Speed Dating for Delegates
Anger is an active emotion.
Recently, a friend of mine got divorced and her ex-wife, who was eventually going to move out to live with her parents, refused to pack and move until my friend ended up moving out to move to another state. This puzzled me. Why would she not be motivated to move out as soon as my friend had asked for the divorce?
I realized: she wasn't angry.
Sadness is a passive emotion.
Had my friend's ex-wife been more angry instead of sad, or rather, expressed her sadness with anger, perhaps she would have moved out much more quickly. But she didn't. She stayed were she was, sad, taking days off work to be sad, and she stewed in the life she was about to no longer have with the woman she loved but who no longer want to be with her. Sadness is immobilizing.
This story is an allegory for our greater political process in our country. I'm afraid that we are all sad; we're immobilized with this grief for the system we have when instead we should be angry.
Historically, nothing political has ever been done without anger. The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example, but here I will discuss the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
The AIDS epidemic in the 1980s was getting little to no political support or funding. When it was discussed in the political sphere, the tragedy of the lives lost was made to be a joke. The Reagan administration regularly teases reporters for being gay when the issue of the "gay plague" came up in press conferences.
Larry Kramer, playwright and activist, is one of the key members of ACT UP and one of the only surviving members. He was interviewed for the HBO documentary The Out List and in that interview he briefly describes ACT UP.
Everything changed in July 1981 with the announcement of what would be called AIDS. I helped to start two major organizations; Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP. On the one hand, so many of our friends were dying and on the other hand we slowly had a small army of people that were working so very hard to save the rest of us. It was during that time that I realized, number one, how truly proud I am that I am a gay man and how truly wonderful I think gay people are.
I found that with AIDS the Times wasn't writing about us, nobody was writing about us, the Mayor wasn't answering phone calls, it was awful. People would rush up to me and say, "Have you heard of anything, is anything coming along, I don't think I'll be able to last much longer?" For many years there wasn't anything and you'd have to say to them, somehow, "Hold on, hold on." And give each other hugs.
And ACT UP made itself. We began every meeting with announcing who had died since the last meeting, and, boy, if that wasn't enough to keep you going then I don't know what. The first meeting had two hundred the next meeting had three. We had a demonstration that following week on Wall Street, several thousand showed up, and we were born.
It got more radical as we went on and we decided to have a protest at St. Patrick's. We had all been trained in civil disobedience and it was very carefully choreographed, what we were going to do. Like all good actors, these guys and gals really got into their parts. They faced the alter and yelled at 'em, "Stop murdering us!" Cardinal Connor was having a fit. We were crucified ourselves the next day and on. Every major network, every major newspaper said the most awful things about ACT UP. How terrible we were, destroying peoples' right to worship. And people were scared. "What are we going to do, they hate us!" And I said, "No they don't, they're afraid of us. This is the best thing we've ever done. We're no longer just limp-wristed fairies. We're guys in jeans and Levis and boots. We're here, we have voices, and we're gonna fight back." It made us, that action at St. Patrick's.
Every treatment for HIV that is out there is out there because of us. Not from the government, not from any politician, not from any drug company. We forced all of those things into being by our anger and our fear. And that's what anger can get you. You do not get more with honey than with vinegar. Anger is a wonderful emotion. Very creative, if you know how to do it. I really truly felt that for some reason I'd been spared to tell this story. Everybody I know is dead, all my friends. I shouldn't say everyone, but almost. I'm still here. Ok, thank you God, I don't believe in you, but thank you anyway. This is what I'm going to do to pay back.
Anger made ACT UP. It saved people's lives. And people right now are dying in the streets, sometimes left there, and where is the anger?
I am angry. I am pissed off. I want change.
No matter what side of the aisle you are currently are on, we need to recognize that those sides and the aisle is bullshit. The elite political forces to clearly are not on the side of the citizens that it is unfathomable at this point that all people aren't also pissed off.
We do not live in a democracy, and this election is showing everyone that. That is bullshit. I want my voice to be heard equally to everyone else's and the only people who don't want that right now are the delegates and powerful within the Republican and Democratic parties.
I think it's time we do something. Bu first we have to get angry.
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