7 October 1991, New York City, USA
SO! WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING PLAGUE!!! AND YOU BEHAVE LIKE THIS! SO! FORTY MILLION INFECTED PEOPLE IN THIS FUCKING PLANET!!! And nobody acts as it is! Nobody here either! Nobody in this hospital! Nobody in this city! Nobody in this world! [Begins banging on the podium.] [Bang, bang, bang] ... the fucking plague [Bang, bang, bang] ... all because of some stupid thing you didn't even call and ask me about! You don't know what I did!
We are in the worst shape we have ever, ever, ever been in! Nothing is working! None of that shit you saw on the screen is working! None of the shit that's in the pipeline that these people are studying is working! You heard what George Bush said ... when we went to Kennebunkport. He's more inclined, he's feels more sorry for the unemployed. That's what we're in. Every person I talk to -- in every city, in every agency -- gay, straight, AIDS -- is as despondent as they can possibly be. Nobody knows what to do next. Nobody knows what to do next. And we have a president who cares ... more about the unemployed ... setting people against each other ... just like these people are doing ... than he cares about us.
All those pills they're shoving down our throat -- forget it! All those treatments Mark mentioned -- forget it! My beloved Brad Davis took every fucking drug for MAI, and not one of them worked. Plus two that we got out of the White ... out of experimental ... that are so top secret nobody else has had them.
What does it take? Nobody knows. I don't know anymore. I helped start the two biggest organizations. They've turned to shit! Both of them! GMHC is a bureaucracy that's so ludicrous -- it's a joke. ActUp has been taken over by a lunatic fringe. They can't get together. Nobody agrees with anything. All they can do is steal. A couple hundred people at a demonstration. ActUp doesn't make anybody pay attention. [Unintelligible] ... millions out there. We can't do that. All we do is pick at each other. And yell at each other. [Banging on podium] I deserve a little fucking respect for what I've done -- in this room. [mixed applause and boos] These people like to write me love letters ... the essence of Larry should be bottled, and we should all drink it ... and suddenly I do one thing that they don't agree with. Then I'm Hitler. What kind of extremism is this? [Unintelligible]
I'm as depressed as I've ever been. I talked to Marty Delaney on the West Coast, a similar kind of guy. He doesn't know what to do. [Unintelligible] You know that Tony Fauci ... damned bungler that he is ... are not capable of the jobs entrusted to them. You know that! Fred, you know that the ACTG system is worth shit! Yes, you said that, you told me! ... The ACTG system has produced nothing of any value. The studies are all the product of second-rate, middle-of-the-road decisions that are not controversial. And everybody knows this. You all schlep down there, three times a year, at tax payers' expense, and you sit there, and you know it's all a load of shit.
Why are all the fights left to the activists? Why do we have to do all the fights? Why do we have to fight your fights? Have any of you gone back to Saul Farber, the head of this medical school? Have you gone to Larry Tisch and Bob Tisch, whose name is on this hospital, and said we have got a plague on? We have to get to George Bush. We can't get the fucking ear of George Bush. And he's the only person that matters. It doesn't make any difference to go to Cuomo, or Dinkins, or Moynihan. Forget it! It isn't going to do dipshit. George Bush is the only person, and we are closed off from him. The people who have the power won't go near him. You want to tell Dr. Farber ... the Tisches. Joan Tisch is on the board of directors of Gay Men's Health Crisis. [exclamation from the audience] You didn't know that? She is on the board of Gay Men's Health Crisis. Bob Tisch's wife. I have spent personally two years begging her to have a meeting with her husband. Her husband, Bob Tisch, was in Ronald Reagan's cabinet, as Postmaster General. And I said, "Joan, you're on the board of this organization. Get your husband to talk to George Bush. Tell him there's a plague on. Tell him nothing is working. Nobody has a master plan. You keep throwing all this money away. Has anyone planned. Does anybody have a plan? At NIH? NIH is a joke."
David Ho, you know the things that we have to learn -- before we can go forward. You network with our people; you can help make a list of all the things that we have in order ... to investigate. Why aren't we doing this? What does it take, to get, to perpetuate a master plan. You guys [unintelligible] ... and we have to do the fight. Ten years have gone. Ten years have gone ... stupid studies of the ACTG. I don't blame you for that. I blame the ACTG. We're getting nowhere. Nowhere! I'm so tired of looking at these stupid flyers. [Laughter] They insult you. [Applause] You come to these [unintelligible] and they trot out AIDS 101. We're in graduate school.
I want to read you something from the New York Times. [Reads article, "Medical Research is in Ruins", about how "the NIH is in disarray".] In other words, you guys ought to be fighting for your jobs. This litany is not new. Why then have the scientists been silent? Why then have the scientists been silent? Why then have the scientists been silent? Scientists have to speak out. If necessary, fight -- for health research. They have to tell the president and his administration that government priorities are signaled by unfulfilled positions and unkept promises. I don't make this up. That's the fucking president of Yale Medical School.
I don't know what to do anymore, and I never said that before. I think ActUp doesn't work anymore. I think the tactics it represents don't work anymore. I think the anger that is in us has fallen on deaf ears. And I don't know what to do next. I don't know what kind of organization to start. I don't know how to fight. I don't know how to lead anyone, should they want to follow. I don't know what to write anymore. I don't know how to write any part of this, because I have said what I have said to you tonight, in one form or another, for ten fucking years. And I say to you in year ten, as we fact the figure of 40 million infected people, the same thing I said in 1981, when there were 41 cases. Until we get our act together, all of you, until we learn to plug in with each other, and fight and make this president listen, we are as good as dead.
And in closing I would like to thank the gentleman in the rear [Bill Dobbs] for stirring me up, because I don't think I would have made such a potent speech otherwise.