New York-"At first, a ton of people said that whoever gets AIDS deserves to have AIDS, deserves to literally suffer all the physical pain that the virus carries with it," Tom Hanks, who won an Oscar for playing a gay lawyer dying of the disease in 1993's "Philadelphia" tells Newsweek in the current issue. "But that didn't hold." Watching a generation of gay men wither and die, the nation came to acknowledge the humanity of a community it had mostly ignored and reviled. "AIDS was the great unifier," says Craig Thompson, executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles and HIV-positive for 25 years. In the May 15 issue of Newsweek "AIDS at 25" (on newsstands Monday, May 8), Newsweek devotes the issue to examining how AIDS has transformed the nation, both bringing out the best and worst in us, our culture and our souls. The cover package features a photo portfolio of faces of HIV survivors and includes reports on how the disease is affecting Black America, Ellis Cose on what Black Leadership is doing about it, an interview with Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Peter Piot, and essays from former President Bill Clinton and Melinda Gates on the international effort to fight the disease.
As part of the cover package, Contributing Editor Ellis Cose examines the role black leadership plays in the fight against AIDS. The issues the community leaders must deal with are issues which aren't rooted in formal discrimination, but which, like AIDS, disproportionately affect those who are poor and nonwhite. "Given the magnitude of the gathering threat, one would imagine that established black leadership would have launched an all-out crusade. That is not exactly the case. Without question, some prominent blacks have placed themselves in the forefront of the struggle. The reluctance of some black organizations to engage stems in part from the fact that most so-called black leaders are perpetually overwhelmed. Poor minority communities are assailed from many directions... But some of the reluctance also stems from a combination of denial and disgust," writes Cose.
As AIDS made its death march across the nation, killing more Americans than every conflict from World War II through Iraq, it left an indelible mark on our history and culture, writes West Coast Editor David Jefferson. Jefferson reports on the advances made in science and medicine towards battling the disease and producing anti-viral drugs. "Don't you dare tell me there's any good news in this," says Larry Kramer, who has been raging against the disease-and those who let it spread unchecked-since it was first identified in 1981. "We should be having a national day of mourning!" Without AIDS, we wouldn't have the degree of patient activism we see today among people with breast cancer, lymphoma, ALS and other life-threatening diseases, Jefferson reports. It was Kramer who organized the 10,000 frustrated AIDS patients into ACT UP, a street army chanting "Silence Equals Death" that marched on the White House and shut down Wall Street, demanding more government funding for research and quicker access to drugs that might save lives. "The only thing that makes people fight is fear. That's what we discovered about AIDS activism," Kramer says.
Cleve Jones, who two decades ago decided to start stitching a quilt to honor a friend who died of AIDS tells Newsweek, "Everywhere I go, I'm meeting young people who've just found out they've been infected, many with drug-resistant strains of the virus," he says. That quilt grew to become more than 40,000 panels. Ever-expanding, it was displayed several times in Washington, transforming the National Mall into what Jones had always intended: a colorful graveyard that would force the country to acknowledge the toll of AIDS. "If I'd have known 20 years ago that in 2006 I'd be watching a whole new generation facing this tragedy, I don't think I would have had the strength to continue," says Jones.
Also in the cover package, Senior Writer Claudia Kalb and Los Angeles Correspondent Andrew Murr report on the AIDS crisis in the African-American community. African-Americans make up just 13 percent of the U.S population but account for an astounding 51 percent of new HIV diagnoses. The root of the problem is poverty and the neglect that comes with it-inadequate health care and a dearth of information about safe sex. IV drug use, sexually transmitted diseases and high-risk sex (marked by multiple partners and no protection) have fueled transmission; homophobia and religious leaders steeped in moralistic doctrine have suppressed honest conversations about how to stop it. HIV, says Cathy Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and author of a book about blacks and AIDS, "is one of the greatest crises threatening the black communities. It's the life and death of black people."
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