Throwback Thursday, three years ago today. How To Survive A Plague was screened for the first time, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Tomorrow, at the same Temple Theatre, Larry Kramer in Love & Anger will have its premiere. Obviously, its been a wild ride for me since then. I got back into AIDS activism, and have witnessed what I call the HTSAP effect -- the old guard getting a second wind, and hundreds of new activists joining the fight. ACT UP New York is far more active than it was five years ago. Some long dormant chapters have been restarted, most notably ACT UP London. Entirely new efforts like The Recollectors have been started by folks inspired by the doc. TAG and Housing Works have launched the best domestic AIDS activism in years with their push to dramatically lower HIV infections in NYS by 2020. To this day, I get a couple FB messages a day from strangers around the world who tell me theyve seen the film, and are joining the fight in some way. Youll find young employees at ASOs around the country that now feel part of a beautiful, larger history of AIDS activism, from new staffers at GMHC, ASCNYC, SFAF, and APLA, to the vibrant energy of smaller orgs like the Frannie Peabody Center in Portland, Maine. From the beginning, HTSAP has had a small handful of critics -- often with concocted critiques that mask some underlying resentment from years past. They still wear blinders to everything Ive listed above, not able to see the forest for the trees. It reminds me of how critics of Selma have also missed this larger picture of how long overdue historical retellings can inspire new generations of activists. Three years ago today, Joy Tomchin and Howard Gertler and T. Woody Richman and Tyler H. Walk and the entire team behind the doc, especially its director, David France, gave us all a gift -- a huge booster shot for the years to come.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 15:47:25 +0000
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