Last night I was privileged to speak at the Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco, the city’s oldest continuous library that was founded in 1854. In recognition of the tragic events that happened the next day 100 years ago, on July 22, 1916, I read excerpts from my biography of Marie Equi about the controversial War Preparedness Parades prior to the US entry into World War I. Here’s the segment: A Troubling, Contentious Year “Across the country 1916 was a troubling, contentious year fraught with foreboding and disruption. Americans felt uncertain and unsteady as the hostilities in Europe worsened and threatened the nation’s tenuous neutrality. Strikes flared east to west with picketing shoe workers in Philadelphia, steel workers in Detroit, housemaids in Denver, and loggers in Washington. It was a presidential election year with war and peace, woman suffrage, and labor rights dominating the political campaigns. “Much of America accepted the message of war preparedness as necessary self-defense even if they objected to a foreign military adventure. For a full two-and-a-half years, Americans resisted the pull of war and took comfort in their distance from the changing, dangerous world beyond the country’s shores. At the same time, war boosters enthralled young men with visions of the glory that awaited them in the fields of France, far from their grinding factory jobs or farm work. Progressives feared that reform efforts at home would be scuttled by a government preoccupied with war and by a population consumed with nationalism. In this jumble of sentiments, a significant minority suspected “readiness” was a capitalist ploy that would inevitably lead to war with a grab for power and profits. Preparedness – A National Watchword “Preparedness became a nation watchword, and its spirit unified most Americans in the camaraderie of shared purpose. Throughout the summer of 1916, nearly every city and town outdid itself with a parade. In Chicago one million people rallied, waving flags and signing patriotic songs in an eleven-hour procession. New York City’s outpouring drew two hundred bands and fifty drum corps. Bomb Disrupts San Francisco Parade “Violence marred San Francisco’s parade, and its impact shadowed labor and civil rights for decades. On July 22, 1916, fifty-one thousand marchers assembled at the foot of Market Street around the Ferry Building. Thirty minutes into the parade, a bomb exploded with a force so great that it tore off legs and arms of bystanders, killing ten and injuring forty. No one knew who had placed the bomb, but the police arrested Tom Mooney, a radical Socialist and union leader, as well as Warren K. Billings, among others, who they suspected of promoting violence for political change. The proceedings against Mooney and Billings were scandalous from the start. Mooney was denied legal counsel for days. Evidence was specious; the witness, unreliable. Murder charges were drawn up by a jury selected by the district attorney, and a conviction followed. Only an international outcry kept Mooney from execution. He and Billings were left to languish at San Quentin State Prison with life sentences. They were not released until 1934.” “Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions,” by Michael Helquist, published by Oregon State University Press, 2016. Available at bookstores and online sites. |
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In the summer issue of the Western Historical Quarterly prominent historian Jean M. Ward reviews the new biography MARIE EQUI: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, published by Oregon State University Press. I am honored to receive this review and pleased to share excerpts of it with you. Ward served 42 years on the faculty of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon as a Professor of Communication. She also co-founded and directed the Gender Studies Program and the Gender Studies Symposium on campus. She is the author of two highly regarded studies of West Coast women: Pacific Northwest Women, 1815-1925, Lives, Memories, and Writing” and Yours for Liberty, Selections from Abigail Scott Duniway’s Suffrage Newspaper. She retired in 2006. From the review: “Michael Helquist’s superb biography of Dr. Marie Equi (1872–1952) is a riveting page-turner that keeps on giving. This is the far-reaching story of a Pacific Northwest woman who fearlessly challenged conventions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a woman who openly risked becoming an outcast because of her lesbianism and radical activism in pursuit of social and economic justice. MARIE EQUI: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions -- by Michael Helquist and published by Oregon State University Press -- is available at bookstores and online retailers, including Amazon.
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The New York Times (“Birth Control via App Finds Footing Under Political Radar,” June 18, 2016) mentions these digital sites for birth control prescriptions: lemonaidhealth.com , Prjktruby.com , https://nurx.co. , www.virtuwell.com . Also available through Planned Parenthood Care clients in several Western states and Minnesota. “Portland Moral or Ridiculous?” Oregonian, June 21, 1916, 10. Michael Helquist examines Margaret Sanger’s 1916 visit to Portland, Oregon in “Lewd, Obscene, and Indecent”: The 1916 Portland Edition of Family Limitation” in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Summer 2016. In the same issue, Helquist co-wrote with artist Khris Soden “Adventures in Family Planning” a history comic about Sanger’s arrest. (Both the article and comic can be downloaded here. Helquist received the Joel Palmer Award for his article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly (Spring 2015) titled: “Criminal Operations”: The First Fifty Years of Abortion Trials in Portland, Oregon” (click for pdf download). Helquist’s biography “Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions,” published by Oregon State University Press, 2015 was named a 2016 Stonewall Honor Book for Nonfiction by the American Library Association. Portland’s 1907 Rose Parade “A Triumph”: Marie Equi Wins Prize Months after Same-Sex Scandal6/10/2016
Six years after reporting the first cases of AIDS to federal health authorities (in June 1981), Michael Gottlieb MD was denied tenure at the UCLA Medical School amid criticism of his professional work and activism. I interviewed Gottlieb in April 2001 – 20 years after his AIDS reports heralded the start of a deadly global scourge. Below are excerpts from the interview. (My interview with Gottlieb five years after his 1981 report appeared as Part One in this two-part series, posted June 5, 2016 on my Politics and Passions blog at michaelhelquist.com). PART TWO: 20 Years Later, AIDS Pioneer Reflects on Professional Conflicts For Michael Gottlieb, AIDS brought a degree of celebrity when he became the consulting physician for Rock Hudson. When AIDS claimed the life of the famous actor, Gottlieb co-founded the American Federation of AIDS Research (AmFAR), the first truly national fundraising effort for AIDS treatment and research. He became a strong advocate for patient rights, and he supported community organizers on the local and national levels. He continued to see patients as part of his research and coped with their deaths. He also faced another reality: political resistance and unexpected consequences. Years earlier Gottlieb had accepted a position at UCLA with hopes of improving the success of bone marrow transplants. Two days a week he saw patients with auto-immune diseases, rare immune deficiencies, and allergic conditions. The rest of his time he was doing research and teaching. But then AIDS changed his plans for a productive career of patient care, research, and teaching.
Today, in 2001, Gottlieb misses teaching and the active research work, but he is at peace with his early advocacy efforts. “I have no regrets for that contribution, and I am proud to have been association with APLA and AmFAR. However, if I had a chance to do it over again, I would be a little more cautious, maybe pursuing just 80% of those involvements.”
Relies on Private Practice Gottlieb’s loss of tenure led to a new path. He established his private practice in Los Angeles, and 85% of his patients were exclusively those with HIV. Others presented with hepatitis C, other viral diseases, and general internal medicine concerns. “In the pre-HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy, also known as the “AIDS cocktail” era, I can’t say that doctors’ prescriptions of therapy were any better than patients’ prescriptions. Doctors and patients played the same scenarios over and over again. You were there for your patients, and they knew that. You were holding their hands, helping them manage their fevers. It was a little like battlefield medicine, like working in a MASH unit, helping patients recover enough to send them out to do battle some more.” AIDS Made Him Better Doctor Today Gottlieb’s practice reflects the advances in AIDS treatment, and he notes the impact on his own medical practice. “There’s no doubt that AIDS care made me a better doctor just as it did for nurses and other health care professionals. We all learned a whole more about the nature of compassion and the value of human interaction as a result of these experiences. We learned to appreciate life even more and to prioritize in your life for what was really important.” Gottlieb also notes that patients approach their HIV care somewhat differently today, after years of personally researching every new experimental treatment. “There is a little more reliance on doctors now that treatment is more scientifically grounded and now that therapy requires more fine-tuning of drug regimens. In the past, patients thought they had to stay on top of it all themselves; now patients seem to have given up some of that control over their care.” Gottlieb said he also advises patients to not make HIV all-consuming in their lives, to not spend hours on end chatting over the internet about their condition. For himself, he stays current on vaccine development and gene therapy, and he participates in major conferences. He also tried to help get the early AIDS drug AZT approved for neo-natal mothers with HIV. Although AIDS brought him great opportunities to influence what he once called “the major health threat of the century,” it also presented setbacks and disappointments in his personal life. He has retained his passion for his life today. “I love medical practice, I love treating patients.” Gottlieb has fashioned in his own path. “I am content with that,” he concluded. Pioneer Reported First AIDS Cases in 1981; I Interviewed Him on the 5th and 20th Anniversaries6/5/2016 Thirty-five years ago today on June 5, 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control reported the first appearance of a new cluster of disease symptoms in previously healthy young gay men in Los Angeles. The CDC has been counting cases of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) ever since. In the early 1980s I started covering the AIDS story in LGBT publications – nationally in The Advocate and in city newspapers across the country. I also wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Ms. Magazine, and the American Medical News. On the 35th anniversary of this sobering event, I reflect on the 31 years that I have been living with AIDS. I also wanted to share two of my early AIDS interviews with the pioneer who first reported AIDS cases to the CDC. The researcher who reported his findings to the federal agency was Michael Gottlieb, a 33-year-old assistant professor at the UCLA Medical School. I interviewed Gottlieb on the occasion of both the 5th and the 20th anniversaries of the CDC report. Below are edited excerpts.
Community physicians in Los Angles referred two patients with fevers of unknown origin and weight loss to Gottlieb in November of 1980. He diagnosed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), the killer disease that people with AIDS would come to fear most of all in the early days of the epidemic. When he saw a third case of PCP in a previously healthy man, “We knew we were on to something.” “Even the First Cases Were Scary” The excitement of the first report wore thin quickly, Gottlieb remembers. “Even the first cases were scary. There was an inexorable progression of disease, and we didn’t have any tricks to improve quality of life for patients. I began to get uneasy when we reported the initial five cases, but I really got scared when the case numbers hit 50.” A month after Gottlieb’s report, New York and San Francisco physicians noted 26 cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma in gay men. Now the CDC recognized a multi-centric epidemic not confined to one location and an outbreak that involved serious opportunistic diseases and cancer. Five years later there are now 20,000 cases of AIDS worldwide. Gottlieb noted the milestones that followed: French researchers and later their American counterparts discovered the AIDS virus in 1983 and 1984; AIDS awareness spiked with news of TV and film actor Rock Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis, and AIDS treatment centers developed in the country. Becoming One of Rock Hudson’s Physicians Gottlieb became an AIDS authority in the years that followed his report, and he soon found himself thrust into the media spotlight when the physician of Rock Hudson asked him to consult on the case. Gottlieb emphasized that the tragedy of Hudson’s illness and death was the same as that of the 10,000 others who have died of AIDS. But he admitted that giving news conferences changed dramatically. “There were more microphones on the lectern than I had ever seen before.” Gottlieb has faced untold numbers of reporters during the last five years, and he has learned to choose his words carefully. But when he is asked what makes him angry about working with AIDS, his feelings surge to the surface. “It makes me angry when AIDS is not taken seriously enough – when institutions fail to respond appropriately, when they play games of political convenience. I’m talking about the federal government and all levels of government. The lack of response is only going to make the problems worse,” he said.
One year earlier Gottlieb joined Dr. Mathilda Krim of a New York based AIDS organization to form a fund-raising foundation, the American Federation of AIDS Research (AMFAR). (2016 note: For many Americans, AMFAR became known as an endeavor of celebrity Elizabeth Taylor). After its first year, AMFAR was ready to award more than $1 million in AIDS research grants. Gottlieb said he expected the federation to raise $10 million a year. Even in the early years, controversy and conflict hovered over every aspect of AIDS research, treatment, and prevention campaigns. Gottlieb became entangled in a dispute over appropriate images and language targeted to high-risk groups, especially when the materials were financed by local or federal government funds. He took an assertive, sometimes defiant, stand. “It is imperative to communicate risks … with whatever language it takes,” he said. An AIDS Vaccine After Two More Years What does Gottlieb think the next year holds for the efforts against AIDS? “In a practical sense we’ll see better drugs, more widespread drug trials involving more people, and significant progress toward a vaccine.” He estimated that a vaccine might be available in a minimum of two years. For his own future, Gottlieb hedged, saying only that he expected to always be involved with AIDS with an emphasis on experimental therapies. “I’m going to pursue that work in an environment that gives me the greatest degree of daily satisfaction, and I can’t tell you more than that, he said. “What I am comfortable with is knowing that what I am doing is right.” COMING Tuesday, June 7
PART TWO: Dr. Michael Gottlieb Reflects on 20 Years of the AIDS Epidemic, Being Denied Tenure at UCLA and His Regret About Not Being More Cautious With Advocacy Professors, Teachers, Students: For Your Consideration Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions Michael Helquist Oregon State University Press, 2015 ISBN 978-0-87071-595-2 2016 American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book “Undergraduate students in my Women’s History course loved Michael Helquist’s book about the fiery and uncompromising radical physician Marie Equi. His balanced, gracefully written, and accessible study introduces students to the Progressive era, suffrage movements, the IWW and workers’ struggles, the Red Scare, women’s social and political networks, and women’s health issues and illegal abortion.” Laurie Mercier, Claudius O. and Mary W. Johnson Professor of History Washington State University, Vancouver “Meticulous archival research…A splendid contribution to both feminist and lesbian history.” Bettina Aptheker, Professor, Feminist Studies Department University of California, Santa Cruz “Helquist is particularly drawn toward Equi’s relationships with other women, both romantic and political, with strong results for both the narrative and our understanding of how these connections enabled and sustained an unconventional life …This biography deserves wide readership and much debate.” Oregon Historical Quarterly “An important contribution to scholarship on female-female sexuality in the Progressive Era … most histories of homosexuality during this period focus on relationships between men.” Committee on LGBT History American Historical Association Michael Helquist Winner of the 2016 Joel Palmer Award, Oregon Historical Quarterly MarieEqui.com michael.helquist@gmail.com
Mark Feldman had the world on a string. The American Journal of Public Health of October 2013 addressed the early AIDS activism that Mark Feldman and several others helped establish. “Only Your Calamity: The Beginnings of Activism by and for People with AIDS” notes: AIDS activism by and for people with AIDS, distinct from gay activism responding to the threat of AIDS on the behalf of the whole community, started as a way of resisting the phenomenon of social death. Social death, in which people are considered “as good as dead” and denied roles in community life, posed a unique threat to people with AIDS. Thirty-three years ago I struggled with the pain of losing someone who, over the course of several months in 1982/1983, I had come to care for deeply as a friend, a boyfriend, and a lover. Today I celebrate the life of Mark Feldman.
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