#ThankYouLarry: Gathering Remembers Kramer
Advocates, friends, loved ones, say goodbye to legendary AIDS activist and writer
BY MATT TRACY
“Thank You
Larry” messages
were
scrawled on
signs. Flickering candles lit up
photos of a smiling Larry Kramer
against the backdrop of the New
York City AIDS Memorial. Large
banners read, “LARRY KRAMER
1935-2020” and “ACT UP! FIGHT
BACK! END AIDS!”
At Thursday’s memorial at St.
Vincent’s Triangle — near the former
St. Vincent’s Hospital that
took in countless individuals with
AIDS in the 1980s, most of whom
died — the LGBTQ community,
HIV/ AIDS activists, allies, and
loved ones joined together to honor
Kramer, who died on May 27 at
the age of 84. Attendees, speaking
through masks — with careful
social distancing observed — expressed
profound emotion while
sharing memorable moments and
refl ecting on the important role
Kramer played in leading AIDS activism,
dating back to the earliest
days of the crisis.
The event was organized by ACT
UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash
Power, the activist group that
emerged following Kramer’s 1987
➤ LARRY KRAMER, from p.24
someone who has found the courage
to confront two presidents, one
vice president, and countless bureaucrats
and drug company profi -
teers to their faces.”
Gay activist Louis Flores, whose
latest cause is saving NYCHA,
wrote, “The only way to challenge
power is to be outspoken. You have
to speak out of turn. Larry did
that, and he set an example for us,
for me, in particular. Social movements
cannot compromise until
you win.”
Gay playwright Bill Crouch
wrote, “He saved me a thousand
times over, as well as many, many
of my friends and peers. How? By
screaming ‘Plague!’ over and over
to anyone within earshot. He was
The community shows their love for Larry Kramer with hearts and fl owers one day after his passing.
speech at the LGBT Community
Center when he issued an urgent
call to action in the face of a devastating
health crisis. The memorial
was also livestreamed on ACT UP’s
social media platforms.
Activist Jay W. Walker, who recalled
his fi rst experience with
Kramer when he was working at
a bookshop in 1987, touched on
anecdotes of decades past before
opening up about the moment
when he found out Kramer had
passed away.
“When ACT UP was founded and
a genius and he saved us.”
Gay and AIDS activist John
Voelker wrote, “For the 1989 Pride
Parade, he was on his balcony at
2 Fifth with Vito Russo, who was
then ill, and a huge ACT UP contingent
marched past and did a
die-in or big cheer or something for
Vito. Larry turned to him and said
fondly, ‘These are our children.’ We
are all orphaned now.”
Late in life, Kramer kept returning
to his theme that we as a community
had failed. With 35 million
dead and 35 million more infected,
it was hard for him to focus on
the major advances in treatment
through activism that he was such
a critical part of and that kept him
and countless millions alive.
Failure was the theme of his last
major public address at the Central
DONNA ACETO
GMHC was founded, could we have
possibly imagined that anyone
with HIV, much less AIDS, would
live to the age of 84 years old? I
couldn’t be sad about it,” Walker
said. “All I could do was just pause
because that was his work… and
all of those people who worked to
get life-saving medications on the
market and into our bodies so
HIV-positive people could have a
life fi lled with joy — not with sorrow,
not with pain — so that we
could live to 84 friggin’ years old.
So thank you, Larry! Thank you!”
Park rally after the Queer Liberation
March on Pride Day 2019
(youtu.be/3GZV3aU8WV0).
“I love being gay, I love my people,”
he said that day. “I think in many
ways we’re better than other people.
Most gay people I see appear to
have too much time on their hands.
If you have time to get hooked on
drugs and do your endless rounds
of sex-seeking cyber-surfi ng until
dawn, you do have too much time
on your hands… If we do not fi ght
back against our enemies, we will
continue to be murdered. But we
have a population that is inept at
organizing ourselves… We are not
very good at fi ghting back.”
As fi erce as Kramer could be in
public, he was a warm, gentle man
with his friends and loved ones.
He would sometimes wonder why
REMEMBRANCE
Andy Humm, who penned Gay
City News’ obituary of Kramer,
also delivered impassioned remarks
about the late activist, who
he said “made better activists out
of all of us” when the AIDS crisis
swept through the city.
“He’s the one who brought 80
people to his apartment in August
of 1981 to hear about AIDS, to get
horrifi ed by it,” Humm said. That
went to the formation of GMHC.
He wasn’t happy with that because
it wasn’t enough of an activist
group.”
Humm then recalled the time
when Kramer summoned him to
his speech at the Center that led to
the formation of ACT UP.
“He said, ‘Just fucking be there,’”
Humm said. “We had to listen and
be there.”
Humm last saw Kramer a couple
of months ago and remembered
seeing a man who, despite
his health and advanced age, was
dedicated to his work until the
very end.
“What I was amazed by was
he would stop for about 10 minutes,”
Kramer said. “And then he
went back to work in the condition
that he was in! He never stopped
working. We’ve gotta keep up that
fi ght.”
people were afraid of him. He did
not suffer fools gladly. When he
would speak to audiences of college
students and they would ask
his advice on what to do, he would
often say, “You fi gure it out.” As he
himself did.
“Larry’s timing couldn’t be
worse,” Staley wrote. “The community
he loved can’t come together —
as only we can — in a jam-packed
room, to remember him. We can’t
cry as one and hear our community’s
most soaring words, with arms
draped on shoulders in loving support.
Broadway has no lights to
dim, which it surely would have.
Can we please do this next year?”
At his death, Kramer was at
work on a new play in response to
the current pandemic, “An Army of
Lovers Must Not Die.”
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/GayCityNews.com
