History is for the Victors

This past Veteran's day I watched the film version of the stage "play" The People Speak (it's not really a traditional play, more reminicent ofThe Vagina Monologues). The People Speak is based on Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and tries to emphasize the idea that history as we know it is incomplete, and necessary change does not come from those in power, but is caused by those who dissent. The film is pretty traditional in its analysis, addressing African slavery and civil rights, Women's rights and liberation, and the various peace movements in U.S. history, in that order. African American women make a short aside at the end of the section on women, and a short piece on the working poor and the struggle for economic justice slides in just before the peace movements. Various dissenters are voiced by an INCREDIBLE cast of Hollywood greats (some of whom are pictured below right), and music breaks in the form of slave spirituals, Dylan songs, and others are included.

I found this film incredibly moving and inspirational. I almost kept it, thinking I'd pay the lost disc fee rather than return it to Netflix, that's how much I liked it. It included the stories of people like Harvey Milk, Cesar Chavez, John Brown, Sojourner Truth, and Emma Goldman. It seemed to suggest that we need to take control of our democracy, else we end up like those described by Langston Hughes in his poem, "Waitin' on Roosevelt." And I briefly felt rather self-satisfied when I thought about how many of the people included in Zinn's play are also included in my social studies curriculum.

But I was also somewhat disappointed by the lack of Native American voices in the project - only words from one Chief were included. Dissenters like Alice Paul (seen left) and advocates like Doris Day were left out of this account of the movers and shakers of American history (and these are only two of the people I thought of while watching the film). Even when purporting to represent the unrepresented, history is still for the victors.

While The People Speak examines those times when our democracy has been goaded into action, I also spent Veteran's Day reading a tome about a time when it staunchly refused to intervene to save millions of lives. I was first introduced to Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On last spring because a friend's girlfriend was reading it during her visit. H. insisted it was one of the best books she had ever read and she was floored by the amount of denial and inaction among the people and our government during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Along with detailing the events and efforts of the epidemic, Shilts also impeccably portrays the emotions involved: There is the desperation of the first victims who slogged through infection after infection with no answers or help from their doctors; there is the mourning and sadness of the lovers and friends left behind when those victims died; there is the frustration of doctors, researchers and congressional aides as the government and its agencies refuse funding even as the death toll rises; and there is the readers' own sense of impending dread because you know where this all leads and how it all ends.

The book is peopled with an extensive cast of characters (Shilts actually includes a Dramatis Personae at the beginning of the book to help you keep them all straight), some of whom were not new to me, like Cleve Jones (at left; real Cleve is on the left, with the actor who played him in the film Milk), one of the activists who worked with Harvey Milk in San Francisco, or President Reagan, who is mentioned repeatedly due to his spending cuts that further strangled the few groups trying to research AIDS. But most of the players are new, like Dr. James Curran who lead the CDC task force that followed AIDS when it was GRID and before it was even named, Bill Kraus, a congressional aide who started working on AIDS in San Francisco before moving to D.C. and helping secure the first federal funding specifically for AIDS research, and a whole host of doctors and public health in the U.S. and abroad who risked and sometimes sacrificed their careers to help treat and research AIDS and provide necessary services to its victims during the early 1980s.

And H. was absolutely correct. It is difficult, if not impossible, to not be struck by the incredible lack of action as the AIDS crisis is breaking. All those involved in following it agree there is an epidemic and agree that its probably an infectious agent spreading it, but no one heeds this information, insisting those actually doing what research is possible have no idea what they are talking about. And, instead of trying to collectively save lives various agencies fight amongst themselves over turf and who is stepping on who's toes, worried that if they yield some control to another agency, their budgets will be further slashed by the Reagan administration. Yes, America did send a man to the moon, and yes, America did have one of the best medical research systems in the world, but yet we definitely fell short when it came to dealing with a virus that destroyed the immune systems of various minority populations (the first risk groups for AIDS were gay men, intravenous drug users, and Haitian immigrants), leaving them to die hideous, demeaning, and painful deaths. One snippet that stood out to me as I continued reading today was this:

"The New York Times had written only three stories about the epidemic in 1981 and three more stories in all of 1982. None made the front page. Indeed, one could have lived in New York, or in most of the United States for that matter, and not even have been aware from the daily news papers that an epidemic was happening, even while government doctors themselves were predicting that the scourge would wipe out the lives of tens of thousands."

As I read this, I realized that my parents were meeting, falling in love and getting married while this was happening. I was a growing spot on the horizon as this was happening. Any my grandparents certainly weren't thinking about AIDS. My parents weren't thinking about it, concerned about getting it from each other or passing it to me. My aunts and uncles weren't troubled by it either. And not only were they not thinking about it because it was a "gay disease" (soon to be proved untrue) but they may not even have known it was happening. This realization carried approximately the same weight for me as finding out a couple of weeks ago that one of my students didn't remember or know the significance of September 11th.

We like to think that only history is for the victors, that we all have a fighting chance to win it and write it while we're in it. But sometimes the deck is stacked even before we start. Sometimes those in power are just going to do everything they can to ensure their group is worth $34,841 (the amount spent per person on Legionnaire's Disease 5 years after it was effectively eradicated), while ensuring yours is worth only $8,991 (the amount spent per person on AIDS in 1982). And you are written out of the history books, and sometimes even the memory of dissent and rabble rousers. My take-away from Veterans' Day this year was to remember not only our veterans, but also to consider the memory of those veterans of history forgotten and left behind.