December is a time of celebration, giving and family, it’s Also AIDS awareness month. It’s a time to remember those that were lost, those that survive, and those that work hard for a stronger tomorrow. As part of AIDS awareness month I interviewed Timothy Lunceford-Stevens who is a member of ACT UP, and a number of other sister organizations including PHAG (Prevention Health Action Group) and TAG (Treatment Action Group). Timothy has been an ACT UP member since 1987.
The Denver Principles: We condemn attempts to label us as ‘victims,’ a term that implies defeat, and we are only occasionally ‘patients,’ a term that implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others. We are ‘People With AIDS’
When you lose a close friend, what do you do? For Timothy, losing his friend Paul Popham to AIDS was the impetus that drove him to become an activist and join ACT UP. After Paul passed, Timothy was upset at the governmental inaction at what most people at the time saw as a gay disease that didn’t affect them. From the government’s viewpoint there was no reason to advance treatment or put money into something that was looked at negatively through America’s puritanically shaded glasses. The general public wanted(s) to ignore this segment of the population and the inertia reflected this. Timothy was mad and wanted to do something to express his outrage, so he attended his first candlelight vigil which marched from the famous Stonewall Inn to the Hudson River. Shortly after that he went to his first ACT UP meeting and has been a member ever since.
Looking around Timothy’s apartment you see photographs and artwork of people that have passed through his life. People that are dear to him, but that are no longer here. Timothy lost the love of his life, Steve, in 1989 to AIDS, and another friend Donald in 1992. Currently he lives with his husband Mel, who also has memories on the walls of people that have passed. Death is an all too common experience when it comes to the AIDS community. This is why Timothy finds it important to fight and not be a ‘victim’. This sentiment is echoed in the Denver Principles, which incidentally Timothy’s friend, Paul Popham, helped draft. The Denver Principles (http://www.actupny.org/documents/Denver.html) was a statement drafted during an AIDS conference in Denver 1983 and has been key in the tone of how AIDS activists have spoken about and shaped the movement ever since.
People with AIDS don’t want to be seen as victims. They want to be empowered to fight, to act up, change perception, change attitudes, and change the way treatment is handled from the top all the way down to the community level. Timothy embodies this sentiment, not only in his AIDS activism, but also in his work with other communities that he is involved in. He has survived cancer and in the process lost his hearing and the vision in one of his eyes. He does not lie down in the face of these obstacles, but rather, he uses them as motivations to continue the fight. Timothy looks forward to being an activist for as long as his health allows, which for a sixty year old man currently going through chemotherapy, is a harrowing feat. As he says, “I’ll try to stay as involved as I can for as long as I can”.
