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Eleventh Hour graphic and show opener.

Host Lipsyte introduces and welcomes his guests in the studio: Richard Goldstein, Sr. Editor The village Voice; Rosemary Kurapack, Writer; Mark Harrington, ACT UP; Darryl Yates Rist, Author.

Large crowd of AIDS activists and protestors, chanting, arms up in air

More protestors and activists, gay men, holding up posters of Ronald Reagan, posters read Silence=Death

Man lying down on sidewalk, yells, "the people are dying, I'm willing to go to jail for this".

Interior behind the scenes community center kitchen - woman stirring large pot of soup, food being prepared in aluminum trays.

Large group of protestors crossing New York City streets, holding signs.

Gay/Lesbian Pride Day 1988 - people walking with the large banner at the parade.

Nurse and Doctor surround African American baby administering intravenous medicine as mother looking on.
Rist narrating about how the real future devastation of AIDS is among the indigent Black and Latino folk and their infants, not the white gay men

Elizabeth Taylor dressed up in pink, smiling, standing beside Nancy Reagan

People at Memorial Aids Quilts Project, kneeling, walking arm in arm amidst the hundreds of quilts.

Back in the studio with Host Robert Lipsyte and guests sitting at large round table. Interview/debate begins.

INTERVIEW CONTINUES:

Robert Lipsyte 12:20
rosemary, do you want to talk about that, among other things?

Rosemary Kuropat 12:23
Well, I think that what the focus of their gay movement on AIDS does is actually allow our opposition to, to equate aids with with the gay community and therefore isolate our community. For me, it's much more a larger issue of a national crisis in health care. AIDS is a part of that national crisis. But in fact, we don't provide as a nation for the health care of, of poor people or the most infirmed. So that it's not that I don't, I did not interpret Darrell's thesis as one of age is not important. But rather, there are so many concerns that that ought to be brought to bear on this issue, that we can't alone isolate aids as a as a crisis in and of itself, because it's one crisis of gay hatred, because originally the community was marginalized and deaths in the community were therefore See, interpreted as unimportant, it was easy then to disregard us. So they, the the crisis was allowed to escalate before it was really focused on and a national healthcare crisis that that just doesn't we as a nation don't provide for people, for people who are not well, and we're one of only two nations in the world that don't guarantee some form of health care.

Richard Goldstein 13:36
But AIDS is an acute situation. AIDS is not a chronic health problem. AIDS is an epidemic, you're not keeping your eye on reality here, you have to wake up and be real. This is this is a disease that potentially can affect virtually everyone who's sexually active. This is this is and this is something that that has no no end in sight unless we respond through changes in behavior. And, and can regulate a natural phenomenon through our own adaptation to it. And that's where it's different from breast cancer. Let's say there isn't a simple thing you can do that will wipe out breast cancer, there is thing there are things people can do that can wipe out AIDS that can keep it at bay. And that's why the vigilance that's why it takes center stage. It's a life saving measure.

Rosemary Kuropat 14:18
There's a difference between education and agitation. Education is terribly important. We cannot agitate for a cure, we can agitate for humane response on the part of our government to all people in need of adequate health care to poor people to the homeless, homeless people with AIDS are part of a larger crisis of homelessness in this nation.

Richard Goldstein 14:36
You must advocate for a cure, we won't get it otherwise,

Darrell Yates Rist 14:38
I would like to come back to some of the characterizations of the article because what I find very encouraging Richard is that you and I are so much of a mind on gay activism and AIDS. Well, I know it is because because you read the article with a profound inability to understand it. And you know, this is what I'm calling some of the the hatefulness In spite Richards responses, a very hysterical one to the peace. And yet we find that we agree, we agree that aids must not ever be abandoned, we cannot ever abandon the fight against AIDS. And of course, my in the conclusion to the article I spoke of our need to fight AIDS as more than we ever have. My my whole thesis is that while we're fighting aids while we're on the front fighting age, as vigorously as ever, in fact, more so that we should also not forget that people are dying and have always died or have had their lives destroyed by by innumerable other issues that are adversarial to gay men and lesbians. And so you know, Mark and I also ended up agreeing on this and and I'm glad to know that act up and I are, you know, maybe I could become one of the propagandists for act up after this. Because what I find is, he's saying that act up is not actually a gay movement. It's an AIDS movement. And I would encourage the society to continue to keep its eye on AIDS. It's a very dangerous disease, obviously, who's going to deny that

Robert Lipsyte 16:10
I don't want to rupture any mood of detente, but I do think that you're moving a little bit backwards from the original article itself, which really seemed more powerfully directed towards aids as a kind of false Cold War. That obscured other issues

Richard Goldstein 16:29
but a morbid lack of self respect. What about the majority of gay men will never be affected by I think that's true. I think that they listened to you they might well, you see, Darrell, let me make a point. Two thirds of the nurses have AIDS in this country, are occurring outside the big cities. That's the way sexually transmitted diseases always act in this country. Why is it that on your 60,000 mile jaunt, you didn't notice this? Why don't you wake up and smell the corpse?

INTERVIEW CONTINUES:

Darrell Yates Rist 22:05
everyone who mourn and grieve. You see, I was there was a wonderful thing that happened. back about five years ago, I was one of the few gay writers who was writing about AIDS with any consistency. And it was a time when, of course, The Village Voice was was silent on the epidemic. And Richard was in fact, let me tell you, there's a very interesting story. Mike Callen Who is the one of the founders of the PWA coalition, the people with AIDS coalition, and and an incredible activist, very heroic man who has lived six or seven years now with diagnosis tells the story about five years ago, when he was walking down the street with a friend who had kaposi sarcoma lesions all over him. And he saw a journalist from one of the New York papers, a gay journalist who has has failed had failed to write about the epidemic. And Mike crossed over the street with his his friend, and his friend to meet up with a journalist and his friend reached down to pet the journalist dog, the journalist, a gay man, grabbed the dog back and said, Don't touch my dog. You know, this was back in the days, when there was such an incredible terror of the epidemic that some people could not even write about it. Now, that journalist today is one of the people who is most hysterical about the epidemic. I would rather not say, Richard, you may know who I'm talking about. But it's a kind of guilt is a kind of Latter Day guilt, I think. And as far as the hopelessness, you know, there was a wonderful article in the Bay Area reporter, which is the primary paper gay paper in San Francisco, the health director of the San Francisco health department, David, Dr. David Werdegar, told BAR just this February, that absolute fatality was not a concept that he believed in, that AIDS is becoming a conventional infection, one lives with real lifetime. It's like a diabetic taking insulin. And he went on to say that he's optimistic by nature, and that we have to convey a positive attitude towards AIDS

Mark Harrington 24:16
That's the goal. But that's not the reality and 1989. And one of the reasons for that is because access to health care in this country is so skewed on class lines. That's right. That's right. And I think but I don't want you to act like you're agreeing with me because you don't agree with us all down the line. And what, you know, we don't agree. We don't agree about the gay movement. We don't agree about lesbians. We don't agree about the future of the epidemic. And what I really see in you is the impotent rage of a leader without followers and a spokesman without a constituency except for the publishing company that's putting out your book. And I really resent the way that you are spreading all these personal attacks, making vituperative attacks on reporters from five years ago. We're dealing with a situation in 1989. The epidemic is going to continue till the turn of the century in the inner cities of America. It's going to decimate gay men all over this country. Till The end of the century it's a very long very slow disease, and progress on the disease comes very slowly. So don't read that happy talk from that San Francisco health guy, because that's not the reality of aids for people who are living with at night in 1980

80% of the people who were who were infected before 1985 are dead. Now. We're not at the point now where we can say that this is the view.

Darrell Yates Rist 25:21
I'd like to hear what she has to say

Richard Goldstein 25:22
Well you're not the moderator.

Rosemary Kuropat 25:24
Yeah, no, I would like to know their place on which disagreement exists on lesbian issues. Because I, I think that one of the things for me about act up is that not that act up is agitating, but that it isn't that people around the country everywhere are not agitating on a an array of issues, because act of has, very commendably really broadened its issues in the last six, nine months a year, we act up, we'll be very involved on the Webster case in the rights for abortion, I think that's terribly important. But that it's not there's not a larger movement nationally, are gay, our mainstream gay movement nationally, is much more conservative movement that doesn't take into and unfortunately, lesbian issues are not part of the conservative name, because the conservative man is defined by a white middle class, male agenda, of which act up is not part of it.

Mark Harrington 26:14
We're part of a different generation of activism. And I think one thing that happened in the 70s was maybe it was necessary for lesbians and gay men to build separate movements, it was really necessary for women to sort of get off and think by themselves and realize the nature of oppression against women and stuff. Things have changed. Now, I think that for, for younger people who came of age in the early in the late 70s, and early 80s, the nature of the oppression was never seen as as quite the same. And there was more of an ability to work together.

Rosemary Kuropat 26:38
You know, it's very easy to distinguish us on gender, age and generation. But I'm of the generation I'm of the active generation. I'm 30. I came of age in the late 70s. And I think that I have and I have always felt as going into the national gay lesbian taskforce, which was the National Gay taskforce before I arrived, was very much a part of what I believed was the necessary bridge between the gay and feminist movement because they're both based on gender oppression, because gay men are feminized by the larger structure. And so the forces that oppress gay men are the very same forces, the forces that affect or oppress women. And I felt that only lesbians could be that bridge. Only lesbians could join the two movements. And so I went into that. So I feel very much in agreement with you that that strength comes through coalition, which is exactly why I think the AIDS movement as an isolated movement is is in some way self defeating because important coalition between other people who are in need of health care, we're in an aging population, the need for health care in such a population is tremendous. We're in an increasingly impoverished population and the need for health care in that community is tremendous. So that forming Coalition's on those with with those groups, makes for tremendous strength and allows us not to be marginalized as women or as gay men, or as gay men with AIDS.

Robert Lipsyte 27:59
As important this is I'm afraid we're gonna have to leave this here. Darrell Gates Rist, Rosemary Kuropat, Mark Harrington, Richard Goldstein, thank you very much for being with us. This is the 11th hour. I'm Robert Lipsyte.

Host Robert Lipsyte announces the show and introduces himself. show end.

Funding for show by announcer and overlays the Eleventh Hour graphic.