public — marched, carted the Quilt panels from place to place. Whatever our friends and brothers needed. We did what we could.
OK, that’s it, that’s all I can write. I keep crying. Go read some history. Or watch it, there are several good documentaries out there. Don’t watch fictional movies, don’t read or watch anything done by straight people, fuck them anyway, they always made it about the tragedy and noble suffering. Fuck that. Learn about the terror and the anger and the radicalism and the raw, naked grief.
I was there, though, for a tiny piece of it. And even that tiny piece of it left its stamp on me. Deep.
2011
A visual aid: this is the Quilt from the Names Project laid out on the Washington Mall
I was born (in Australia) at the time that the first AIDS cases began to surface in the US. While I was a witness after it finally became mainstream news (mid-85), I was also a child for much of it. For me there was never really a world Before. I’m 35 now and I wanted to know and understand what happened. I have some recommendations for sources from what I’ve been reading lately:
I don’t think I can actually bring myself to read memoirs for the same reason I can’t read about the Holocaust or Stalinist Russia any more. But I have a list:
Read or watch The Normal Heart. Read or watch Angels in America. Read The Mayor of Castro Street or watch Milk. Dallas Buyers Club has its issues but it’s also heartbreaking because the characters are exactly the politically unsavory people used to justify the lack of spending on research and treatment. It’s also an important look at the exercise of agency by those afflicted and abandoned by their government/s, how they found their own ways to survive. There’s a film of And the Band Played On but JFC it’s a mess. You need to have read the book.
Some documentaries:
Everyone should read about the history of the AIDS epidemic. Especially if you are American, especially if you are a gay American man. HIV/AIDS is not now the death sentence it once was but before antiretrovirals it was just that. It was long-incubating and a-symptomatic until, suddenly, it was not.
Read histories. Read them because reality is complex and histories attempt to elucidate that complexity. Read them because past is prologue and the past is always, in some form, present. We can’t understand here and now if we don’t know about then.
*there are just SO MANY people I want to punch in the throat.
They’ve recently digitized the Quilt as well with a map making software, I spent about three hours looking through it the other day and crying. There are parts of it that look like they were signed by someone’s peers in support and memoriam, and then you realize that the names were all written in the same writing.
That these were all names of over 20 dead people that someone knew, often it was people who’d all been members of a club or threatre group.
Here’s the link to the digitization: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/aidsquilt/
As well, there are numerous people who were buried in graves without headstones, having been disenfranchised from their families. I read this story the other day on that which went really in depth (I would warn that it highlights the efforts of a cishet woman throughout the crisis): http://arktimes.com/arkansas/ruth-coker-burks-the-cemetery-angel/Content?oid=3602959
I’ve had several conversations recently with younger guys for whom this part of our history isn’t well known. Here are some resources for y'all. Please, take care of one another.
Updated link to the quilt
this is so hard to read or even think about but… it’s so important. it’s so important to understand just the …overwhelming SCALE of this. how many people died while the government did NOTHING.
Reblogging for pride
Never forget your fallen. Your people were nearly annihilated in an epidemic. Never forget how lucky we are, never forget how they tried to let us die.
I grew up hearing about the Quilt all the time and this post reminded me how long it’s been since I’ve heard about it. Kids, go out and learn your history.
I’m a trans woman and I’m 38 now. My grandfather was a gay man living in Florida and he died of AIDS in the mid 90’s. He was in his 50’s.
My parents took care of him as he died, but they go to church 5 times a week to this day and though grandpa died saying he had no regrets my parents still insist that he must have “repented” for his “sin” before he died. The thought comforts them, apparently.
Meanwhile I’m in Florida right now for the first time in a decade and I can’t visit grandpa’s grave because I don’t remember where it is and I can’t ask my parents because they disowned me for being trans. 30 odd years after the crisis began and we’re still dealing with the trauma of it. The response to the AIDS crisis was practically genocide against the queer community.
In the documentary, How to Survive a Plague they mention this very fact. Reagan was the president during this time and do you know what he did when the LGBTQ community begged him for help? He fucking laughed at us. His administration CELEBRATED that finally, ‘God’s judgement in the form of a plague’ was striking down queer people. They saw it as a form of divine population control. Reagan could have given a rats ass about us…
Until the plague began to effect straight people. THEN his administration cared. Because the people that mattered were finally getting sick. And finally the millions of dollars in research money was poured into finding a treatment for HIV. But by then, so many LGBTQ individuals had died. More people died from the initial HIV epidemic than the Vietnam war.
So when straight people complain about being ‘oppressed’ and why there isn’t a straight pride parade? Go fuck yourself. No one has ever tried to wipe you out through a plague, ignored your cries for help as a disease wiped out massive amounts of your community.
Interesting how a pandemic can be shown to disproportionately affect oppressed groups and conservatives can plan to claim negligence when they decide to weaponise it. I hope nothing like that ever happens again.
*looks at camera like we in the office*
Princess Diana shaking the hand of an AIDS victim with no gloves on, a move that would work to reduce AIDS stigma and help prove that AIDS is not spread by skin to skin contact. 1991, Toronto, Canada.
Jesus.
There’s a reason why so many LGBT leaders from that era are women.
And there’s a reason why gay culture essentially had to reboot itself.
and there’s a reason saying ‘you’ll survive’ is bullshit.
There is a current, ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis in gay black men.
Saying “well we survived Regan” and “well we survived Bush” is bullshit.
Maybe *you* survived, but *we* didn’t. Not all of us. Not enough of us.
Anyway please continue to be very loud about the fact that the AIDS epidemic isn’t over, that it’s disproportionately harmful to gay black men, and that the current administration is doing everything that it possibly can to ignore it.
I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.
The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.
So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”
1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.
Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.
Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.
It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.
dude had guts, someone needs to update his Wikipedia page
David Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was a painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and activist who was prominent in the New York City art world of the 1980s.
Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1954. The product of an extremely difficult childhood brought on by an abusive family life and an emerging sense of his own homosexuality,
He wore this jacket in 1988, just 4 years before he’d ultimately die from AIDS. Sadly, just a few years ago some of his artistic work was censored at the Smithsonian. People in power are still content to try and erase his history and the continued struggles of people with AIDS. (Source)
If people want to read more about Wojnarowicz, “Lonely City” by Olivia Laing has a very good chapter on him. Also they never did dump his body on the FDA doorstep, but his ashes were among those scattered on the White House lawn by ACT-UP in 1996.
Other books on him that I've been told are really good are his book "Close To the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration", as well as "Fire in the Belly: The Life & Times of David Wojnarowicz" by Cynthia Carr
David Wojnarowicz wore this jacket in 1988, just 4 years before he’d ultimately die from AIDS. Sadly, just a few years ago some of his artistic work was censored at the Smithsonian. People in power are still content to try and erase his history and the continued struggles of people with AIDS
everyone everywhere please please please reblog this important artist.
Just bought a book about him just last night, "Fire in the Belly- The Life & Times of David Wojnarowicz" by Cynthia Carr.
His book "Close to the Knives- A Memoir of Disintegration" is supposed to be really good.
