My friend Liz Boone Lossin s daughter, a high school student outside of Louisville, KY, was assigned the task of coming up with a pictorial essay. She chose to base hers on the AIDS epidemic. Rather than focus on its ravaging of America (something that I lived through and write about often), images portrayed really speak to whats occurring abroad. The disease is very much now as it was in America in decades past. When she says there is no cure she is correct. There is long-term remission, so long as there is access to medication. An enormous caveat, given the $2000/month price tag that it costs for HIV medication, which those in the countries in this piece cannot afford. Absent that, prevention is the only hope, and most dont learn the cause, or how to effectively contain its spread. As was true in its earliest days of the 1980s, silence about the disease will always be equal to death. This speaks to scapegoating, stigma, demonization of parents of children, or spouses who contracted HIV via transfusions, exposure to blood, or any number of ways. Some images harken back to the early days of the 80s and public throngs acting out against victims of the disease. An Indiana family shot at; a family in Florida whose house was set on fire when it was disclosed that their twins were hemophiliacs whod contracted AIDS; a father who lost his job when his employer learned that his son had it; heartbroken parents in Tennessee crossing picket lines to bring their children home, amidst shouting throngs holding signs, telling them to get those diseased children out of our schools, as they drove away. We who lived in the belly of the beast (in cities like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, etc.), remember that time - 3 decades behind us now - well. What we dont choose to zero in on is the fact that this continues unabated elsewhere. Its an unwelcome demon that exhausted us, now out of sight, and out of mind, decimating others. So many feel a sense of relief when all that he are fortunate enough to have (if we can afford it) is a period of reprieve. We look away, as if it all only mattered for us. That, to me, is the ultimate betrayal on our part of our fellow man. The exact same violence acted out against various groups, what we experienced as the ones causing all of the problem, who deserve what they got that she displays here occurs abroad now. Little has changed. Its hard for me to discern whats current in this from what we lived through in America. Thank you, Sydney for this. So, so very much love to you, from a kid who once had the gun pointed at him.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 01:12:31 +0000
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