Thread by @mileswgriffis

THREAD 📣 Vito Russo's 1988 ACT UP speech "Why We Fight" and it's many parallels to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic currently causing 1k+ deaths p/week + mass disability #LongCovid #ME #POTS

1/ Russo delivered "Why We Fight" during an ACT UP Demonstration at the Department of Health and Human Services, D.C. on October 10, 1988.

actupny.org/documents/whfi…

2/ "My family thinks two things about my [AIDS diagnosis.] One, they think I'm going to die, & two, they think that my government is doing absolutely everything in their power to stop that & they're wrong on both counts."

statnews.com/2022/03/29/nih…

3/ "If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from racism."

cnn.com/2022/10/27/hea…

4/ "If I'm dying from anything, it's from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are preventing an end to this crisis...If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from the President of the United States."

cnbc.com/2023/03/31/med…

5/ "Living w/ AIDS in this country is like living in the twilight zone...[Everyone is] walking the streets as though we weren't living through some sort of nightmare."

them.us/story/queer-sp…

6/ "It's worse than a war, because during a war people are united in a shared experience. This war has not united us, it's divided us. It's separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people with AIDS from the rest of the population."

pestemag.com/featured-posts…

7/ "The media tells them that they don't have to care, because the people who really matter are not in danger."

thelancet.com/journals/lance…

8/ "trying to figure out how to get hold of the latest experimental drug, and which dose to take it... how are you going to pay for it? And where are you going to get it? Because it isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit."

cnbc.com/2022/12/01/lon…

9/ "And they don't spend their waking hours going from hospital room to hospital room, and watching the people that they love die slowly -- of neglect and bigotry, because it isn't happening to them and they don't have to give a shit."

theguardian.com/world/2023/apr…

10/ "[Why is] the only television movie ever produced by a major network in this country about the impact of this disease is not about the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS, but of the impact of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family?"

pestemag.com/featured-posts…

11/ "All the newspapers I read tell me that IV drug users and homosexuals still account for the overwhelming majority of cases, and a majority of those people at risk."

accessibility.com/blog/cdc-direc…

12/ "It is more than a horror story, exploited by the tabloids."

niemanreports.org/articles/three…

13/ "When future generations ask what we did in this crisis, we're going to have to tell them that we were out here today. And we have to leave the legacy to those generations of people who will come after us."

thenation.com/article/societ…

14/ "We're so busy putting out fires right now, that we don't have the time to talk to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave, and the next day, and next month and the next week and the next year."

npr.org/sections/healt…

15/ "After we kick the shit out of this disease, we're all going to be alive to kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again."

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

16/ Russo's above ending quote is heart-wrenching to read as the world counts ~18 million excess Covid deaths and at least 65 million people with #LongCovid. Russo died of AIDS-related complications in 1990.

Its*