Current Events > AIDS activist Larry Kramer dead at 84

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https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/27/larry-kramer-death-playwright-author-hiv-aids-activist

The groundbreaking American writer and tireless activist for gay rights and a national effort to tackle the HIV/Aids crisis, Larry Kramer, has died in New York.

Kramer, 84, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan, the New York Times reported, citing his husband, David Webster, who said Kramer died of pneumonia.

Kramer was a founder of the Gay Mens Health Crisis, the pioneering organization to assist those with HIV, and also a founder of the direct action group Act Up that demanded an end to the sluggish response to HIV treatment and research in the US as the Aids crisis worsened in the 1980s.

He wrote The Normal Heart, a largely autobiographical play that looked at the rise of the Aids crisis in New York City between 1981 and 1984, as seen through the eyes of writer/activist Ned Weeks, the gay founder of a prominent HIV advocacy group.

It became an Emmy award-winning television drama in 2014, starring Mark Ruffalo as the central character, and had been produced on Broadway in 2011, where it won three awards.

Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (Act Up) became an international organization aiming to end the Aids pandemic but retaining its grassroots style and Act Up New York tweeted on Wednesday: Rest in power to our fighter Larry Kramer.
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An interview piece by the Guardian in 2015 explained that Kramer came of age in an era when being gay was still illegal, when that counterculture wasnt just rebellious but in serious peril.

He was a firsthand witness to the deadly costs of that taboo, because when Aids came and swept the city, it took a long time to get American health authorities to pay attention.

Kramer was there, in the front row, to catalogue and object to every moment of that neglect and he became a driving force behind loud direct action protests that drove American health authorities to take Aids seriously.

Read a bit about Act Up a while back; the stuff they did in the face of a deadly pandemic was really inspiring. This article goes into some details

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/09/689924838/how-to-demand-a-medical-breakthrough-lessons-from-the-aids-fight
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Rest in peace

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Rest in power

Act Up fight AIDS

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A true fuckin hero, RIP

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died from pneumonia in New York?

Wonder if it was the Rona

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