June 5, 1981 - 2026, AIDS 45 and other June Thoughts and Poems. #ACTUP #SevenDaysInJune

Eric Sawyer and others at the June 5 Vigil and Die In

June 5, 1981 - 2026, AIDS 45 and other June Thoughts and Poems. 

We gathered at the New York City AIDS memorial, at the intersection of Greenwich Avenue, Seventh Avenue, and West 12th Street in Manhattan's West Village, commemorating June 5, 1981, the occasion of the first government report on a strange  pneumonia in gay men years prior. The CDC published the report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) describing five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) in previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles. This brief article was the first official, published documentation of the disease that would later be named AIDS. 45 years, 45 million dead, 45 million deaths later, it's afflicted everyone. AIDS is not over.

Speakers filled the Friday night, just before our Candle Light Vigil, a march. History is calling, can we respond, asked  Dr. Demetre Daskalakis (Callen-Lorde). Tonight we refuse to be quiet. 

Other speakers included drag artist and actress Peppermint, actor Javier Muñoz, and UNAIDS liaison Vinay Saldanha. 

Health is primary, said Dr. Oni Blackstock (Health Justice).  Everyone needs healthcare. Yet it’s under attack. 

 Actor Javier Muñoz recalled a lover who died in his arms in St Vincents, another an uncle who perished in Dublin. 

Where are we gonna go when the clinics close and people die, asked drag artist and actress Peppermint, who spoke without  notes. Look out for each other. We need healthcare. We need mutual aid. We need each other. We need health clinics. 

Cleve Jones put out the call for vigils, as part of Seven Days in June, organizing around health. Health is primary. I brought the idea to ACTUP and Rise and Resist. Both supported immediately, flew into organizing. I talked with Eric Sawyer, who contacted the AIDS Memorial and Housing Works we were rolling. A few of us got arrested on June 2 in DC challenging the Secretary of State around dismantling USAID and PEPFAR, amidst an Ebola outbreak. The health safety net we created is being dismantled, AIDS  numbers are increasing. June 5 reminds us we need to support each other, we need to remember. We need mutual aid. Everyone needs healthcare. Vote for your health. Our lives depend upon it.

Visibly moved by the other speakers, long term survivor Eric Sawyer, a co-founder of ACT UP, spoke last. His words were some of the most impactful of the night:

“We are here today for two purposes:  

One is because it’s Long-term Survivor’s Day for people living with HIV aids. 

And the second purpose why we are here is to commemorate the 45th Anniversary of the June 5, 1981 MMRW publication reporting on the death of five gay men in Los Angeles, dying of an untreatable pneumonia (PCP or Pneumocystic Pneumonia).

As a long-term survivor of HIV myself, I will make comments mainly about the primary impact that being a long-term survivor has had on my life.  

While I have had some medical complications of having lived with symptoms of HIV since before 1981 and have suffered with neuropathy, early onset arthritis resulting in Hip and Knee replacements, heart and vascular disease, I would say my most challenging factor related to being a long-term survivor is Survivor’s Guilt.

I have been lucky enough to gain access to treatments for opportunistic infections and also to get early access to anti-retroviral drugs that have kept me healthy enough to have survived more than 45 years of HIV infection.  

But meeting people living with AIDS at international AIDS conferences in the early 1990s outraged me that we people living with AIDS in the US and Europe were surviving more than a decade of AIDS symptoms, while people in the developing world were dying in one year or less after diagnosis.

I remember the 1992 Amsterdam International AIDS Conference, where people with AIDS from Africa were getting on airplanes with active pneumonia to attend this meeting - with NGO conference scholarships, they received plane tickets, hotel reservations, and conference registrations, and showed up at the conference so sick that they had to be sent to the hospital for treatment at the conference’s expense.

People with AIDS suffering from pneumonia were so desperate for healthcare and AIDS treatments they were getting on planes and traveling to Germany with pneumonia.

Others had herpes outbreaks all over their faces, thrush so bad they couldn’t eat or swallow, and constant diarrhea. 

I reached into my shaving kit to take out my drugs to treat thrush, herpes, diarrhea, and other opportunistic infections to give to people with AIDS from Africa.

These things motivated Aldyn McKean and Andy Velez, along with me, to force the conference organizers to bring doctors and nurses to the conference and to set up a PWA lounge with a medical clinic to care for the sick people with AIDS, who had traveled from the developing world.

This realization of the lack of health equity propelled my desire to fight for universal access to health and especially for the Global distribution of HIV medications, including anti-retroviral AIDS drugs.

Surviving AIDS for more than a decade when I couldn’t save my dying lover Scott Bernard’s life, and watching people from Africa die of AIDS within one year of diagnosis, created the survivor's guilt that motivates my AIDS Activism still today.

We are also here today to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the MMRW reporting of five gay men dying of pneumonia (PCP)  in Los Angeles.

This article and a subsequent article in the NY Times in July, reporting on as many as 41 cases of death by Kaposi Sarcoma (KS) in gay men in New York City, marked the medical community’s first scientific notices of an illness that became known as AIDS. 

They aren’t the first cases known to the medical community of such illnesses as (KS), PCP, wasting syndrome, and other opportunistic infections related to the collapse of gay men’s immune systems.

In 1979, there were reports of early Kaposi Sarcoma cases by a dermatologist in New York City, and in San Francisco, and in 1980, reports of PCP cases in UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles also showed that HIV was spreading and cases of AIDS were developing long before this MMRW report.

The MMRW report was, however, the first formal scientific CDC data showing that HIV was spreading, and AIDS had arrived.

So this was indeed an important milestone, because it showed scientific proof that there was a horrible, deadly, new infectious disease spreading amongst gay men in the United States.

This also shows the importance of data collection and medical surveillance, something that the Trump administration is trying to erase at the CDC and has defunded at the World Health Organization.

The administration is defunding Healthcare, HIV prevention care, and the Global Development initiatives of USAID and PEPFAR.

This government has also recently announced changes to Medicaid provisions that are not part of the Medicaid law HR1, which would require adults on Medicaid to recertify every six months to prove that they are disabled or document that they are working at least 80 hours per month, or risk having their Medicaid canceled.

This is the latest announced attempts by the Trump administration to kill people with HIV by making it extremely difficult for them to continue to get their healthcare through things like Medicaid and is another example of the Trump administration‘s murderous policies to destroy lifesaving programs, like the Ryan White Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the  Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS Act and, countless other healthcare funding initiatives.

Cleve Jones, who started the AIDS Candlelight Marches and the AIDS Quilt in San Francisco back in the 1980’s, issued a call to organize Nationwide Candlelight Vigils on June 5 to mark the 45th Anniversary of the MMRW article and to anchor a call to make June 1-7, “Seven Days of Action” to draw attention to and organize efforts to make “access to healthcare, and healthcare funding THE Major Political Issue for the 2026 midterm election.”

Tonight’s Vigil, March and Die-In have marked the need for these priorities. 

We must all now join together and organize to make healthcare the priority for the midterm elections.  

We must support voter registration drives, political fundraising campaigns, door-to-door canvassing, get-out-the-vote drives, and candidates' forums; anything that supports making healthcare funding, equity, and access to healthcare the winning priority issues of the midterm elections.

We must organize, mobilize, and win.

 

ACTUP, FIGHT BACK, FIGHT AIDS!

ACTUP, FUND HEALTHCARE! FUND AIDS!

Remember:

HEALTHCARE, IS A RIGHT!

HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT!

After Sawyer’s speech, we recalled names and lit candles for the dead, walking with them to the Stonewall Inn, where we held a die-in in the street. Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living, we chanted, many recalling the years of working with the sick, analyzing data, stitching quilts, creating programs, engaging in civil disobedience, passing out syringes, building programs, defending the vulnerable. The cuts  show they don't care about the poor, noted Sawyer, who took part in the die in. We have to organize the vote for healthcare. Our lives depend on it. Money for aids and health care, not ice and warfare. 

About to leave, Brian, who’d taken part in the die-in, led the crowd in “Sang somewhere over the rainbow” recalling Judy, whose funeral in June of 1969, ignited the riot at Stonewall Inn. 

And out we walked into a quiet Friday night, the thoughts of the vigil lingering in our minds. Out to Julius, I joined Eric and a few others. Knicks on TV, even in the oldest gay bar in New York, the whole city going crazy for the Knicks. Out to Village Works to watch the game. Dancing into the knight. Knicks in three someone chants on the way home. 

The day before, Treatment Action Group posted a note:

“Forty-five years ago tomorrow, the CDC published a few paragraphs in a weekly report describing five cases of a rare pneumonia among young gay men in Los Angeles. No one reading it could have known it marked the beginning of one of the deadliest epidemics in modern history. What followed was not only a public health crisis. It was a crisis of neglect. People living with HIV and AIDS faced stigma, political indifference, and a research establishment that moved too slowly while lives hung in the balance. But the history of HIV is not simply a story of scientific discovery. It is a story of people demanding that scientific discovery serve everyone. The future of HIV research is being written right now.”

A coast away, a vigil took place in San Francisco at the Corner of Castro and Market. After the San Francisco Candle Light Vigil, Cleve Jones, who was there, after Harvey Milk was killed and activists marched from the same streets, put out the following statement:

“Dear friends,” wrote Jones:

“Forty-five years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control published the first account of clusters of gay male patients in Los Angeles and California with unusual infections apparently related to a breakdown of their immune systems. As a young legislative assistant assigned to the Health Committee in the California State Assembly, I read the report at my desk and felt a deep sense of apprehension. Four years later almost everyone I knew was dead, dying, or caring for someone who was dying.  I tested positive for HIV when the antibody test was approved in 1985, and lived with the knowledge of that diagnosis for a full ten years before any effective treatments were developed. During those years most of my friends died. I made new friends, then they died. I found more friends and comrades, then watched as they also died. This went on and on and on. After a while I grew reticent to accept new attachments to friends or to lovers. Most of my community fought back, but not all. Some retreated into willful denial, subscribed to foolish conspiracy theories or embraced the quackery and pseudo-science of legions of grifters. Others lost their way to alcohol and drugs, defeated by the endless spectacle of misery and death that filled our days and haunted our nights. Some, with no one left in their lives, took their own. Many celebrated our deaths. Bumper stickers like ‘AIDS: Killing All The Right People’ were popular at conservative gatherings. Republican politicians called for us to be quarantined. In the White House and the halls of Congress they whispered loudly, ‘et them die.’ And die we did. They called it the gay plague even though the overwhelming majority of the 45 million people who have now lost their lives across the planet were heterosexual men and women and their children. They did their best to deny funds for research, education, treatment and care. The one nation on earth with the resources, institutions and wealth sufficient to slow the spread of the virus failed.  We kept fighting. We marched, lit candles, lobbied, prayed, were arrested, raised millions of dollars, sewed quilts, wore red ribbons, funded research, cared for the dying and did our best to comfort the survivors. We shouted in the streets against the bigotry, racism, greed and stupidity but it felt like we were screaming into the winds of a hurricane that would surely sweep us all away. Those of us who recognized early the threat of the new disease were often mocked or abused, but mostly we were just ignored. It was painful and exhausting to witness the calamity we had predicted as it descended. Some of us survived. We lived long enough to witness yet another pandemic, and to watch with sorrow and rage as the same mistakes played out, hospitals filled to overflowing and the body count rose. We endured again a President of the United States who failed utterly to perceive the gravity of the challenge and derided those who did. Forty-five years later, when advances and innovations in medical science brought the world to the brink of victory over HIV and AIDS, we find ourselves, instead, on the precipice of a new catastrophe - an entirely preventable and unnecessary disaster which will be inflicted upon our nation and the world deliberately, by the actions of a few powerful, corrupt and epically ambitious wealthy politicians and their hidden benefactors and masters. It will take many years, perhaps decades, to rebuild what they have already decimated. And this is just the beginning. Over the coming months hospitals will close, research will stop, care will be denied, treatment will be abandoned and medical costs will soar. Across the United States and around the world, millions of innocents will die to satisfy the greed of the wealthiest few. It's Friday night as I post this in California. Families are gathering for their dinner. Theaters and restaurants and clubs will be full. Sports fans will cheer for their teams. Picnics are planned for the beach tomorrow. News of war and corruption and deceit have lost urgency to a people numbed by the daily barrage of insanity. It is deliberate, of course. The pain is the point. The chaos is orchestrated. Political division and apathy serve their purpose. They did not come to govern; they came to destroy. And within that destruction, they came to profit. The only question that remains is: will we let them do it? If we can find common ground, respect and support each other, speak truth in plain language and commit to the long struggle ahead, we can win. I tell you we can do this. We can build a healthy nation and share this world in peace with justice. Much love to you all. Be strong. Cleve.”

Like few others, Cleve’s story invited me into activism, inspiring and engaging generations of us. 

AIDS activists around the country reflected on the moment. Ivy Kwan Arce, a long term member of ACT UP New York posted a note: 

“JUNE 5

HIV LONG-TERM

SURVIVORS

AWARENESS DAY

45 years ago today, a brief CDC report titled “Pneumocystis pneumonia — Los Angeles” marked the official beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Today, we look back to remember those we lost—but we also look directly at the people who survived. More than 300,000 HIV Long-Term Survivors carry the profound weight of our history. They lived through a time of terror, stigma, and systemic neglect, turning grief into an historic movement for healthcare justice. To this day, HIV disproportionately impacts communities of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. As our long-term survivors age, their medical and social needs are evolving, requiring more resource investment, not less. Honoring our history means protecting our present. Federal healthcare cuts threaten the vital lifelines that keep our community healthy and thriving. We honor the legacy of survival by fighting for the funding they earn every single day.”

After the vigil, I spoke with Ivy. “I ended planning w ACT UP and did a teach in w DOHMH which was great,” said Ivy Kwan Arce. “Reed was in it and ACT UP new members (some HIV + from the last few years ).” She followed, “the line up of speakers - had one woman - was she HIV + ? when I mention HIV + longterm I don't mean I want to speak - Tanya Walker  or Michelle Lopez  ....these women have contributed and  survived 30 - 40 years. Michelle 's specimen is still used for research from the Y studies. Globally, women and girls account for 53% of all people living with HIV. They also represent approximately 45% of all newly acquired HIV infections worldwide…without the right dosing and formulation - the children would die just from the toxicity of the meds.  - so yeah looking at the 45 years of organizing --- it is just what it is.”

It’s hard to get this stuff right, hard to organize, with enough voices, in ways to honor the moment. These are hard moments.  I recall so many left behind, everyone remembers someone, Maria, who I interviewed in 1995, calling her back a week later to set up a photo for our book, only to find she’d died a few days after our interview, Fred, Dad’s best friend from college, so many left behind, the rest of us catching up with the horror. 

"That was the year of the exanthemic typhus,” wrote Isabel Allende in House of Spirits, in our book group the following Sunday.  “It began like any other calamity that strikes the poor but quickly took on the characteristics of a divine punishment. It was born of the poorest quarters of the city, because of the harsh winter, the malnutrition, the dirty water, and it joined forces with the unemployment and spread in every direction. The hospitals could not cope. the sick wandered through the streets with missing eyes, picking the lice from their hair and throwing them at the healthy. The plague spread to every house, infecting schools and factories so that no one felt secure." So wrote Isabel Allende, sounding very much like Camus, whose book explains the existential struggle against death and pestilence like few others. I first read the novel in 1993, devouring it as a more digestible Hundred Years of Solitude. This time, three decades later, I saw the fascism, the dark battle between autocracy and democracy, Esteban, the abusive autocrat who felt like Pedro Paramo. Clara, Blanca, and Alba who find their way, endure abuse, torture, fight, adapt. All weekend I thought about the author of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, who passed away at the age of 56. She "died of sadness" a little over a year after the death of her husband, Mattias Ripa, and her struggle in Iran, forced to flee, displaced, away from her family. Her grandmother, whose husband was taken during the Revolution, died shortly after she left for France. The years of sadness and exile, exile and transformation, they were many. Spent the morning with Mom, then came home, read, rode to the beach, a little drizzle, met my buddies in book group to discuss the house of spirits. We read the Origins of Totalitarianism earlier in the year. I hadn't thought of Isabel Allende's story as a narrative of displacement. Yet , she was forced to flee after her uncle was killed on September 11, 1973. Off to Venezuela, where the wrote to her grandfather,  telling him she would never forget the stories she heard at his table with her aunt and grandmother, her models for Clara. And then off to the Bay Area.  Displacement would be a theme of many of her novels, including displacement as a theme in A Long Petal in the Sea, another we read in book group. The books meander through my mind, like the chatter I hear from mom when she's asleep, more awake in her sleep, her mind still rumbling.

The poems were everywhere all week. 

On Saturday, Anne invited us to Siempre Verde where we read poems, majestic heartbreaking poems about Palestine. I read Wild Dreams of a New Beginning, thinking about the chaos about us, the strange dreams the night before, lost shoes, strange happenings, a trip to jail, a peculiar feeling reminding me. My mind trailed off, thinking of Marjane Satrapi.

Colin talked about Choking Victim and Sascha and Bernie and  Bernard Goetz. And we ran into Susan, who talked about the garden, and Mom and I sat in her garden, before the storm, strange rumblings about us. And I thought about the poem Colin read earlier by Gary Snyder:

"I went into the Maverick Bar  

In Farmington, New Mexico.

And drank double shots of bourbon

                        backed with beer….

I recalled when I worked in the woods

                        and the bars of Madras, Oregon.  

That short-haired joy and roughness—

                        America—your stupidity.  

I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—

                        under the tough old stars—

In the shadow of bluffs

                        I came back to myself,

To the real work, to

                        “What is to be done.”/;’

It had been that kind of a week, thinking about Gary Snyder as Japhy, the mountaineer in Kerouac's 1958, The Dharma Bums.

June is seared in mind, the 4th, the anniversary of the  Tiananmen Square Massacre  and the '89 Democracy Movement. 

Thursday, we biked out to the water. 

Brad invited us to the poets afloat reading at portside. 

 Up Sackett Street we rode down Van Brunt to the water. Aboard a ship, Brad was there to greet us, amidst the docks, piers, water, reflections, light flickering, sun on the water, meandering tides. Brad conjures Walt's tales of voyaging, voyaging, voyaging, through the nooks and crannies, the dark corners of this, our city of orgies; poet after poet read tales of our archipelago of a city, seals converging free,  Newtown creek, a biodisaster of pollution, chemicals in the water, ExxonMobil still won't pay, condos rising along the Gowanus, spelled with an anus, full of affordable housing no one can afford; a  song of a salty vessel fills the air; we  we find our freedom together, riding train to the end of the line, to water, return to the flow, biking across a bridge, to a tributary, from eerie basin to buttermilk channel, a multilayered rhythm, back through red hook, poets afloat... always a coffee shop connection, says Brad, reminding us to greet the poets along scribbling notes, contemplating infinity,  light rippling in the water, looking at the  statue of liberty, stories of immigrants, about us, redeeming us, keeping us vital, a poet from Taiwan recalling a  cousin Kevin, remembering the mornings before school, before the bus, remember our backpacks. what do I write about,  the people I know, the family, clearly all this seawater is getting me existential, brad confesses, hugs coming in to take me from the dock, at pier 17 backpackers jazz and joggers, pipes mad, a ghostly national anthem, sone stand before the k icks game like uncle bruce used to do, saluting the tv, dad laughing, Miranda dreaming, recalling warm bodies, the wind cries, reminds me i'm alive, robins sick,so Miranda reads about Jamaica Bay birds flying about, impossible not to think about the climate catastrophes, looking at the water, the other boat sailed around the world? taking g me with it, looking out, about on a windy afternoon, a guy singing a sea shanty about pirates, singing about philosophy. Monuments make ideas easier to recycle, says Miranda,  lesbian poets confess they are still taken with Pride month, lost notebook, into oblivion, there with Reinaldo's lost drafts of before night falls, confiscated in a Cuban prison, Persepolis now and forever; Alexandra invites us to an art show on 3rd, we ride down Union, through the Gowanus, new buildings city on top of city, dreams about us, where crowds screamed for the Knicks the night before...

June 8

Here's to immigrants, said Janat Namirembe Mutebi (Computer Engineering Technology) the valedictorian at City Tech (New York City College of Technology) Class of 2026 at the college's 86th Commencement Exercises at Barclays Center. The whole talk of the city was Trump is coming to the game, ruining the party that's the Knicks epic playoff run, falling to the San Antonio Spurs 115-111 in Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden. This marked their first loss in exactly 46 days, since losing to Atlanta on April 23. No one wanted Trump in town, tarnishing this moment. Still a good vibe in the streets, people our eating burritos in the street at St Marks Place, watching the game, all over the city. Go Knicks!!! Knicks in five, stay alive!!!

“I wish things were as I think they should be,” PEPFAR Bust and Other early June, May Adventures

 

Poz reports: 
"Activists Arrested Protesting Secretary Rubio’s New Attacks on Lifesaving Global AIDS and Health Programs
HIV activists held signs and chanted, “Rubio’s Cuts Kill People with AIDS, PEPFAR Saves Lives!” as they were arrested by Capitol Police."

“I wish things were as I think they should be,” PEPFAR Bust and Other June/May Adventures

We met at Penn Station at 4:30 am, taking the 450 train out of town, watching the sun come up, careening South, past the river, Philadelphia, on the way to DC, talking about Andrea Gibson's poems, getting ready for the action. 

Secretary of State Mark Rubio was to be speaking to the Senate at 10 AM, an unpopular war, rising gas prices, an Ebola outbreak as we are dismantling US AID, a know nothing approach to public health and soft power, he had plenty to answer for. 

“Rubio lies, people with AIDS die. PEPFAR saves lives!” we screamed in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 419, 10 AM, turned away from the Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his appearance June 2 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

Somebody's gotta fight this resistance, says Asia. Closed mouths don't get fed. I saw 20 families removed from their homes, she says, referring to patterns of poverty she sees back home in Staten Island. People are getting homeless because of this. 

ACT Up’s Ryan Foster Casey took part because Rubio's funding cuts to the PEPFAR program allows one child to die every thirty minutes from AIDS related complications, one adult every three minutes, according to the PEPFAR impact counter.

Health Gap, Housing Works, and ACT UP took part in the action  as Evidence Reveals New Attacks on Lifesaving Global AIDS and Health Programs,

The protest comes amidst mounting evidence of Rubio’s attempts to sabotage PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, US bilateral AIDS program) and vital global health programs, by: Eliminating Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) lifesaving PEPFAR programs, which currently support approximately 12 million people on HIV treatment across 51 countries. Instead, Rubio intends to dismantle CDC’s current PEPFAR role and stamp out their global footprint in disease outbreak and surveillance for pandemics beyond HIV. Experts including 8 former CDC Directors under Republican and Democratic administrations have spoken out against this effort to dismantle PEPFAR. Recent PEPFAR data showed sharp decreases in the numbers of people newly tested, diagnosed, and treated for HIV, but these data would have been even worse if not for CDC’s PEPFAR programs. Withholding $2 billion in Congressionally appropriated FY25 funding, including $330 million to combat HIV, $250 million to fight malaria, $320 million for maternal and child health programs, and nearly $650 million in global health security programs. 17 Senators wrote to Rubio regarding this crisis: “The Trump administration is trying to divert $2 billion in global health funding to pay for USAID shutdown.”

Negotiating secret bilateral deals blackmailing African governments by demanding access to critical mineral wealth as a condition of access to HIV treatment and prevention funding.

In addition, evidence continues to mount of death and devastation created by Rubio’s decision to eliminate USAID in 2025, extending to the ongoing deadly Ebola outbreak in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). DRC had been the second largest recipient of USAID funding. Protesters highlight the human cost of funding cuts, emphasizing that interruptions to HIV treatment, prevention, and care services have immediate and deadly consequences for millions of people globally. Speakers and participants will call on Congress to fully release and protect funding for PEPFAR and other global health programs and to hold OMB accountable for actions undermining these efforts.

With handcuffs not too tight, a dozen of us, ten with Housing Works, ACT UP and Treatment Action Group, another two with Code Pink, were processed in a few hours. 

On the way home, Tim Murphy called us, asking about the action. He wrote:

“Riding a train back from D.C. to New York later that afternoon, Shepard told POSITIVELY AWARE in a phone call that, “We wanted to have Rubio hear that people are still thinking about PEPFAR—and that people overseas are dying” because of the Trump administration’s dismantling of that and other U.S. global health programs.

 

Late last year, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Dr. Atul Gawande reported that the administration’s decision to shut down USAID “has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious disease and malnutrition.”

 

The PEPFAR Impact Tracker, which is run by the Boston University School of Public Health and the HIV Modeling Consortium, estimated early this year that, since early last year, the cuts and closures have resulted in nearly 160,000 adult deaths and nearly 17,000 child deaths worldwide.

 

Senate hearings are generally open to the public. But, said protester Ryan Foster from ACT UP-NY, “It seems they were leaving only 10 seats open for the public.” However, some protesters from the group Code Pink were able to make it into the hearing, which they disrupted by loudly demanding that the U.S. government use taxpayer money to fund U.S. healthcare instead of Israel’s military. The Code Pink protesters were soon escorted out.

 

“They didn’t want people with opinions to air to be in the same room with Rubio,” said Shepard. “But democracy is not a spectator sport—we have to participate.”

 

Shepard acknowledged that there was no guarantee that the administration would reverse its dismantling of PEPFAR and other global aid programs, even with increased pushback from Congress (whose approved funding for such programs the administration has repeatedly ignored). 

 

“But one way to guarantee not getting something is to not fight for it,” he said. “It’s still worth my time because it’s the right thing to do. The door is still open to save these programs.”

On the way home, Ryan and I talked about Monica's Blondie of Arabia journey, looking back on the day, thinking about Anthony and Richie and Panama and Young Lords and CUNY demos, when the streets of New York with filled with bodies, the CODEPINK activists, who questioned Rubio about Cuba, and David, whose taken more busts than any of us, whose first campaign was with the MLK Poor People's Campaign, inspired and heartbroken by King's death. He’s been with us for dozens of these actions, once arrested three times in one day, always ready for more trouble. Today, he mostly works outside. And stays involved with the movement. After King was killed, David was inspired to join the Poor People’s Campaign, wondering what it all meant. Dosing in and out of sleep, I found myself recalling King's 1967 Speech when he called upon the whole world to reimagine our social order:

"We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring"

"Why are there forty million poor people in America? ... When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy"

"We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights, an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.

Today, a lot of us are thinking of those basic questions. 

It's the 250th anniversary of this nation. It seems ready for a reboot, says Ryan. The forces that elected Trump twice, allowing this mess, remain in place.

Ryan later wrote, 

“I had heard that…

The train rides from New York to DC for a civil disobedience is where truth is examined, experiences recounted, stories passed along— as we face the question that hums in our minds, the question pounding in our chests.

How do we do this?

How do we leave this place—

Humanity—

Better than when we found out?

“You can learn about the world from the university of the streets. Go out and see it, but find a place in it, dig in, plant roots, make it better.…”

Ben paraphrases Pete Seeger.

PEPFAR SAVES LIVES"

The day after our action the State Department posted an updated Ebola Response:

“The Department of State, in close coordination with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and in partnership with the governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, is continuing to mount a rapid and comprehensive response to the Ebola outbreak…The Department’s highest priority remains protecting the health of the American people and preventing this Ebola outbreak from reaching our shores. To that end, the Department of State, in close coordination with the CDC, DoW, and the broader U.S. interagency, has published guidance on a voluntary process to assist U.S. citizens who have possible Ebola exposure or who request assistance to depart the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, or Uganda during the ongoing Ebola outbreak. U.S. citizens will remain subject to relevant U.S. and foreign government health, travel, and screening measures. Information regarding this new process may be found on the Department’s Ebola information page.”

After the action, one of my friends from abroad asked why we did what we did. 

They didn't want us inside the hearing for our Secretary of State. Democracy at its finest, sigh. 

Tuesday was an eventful moment, after a hectic few weeks, a few highlights of which are noted below. 

Monday, June 1

Help thy neighbor culture, says the mural jamming an add in the Bowery on our way from Eva Mueller's pop up Wall of Emotions on Prince Street on the way to Village Works on a Monday.  

Sunday May 31

A year ago, we sat to enjoy some sweet tea at Flora Cafe in NOLA. Hot people read poetry, read the graffiti in the bathroom. I took a snap, feeling a kindred spirit with the author. The kid and I laughed. A year later, I strolled into Judson Church for sex worker Sunday. And there, among the harm reductionists and authors of I hate my job, thots on sex work, was a table with an artist declaring: hot people read poetry, from @poetrybimbo... Veronica passed out Aphrodite awards to those who have been in and around this world, supports, rent boys, dancers, even educators like me.

After the services, we talked into the park. 

Across town at the 15th Street Quaker meeting house, Savitri D and Rev Billy welcomed us, Delaney Hall hunger strikers in New Jersey.  Mark, who was arrested on Friday playing his cello at the ICE protest at Delaney Hall Detention Center, the night before, told me about his bust. 

The good and the bad, ever meandering into the night, as the gospel choir sang. 

May 29th

Housing Works stands in solidarity with the immigrant detainees on hunger strike at Delaney Hall Detention Center in New Jersey,  who are protesting dangerous conditions and denial of medical care. The violent attacks by federal ICE agents against protesters, elected officials, and families of detainees is unjust, unconstitutional, and deeply disturbing. We urge our elected officials to fully defund ICE and end this campaign of terror against our communities.

May 30

Shannon greeted us, ageless wonder, and we were out and about, Paris St Germain wins on kicks, tapas at Mercado, a stroll through the old buildings, new buildings expanding into the sky, magic light into the night. 

May 29th

I wish things were as I think they should be, said mom, thinking about her kids, and the world. I agree, I replied. Don't we all? I wish the world could be as I wish it could be. So we meander through this life, ever dependent on each other, the  conversation continuing into the summer night. 

May 28th  

Latrell is still my fave Knick. "December 1, 1997, Golden State Warriors player Latrell Sprewell choked and threatened to kill his head coach, P.J. Carlesimo, during a practice in Oakland. The violent altercation began after Carlesimo yelled at Sprewell to make crisper passes. When Carlesimo approached Sprewell to critique his passes, an enraged Sprewell grabbed the coach by the throat, dragged him backward, and choked him for 10 to 15 seconds until teammates and assistant…”

Completing compliance videos for the college, I notice my training doesn't say anything about banning assault weapons. Sigh. 

May 27

Another term in the books, students arrived for their final exam in sex research. Over the previous few weeks, they'd presented on any number of topics related to comprehensive vs abstinence only sex ed, prevention, autism and sex, gender, etc. Several connected their life stories with their research. One wrote about early exposure and hyper sexuality in a completely moving paper. Another pointed out that our rights are being taken away.  Sometimes they stick with you. They are all dealing with complicated terrain. But they navigate it with grace.  After class we met to talk about it all. Details of the budget finally released. Looks like our climate laws were gutted by our democratic governor.  

May 26th

A quiet Monday, writing, strolling through Prospect Park, the sun popping out, on the way out Village Works, where Ally was out and about, book lovers perusing the stacks, one guest on their way back to China, another to Australia. Someone drops off some old Ferlinghetti poems. I found myself dreaming, a recurring moment, Whitmann's children strolling about, Knicks fans cheering in the distance. 

May 25

Woke up thinking about Hegel, who says, "If soul and body are absolutely opposed to one another as is maintained by the abstractive intellectual consciousness, then there is no possibility of any community between them." But there is the space for community, between us. Saw it after a rainy bike ride to Judson, where we formed a circle  and imagined. It was one of those loopy Judson moments, new rituals, moving our senses. I recalled a cave on a beach in England where Merlin was said to preside..Irwin met me at Amalie on West 8th Street and we talked about Platanos Taverna, his favorite Greek restaurant in Athens. And he told me about Leo Lowenthal (1900–1993), "a key figure in the Frankfurt School whose work defined the sociology of literature. He viewed literature not as an isolated aesthetic pursuit, but as a critical social phenomenon that mirrors historical climates, class dynamics, and the psychological impact of mass culture." And I rode by Jean-Michel Basquiat's final living and studio space at 57 Great Jones Street in NoHo on the way home from Judson. Back home tunes were flying from Big Wrench Piano.

Brian reminded everyone jazz and live music is not a cure for that ails us, but it could be part of the solution or at least not part of the problem on a Sunday. The kid and I watched a few episodes of Twin Peaks, the whole world tormented about Laura Palmer's demise. To get my mind off it, I watched a few episodes of Hirayasumi, a Japanese tv show about Hiroto Ikuta, "a breezy 29-year-old with no ambition, no stable career, and no worries for the future." He befriends an elderly woman who cooks for him, before she passes, leaving him a house,  "a cozy, one-story detached house in Tokyo. He takes in a roommate, his  18-year-old cousin, Natsumi, who "moves in with him to attend art school....Hiroto happily works a low-pressure job at a city fishing pond, opting for a simple, stress-free life rather than the typical corporate..."

May 23

We sat in the garden, listening to a robin red breast chirp,  talking about Columbus, drinking prosecco, before retiring to watch old movies. 'There are things I'm doing now I could never imagine doing before the war,' said Kurtz, one of the witnesses to Harry's death in Carol Reed's 1949 film, The Third Man, written by Graham Greene. It captures how the extreme conditions and "classic period of the black market" in post-WWII Vienna. Martins is reviewing the "accident" with Kurtz, one of Harry's associates, Kurtz off handedly says, "I have never seen a man killed before. I never knew a person could be killed so quickly." Martins replies, "I thought there was something funny about the whole thing." 'Who shot Harry," we wondered, looking at the dark postwar streets, talking about Vienna and Constantinople, the peripheries of the Holy Roman vs the Byzantine Empires. 

'I just love history,' said Mom. 

Where does Albania fit into this I thought. Baby C sent a note from the Albania book she was reading:  "There was no sphere of our lives where we were free. We couldn’t even tell the people closest to us what a hard time we were having. And as we couldn’t trust anyone, we couldn’t form any close bonds, either. The system knew that true friendship could kindle rebellion" from Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History, Lea Ypi, on the mariad of ways Albania's communist regime unleashed surveillance and paranoia, blocking citizens from forming close bonds, stifling potential rebellion, highlighting the impact of living under a totalitarian system that forces individuals to isolate themselves for survival... 

May 22 

I woke up thinking about student papers and an old economics textbook,  a dream about being in another class, another reading list, thinking about Peter, one of the good guys who retired. The greatest sin is not to think, said Hannah Arendt. She loved  Eichmann, said Al, sitting at the Ace Hotel, eating Italian. Our waiter is from Albania. But he doesn't want to talk about it. We've thinking about our journey there this summer. He's from New Jersey now, said Al. 

May 21

There are some students I have for a class or two, others for years. Amanda has been in class after class of mine, sex research, field practicum one and two, policy, and this spring diversity and intersectionality. Lots to learn from our conversations through the years, particularly in this class. Most of my students this Spring conducted family oral histories, tracing stories of migrations, from El Salvador and Haiti, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, connecting their stories with those of Belle hooks and audre lorde and Alice Walker. Many were taken by Sojourner Truth's musings. Some students connect their lives and stories with interconnecting narratives far and wide. Others fall off a cliff, and  we cant reach them. Our seminar showed me ways of seeing and understanding the study of lives, and adaptation across time. They've been through a lot. It's not always so easy to find meaning in the struggle but most do. 

May 19 

Sitting in Tompkins, Ron recall Henry Threadgill, who used live on 10th street. A jazz great, he came here to play. Ron and I watched as a saxophonist played in Tompkins. We walked by Lucy's, a dive bar in the East Village, where we used to meet. And Ron recalled his old buddies here. The kid and I stopped at Principles of GI. And a squirrel moved through the park, the city a garden. And Village Works stayed open for the world, stories flying out its doors, visitors dropping by from near and far as Alley roamed the nooks and crannies along St Marks Place. 

May 18 

Woke up to a cup of joe, feeling dreamy after a long sleep. At Judson, we talked about the long battle, the bad guys taking away rights by the day, reproductive autonomy, voting rights. And Spring filled the day. The West Village full of life, Washington Square full of people, college kids selling tshirts, the whole world seemed to be there. Modern Testimony “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

"Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things."

We walked through Little Italy, to Elizabeth Street Garden, to take in the hard won solace of the garden, people out and about, enjoying quiet moments in the sculpture garden. Book group converged,  discussing Fit into Me. Meditations on the story of injuries and stories, fiction is into memoir. Sometimes getting through the day is hard. We suffer. But there are books to read, reminding us, others have felt a similar pain. There is company in our solitude. Birds flew about us in the garden, reminding us, joining the conversation. And we bid adieu. Till next meeting.

Leaving the garden, I biked over to the Center, where we were celebrating Bob Kohler's 100th Birthday party. A legend of activism,  friendship, and irreverence, Bob invited all of us into a vast conversation about movements and meaning making, fighting the homophobes and the bigots, one demo at a time. As we sang at his 80th celebration, the Church Ladies sang:

"You’re a Grand Old Fag, you’re a bright flaming fag

You’re a queer lovin’ dear lovin’ guide!

You’ve got charm and sass,

A real cute ass,

You speak truth to power with real pride.

Queer youth need a home and a safe place to roam!

We’ll keep streets and piers in the bag!

We swear to keep our buttholes clean

And our eyes on the Grand Old Fag!"

And we recalled Bob's life. Randy talked about

his conflict with Bob, the GAA and GLF schism, when you get older you bury the hatchet, said Randy. Kate recalled the two Kate's cutting the gate at the piers, as waves of gentrification and displacement steamrollered over difference. And Bob provided jail support for those fighting back.

Perry Brass recalled Bob Kohler at a small Gay Liberation Front meeting. 'Welcome brothers and sisters' said Bob. Perry was incredibly moved. I could tell you a thousand stories about Bob said Perry. So could Perry. https://outhistory.org/.../coming-out-into.../perrys-story. Just show up, Bob Understood. Listen to the crazies. The poor are pushed around and crushed like few others. They see the way the system works. Pay attention to their experiences, to their vantage point. They see a lot, said Emmaia, recalling Bob's insight. The stories about Bob's life and ours, they were many. Happy birthday Bob.

May 17

Mom and I strolled about looking at the azaleas. And I made my way from Princeton NJ to Millerton NY, where my old buddies in the Lower East Side Collective were converging for a retreat. For a few years there, three decades ago they were my everything, merging a rambunctious activism with a politics of play and public space, defending gardens and the public commons, connecting with global justice movements, one prank at a time. They were my social world and mentors into a worldwide of activist scholarship. We held street parties? organized community gardens, faced charges, fought the law.  The world changed and so did we. Lani passed. New collectives came, went, along with wars and movements.  All that is solid melts into air. I careened into the hills, through the light of the afternoon, past creeks, waterfalls, old barns, a peace demo, towards Bennington, Vermont, to pick up the kid. Listening to Sheena is a Punk Rocker, Lloyd  Cole and the Connotions, and three versions of Ceremony, we drove back home, stopping for a snack and a cup of joe.

All the while Marci Shore told stories about a history of ideas, about friends and movements, Havel and his friends in jail, forging a new path. "Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing."

Václav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe"

May 16

Ed Wolf posted a telling note: "In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?  I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability.” – Howard Zinn 

May 15

Mom and I talked about Virginia, about meeting her at the library at Princeton, the two running into each other picking up books. They both shared a shelf for their own research, books coming and going, into their classes, from library loans into their minds, into student minds, out to the world.

Later we watched Montgomery Clift stumble, not knowing who to admire most Elizabeth Taylor or Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun.

Watching I thought about the forces working through all of us, my students reflecting on their own stories, the ways they are shaped by the social world, images, experiences, video, books, ill information, power, pain, desire, experiences with others ever evolving through us.

"We always limit our personality much too narrowly! We always count as pertaining to our person only what we recognize as individual differences that set us apart. But we’re comprised of everything that comprises the world, each of us, and just as our body bears within it the lines of evolutionary descent all the way back to the fish and even much farther beyond that, in the same way our soul contains everything that has ever dwelt in human souls. All the gods and devils that ever existed, whether among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are all inside us, they exist there as possibilities, as wishes, as ways of escape. If mankind died out except for a single halfway-gifted child that had received no education, that child would rediscover the whole course of events, it would be able to produce again the gods, demons, Edens, positive and negative commandments, the Old and the New Testament.

Hermann Hesse, Demian 

May 14

 "It's more like a half way house than a home," said Andrew, my old Chicago buddy, who teaches at Baruch, speaking about New York. We met at the Library, on Ave A, conspiring with Andrew and Oscar about Chicago and Barcelona, Oscar's book the Menchovics and Red Globalization: The Political Economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev

Book by Oscar Sanchez-Sibony. He told me about his Chicago mentor Sheila Mary Fitzpatrick (born 4 June 1941), an Australian historian, whose main subjects are history of the Soviet Union and history of modern Russia. And Bruce Cumings, a renowned historian and author specializing in modern Korean history, US-East Asian relations, at the University of Chicago, where he taught for decades before retiring in 2022. Andrew recalled  his mentor,  Moishe Postone, leading interpreter of Marx and scholar of European intellectual history, 1942-2018. Andrew is more of a Menshevik, a supporter of the  moderate faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) that split from Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1903. And we talked about Hong Kong and We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (2023) by journalist Vincent Bevins, a non-fiction analysis of global uprisings between 2010 and 2020. Based on hundreds of interviews, it explores why a decade of record-breaking mass protests often failed to achieve democratic goals, sometimes resulting in worse conditions, such as the rise of right-wing forces. I was not taken by it. Oscar was more compelled by the argument. We talked into the night before Andrew went back to Canada. And I rode home to Brooklyn.

May 14

Andy Humm writes The most searing indictment of the Trump Republican Party I've heard. This Louisiana citizen, identified as Marshawn--speaking against last-minute redistricting in his state--says the GOP is in "a death spiral" and "the last breath of the Confederacy." Well worth two minutes and 34 seconds of your time. 

May 13

On the road, we walked to the port authority, looking for the bus upstate, they were off, into the summer. I made my way back for classes. Super moving to hear the student presentations, sharing life stories, reflecting on the world, meeting Alex at Bijans, Baby C and Morgan at Barely Disfigured, basketball games, Brooklyn chitchat into the night... 

"We want justice, we want peace, we want ICE  off our streets!!!" We chanted at Foley Square.   END ICE ABUSE NOW. Tom Morello joined us, singing the lost verses of 'This Land Is Your Land' from Woody Guthrie.

"As I went walking I saw a sign there,

And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing.

That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?"

Kept riding up to Union Square, back to Jay Street, for class. Back to 23rd street to see

mario adrion german comedian gramercy theater, giggling away at his wildly silly, irreverent cuts on white supremacy, ice, the usa, and the ever  bubbling tides of nationalism. As Sarah Silver says, 'Hitler jokes are not always funny.' Says Mario: 'The American dream is not dead. I'm a German comedian. Anything is possible.

May 12

We gutted the CDC, shut down research on mRNA, public health, us aid, public health infrastructure, etc. What could possibly go wrong?

"August 2025, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cancelled nearly $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine research. This decision terminated 22 research grants under BARDA, targeting mRNA projects for respiratory illnesses. Critics call it a major setback for public health, while supporters cite concerns over efficacy."

“This man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other,” writes Melville, student papers on my mind. I joined the teenager drafting a final paper for the semester at Principles of Gi. I wonder if Brad will be there. Affirmative, a chat, greeting, talk about his latest poetry excursion, a  "reading aboard the Mary Whalen in Red Hook, June 4."

"I don't care about your substack" says the writing on the bathroom wall, full of  bike affirmative propaganda, the whole place popping with conversations, typing. Out to the Parkside Lounge, to the Acties, where Earl was busy spinning records, AC was hatching plans,  and Penny was talking about Ben Morea. "They were anything but misogynistic" she explained, recalling his group, who battled the cops at Stonewall Inn. At Village Works, people perused the books and the store continued another day. Damian passed some late night graffiti remembering Ben, and I rode into the night.

Penny puts it: "Ben Morea Keep an eye out for his NYTimes obituary.  Let’s hope they get it right  not that Ben would care - he lived a life of personal integrity and full commitment to his values we were lucky to know him especially me who met him when I was 17 and his demand that art politics and life not be separated held me in its sway for the rest of my life..."

May 11th

Out for a Mother's Day lunch, we all caught up.

"Every Thursday there was a new movie in Columbus," said Mom, speaking with Caroline. "Montgomery Cliff was dreamy..." said Mom, recalling a Place in the Sun. Her favorites leads were, of course, Bogart, and then Paul Newman.

May 10th

I woke up thinking about  the novel I was reading, Fit Into Me, blurring genres. "Because fiction is memoir. Because memoir is fiction," says Molly Gaudry. And we walked into the morning, greens into grays, raindrops about to fly. Garden stories on my mind, years and years of stories. Years of us all growing, garden parades  with Elizabeth and Brad, now gone, finding a neighborhood, looking at the green pockets between buildings and lives, stories about here and now, then, ruins and rumble and regeneration, walking from garden to garden, planting, inviting new birth, new life, new ecologies of wonder into the morning, finding new poems, new stories, notes in between,  our dreams and missed trains, comics, and horror stories, looking at the rubble of lives, finding, losing, looking at the city and ourselves. See less

May 9th

Since 1999, I have been part of the Earth Celebrations procession,    some years on the sidelines, some years as a spectator, a biker, a Marshall, or puppet, often with the kids. Just back from Boston, the college kid joined me as a puppet. Arriving at 6th Street Community Center, we found our way to the puppets. I would go as Earth Celebrations zero carbon hero, even if Owen disagrees. They would join as an urban garden, roof garden. Processing from the Sixth street community center, in the Lower East Side, from garden to garden, we supported stories about deep ecology at East Side Outside Garden, ran into Bill, took in modern dance at El Sol Brilliante. At La Plaza Cultural, we put down our puppets and joined as a wave of water, processing through the garden. Many of us are a part of the story of resilience and resurgence found here, a transformation of the lots filled with garbage into gardens. We rose up, creating an ecological city,  absorbing flood waters, fighting for climate solutions. These are stories of regeneration, Gaia vs machine, clean waves vs trash, climate change and fossil fools.  Supporters recognizing gardens are the future of cities. Healthy cities require their green space. By 205 pm it was drizzling. We needed a break from carrying 40 lb puppets. Stopped at El Jardin Paraiso, where a dance performance was taking place. And snuck off for lunch. 

May 8th

It's always trippy going to Boston to drop off or pick up my kid from school. I think of Dad in Cambridge all those years ago. And then look at the kid, chatting with friends, studying archeology, making friends with the librarians, hatching plans, talking about

Butch Pressley and the  Wanbabees, listening to the Ramones sing, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" singing along with Tiffany, "I think We Are Alone Now" and the Big Boys "Lullabies Help the Brain Grow".... chatting about apocalyptic times and music, our lives changing, half way through college. 

May 11

My friend Shan Shan Song 

“Posted reviews of your book on Goodreads, Amazon and Storygraph, Benjamin Heim Shepard!

In this fiery, evocative work published on Common Notions, On Activism, Friendships and Fighting, Benjamin Heim Shepard weaves together auto-ethnographic first-hand accounts from more than thirty U.S.-based movement organizers, in movements ranging from ACT-UP, to Occupy Wall Street, to the Lower East Side collective, to paint a story of social justice activism involving social justice movements and the webs of support, conflict and resolution within.

Citing contentious friendship-relationships between organizers, writers and activists, like Marx and Engels, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde and others, Shepard uses accounts of protests, of conflict and transformation, to paint a multifaceted story of both the pain of conflict and political and ethical disagreements but also the strength and sharpening of values and found family that can be found among social movement friends.

Through these “rebel friendships”, I have sometimes found worlds of joy, lust, energy and revitalization, love, clarity, joy, bliss, and my own sharpening of values, coupled with deep pain, grief, divisiveness and loss. The accounts in this book are truly magnetic and pulled directly from social movement history across decades of experiences in the United States. In reading this book, I reflected often about my own experiences as a 36 year old, queer, trans organizer who’s organized half my life, of falling in love, of falling into beds, of hate and conflict, of the movement, friends and comrades I’ve loved and lost, the political theory and the cities we’d explored along the way.

Shepard masterfully mobilizes qualitative interview accounts from firsthand participants in social movements to try to answer the questions: how do we find our friends, who do we find friendship and support in and how do we build the better world we want to see? These contemporary accounts definitely created substantive food for thought and are a true meal of a book.