[ If ever there was a time to act up, be confrontational, disrupt
and demand an end to this dystopia, it is now. Larry Kramer was right.
Lets honor his legacy and raise hell.] [[link removed]]

NYT'S OBIT DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHY LARRY KRAMER IS THE ICON WE NEED
NOW   [[link removed]]

 

Dorothee Benz
June 2, 2020
FAIR
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_ If ever there was a time to act up, be confrontational, disrupt and
demand an end to this dystopia, it is now. Larry Kramer was right.
Let's honor his legacy and raise hell. _

Detail from a New York Times photograph of Larry Kramer, taken by
Sara Krulwich, that accompanied his Times obituary (5/27/20).,

 

The NEW YORK TIMES’ obituary of Larry Kramer (5/27/20
[[link removed]])
announces in its lead that Kramer “helped shift national health
policy in the 1980s and ’90s,” but the rest of the obituary
doesn’t explain this absolutely justified introduction.

 

The subhead of the New York Times` obituary for Larry Kramer (5/27/20)
originally declared that "his often abusive approach could overshadow
his achievements."
FAIR
To read it, you would think Kramer was a moderately successful writer
and an ill-tempered activist. Though both Gay Men’s Health Crisis
(GMHC) and the AIDS Coaltion To Unleash Power (ACT UP) are mentioned
briefly, you would have no idea that they are two of the most
important public health organizations of the 20th century,
and _the_ most important public health organizations for LGBTQ+
people in the last two decades of the century.

If you sift through the swipes at Kramer (“raucous, antagonistic,”
“enjoyed provocation for its own sake”; an early edition
[[link removed]] called
him “often abusive”), you find a striking acknowledgement of
Kramer’s role in the development of HIV treatment and the reform of
FDA processes: “essential” in the opinion of none other than Dr.
Anthony Fauci. It’s striking, because Fauci was the target of so
much of ACT UP and Kramer’s rage during the early AIDS crisis.
“Even” officials (like Fauci) whom Kramer condemned at the time,
says the TIMES, recognized that Kramer was sounding the alarm on a
public-health emergency. Yet these attestations to his accomplishments
feel like asides in the piece.

Nowhere in this obituary is there any comprehension of the horror of
those years—the constant death, the fear, the tremendous courage,
the anger. Identified initially as a “gay disease,” the onset of
AIDS in the early ’80s further stigmatized queer people; gay men
were shunned, evicted, disowned, fired and dying by the thousands.
Infection and stigma spread to other marginalized communities,
particularly communities of color. With no funding, no research, and
not even government acknowledgement of the crisis, entire populations
were essentially left to die in a modern plague. Trauma and terror
shaped an entire generation of queer people, and those of us who
survived feel the devastating losses to this day.

Into this nightmare, Larry Kramer threw his whole self with equal
parts desperation and determination, fueled by righteous rage.
Movements are never made by one person, but he played an outsized role
in that generation’s fight for our lives. In the 1980s—the worst
years of the AIDS crisis—Kramer was a founder of GMHC, which
provided everything from crisis counseling to legal aid at a time when
HIV+ people were treated like modern-day lepers; a founder of ACT UP,
which changed both US healthcare and activism forever; and the author
of _The Normal Heart_, a gut-wrenching play about the times that went
on to win a Tony in 2011 for Best Revival of a Play.

 

New York Times photo (5/27/20) of a demonstration at the New York
Stock Exchange by the group ACT UP, which had a total of five lines
devoted to it in the Times' obituary of co-founder Larry Kramer.
FAIR
These achievements would be remarkable under any circumstances, but in
the midst of a plague, they were truly extraordinary. ACT UP in
particular played an enormous role in the course of the AIDS pandemic:
It combined research, direct action, education and lobbying, and
without it, untold thousands more would have died.

Yet GMHC gets four lines of mention in this obituary, and ACT UP five.
By contrast, Kramer’s less successful literary ventures get a total
of 57 lines. (_The Normal Heart_ gets 13.) Moreover, ACT UP is summed
up pejoratively: its

street actions demanding a speedup in AIDS drugs research and an end
to discrimination against gay men and lesbians severely disrupted the
operations of government offices, Wall Street and the Roman Catholic
hierarchy.

The TIMES doesn’t mention that those disruptions were ultimately
largely successful.

The most unfair—and the most revealing—line in the obituary,
though, is the one about enjoying provocation for its own sake. In
context:

Mr. Kramer enjoyed provocation for its own sake — he once introduced
Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York to his pet wheaten terrier as the man
who was “killing Daddy’s friends” — and this could sometimes
overshadow his achievements as an author and social activist.

The encounter with Koch related here is anything but “provocation
for its own sake.” It’s a speaking-truth-to-power moment in which
Kramer confronted an official whose decisions did indeed have
life-or-death consequences for New Yorkers at risk for AIDS, and who
deserves shared blame for the city’s death toll because of those
decisions.

The TIMES’ failure to recognize the Koch anecdote as a deliberate
political act goes to the heart of the underlying problem with this
obituary—and it’s the problem with much of the NEW YORK TIMES’
coverage of social movements. To acknowledge the role that Kramer and
ACT UP played in US politics is to admit that direct action, civil
disobedience and other disruptive strategies of power from
below _work_. Which is to say, the TIMES has it exactly backwards:
Kramer’s confrontational approach didn’t “overshadow his
achievements,” they are what made his achievements possible.

This truth could hardly be more relevant right now. Jeff Bezos is
making headlines as the world’s potential first trillionaire
[[link removed]],
while he cuts hazard pay
[[link removed]] for AMAZON workers.
Trump forces
[[link removed]] immigrant
workers back to unsafe meatpacking plants, while speeding up
[[link removed]] the
deportation of children. Governors are “reopening” despite expert
warnings
[[link removed]],
while BIPOC communities suffer and die disproportionately. Tens of
millions face housing and food crises, while corporations walk away
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the relief funds meant for small businesses. And police are savaging
anti–police violence protesters from coast to coast, while Trump
cheers from the only place in America that has consistent testing and
contact tracing.

If ever there was a time to act up, be confrontational, disrupt and
demand an end to this dystopia, it is now. Larry Kramer was right:
“If you write a calm letter and fax it to nobody, it sinks like a
brick in the Hudson.” Let’s honor his legacy and raise hell.

_[Dorothee Benz is a writer, organizer, and strategist who has spent
decades on the frontlines of social justice struggles in the United
States. Follow her on Twitter @DrBenz3
[[link removed]]. ]_

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