man northrup and this week we're going to take a long look at the record of george h w bush on l g b t n aids issues and we're going to show you for a long period of time the intensity of the act of protest against him while he was president it's a very moving video by act up videographer james went say well also look at how the mainstream press coverage of bush's death mostly ignored his age in action on parliament came out as a positive but the news this week of course is the death of george h w bush now certainly you've been swamped with enough pablum about what a wonderful guy he wa that very painful to watch all of this coverage because it virtually totally ignores his record on aids which was abysmal and it's not just that you know that was one the bad things that he did as president which we could talk these people in power when they die i want to in fact say a little about this after we watch this video but it is just astonishing the homogenous zation of people's records all they want to talk about is the socks his marriage his letter writing his hate of broccoli skydiving i mean it's all it's just personality this is how we know it's more than that it's how we ended up with trump it's the end of the cold war or whatever but we can talk about all those things too in a in a more intelligent way especially as war record but we are going to his record in one word two i mean the wars that he perpetrated are just treated as great victories for the united states and don't get me started on clarence thomas but we  feel a need to be honest about the fuller record and george bush was president at the height of the aids epidemic and we're now fans of reagan or clinton on this either and bush was part of the reagan administration absolutely so for many years he had a hand in what could have been a response to the aids epidemic and did virtually nothing and in fact in some bad things so act up was very angry at him for a long time and we staged many many many demonstrations against him showing our anger but really begging demanding that he do something to end the epidemic and he just ignored us wouldn't say the word and cut back funding and was nasty to gay people so so to all this abnormal right and so to a lot of you don't understand who didn't live through this don't understand how we felt back then and we were going through and what our friends so many of our friends dr so many of the people you're going to see in this film are dead so not only is this an indictment of george bush on aids issues and a little more broadly it's also a lesson in how activists operate in an attempt to get the attention of the public as well as the people in power who are asking to do things differently so this is most of idio by james when see of backed up under the heading of aids community television we've turned a couple of minutes off it but it begins with a speech by someone at the united nations talking about the statistics of how many infected and then goes to larry kramer angry and then a long period of act up going to do in many demonstrations in the ninety ninety one and one thousand nine hundred two i was at kennebunkport i was at a number of these other phrase a message for me where we're spending four billion dollars a year on aids research when you consider that on a per capita basis for compared to heart disease or cancer it's an awful lot it's far more so what was the message the basic budget for research is eight hundred eighty five million dollars it is not enough to find a cure business as usual search particular hasn't even started the funding for aids research is inadequate and in fact is getting less adequate as time goes on in fact this year the budget for the aids clinical trials program is actually being cut by about twenty five percent or spending eight hundred fifty million hits the mark and dozens of departments across the government there's no one person to charge there's no not even one committee in charge the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing so your final thought are you hopeful that there will be a cure found i think we shouldn't talk about cures we should talk about step by step progress we should talk about the development of vaccines where progress is being made and most importantly we should talk about prevention of infection where the government is not doing nearly enough to try to prevent if the message is research i would say please talk to dr found she and others at the national institute of health who would tell you that we're doing pretty well in funding of research and we've got the best scientists in the world and i think there's more optimism in this community now the scientific community has been there ever has  people who will be infected with a because of george bush's criminal negligence these people will not get a vacation rape and the hundreds of thousand people that have already died of aids those people did not get a vacation from aids we're here to demand leadership from george bush leadership in the face of this crisis is about which is the seminarian our population and which is going to lead to a total breakdown of the internal fabric of the society we're here to finally present george of boy anything about inside but she was one faction's elihu a person with down housing asleep on the subways on a street in new york city you had to make a decision between whether or not to take care of your infection i'll buy yourself a place to eat to get into a soup line so we feel that there's a need for more supportive housing most of those who came out of prison motivation his lack of shooting a political priority for rates and health care in this country costing the lives of thousands of people in new york city alone there are a million people who are infected with hiv in the next ten years those people are going to be dead and it's going to be when george bush epidemic ever the potential people that could suffer the epidemic i'm not safe and nobody out there is safe from this epidemic as long as we have a government that will not take responsibility for educating people about how they can contract the disease and how they can so i thought i was going to be a private you know like no one would know about it and they suggested bringing it to the bar that they said they would personally support it so they said you know when you're in new york when you bring it to the group so i present it as  a next step in the activism i mean lots of people have been talking about if they die having their bodies using a political purell i think the quilt itself does good stuff and it's moving still it's like making something beautiful out of the epidemic and i feel like doing some like this is a way of showing there's something beautiful about it you know this is what i'm left with i've got a box full of ashes and bone chips you know there's no beauty in that and i felt like a statement like this probably needs on the white house lawn fact that it was the political funeral that we were aware of directed at the white house certainly the first related to the genocide of people with aids i think it was it was a very moving action  it really affected me a lot and the subsequent political funeral that we had for mark was equally moving i think carrying mark's body not only because it was a body as opposed to ashes but because it was mark you know someone that we all rather than just be ashes of people that some of  new and you know the fact that it was his wishes that you know he had been one of the organizers of the cane project and and you know head off there the whole bit you know really was evening was about to heat up outside become threatening calls we have we will not be excluded from justice we will not be excluded from participation we will not be excluded from liberation saw with desert storm it is obvious that this will not happen with another four years of george bush and frankly i think it's unlikely it will happen with the president clinton the key to making this these issues important to national leaders is our ability to disrupt the status quo and making the anger associated with not dealing with a more threatening to the fabric of society than the disease itself the august seventeenth arrive at associated with the act that march at the republican national convention in houston can be a beginning act up did provoke the police and defiantly said we can no longer accept genocide as an answer to a no group of people has ever won their freedom or civil rights at the ballot box it has never happened and there is no reason to believe it ever will for eight ten times as much for aids victims as per cancer but i think that we're showing the proper compassion and concern so i can't tell you where it's coming from but i am very much concerned about aids and i believe that we've got the best researchers in the world out there and i work in the problem we're funding them i wish there was more money but we're funding them far more than any time in the past and we're going to keep on doing that i don't know is a little disappointed in magic because he came to me and i said that if you see some we're not doing get ahold of me call me let me know he went to one meeting and then we heard that he was stepping down so he's been replaced by mary fisher who electr d the republican convention by talking about the compassion and the concern that we feel it was a beautiful moment and i think she'll do a first class job on that commission so i think the appeal is yes we care and the other thing in a recent press conference restricted to reporters who write about religious matters president bush denounced act up he called us outrageous and counterproductive he said it is an excess of three speech to resort to some of the tactics these people use later bush continued his whining free speech he said is under assault throughout the land the american way is threatened when various minorities in a desperate last ditch dan attempt to be heard make so much noise downtrodden should be more polite let's trust our friends recommends george to respond to reason george we tried to use reason but while we were hoping you would listen to reason following in the footsteps of reagan a few cases of an awful disease grew into an epidemic and then grew more and more and became a plague  impolite abrasive and rude like the virus that is killing us what else can we do when we're dying from a plague we need not be dying from and the second republican administration in a row is sweeping us under a carpet we have seen this coming for ten years each year it gets worse and worse each year millions more are allowed to become infected and face death and still no one officially cares and our president wants us to be polite george bush's america as ronald reagan's america was before his is a country of bigotry and hate and greed and blindness act up of cheese what it which is by being impolite everything we're doing is something that in a decent world the government would be doing in order to stay alive we are forced to spend what time and energy we have left fighting the lethargy and stupidities of your do nothing government the deliveries in curing aids and ending this plague are not scientific ones they are bureaucratic ones can forty one and that was the late eighty's and early ninety's fighting the epidemic and fighting president george h w bush again thank you to james went to see of aids community television for that really stunning video and one of the messages that i think i hope we all got is that you know we're all very happy that we had a little progress on the election but it's not just about elections you've got to be on the streets you've got to be activists and the intensity of that was tremendous look there you saw a little references to it there george bush was asked what he would do if a grandchild of his was gay said i'd put my arm around him and tell him i love him and i'd tell him you're not normal you have don't go out and push that is normal the international aids conference was going on now so here we have this funeral and all these encomiums to george h w bush and i've been watching this to the extent i could stomach ever it's not much i have to keep turning it off and i've been thinking about this and it really is it's the self perpetuating hierarchy it's privilege it's power you know they said talk about him being a man of the people nonsense he was i mean look how he talks about people with aids and gay people  back about how wonderful they are with all the that's going on in this country in the world and they're just so pleased to be able to sit there and say nice things about each other and frankly it's stomach turning so  used her opportunity to confront him verbally and with this sign talk is cheap aids funding is not and people say oh how could you know how could you do that well that's what we need to do because he really wasn't talking about it and also he talked know he was really he was representing the united states and he wasn't doing what needed to be doug people dying by the thousands and he to any lied about the fundy nanny and a slash funding instead any wouldn't deal with it any wouldn't you know all this talk about how compassionate he was did you see any compassion there no now and he did say he was more concerned about people who are unemployed rather than people who are dying of a raging epidemic all right well let's move on to the current occupant of the white house well when the was a small victory this weekend that the anti gay thomas far from nominated to the federal bench from north carolina  saying with jesse helms again if you there's that name and there's a long line of hideous nominees behind him and some sneaky horrible stuff we had told you that the revised nafta the u mexico canada trade agreement had a provision put in by canada that had a nondiscrimination for a sexual orientation and gender identity provision to protect workers covered by this agreement well and we were watching it very carefully because the right wing in the u s congress wanted that out of there so it turns out that bush found a way to get it out of there our nominee i'm not sorry trump thank you ok not by taking it out but by putting a little asterisk and a footnote that says the u s policies already protect people enough so they don't have to be applied to to these workers and they also added into this agreement the provisions that were in the transpacific pardon ship agreement that we so hated and that made us glad the p p was cancelled which is all the propping up of the pharmaceutical president pence is standing up on world aids day and so you know or to give you know more money to pepfar yeah a hundred million dollars to faith based organizations which will refuse refuse to work with any organization around the world that does  and in this in this speech on world aids day doesn't once mention l g b t people not to mention the fact that this administration fired the whole aids advisory council and stole money from one ryan white care funds for border family separation two million federal workers this week got a memo saying they cannot use the word resist or discuss trump impeachment at work well didn't they do some or vision on that and th actually have free speech rights i think the federal workers government workers have more free speech rights than private workers you know but yes they well that's because it is the united states constitution that protects free speech not anything that protects the speech of corporate workers people confuse that meanwhile in the military trance service a district court in the district of columbia h again rejected a request from the trumpet ministration to lift the injunction against the trump administration's trans military ban the court said there's no need to lift the injunction you don't need to ban people you cannot show that you're going to be irreparably harmed the the protection of the united states is going to be harmed if we keep our injunction in place so trump is that the supreme court trying to get that overturned and these new head of the senate armed services committee the lovely james inhofe of oklahoma extreme right winger is working on having in the congress impose the ban on trans service in the military meanwhile the department of so called justice in the united states now has a new spokes person her name is kerry cooper back to you p c she's a former staffer at the anti l g b tea alliance defending freedom nice absolute easy prominent gay couple well they in support of the clintons and on election night they went over to trump headquarters because the they didn't is going to go as low as they did they were around the mystery want to trumpet quarters was a horrible article in the times sort of you know talking ok he says and we will win and we will take away your little rights away and deport you and guess you and turn you straight well you run in the cage this is what the guy posted a nice tall piece not v drugs under medicare part d also making cuts to cancer drugs depression drugs schizophrenia drugs and other conditions this is being called of course draconian and your hero anthony found she at the national institutes for allergies and infectious diseases is going to cut funding for the university of california at san francisco aids research lab because they're using fetal tissue and mice to research aids drugs and other drugs and the congress the right wingers are up in arms so they're going to cut federal funding to this extremely important research this is the epicenter of aids research on the west discriminate act which even the right wing governor vetoed and supports conversion therapy in california several stories first the chair of the democratic party and a gay man named eric know we thought that was a great thing when he became chair of the party but it turns out he has resigned because he has been charged with sexual harassment and an alcohol problem so he is out also in california the superintendent of the ventura county schools david creswell has resigned because he was found to have made a lot of homophobic and transpo because remarks in a church speech two years ago ryan murphy december seventeenth no genitals and no female present proof presentational nipples quick follow up on the lesbian tree at rockefeller center we showed you it being cut down donated by a lesbian couple and they put up the tree at rockefeller center and they held the lighting ceremony and there is the lovely surely figaro and lizette good here as with the rockefeller center tree that they donated all lit up thank you when they on the v show i didn't watch the show in baltimore black trans woman named tiny t y d i was shot and killed or we know now is that the police are investigating and it turns out a gay man was killed there recently to stars in whatever fields they are striving for back to bad news in las vegas nevada in nevada a gay couple charles and vincent were attacked outside their home very viciously with  glass shards from a table that was broken two guys one of whom worked with one of these guys at wal mart followed them home screaming anti gay epithets faggot we're going to go after you and just attack them brutally one punctured lung broken ribs a head injury they said they feel they have to move now i mean that there is an investigation well the neighbors saw the whole thing happen and didn't call the cops didn't call an ambulance didn't do anything and it was only them once they thought these guys off who were able to call the cops are terrible story in new york there was someone who was in police custody who was said she was beaten up by the by the police and in the jail and or discriminated against and she brought tried to bring a complaint to the division of human rights to investigate and they forgot the state was fighting it off and saying oh no no no no no it's police we don't juden was in the bathroom a trans woman going to the bathroom in a bathroom stall and the dorothy some of the school came in and force the door open to tell her to get out seventy nine he was a major leader of p flag that's him and his wife the parents means and gave his wife julie they had a lesbian daughter and they became extremely active not only with people but also in fighting eight and with the freedom to marry and they were much beloved in the san francisco community we also got an interesting comment from former supreme court justice anthony ken sex parents and i thought they deserved to have their parents marry that was clear in his decision it was not like we might need some support in our relationships but that the kids deserve married parents and  knew this is a case of the ends justifying the means and i'll take it and our old pal fred karger the out gay republican candidate for president a couple of times who now runs something called mormons for quality succeed in getting any kind of asylum well it's going to impact twenty thousand immigrants to receive such protection and just twenty five percent of them they may not get much help from the pope in a new book marriage news in taiwan the premier says she will write a new separate law that as opposed to just amending the marriage law this this is not making activists in taiwan happy because  the constitutional court said we need marriage and this year jewish will secretary general announce that the passage of the anti gay referenda which we reported on extensively cannot override the constitutional court's twenty seventeen ruling that you've i suspect this will end up back in court meanwhile after the referendum which all went against calls to the l g b t q hotline are up forty percent and hong kong the legislative council rejected a motion from a gay member of the council to at least study moving toward same sex marriage in alberta canada a lesbian couple is filing a complaint with the human rights commission because they were forced out of their jobs with the emergency services department because people were offended that they were married and referred to each other as wife and they got so gay bash that they had to leave their jobs so now they're they're following a human rights complaint in brazil gay couples are trying to marry fast because of the new right wing president and they're worried that he's going to take their rights away and in south africa new bill that's been proposed the home affairs offices would be required to officiate same sex marriages and civil unions it's a little confusing about what's going on there now there are most of them refuse because they're allowed to so this will put new pressure on them and in russia in katherine berg i'm sure mall and that they have the high school drawing competition on tolerance tolerance had broad pictures of gay people and one of them said we are all unique we don't get to choose our looks our race there are orientations scary gary and segue into aids news a member enjoy life than anyone else because of their status and in your own country and in new york city in fact you know that the speaker of our city council cory johnson is not only out gay but out as a hiv positive and for even with all that they have a separate segregated section for people with aids who died in prison mostly and corey went out there on world aids day to to just kneel  respects these are neglected graves and there's talk that they should transfer control of the island from the corrections department to the parks department which sounds like a very good idea but thank you corey for doing that in this country buyers clubs are forming to make prep available directing people to trusted online sources because you know you are allowed to import small amounts of medicine for your personal use and it's growing around the world in michigan the prison system there has settled with a guy named john doerr and who was in prison hiv positive they accused him of this in prison of having consensual sex while h i v positive and put him in solitary confinement for a year while the guy who had sex with got thirty days of privileges revoked they are paying him a hundred fifty thousand dollars well deserved once again congratulations to broadway cares that what he fights aids who do support us here but they do the red bucket follies which used to be the gypsy of the year competition and now they call it the red bucket follies and it was a wonderful show they raised six million dollars this season just in six weeks from shows sixty seven shows there is no people like show people in canada the attorney general is going to issue a directive no prosecuting undetectible  positive people who have sex and no prosecuting h l v positive people who are practicing safe sex in new york state new infections down again for several years in a row income limit for those receiving assistance to sixty thousand dollars a year and no longer doing in assets test that's very good news mike pence said we could and did to entertainment news is going to do ryan murphy there our man made the documentary about the trans men who are body builders plays at the center on wednesday the twelfth at seven pm as part of the new fest  operation the play daniel's husband the recommender it is announced that it's going to close on december thirtieth that's at the westside theater that's a good good good good place non gay things i saw a roma the very highly touted movie it's a little tedious and long but in the end i was very happy i saw it picks up in the last third the last forty five minutes so two hour and fifteen minute alfonso yes correct so i was glad i saw it i thought it was worth it and i'm just a dorrian my so i give them credit but and i'm sure there will be people who are upset or unhappy with us showing all of that and going after him like this but really we cannot let people in power off the hook they have a responsibility to do the right thing with their power and when they don't we need to say so absolutely whether they are living or dead and you know i don't like being yelled at either but we have to tell the truth and we'll let's see what we missed that we could put it in the promo