Larry Kramer: “Obama treats us like pieces of sh*t.”
Hat Tip: Rex Wockner
REMARKS MAKE BY LARRY KRAMER AT ACT UP/HealthGap DEMONSTRATION AGAINST OBAMA, THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2010, ST. REGIS HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY:
Obama is not my president. Obama is not your president. Obama does not like AIDS. Obama does not like gays. Now what are we going to do about it? Because we continue to sit on the sidelines while our world is denied us, yes, our world, which is as much our world as anyone else’s, is denied us. Our rights are denied us. Our love is denied us. We are even denied the right to fight for our country. How long must we be denied all of this before we truly rise up in united anger!
Why is it always so hard for us to fight back? This man does not like us. When someone does not like you, you fight back. This Obama who is not my president and not your president obviously does not like us. It is not a secret. Day after day and week after week and month after month he tells us he does not like us. He tells us! He does not keep this a secret. His government does not like us. His chief of staff does not like us. His Attorney General does not like us. His Department of Justice does not like us. His Generals do not like us. His Department of Health and Human Services does not like us. This is not a new situation for us.
President after President have treated us so badly. Ronald Reagan. George Bush the first. Bill Clinton. George Bush the second. Barack Obama. They have all treated us like shit. Like little pieces of shit that they can step on with their heels and grind into the ground. Obama is treating us just like that. Like little pieces of shit he can grind into the dirt with his heel to make us go away. I wish you could see that. I wish you could see what he is doing to us for what it is. He is manipulating us into invisibility. He HAS manipulated us into invisibility. Our people in Washington live in a never-never cloud cuckoo-land, thinking that this man likes us, not responding as, little by little, he take bits and pieces of us away. That is how they control us. Can’t you see that? Why can’t our people in Washington see that? They give them a dinner as they take away another right.
How long are we going to allow ourselves to be treated with such disdain, to be cast way in such an unwanted and disposable and ignoble fashion?
We forget what miracles we once were able to accomplish. Every single treatment for HIV/AIDS is out there because of us. If they are out there because of us, why can’t all the people waiting for Ryan White meds get them? Why can’t over 90% of the rest of the world get them? We did not fight for them just for ourselves. So many dead young men fought as activists for those drugs to save the world and this Obama will not let them save the world. Little by little he takes away our Ryan White drugs in America and our PEPFAR drugs for the rest of the world and our AIDS organizations and clinics everywhere so he can grind even more people with his heel into the earth like little helpless smelly pieces of shit. Yes, this man, like all his rotten hateful predecessors treats us like shit.
I am so tired of being treated like shit.
I wish you could realize that my words and my language and my vocabulary are not too strong. They are not strong enough!
I beg of us all. Re-assemble! Re-unite! Fight back once more with the passion and honor and truth and unity and brotherhood as we once did. We once accomplished miracles. Why do we not recall our glorious fights and build anew upon them? They treat us like shit because we let them treat us like shit. When will we get that into our heads and hearts and fight back?
How effective and fierce and unstoppable we can be when we take action together. The only reason we got those drugs is because of direct action, mobilization, fighting back. That is the reality of what we have be able to accomplish. We are alive, for those of us who are still alive, because we saved ourselves! When we fought back rudely and together, we were able to achieve miraculous victories. I take these victories, as do many of you, every morning with my breakfast.
This Obama president made a commitment to ensure that America does its fair share to fight AIDS, in Africa, in America, and around the world. He has broken that promise. He, like Clinton, has lied to us. He does not like us, this president, as the other presidents did not like us. We are not a part of their American People. He does not want us to get married, he does not want us to fight for our country, he does not want to end the plague of AIDS.
We must have the presence of mind and the force of character to insist that he and his society are wrong and we are right.
Do you need to know any more than this? This is all you need to know. And that once upon a time we accomplished miracles.
Can we do it again? Oh, please, can we do it again?
“Robert Kennedy does not like us..blah blah blah blah.” Can anyone imagine Dr. Martin Luther King extolling on such nonsense?
The psychotic preoccupation with President Barack Obama by some of these clearly misguided and deranged LGBT mouthpieces is the sole reason why LGBTs won’t even come close to striking distance of obtaining full civil rights in this country.
Instead of focusing on obtaining equality and preaching to the masses about strategies of civil disobedience and collaborating with potential allies to create a powerful presence in standing up the nation and its timeheld oppressive laws in homophobia—the above is what supposed LGBT leadership is about. How pathetic.
Obama could be gone in two yeas. Then what? After he leaves we’re suddenly gonna get full civil rights? Obama is not the problem. How foolish and ridiculous that after over a year these jokes for gay political thought take such a limited and unproductive stance.
Can anyone imagine if Dr. King made it all about Kennedy? LGBT community WAKE UP. THE MAJORITY OF THIS COUNTRY OPPOSES YOUR LEGAL COUPLING, YOUR HAVING CHILDREN, YOUR GENDER CHANGES, YOUR EXISTENCE.
All Obama is, is a portal. Not the messiah. Why this fool Larry Kramer insists on encouraging you think this is beyond incredulous. Here’s a secret: Obama or any other president is not going to do a THING until the community stands up and kicks it off—meaning a full scale civil rights movement. Nothing less—forget about it—it’s not gonna happen if LGBTs do not rise together and exercise the right to create social and economic upheaval in a demand for equality.
Don’t get it twisted: it’s never about the president and it never will be about the president. It’s about the system. And it’s ALWAYS gonna be about the system.
Why Kramer has this delusional expectation to be LIKED by anyone as if that’s a prelude to civil rights is beyond me. Obama doesn’t have to like gay people. No more than Kennedy had to like blacks. What he GETS to do is support a civil rights movement that interrupts his administration while possibly threatening the cohesion of the Union and its economy while negotiating with his Congress for full federal rights to LGBTs in America.
NOW THAT’S OBAMA’S JOB. But he can’t even do that cause he ain’t got nothing to work with.
GROW UP KRAMER. TELL IT TO SOMEBODY ELSE. Get over your white privilege crap and stand up like a man—while emphatically encouraging your fellow LGBTs to fight for their civil rights. It’s a time-held American tradition by the way for the oppressed. Your white privilege drama doesn’t exempt you from that tradition. Even if the only person who’s clear about that these days is in the White House.
You’re the Obama you’re waiting on.
CORRECTION:
In my urgency I said “Robert Kennedy does not like us..blah blah blah blah.”
I meant John Kennedy.