Democrats VS AIDS Activists in Pennsylvania
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AIDS activists from Rochester and Penn State were pushed and had a sign ripped from their hands by a rabid Kerry campaign volunteer in Greensburgh, PA on Saturday. The demonstrators were seeking to pressure John Edwards and John Kerry to speak substantively on the global AIDS pandemic and to tell the public how they plan to improve treatment and care for people with HIV around the world.
Free speech appears to be back-burnered by Democratic Party members and campaign volunteers who have their sights on Party Unity and a sanitary image for the media. The venom of some of the Kerry volunteers toward our group of students and community members who want the candidates to pay attention to global health and access to medicines seemed almost a match for the narrow-mindedness of Bush's "loyalty oath" requirement (to enter Bush campaign events these days you must prove your loyalty to the President before being permitted entry).
Global AIDS advocates have been educating the candidates on ways to begin solving the crisis and start getting desperately needed medicines to people who are dying from AIDS at a rate of about 8,000 per day in Africa alone. Dramatic, immediate improvements would happen if rich countries, especially the U.S., did three things:
1) stopped negotiating trade deals on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry that cripple nations from producing or importing safe and affordable generic antiretroviral drugs;
2) cancel debt in poor countries - payments to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and to rich countries far exceed poor countries' expenditures on education, health, clean water and other community needs such as HIV prevention and care; and
3) pay our fair share to international efforts like the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
By the beginning of this year all of the Democratic candidates had adopted the '04 Stop AIDS Platform, which included strong provisions in the areas just described. The thing is, the candidates didn't know enough about global AIDS to talk about the details of the platform now posted on their own websites - so we have taken it upon ourselves to bird-dog the candidates until they get it. We want them to say out loud, in public, and with substance, that developing countries need access to generic drugs even if the big U.S. based pharmaceutical companies don't like it.
We need to hear from our leaders a call for broad debt cancellation for developing countries even if the market-worshippers bent on rigging the global economy for the benefit of multinational corporations disagree. We want the next president to promise at least $30 billion over the next five years to fight global AIDS, our fair share of what is needed according to public health experts.
So how do the good guys get their demands met in a time when millions of people demonstrating for peace in the streets of the world get flipped off (i.e. called a focus group) by the president of the United States? I have always thought that most ordinary registered Democrats, like my mom, are basically good guys, at least in terms of intention.
So what moved the crazed Kerry lady to rip a sign out of my hand when she did not even bother to read what it said? What was this volunteer thinking when she practically body-slammed my friend in order to keep her message from being seen by John Edwards and the media cameras? Was it that we had slightly wrinkled white paper that stood out ugly in the sea of clean navy blue "Help is on the Way" signs? This volunteer didn't even know we were going to interrupt the speech with a brief but forcefully repeated chant "MEDICATIONS FOR EVERY NATION. GENERIC AIDS DRUGS NOW" when she bolted from behind to block our group with her body and her arms and her big blue "Help is on the Way" sign. It was as we started the chant that she moved from pushing Lindsey to tearing my part of the paper message from my hand and wadding it up. She murmured something urgently about not having anything that will look bad for the cameras. What was it about our small group of friendly, well-organized people demanding substance from a presidential candidate on one of the most significant (and real) threats to humanity that drove another bystander to tell people that our banner was a chopped up American flag? The banner was red fabric overlaid with white lettering that said SILENCE EQUALS MORE AIDS DEATHS.
Fortunately when we showed the banner to people standing near us, and explained what we were doing, they shushed the guy accusing us of flag desecration. The malleability and shallow focus on "image" of many Kerry fans at this Pennsylvania rally was surprising and disconcerting.
Though Edwards just kind of gawked at the scene of us being attacked while chanting and struggling to hold up our message for twenty seconds, Kerry was more adept. He acknowledged our message, explained to the crowd that we were demonstrating because the AIDS crisis has not been addressed effectively and that he will show moral leadership…. It seemed that Kerry's stated approval of our action caused a switch to be flipped in the crazed volunteer person. NOW she came back over and said we should have registered our banner with her and she would have helped us put it up. How odd this is. What does it mean when political participation amounts to putting on a volunteer Party badge so you can execute football maneuvers at what MIGHT be a dissenting message at a campaign rally? My mom would never behave like that, and I'm sure there are plenty of Democratic Party volunteers who are really quite reasonable.
We're planning to do more bird-dogging, and we hope to meet them soon. To join the '04 Stop AIDS campaign or learn more about Rochester area efforts on global AIDS please call me at (585) 464-8965.