Of Bears and Penguins

Hey Momma,
Are you ready to get back on the speech train?
Cause we're back with Elizabeth Glaser's address to the 1992 Democratic convention in New York.
I'm not usually the one to look up the back story on the speakers, but I did here and found the Elizabeth Glaser contracted HIV from a blood transfusion she got while giving birth to her daughter in 1981, she passed the virus to her daughter through breast milk, and to her son in 1984 in utero. In 1985, she and her children were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. At the time there were no drugs for children, and her daughter died in 1988. Glaser then started the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to raise money for research of the disease in children.
She became a prominent activist and spokesperson, and she died in 1994 - just two years after her speech. Her son survives, and continues in his mother's work today.

Now here's some more background: In 1981 when the Glaser's unknowingly contracted HIV from a medical procedure meant to help them survive, HIV/AIDS was still relatively unknown - it did not have a name, doctor's didn't know how it was transmitted, knowledge and theories about the disease, who it affected and how you got it changed regularly. In December of 1982, the CDC reported the first mother to child transmission.

I think this speech has to be approached differently than some of the others, primarily because Glaser wasn't a public figure in the sense of a politician, so I think the standard should be perhaps gentler.

Rhetorically, I didn't think it was a great speech - it was a typical convention speech, an us against them speech drumming several campaign themes. People expect that kind of thing at a convention. And particularly after the past season of conventions, I believe that I find those speeches to be lacking in substance and only trying to sound as though they have meaning.

I feel that too often American's are unknowing of how their country is actually supposed to run, we the people elect the president, and if we find he doesn't listen, or he doesn't care and pursue what we think important, then we vote him out, which is the very thing that happened in 1992. Beyond that, the strength of our government is not solely in the executive branch, but also in the legislative: we elect our leaders, and routinely put them out of office at the voting booth. Her speech would not have played nearly as well, but it would have been perhaps more powerful to say that America's failure to act quickly in the HIV/AIDS crisis was not a failure of the government, but a failure of her people, because it is we who elect our leaders, and we who help set their agendas - or it should be at least. To her credit she does appeal to America when she says, "America: Wake up." But I think too often we forget the real heart and soul of America is we the people, not, and sometimes we the people make mistakes.

We hope that our leaders have the courage to speak and act about difficult and upopular things, and had the full weight of the government been behind the cause of HIV/AIDS as it is much more so today, than Glaser might not have had to make her speech. But it wasn't, and leaders weren't speaking out, and we the people weren't speaking up.

On a personal level, Glaser can be admired as can any mother who is fighting for her children. The experience of fighting an unknown, and stigmatized disease, that she as a mother had passed on unknowingly to her children must have been terrible. I've not met a mother who would not sacrifice her own health for that of her children.

As anyone who's read about the history of HIV/AIDS the 1980s were marked by ignorance and fear - Glaser's own four year old daughter was barred from her preschool and shunned from birthday parties.

So I think the lesson from this speech is that we the people need to speak up, and we need to remember that leader's travel to Washington on our vote (recent gubenatorial appointments not withstanding) that's how it should work anyway. So my question is, what's the issue now? What are we not speaking up about? Is it genocide? Oppression? Slavery? What do we need our leaders to hear now?

One last note is that is remarkable how things have radically things have changed in just under 20 short years from that speech. Can anyone have imagined then that our first black president was less then two decades away? Could anyone have imagined that our government would give so much resource to fighting HIV/AIDS around the world? (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/globalhealth.html for more information.)