We [HEART] Pedro??

Are biopics dangerous artifacts to put in public view? In light of my emotional response to MILK, I was a bit taken aback to learn a new feature was airing about the late Pedro Zamora, a fallen soldier seemingly from another time in the LGBT sensibility.

"Pedro" aires on MTV and LOGO and comes in the wake of the successful biopic, MILK, written by the same screenwriter.

Zamora and his 15 minutes of fame are being brought back to a new generation of viewers for whom the early days of AIDS is a blank slate of indifference to hedonistic gay men's lives. MTV and LOGO are airing a "biopic" about Zamora, not the editors of DISEASED PARIAH NEWS. Zamora the biopic is pure Hollywood; DPN, a 'zine of the time was fun, raunchy, bitter, and always pointed (remember AIDS Barbie pictures intubated or with KS?!). With "Pedro" get the tissues ready but will we really be educated about the Health-Care Crisis, Racism within San Francisco whose working class and ethnic minorities were already beginning the Recession & Bubble Bursts that are only spoken of now after it affects the Establishment.

In the early 90's we were barely acknowledging lesbians (remember the ADVOCATE: a GAY magazine without any mention of lesbians on its masthead?), and certainly not warm to AIDS sufferers - adult OR children. Silence=Death really, really meant something. The Masses simply weren't talking while young men were dying.

But I suspect "Pedro" will make heroes where there were none and forget DPN and those who worked in the trenches, buried the dead, volunteered at SHANTI Project.

"Pedro" The Movie would not have been greenlighted in those days. So why is Zamora, the HIV+ Cuban-Ameican namesake being brought to life for this program now? Fifteen years have passed since Season 3 of REAL WORLD [MTV 1994] filmed in San Francisco and featured him in the cast. It is too ironic that this project be greenlighted while Zamora himself - an educator - had no health care. What does it say about our civilzation that we don't take care of our educators?

I suspect the biopic is to purge us our official guilt, our crimes, show how much we loved, followed, this ONE young boy who will somehow assign us a compassion[!!] for all things HIV/AIDS. As Pres Obama would say: let me be clear: this compassion did not exist beyond the LGBT community, its close allies and friends. With "Pedro" we can all say as other Ostriches have said in another Holocaust: "We love Jews: we hid Jews. we didn't know what was happpening." Former president, Bill Clinton, reportedly will introduce the MTV/LOGO feature, undoubtedly looking folksy and solemn.

I further suspect in our Gay Marriage-Obsessed days, Zamora's pre-nuptial lifestyle that many gay men came to celebrate with their bodies will be ... white-washed. I heard some psycho-babble that he threw himself into sex to compensate for the death of his mother. I have never heard such an analysis made of our philandering presidents.

"Pedro's" version will pprobably go: He caught The Bug, and he became a Hero. Yuck! No, he worked with his body through the hypocrisy and homo-hatred of a phony Christian society in many places, in many ways.

Zamora died "from complications from AIDS" a day after the final episode aired, no biopic slated. He had a union ceremony with another HIV+ activist, Sean Sasser, a Black man, whom we've otherwise heard nothing about. Zamora was one of many who insisted they would "fight" this, meaning Death, meaning Indifference, meaning Hate. Will viewers be equally moved to the rage that fueled ACT-UP to meet the US's official indifference to HIV specifically and health care generally or crocodile tears?

Is Multi-Party Socialism Possible? It is a Necessity

According to a recent news item from Agence France-Presse (AFP), the socialist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is having chilly relations with Cuba's newest communist president, Raul Castro. The story, written by Rosanna Mina, alleges Chavez backed a coup d'etat against Raul and implicates some of Fidel's advisers. Former Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, Vice President Carlos Lage, both appointed by Fidel, and the other recently dismissed government ministers were co-conspirators.

Truth or fiction? I know from a cursury reading of history that the West is quite prone to psy-ops/PSYWAR, psychological-operations/psychological warfare , whereby Western institutions will spread malicious lies about a group so that their official enemies will turn on each other and devour their own. This is to be expected, anticipated, and guarded against.

Famous examples include the US government, the Chandler Family-run Los Angeles Times undermining the increasingly popular End Poverty in California Program of socialist gubernatorial candidate, Upton Sinclair, in 1934, by telling voters Sinclair was going to take their children away. The US Phoenix Program in Viet Nam to make monsters of Vietnamese freedom fighters and anti-colonialists. COINTELPRO against Black Panthers, Weather Underground, Women's Movement, leftwing artists, like John Lennon and Paul Newman. Nixon's Enemies List and the use of government institutions, like the IRS, to harrass dissidents. Shock and awe in Iraq and Afghanistan. Spreading the lies that Cuba's revolutionary government in 1959 would force Blacks and Whites to marry, take children away, and force Believers to throw all religious artifacts into the sea ...

But even former president Bill Clinton, in one of his final interviews, dismissed much animosity against the Republicans saying he knew it wasn't personal. The fight was about Power. We forget politics is like playing chess.

Which begs the Question: what differences might exist between Fidel's appointees, like Perez Roque, and Raul? During the USSR's glasnost/perestroika under Mikael Gorbachev, Fidel stood firmly against any such reformism in Cuba. Raul reportedly favored it. Going back to the early years of Cuba's revolutionary struggle against the US-backed and funded regime, Raul is said to have embraced communism early, the first to befriend Dr. Ernesto Guevara ["Che"], and was instrumental in introducing Fidel to both. Fidel, contrastly, had married into one of Cuba's ruling-class families, the Diaz-Balarts, and it is his own nephews who sit in the US Congress staunchly against Fidel, the Cuban revolution, and communism. Fidel was by many accounts a Cuban Nationalist, wanting Cuba's wealth for Cuba.

Do these differences inhibit the development of a socialist society? Cllearly, the Diaz-Balart nephews in Florida have nothing to add to the building of socialism, but what about within Cuba or within a socialist movement anywhere?

Again, history: we might see these differences as a Threat rather than the "necessary fund of options" lesbian communist poet Audre Lorde spoke of.

A revolutionary ally, Carlos Franqui, fell out of favor in the early 1960's largely because Franqui, a member of the Cuban Communist Party, soured at seeing revolutionary Cuba go from being a US protectorate and sugar provider to being the same under Kruschev's USSR.

Whether Fidel Castro was a crypto-Communist we do not know. We only know his actions as a nationalist, Orthodox Party senatorial candidate, and married into one of Cuba's prominent families.

But I do not intend in any way to dispute that Fidel became a deeply orthodox and sincere communist, and his brilliant mind and political sensibilities saw him excel his brother. He undoubtedly went throough a similar transformation as what happened to our Beatniks, Flower Children, and home-grown dissidents of the 1960's: awed by Cuba's old colonial institutions he grew to believe they were like the Wizard of Oz, thunderous and powerless. This transformation must be behind his "charisma" as a public speaker, having the distinction of giving the longest public address by the Guinness Book of World Records, when he addressed the United Nations for almost 7 hours.

In the US we fare no better. Our debates are between factions of the Property Party, a capitalist fundamentalist party having two wings: the Republicans and the Democrats. This is one party that serves capitalism's interest, and each faction will resort to lies, blackmails, smears, and even robbing the opponent's offices to keep the balance from tipping one way or another. Remember: a fish rots from the head down. Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth. Swift Boats. Watergate.

In the perfect world, which is acheivable, we would have a broad menu of political parties, left and right, capitalist and communist, and the system would defend and protect all sides, and each ideology would be given free and open access to make its arguments to perfect our Civilization. Presently, no such defense exists to defend us against the Nixons and J Edgar Hoovers and the COINTELPRO and or own home-grown purges. We, the marginalized, the poor, the LGBT, the women, the dark, the light, the laborer are not defended. The US rivals more Third World countries in that we have no workers party. We are the only first-world country without one.

The Property Party will argue socialism doesn't work; that it has failed; that leftwing third parties cannot garner public support to be included in debates or covered by mainstream media. There is no Voice allowed to dispute this refrain. But this is a Lie.

Socialism has not failed. It was failed. Fidel employed the perfect metaphor years ago when he lambasted the US policymakers for "hanging us by our necks and criticizing us for not breathing." Since the Revoution's inception, the US has sought to undermine it and this government used its hegemony over the Organization of American States to have Cuba expelled (only Mexico retained diplomatic relations to Revolution Cuba, the last to re-establish relations happened just the other day: Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, a man who compared Fidel to Chile's Pinochet, which was not evicted from the OAS). No where has socialism been allowed to live and thrive or crash and burn by its own devices and aspirations: it simply has not been allowed to acheive its aims ... except one place, not a country, but in the US public school system.

Despite popular criticism of our poor public schools - a critcism I believe is founded on a hatred of the Masses - the creation and funding of this most public institution has educated mass numbers of young people, cultivated them to a multi-dimensional society, socialized them to working with other genders and groups of people, fed them free- and reduced-lunches.

So socialism can and must work. It will not work if we do to other socialists and communists what the Property Party does to us, the Third Parties, the anti-parties, the socialists, communists, or those still not matured to these bold ideas: the "progressives." A Socialist array of parties would argue for the perfection of socialism/communism. So one imagines while the US is utterly capable of domestic and international terrorism, psyhcological warfare against domestic and foreign populations, one also dreams that Cuba - which inspired Ho Chi Minh's revolution in Viet Nam - would see in the AFP story a genuine and healthy struggle between a Raulista Camp, a Fidelistia Camp, and other Camps, like one comprehending the socialism of the late Celia Hart (see It is Never too Late to Love or to Rebel), among others. All would have the sole aim of making socialism/communism more effective, more real for working people, benefitting children and the elderly.

Our socialist tendencies are too big to fail, our socialist voices too vital in the construction of a better society: that is, after all, what government is for.

Days of Contrast: "Rent" & My 1989

Everything happens for a reason. If this is so, and the older I get the more I believe this, my hasty move to San Francisco in 1989, literally days after my college graduation ceremony, was Predestined.

What I found after the requisite rocky start - my Richmond District, hole-in-the-wall dwelling run by a southasian slumlord, the October 1989 earthquake - was a fabulous pool, fabulous swim team [USF Masters], and the 727 Clayton Clan: Nicko, Molly, Olivier, and me. Lidi came later, hanging her bedclothes from our front window a la French style.

We were young, full of ourselves. Nick and I writers. Molly an actress. Olivier seemed to me a man of letters. I think he was the first Intellectual Gay man I'd ever met. I'd certainly met Out ones, proud ones, fierce ones, even in high school. But Olivier was, like I thought of myself but pale to him, studied. Oh, we had "Jobs," but that was never the Point. It never seemed the Point: we were climbing up a Big Tree to where the Big, Red Appples were.

Along with everyone's ambitions - Michael Moore opined that no one seemed to work in San Francisco in those days - was desire for social change. ACT-UP [AIDS COALTION TO UNLEASH POWER] started in New York City and spread to the Bay Area in response the Ronald Reagan's official silence toward the rising epidemic of young, gay men dying of AIDS. QUEER NATION followed suit to combat homohatreds in whatever city council or strip mall or trolley stop. Both countering not only Reagan [and his evil sister, Margaret Thatcher, in the UK] but also what was woven into the fabric of our very streets, the marches, the hangings-out at Cafe Flore: that is, Death.

Nineteen-eighty-nine was several years before the supposed improvement of HIV medications: this is a topic I will have to put my attention to another time, since there is persuasive debate about the evolution of meds and the evolution of survival. At that time, at that year, I could see men walking the streets of the Castro, being held and supported by friends, lovers, neighbors, god-knows-who. Weathered, whithered men not much older than I.

The Christians said their crimes were ... but why give more Voice to that din of unreason and superstition?

I was a Black, Midwestern kid, born of Southern roots, set in the middle of a white affluence in Southern California, and did not know up from down what to make of the world. Or, as my dear grandmother, Mary Adele Denny, would observe: "You have nothing to say [as a writer]". So it was not coincidental that I should feel a hunger to forgo a silly Marching ceremony at a prestigious university that, at bottom, is just as evil as Siblings Reagan and Thatcher, and rush headlong into the Bay Area, a better schooling.

Like a later headlong rush into Cuba in 1992, San Francisco was just the right chill of cold water to begin the breaking of something, an initiation. My godmother says "to gain wisdom you must sacrifice your ignorance." Despite myself, I was striving a knife into an enemy.

Clinton came. ACT-UP would split. Queer Nation dissolved. The poor began to be evicted from the City to make room for the dot-commies. I'll never forget the canary in the mine for me was hearing my godsisters become disenchanted with Club El Rio in the Mission because a new Class of men - macho and aggressive - tried lording over them: who were these arrogant fuck-heads? I came to my own conclusions about the decay that followed in what seemed like a Wonderland. I hadn't seen or read anything that touched the slice of that life until I picked up a DVD of the film, RENT.

I don't like musicals as a rule. I take myself much too seriously. So the opening scene of the cast singing to me made me uneasy: had I made an error and wasted $10? Another song. Another song. Does anyone not speak? Then: Angel rescues Tom, and I no longer noticed the songs.

RENT is about my generation, my social-economic Class. My real class. Not the class of 1989 Washington University. RENT seems to me to be the first, unique portrayal of a working class, imaginative bunch who will take shelter together, piece together their small fortunes, and dream big - big in their Art and Activism and exorcizing the world - at least the country - of the ghosts of Reagan and Thatcher and the offfical hatred of all things Queer and black and brown and working class.

"FIGHT AIDS" Tom scribbles on the board in the coffeehouse during the performance of "La Vie Boheme".

So what can I say? I cried like a baby so much of a slice of the wonderment of those days, days of contrasts. Swimming with my team at 6am. Running in Golden Gate Park. Walking up the hill to the Castro. Meeting an amazing bunch of fascinating, vibrant, real people who would show me how to be the Man I Could be. Then, seeing Angel fade like that made me conjure the last real-life moments of Andy, Gerald, Martin. They went like that, those Deaths every day ... Andy back home in the UK; Gerald a few weeks before I could return to see him one last time; ... Martin. And many others went with them. Every week - every, single week - the BAR [Bay Area Reporter] displayed two to three pages of thumbnail-pictured obituaries of our NEIGHBORS who had just died "from complications from AIDS."

How did we survive that? What balls we had! I guess in our own way, we sang through it. By the way, before my grandmother died, I think it was my musing one day over those years - an analysis of sorts - that she exclaimed: "See, now you have something to say. I can't wait to read your Book!"