06011987

Ronald Reagan waited until the fifth year into the epidemic to even say the word "AIDS" and he did so at the AMFAR dinner fundraiser under a tent in Georgetown on Sunday, May 30, 1987. I joined thousands of others in a quite candle light vigil outside the huge tent. A private security guard from the building asked me to get off the sidewalk. Don't ask me why, except to this day I believe he was just a homophobic bigot who couldn't stand so many queers.

I refused and the next thing I knew the crowd was gathering around me and encouraging me to stand my ground. Eventually, the guard backed off, but not until several hundred came to my rescue.

The next morning, I got a phone call from I believe Philip Dufour from HRC, who eventually became Vice President Gore's Assistant Chief of Staff, and Mrs. Gore's Social Director, with what was then the Human Rights Campaign Fund asking me if I wanted to get arrested protesting outside the White House on what was then a busy street called Pennsylvania Avenue (you might recall that it is now closed to traffic). I was sure and was asked to wear a suit and tie (which I wore to work anyway), because it would "make us look respectable to the press". It was 105 degrees the next day.

On Tuesday, June 1, 1987, I arrived at Pennsylvania Avenue around 11am. Hundreds had gathered, but in the end, only 64 were arrested for stopping traffic.

Even now, I marvel at the list of co-conspirators. Randy Shilts in "And the Band Plays On" describes it this way in his book: "As the Washington police prepared to arrest sixty four gay leaders blockading the White House driveway, they pulled on long rubber gloves. Police had requested full protective suites with face masks, the kind one wears when venturing into a nuclear meltdown, but city officials had persuaded them that rubber gloves would suffice.

AIDSdemoGRAPHICS, a book of protest art, wrote "The activists, many looking unusually respectable in conservative business clothes, raised the very queer chant "Your gloves don't match your shoes, you'll see it on the news."

Prior to getting arrested, the National Gay Rights Advocates gave us a list of what we could expect, including our Miranda Rights, how we should respond when arrested, and assuring us that they would have lawyers there to represent us. Once in jail, someone passed around a copy of our Miranda Rights to sign as a souvenir. Months later, I got a copy in the mail.

I marvel even now at the names of those who I was arrested with: Leonard Matlovich, Michael Callen, Tim Sweeney, David Scondrez, Eric Rolfes, Randy Klose, Steve Endean, Howard Katz, Judy Greenspan, Troy Perry, Jim Bennett, Deacon Macubbin, Dan Bradley, Jim Foster, Phil Panell and on and on. Many have since died.

These were all people I had read about in the news or in gay publications and suddenly I was among the heroes I had admired for so long. It was tremendously empowering finding the hero in yourself.