Red-Ribbon U.S.A.
Apathy or Revenge
from Issue #4

    "Twenty-seven", I thought to myself. "That's twenty-seven red- ribbon- wearing- buffoons in only three blocks. What the fuck are they thinking?!"

    In those same three blocks I had passed eighteen posters declaring, "You Can't Wear A Red Ribbon If You're Dead!"

    I had heard the message.

    Red Ribbons, considered by many as a valuable, liberal statement of support for people with HIV and AIDS, are really vacuous fashion statements made, most often, by people who are concerned about AIDS but haven't done much to create change. Of course, of the ribbons I saw, only four were actually cloth. The others, costing quite a bit more, were either red enamel or ruby encrusted; certainly not very practical for storming the white house.

    What these people didn't understand, not from the posters or from the hundreds of New York City AIDS-related deaths each day, is that the leisurely pace of the U.S. government in dealing with this disease is costing us unimaginable loss and suffering. It is killing off our cultural leaders like so many Queers at a Neo-Nazi convention. And it has allowed AIDS to become the single largest killer of men ages 25-40 in the United States.

    There is no more time for passive statements of support for people who are dead. They don't give a shit about the fifteen dollar red ribbon on your coat. Their bodies are rotting six feet under the ground or, more likely, have been cremated because morticians are too afraid to touch them. So, apparently, are Bill Clinton and most of our leaders. How many of them have suffered with friends, bodies racked by disease and bloated by medications; dying because for twelve years our government hasn't given enough money or priority to do their work, educators enough resources to teach even the safer-sex basics.

    No! We can no longer sit on our liberal high horse saying, "We told you so." We cannot be afraid to dirty our clothes or scratch the Fine German Enamel on our eighteen-hundred dollar Tiffany + Company red ribbons. And we cannot allow more of our friends, lovers and children to be infected by a currently incurable virus because we have comfortable l ives and don't want to rock the boat. Please, before another person dies, return your red ribbon for cash and use the money in the fight to convince our leaders that saving lives carries a higher priority than buying life-destroying bombers.