Subject: AIDS, The Welfare bill & Bill Clinton
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 18:12:00 -0400

Breaking the Deadly Silence
Lives depend on holding Clinton accountable over Welfare Reform flip-flop

a commentary
by Steve Michael

 With the stroke of a pen, President Bill Clinton recently  wrote off the
lives of the thousands of men, women and children with AIDS who depend upon
the federal safety net for their very survival.  Millions of Americans will
lose their benefits under the auspices of Welfare Reform, including food
stamps, school lunches, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the poor
and disabled, and AID to Families with Dependent Children.  

For decades, people who lived in poverty have been able to receive food
stamps, a federal program that even Richard Nixon championed in the 1970's.
 With strict eligibility and proof of income requirements, individuals and
families receive the equivalent of about $20 per week for food.  Under the
Clinton-Gingrich reform plan, states will invent their own eligibility
standards. In states where religious zealots control the Republican Party,
Governor's Mansion or the State House that spells disaster for people with
HIV and AIDS.  Clinton's signature gave Buchanan's Brigade real power over
the essentials of life for countless thousands of people with HIV and AIDS.  

Federal guarantees will be replaced with new restrictions for legal
immigrants, single mothers, and 'able bodied' persons.  People living with
HIV and AIDS will feel the brunt of these cuts.  Food banks and community
groups, already pushed to the limits, will be unable to take on the tens of
thousands of individuals unable to feed themselves and their families.  

Clinton claims to feel our pain, yet he is clearly the cause of it, taking
the food out of our very mouths.  Our "Democratic" president has outdone even
Ronald Reagen, who at least preserved ketchup as a vegetable-entitlement for
hungry children.  

Clinton-Gingrich characterize their plan in a manner that feeds upon
divisions of race and class in American society.  Immigrants who have legally
worked and paid taxes in this country for years are suddenly ineligible for
the safety net benefits that they've paid for.  'Illegal immigrants' have
become a subhuman class useful only for indentured servitude and political
scapegoating.  Americans living in poverty, struggling to survive, are
expendable to this President.  And, of course, immigrants, whether "legal" or
undocumented can't vote, and just plain don't matter to Bill Clinton and his
"new" Democratic Party.

This comes as no surprise to the HIV positive AIDS activists in ACT UP
chapters across America.  ACT UP has been virtually alone for over three
years in applying constant pressure to the former governor of Arkansas as he
shifts increasingly toward the right.  From the firing of Surgeon General
Elders, to his failure to launch a war on AIDS, the abandonment of universal
heath care reform, and his refusal to lift the federal ban on needle exchange
programs, Clinton's failures have been dismissed by many as political
expediency. 

Democrats have been unwilling to criticize Clinton, save for the members of
the Congressional Black Caucus and a handful of progressive liberals like
Senator Paul Wellstone (D MN).  The Democratic silence is as deadly as the
pontificators of the extremists that lead the religous right-wing. 

It is unrealistic to assume that somehow Clinton will be 'better' in a second
term.  This president has made it clear that it has but one priority:
reelection.   This President is willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to
win another term in office.  

It's time for groups like the National Education Association, and the Human
Rights Campaign to start playing hardball:  Withdraw your endorsement.
 Cancel those fundraisers.  Speak up like Patricia Ireland of the National
Organization for Women did last week on Washington's Fox Morning News when
she said that Bill Clinton was "the evil of two lessers."  Join ACT UP
members from as far away as Seattle, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and
Washington in the streets of Chicago.  Pressure Bill Clinton.  Because,
pressure is the only language Bill Clinton understands. We must tell Bill
Clinton to move away from the political extreme or we will help move him out
of the White House on November 5.   Strong language bucked up with an even
stronger resolve is the only moral response to the political cowardice that
is Bill Clinton. 

Progressive AIDS activists must link Clinton's violent actions against women,
children, immigrants and people with AIDS to the well-fed and housed leaders,
funders and members of organizations like the Human Rights Campaign who
remain silent.  It has been nearly ten years since ACT UP members first
linked individual and communtiy silence to AIDS death.  Those who are silence
must bear the responsibility of that silence.  That silence can and must be
broken when the Democrats assemble on August 26 to nominate Clinton and Al
Gore. 

Saying that Clinton is better than his predecessors, better than Dole when he
refuses to stand up to the extreme elements of the Republican Congress
ignores the devastating impact of that presidential signature on August 2.  I
see no compelling reason to devote any of my precious t-cells to a spineless
President who, with the stroke of a pen, wrote off the lives of Americans
with AIDS.

(Steve Michael is a founding member of ACT UP Washington and is helping
organize AIDS activist actions during the 1996 Democratic Convention in
Chicago.  Michael and ACT UP New York's Ann Northrop are the presidential and
vice-presidential candidates of the AIDS Cure Party.  The AIDS Cure Party was
formed earlier this year in response to the refusal of the Democratic Party
to address AIDS issues during the primary season)

contact:
ACT UP Washington at 202.547.6780
825 5th Street NE  #A
Washington, DC  20001
[email-masked]
fax 202.547.6782