13- Global Activism

By Tayisiya, Kelly and Jaeho

INTRODUCTION

This week’s movie How to Survive a Plague is a documentary film of approximately 110 minutes, directed by David France. It was firstly released in the United States of America at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22^nd, 2012 which is talking about people with AIDS and how government and media treat them and how these people resist to get better drugs to survive. In the movie We were here, the one our group watched, is also filming 1980, first years of AIDS, and filming how the society treats people with AIDS as, but the filmmaker films more about relationship between these people with AIDS rather than how they resist to be cured.

How to Survive a Plague

SUMMARY

This week’s movie How to Survive a Plague is a documentary film of approximately 110 minutes, directed by David France. It was firstly released in the United States of America at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22^nd, 2012.

How to Survive a Plague focuses its attention on people who revolt against the government and fight to prevent the continuous death of people suffering from AIDS. While persecuted by the government, media, and most of the population, the gay community raises a rebellion to be recognized and treated as typical human beings, deserving medical treatments as everyone else. They are still fighting for their rights, and have their official website (http://surviveaplague.com/) to maintain an international connection with the external world.

The movie begins by showing the images of a demonstration scene at the Wall streets. People lay down on the road, fight with the police, and are seen being arrested by officers. The filmmaker, David France, uses violin soundtrack to emphasize the desperation and the sadness of that situation; without well-made drugs, people suffering from AIDS in their community will have no hope left of having a future. The government stays impartial to their condition; they refuse to cooperate.  They did not propose any solutions for a period of seven to ten years, while AIDS’ ravages progressed.  David France includes statistics in his documentary film, which demonstrate how many victims died each year, and the unfortunate rapid growth of these numbers. A total of 0.8 million individuals died in 1988; 1.2 million in 1989; 1.7 million in 1990; 2.4 million in 1991; 3.3 in millions 1992; 4.7 million in 1993; 6.2 in 1994, and 8.2 million in 1995. Throughout approximately an eight-year period, eight million persons died because of AIDS. Today, about 1.5 to 1.9 million people die by AIDS per year which means more than 4 thousand people die per day, while we write this blog, more than 200 people die somewhere on the Earth, while you’re reading this blog, 10~20 people are dying at somewhere – mostly Africa.
Nowadays, what we define as AIDS, was previously qualified with discriminative terms such as gay-cancer, gay-plague, or gay-related immunodeficiency. In our time, scientific discoveries revealed that AIDS is transmitted by bodily fluids, such as sperm or blood, and very rarely by saliva; it sets a contrast with the preceding beliefs, for example the contamination by a simple touch of a hand. Because of the false thoughts regarding AIDS, people avoid any contact with the individuals affected by it, and unfortunately the majority of the population is repulsed by them and disregards the issues they are struggling with. The roots of this problem are the neglecting government, who refuses to contribute efforts and help to those in need of an appropriate medication and health care. The documentary film exposes the lack of research, which is the result of the absence of investment from the government; it leads to the misunderstanding of that health problematic that mostly affected the gay community. 
The media, criticizing the promotion of safe sex and people with AIDS, also contributed to create a judgmental and hypercritical environment in the society. It is the source of fear among the population; the fear is not about the illness anymore, it is about the homosexuality. Although they have a drug called AZT (azidothymidine), also called zidovudine, it is not enough to cure them; firstly, the cost of that drug is of $10,000 per year, but also its effectiveness has been qualified as weak. ACT UP does not give up and keeps on fighting for their rights; they demand the FDA to research more drugs, but being entirely ignored aggravates significantly the conflict between the government and the activists. In the second half of the film, their actions as well as their way to address themselves to the government try to exhibit the idea that all the deaths (114,000 in USA) are the responsibility of the government. As time goes by, the conflict has been growing and still not entirely resolved; they are still fighting for their rights to gain equality and eliminate discrimination against them.
This film filmed to let people know what the government, the force that supposed to save us from harmful, treated people with AIDS at early age of AIDS and how these people resisted to not only to show truth - to survive.

THIS WEEK’S LESSON

This week we have learned about global activism. As we discussed it, this social action and engagement is meant to make a political or social change in society. The media creates “fear and panic,” which lead to discrimination and the growth of a judgmental view of the gay community. Because of the massive influence of media, gay media decided to use it to their advantage to promote safe sex and inform people of the truth. They educated people; as we saw it in the documentary film, they used their united power to change society and bring something new – acceptance and an unprejudiced way of thinking.  The governmental homophobia tricked people into developing the same attitude and shut themselves against any propositions and explanations. They decided to take control of the situation, seeing that they will have no external help and support. Their actions then evolved with the goal of gaining a powerful voice in society, and attesting their equality to attempt being heard not only by the government, but also by the population. Imagination inspired pieces of art used to motivate, inform, and symbolize their motives.

Concrete activism involves knowledge, courage to fight, and love. Knowledge is the key to noble and meaningful actions; the more you are informed about the reasons that motivate you to be a part of a protestation, the better the results will be. Courage is more than necessary in these kinds of situations; as in the film, people are sometimes arrested (several times) and continue to fight for what they believe in, which is an inspiring example to all of us. Finally, love is what makes unity; empathy and compassion will bring very different people together and the more variety there is, the stronger the union will be.

We were here

Summary

   We Were Here by David Weissman is a documentary that addresses the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. It premiered in January 2011 and is 1h 30m long. The issues that this film demonstrates were primarily the social and intimate hardship of the 1980’s when AIDS was called the "Gay Plague" as we could see from How to Survive a Plague. This movie is really more about the relationships rather than the main focus in How to Survive a Plague which was trying to find cures, the fights and AIDS support groups. When they finally found a test that you were able to take to see if you had aids, already 50% of the gay population had been affected. Having not known for the years that it was extremely okay to have sex with whoever you pleased, the more the better, it spread extremely quickly in San Francisco. They focus on 5 main people in this documentary: Ed Wolf, Paul Boneberg, Daniel Goldstein, Guy Clark, Eileen Glutzer. Eileen was the only one not affected by aids, being that she was a nurse during this epidemic. All the gay men talk about stories of how they watched all of their loved ones around them die, and tragic stories of their last moments. Dan Goldstein goes into a horrible story about one of his boyfriend when they were both affected by AIDS. His partner was fine one moment, and the other he was racing down the street trying to bring him to the hospital and didn’t make it there, died right there in the street next to him. All of them make the connection that they stopped asking if their friends, or people they knew were even alive anymore. Just assumed they were dead instead of having to ask. This film was interactive yet reflexive at the same time. This documentary was in the interview style and told the story about the whole AIDS crisis throughout the years. The 5 interviewers told their person stories and experiences about the AIDS epidemic as it unrolled to what it is today. There was no propaganda necessary, yet clearly shows in BOTH documentaries that the government was in the wrong for ignoring this human eating disease. Comparing this film with How to Survive a Plague, We Were Here explores how the City's inhabitants were affected by and how these people responded to AIDS

http://wewereherefilm.com is the official website for this film and has all of the information one would want to know on the documentary and the AIDS crisis.

Personal Reflation

   “How to survive Plague” reminds a poem that is written by Martin Niemoller, a germen writer, the name of poet is “First they came…”

          First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out

          Because I was not a socialist

          Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out

          Because I was not a trade unionist

          Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out

          Because I was not Jew

          Then they came for me,

           And there was no one left to speak for me.

           Yes, we can ignore what is happening to people with AIDS and we can let other people to call AIDS as gay-cancer or gay-plague because we are not a person with AIDS or homosexuality. But what happen when we become a minority? Would there someone who can stand by our side and protect me while everyone else is against us? How to Survive a Plague is a perfect example and encouragement to all of us; the activists reunite their strengths and overcome their differences to become a powerful union. Being victims of constant discrimination and seeing their people die from the disease is simply what makes their task of such great difficulty. Although they struggle with these issues, they do not give up; it is sometimes hard for us to take a stand and fight for something we believe in, but the film shows an incredible participation and collaboration, and that is what gives them much more power and inspiration. Their growing love to fight for their cause will bring others to join them in their battle; everyone can make a difference. Sometimes, out of laziness we might think that our personal participation will have no impact on the situation, which is in reality the complete opposite; if we all start to think in this negative way, it will for sure lead to unfortunate consequences. When I was in High school, although the views of students about homosexual people have been more positive, they still feeling kind of disgusting to see them. In our generation, we still have huge discrimination - include us - about personal taste of sexuality, I've seen a poster that says 1/3 of homosexual people commits suicide when I was in Ontario. Although my English ability was short so I couldn't fully understand what the poster said, but even we say we're living in the most advanced world, we are still the only one organism that harm our own species.

   We feel as though everyone can learn something from this film. Although many people are against gays, when we watch We Were Here, this movie tells their story in a way that isn’t offensive to anyone. Simply telling a story about an extremely large number of individuals who have died from a horrible disease. The issue that really irritated us throughout all of this was how the government and hospitals reacted. Some hospitals didn’t even accept gay people into the system and basically sent them all out to die. Ronald Reagan, although he was a bad president for many reasons we could never know he was president throughout this time. He could have made a huge difference and saved millions of lives if he had just pressed people to try more treatments and put more effort into helping these individuals. We were here is story of people and witness of what was happening at that time period. And still we can apply this situation into our generation. In any generation in any country, homosexuality isn't really welcome - except in ancient Greek. It always treated as sin and even today, we know homosexuality isn't disease - it's more like hormone, we avoid gay people. One of my Facebook friend, I just know his name, said "Sorry girls I'm actually a gay", and the first response that I was about to do was delete him from my friend list. Honestly many of you would think to do what I was about to do. Even here, Canada, the country that has law that protect gayness, people don't feel comfortable about gayness, how do you think about countries in Africa, South America or Asia? In those countries gayness still treat as disgusting or not even human nature. When I was in Korea, I had one friend who said to me that he think he's a gay - he wasn't sure about it and I couldn't get clear answer before I came to Canada - and he was very careful, even I was one of his close and reliable friend, and shameful. I didn't know anything to say to him because I was - and still am - having very negative view about gayness. I think if today's I can go and meet him again, I would say that "It isn't easy thing to live in Korea as a gay person, but you are courage enough since you talked me so we can talk more and you and I know that it is different not wrong".

Conclusion

Both How to Survive a Plague, and We were Here, film about gay people that treated as epidemic people and avoided only because their sexuality preference. Although it's not about story that we are close to, but we have to concern about this situations because when we become minority, maybe there would be no one left to sand on ourside and fight with us. We have to know more, fight to make world a better place, and love each other so the bond that we have would be stronger.

Learn, Fight and Love