Larry Kramer Does Not Care What His Enemies Think

Larry Kramer, the legendary playwright and AIDS activist, walked onto the stage at the Proshansky Auditorium at CUNY to a standing ovation before uttering a word, wearing a T-shirt that read, below the words of his notorious though long-defunct organization, ACT UP , the following message: I CANT BELIEVE I STILL HAVE TO PROTEST THIS FUCKING SHIT. Charles Blow was already sitting down, and confessed feeling intimidated by interviewing someone of Kramers moral stature. Their talk on Thursday evening explored the question of the moment, which was on the subject of past activism: What have we learned?

I want to get your assessment, Blow began, of our present political predicament. The audience shuddered with laughter and groaning. Can you hear me? asked Kramer. A resounding Yes! issued from the crowd. Kramer said he is enormously depressed. Its interfering with my sleep. I think the man is an incompetent idiot. I think we have to fight the same fights all over again, he said, his voice breaking up, and we have to win again. Seeing popular protests has been very encouraging, continued Kramer, adding that activism is a 24/7 job. Non-stop. Its gotta be, and they gotta see us, and they gotta hear us. And we have to have goals.

While Kramer faulted Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter for not having specific goals, he insisted we have to zero in on all of them, and mustnt dissipate our energy. He said what really pisses me off is people not fighting for their rights. ACT UP was leaderless, Kramer said. The gay community has rarely ever had a leader, which is too bad. ... Thats not helped us. He said people would just show up and say I wanna do this, I wanna do that, and there were enough of us that we could discuss it and act on it and we had an enormous number of committees. We all of these affinity groups, much like, dare I say it, you know, Kramer laughed, cells in the Communist Party. The audience broke into laughter.

Let me say this, Kramer said. Successful activism requires people who are frightened, he said, measuring out every word, frightened and angry, and willing to be consistent. You really have to be angry about something to go out there, and we have plenty to be angry about. He expressed astonishment when people come up to me and ask What can I do? and you cant figure out something to do? You cant find people to plug in with? The president is indeed taking away a lot of lives, and it is wrong. Scattered clapping erupted. If I can convey to you, Kramer spoke to the audience, that youre being treated like shit, what do you do about it?

Blow asked about the importance of discomfort and disruption, in the context of the policing people want to do about civility and how civil you need to be and how, you know, Stop blocking the traffic, and let them speak in their town halls, and in fact, Blow added, the history of your protests were incredibly disruptive and they didnt always like you and you didnt seem to care about that very much. Kramer declared that it was a badge of action every time you get arrested. They put you in a jail for a couple of hours and then let you go, so what difference does it make? We had nothing to lose. We figured we were going to die anyway.

I think the more disruptive and obnoxious you can be, the better, quite frankly, Kramer said. Theres no such thing as polite behavior activism. I dont consider activism polite. I consider it a necessary fight. Things are really bad. You write about it brilliantly, he said to Blow. Wild applause interrupted his compliment. I know how hard it is to write the kind of things you do for that newspaper.

After a pause, Blow said to laughter, Thank you. The same day, on Feb. 23, he published an op-ed titled The Death of Compassion , in which he argued he has no patience for liberal talk of reaching out to Trump voters. ... Trump is a cancer on this country and resistance is the remedy. The Trump phenomenon is devoid of compassion, and we must be closed to compromise. Blow continued, This is a culture war in which truth is the weapon, righteousness the flag and passion the fuel.

People have a lot of imagination, and we encouraged people to be friends with the media, because they were the ones that were going to if we were lucky write about us or put us on TV, so they were not our enemy ... We had a very smart group of people who would deal with what the pharmaceutical companies say and we had the street troops, which was everybody else, Kramer said. If we werent getting what we wanted, they would know about it. They were afraid of us. And thats what you want. You want them to be afraid of you. ... Im terribly frightened of this man, he went on, referring to the president. And I know you are, too.

Activism is not rocket science, Kramer told Blow and everyone present, at one point declaiming, Fear is an incredible motivator. When asked what it takes to keep the fear alive, Kramer shrugged. Who knows?