Pandemic organizing oral histories

"We are not helpless. We’re providing care for ourselves and others. We’re advocating for ourselves." -John in February 1989

“Lordy!” was an expletive of choice for John, an early HIV/AIDS activist whose work I have been researching the past few years.

I know that this particular John — one of many righteous men featured in my book named John, Paul, and Bill — used this word because last year, the GLBT Historical Society Archives digitized new batches of cassette tape interviews from the late 1980s. Though his words appear in dozens of articles from the years between his diagnosis in 1983 and death in 1989, a newly digital file enabled me to hear John’s actual voice for the first time, sitting at my desk in my home.

“Lordy” does a lot of work for me. It makes John sound, out loud, the way I have come to understand him. John was a product of the Midwest, the U.S. Navy, and eventually, gay men’s AIDS advocacy in the San Francisco Bay Area and other Western states where he organized peer-led support for those receiving diagnoses as early as 1984. He retained a folksiness I understand, a straightforwardness I appreciate, a simmering rage fueling his work.

Is exasperation the most understated, understandable emotion for civilians abandoned by the state to fight a pandemic on their own?

After gleaning so much from interviews with early HIV/AIDS activists, and from my work advocating for basic public protections during the ongoing SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 pandemic, I am conducting my own oral histories with fellow organizers distributing personal protective equipment. The conversations so far have been soulful, informative, and of course, full of anger and grief. Folks in mask blocs are doing intentional, radical work that I am honored to help document. No one has said “lordy” yet. “What the fuck” is the parlance of our times.

And now, in the fight against Covid, we have numerous organizers across the U.S. named Liz. That’s the name pattern I’m noticing so far.