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Watch it...Your brown nose is showing!
Larry Kramer should read the facts and calm down. GMHC has made it clear in recent weeks that they heard the outcry and that the hot meals program including Friday dinners will not be cut. The separate entrance will provide exclusive use of one elevator to GMHC clients and staff. Larry Kramer is a trouble maker. There was a time when his activism made a real difference, but that time has passed. His current efforts will only hinder GMHC's making a smooth move and continue to provide critical services. I say this as a CMHC client who receives several services from the organization. The new location will be more inconvient for me, but life and time marches on and so should Larry Kramer and his band of rable rousers---they are nothing more.
Kenneth Fry Decker
Well, here's an old set of messages. I was so grateful to be able to get to the GMHC building that those of us surviving remember on W. 20th Street--light, pretty, with a roof garden. In those "box car" days when there was little hope beyond AZT, it was my North Star, GMHC. My so-called life had fallen so far short of what I'd hoped for, "fleeing" to New York from something less, that I would walk into the front lobby, not knowing the handsome faces of founders on the wall, and feel shy but glad to be at a table or a group with people who spoke my language. The move to the dreary building on W. 24th Street was a signal of a huge change in tone, and I can say as a patient man that there is nothing like waiting for ONE elevator with many folks less patient in a city where one is either running for something that is about to shut in one's face, or waiting for an unknown period of time for the same thing; it has an impact. The impact is belittling and taxing on the spirit and body. No control. Loss of services has the same impact, cumulatively, leading to a loss of faith and hope. One comment above is a flawless example of a current sickness, a contempt, a sub rosa ageism that has degraded any concept of group cohesion and respect. I quote, concerning the "rable rouser" (sic): "There was a time when (Larry Kramer's) activism made a real difference, but that time has passed." Has it? No one told this "old man"--I'm 59. It is good to see a lie in print. Nothing worse than discrimination as modus vivendi and self-delusion. People like Larry Kramer are needed more than ever. LOUDER, MR. KRAMER, LOUDER. I'LL JOIN YOU. We are losing out here, outside of New York City. When a vocal and vital part of GMHC nevertheless described the majority organization as "a gay, white country club," something was taken away in my spirit, something was divided, not in an enlightening way, but the way hate cuts. I remember a sweet man in a hallway, looking sad, and when I, as a fellow client, asked him how he was, he said, "I have cancer on my heart." Fatal. Cruel metaphor. CANCER ON THE HEART. I am not and never will be the likes of a leader. LOL, Yale didn't want me, and I turned into an artist, not a doctor, and a dope addict because I felt sorry for myself. Thank goodness the likes of Larry Kramer were stronger. I need Larry Kramer to help YOU and to goad me to keep moving. It's about me, or we, not Larry. I left New York with my HIV to be a caregiver for a family member, for six years, and then my partner in Philadelphia, who died of metastatic small cell cancer. I did it solo. I did not die. I have nothing, on $10 a day. I walked away from the opinionated politics and fussing where I felt I had no audience to influence in a positive direction. In God's Order, I figured I had to do something to make up for all the sense of failure. Somehow w--barely--survived W.--maybe not. Philadelphia is a catastrophe right now, with a rate five times the national average for HIV infection. Somehow, I, this old white guy with a white beard, will fight, for the gay community that embraces ageism and doesn't know that it needs elders, for the addicted that play a role in the spread of the Plague, for all manner of racists who make the people in front of them invisible. The fight is not a simple one, and homosexual community is totally at risk (gang--"gay" is the new "fag" if you step out of the urban nexus). The HIV "community" here is busy revising HIV as not "a gay disease." It was a gay disease for me, and we were HATED. it still is--the homophobia in that dodge is pretty careless and potent. I can't fight culture and I can't heal fear. But I won't lie, and I was a part of history--I still am. I am loved, though I barely love myself. I leave that to my Creator to heal. I can accept. I will work harder. For EVERYONE in the HIV Zone, and for the tattered homosexual "community," which has really slid back into what it was before Gay Liberation, selfish pursuit and married men and dark places and bright clothing. I am one person, one soul, and with my eyes closed, I have no color. I have experience, staggering pain, and a bit of love left. And I remember my friends. Thankyou Mr. Kramer, and I will rededicate myself to service for others. Kenneth F. Decker Phoenixville, PA Oberlin College, A.B. 1973 (lol)
July 30, 2010