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#QueerHeroes day two
Bob Rafsky.

Rafsky was a PR executive and activist for ACTUP and later, the Treatment Action Group. His activism during the AIDS movement included confronting Bill Clinton (then a presidential candidate) at a fundraising dinner until Clinton ended up bellowing at him. He and other ACT UP members stormed the headquarters of Daichi Pharmaceuticals and chained themselves outsidethe CEO’s office because the company had slowed release of lifesaving and innovative AIDS drugs. The most striking act of his, to me, was when he and other ACT UP members brought their friend, Mark Fisher’s body in an open casket to hold a political funeral outside of George HW Bush’s re-election headquarters.

Rafsky said on a megaphone at the event: “George Bush…Here and now, standing by Mark’s body, we put this curse on you: Mark’s spirit will haunt you until the end of your days, so that in the moment of your defeat, you will remember our defeats. And in the moment of your death, you will remember our deaths…In anger, in grief, this fight is not over until all of us are safe. Act up. Fight back. Fight AIDS.” Rafsky died of AIDS at 47.

Happy Pride!
#QueerHeroes Day 1

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.
Their actions at Stonewall would be a huge reason the riots are seen as an epoch in the LGBTQ rights movement. They would go on to form the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and continue to fight for our rights until their deaths, including during the ACTUP era. They often found themselves shut out of the more public liberation movements like GAA, Mattachine, and even ACTUP. Some articles say the organizations feared their radicalism, but their radicalism set the stage for us to celebrate this month.

I’d only heard a few Patti Smith songs before reading this book (after it was endlessly recommended to me). Covering her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in boho 60’s and 70’s New York, it’s a story of dependence and the inevitable forks in the road laid by success. Smith has such an exquisite, knowledgeable mind that her constant allusions can begin to seem esoteric or even pretentious, but it’s nothing that a quick google search didn’t amend. The very ink is riven with her love for Mapplethorpe, rendering a story of two friends into a moving epic with cameos by the likes of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Allen Ginsberg, Sam Shepard, and others.

As devout a Judy Garland fan as I am, I’ve never been much of an admirer of “The Wizard of Oz.” I always found it to be a wash of superficial bubbliness. I think that’s why I adore Was. Jumping from the “real” Dorothy in 1890’s Kansas to a dying gay actor in the 1980’s (with a Judy Garland cameo in between), the book examines the underbelly of how we all have a relationship to this story, for better or worse.

This is a rigorous look into the origins, development, and subsequent influence of one of my favorite movies ever. Though it feels somewhat like a tabloid at moments and Staggs occasionally grasps at straws to make connections that aren’t there, it’s exhaustively researched and I’ve never watched “All About Eve” the same since.