1992-Bill Clinton confronted by AIDS activists in NYC, full text.

[Bluenorthwest]

This Primary cycle has seen many occasions of confrontational and disruptive activism and the reactions of the candidates have been parsed and well examined. Those actions along he recent claim by Hillary that the Reagans had been brave AIDS activists make this 24 year old exchange into a source to see the words and context of the times and also provides a standing metric by which current candidates can be measured when they are confronted by activists motivated by a similar existential threat.....
When reading this please bear in mind that the activist Mr Rafesky is himself battling HIV/AIDS and he would live only a few weeks past the Inauguration of the man who chides him here:

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Verbatim; Heckler Stirs Clinton Anger: Excerpts From the Exchange

RAFSKY. Bill, we're not dying of AIDS as much as we are from 11 years of Government neglect.

CLINTON. And that's why I'm running for President, to do something about it. I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll tell you what I'd do. First of all I would not just talk about it in campaign speeches; it would become a part of my obsession as President. There are two AIDS Commission reports gathering dust somewhere in the White House, presented by commissions appointed by a Republican President....
And let me tell you something else. Let me tell you something else. You do not have the right to treat any human being, including me, with no respect because of what you're worried about. I did not cause it. I'm trying to do something about it. I have treated you and all the people who've interrupted my rally with a hell of a lot more respect than you've treated me, and it's time you started thinking about that.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/28/us/1992-campaign-verbatim-heckler-stirs-clinton-anger-excerpts-exchange.html


Anyone who claims to stand with today's activists should read the full exchange and consider what it demonstrates. For one thing, Bill in 92 seemed aware that Republicans had not taken any action. Hillary in '16 says Republicans lead the way. The Clintons do not seem to have listened to the activists and now seem to have forgotten our own history, their own history.

[Betty Karlson]

1. K&R for exposure. And for truth. eom

[H2O Man]

2. Very important.

Recommended.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. One bit of Bill's rhetoric from that moment is famous but not what he said after 'I feel your pain':

"I feel your pain, I feel your pain, but if you want to attack me personally you're no better than Jerry Brown and all the rest of these people who say whatever sounds good at the moment. If you want something to be done, you ask me a question and you listen. If you don't agree with me, go support somebody else for President but quit talking to me like that. This is not a matter of personal attack; it's a matter of human wrong."

Speaking to a man with a few months to live.

[tk2kewl]

5. he and his wife have that same attitude

[H2O Man]

6. Right.

Thank you for this.

It was at the time when I was serving on the board of directors of our state's largest task force on AIDS. I was also doing a lot of volunteer work. Your post and others brings back the feelings of frustration ....seeing so many good people suffering and dying, meeting them, their families & loved ones ....while the government was largely turning its back on the crisis.

A lot of potential voters, including DU community members, are too young to remember this. It is important that we teach them what really happened.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. Every election I think about those in my peer group who are not alive to vote as they would which

of course would be Democratic and this round for Bernie. I was really taken aback by not only Hillary's comments about Ron and Nancy but by the fact that none of her supporters seemed to understand that it is like calling David Duke a civil rights icon.

Also, watching some posters here carry on as if Bernie and O'Malley had acted toward BLM the way Bill acted toward ACT UP has made me want to look back on those times. People here pretended that those guys were very offensive, but they yielded the stage. Bill shouted at a man in poor health. 'you have no right' he said. But people here who support him took issue with Bernie.

These activists, they did this to sound the alarm and to make a record of the times. Today we can look back at comments like Hillary's claim of Reagan heroics and see that in 92 even Bill was saying Republicans did nothing. Even as he attacked the activist, he blamed the Republican Presidents.

The activists Bill yelled at were heroes.
Nancy Reagan was Mrs Death.

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. Jerry Brown warned the party and the nation

what and how Clinton was corrupting the Democratic party. His speech before the convention is one to behold if you can find it on the net. They wouldn't allow him to speak and then he used the rules of the convention.

Brown also wanted to bring up Mena Arkansas and the
drug connections with Iran / contra under Bill's governorship.

I worked on Brown's campaign back then.

[Bluenorthwest]

16. Jerry became Governor when I was too young to vote but I got to the last time.

I ran into him a couple of times and he was amazingly nice and accessible and interested. He was a governor a teenager might run into because he went to regular cool places and that's just something you never see. Jerry is amazing.

[Ichingcarpenter]

17. Being straight AIDs didn't hit me personally

Until my girlfriend's brother died of it. Then a friend of my brother's, who I knew got it from a freak accident in a lab. But that was in the mid 90s. What got me was to see that human wasting away.

On the streets of Philadelphia

[noamnety]

4. wow.

Clinton to Rafsky, who died of AIDS-related complications less than a year later:

"I have treated you and all the people who've interrupted my rally with a hell of a lot more respect than you've treated me, and it's time you started thinking about that."

Bringing him to heel.

[nashville_brook]

8. +1000000

[thereismore]

7. Dude, this dates me, but I actually remember when that happened. I really liked Bill then.

How things change.

[Nitram]

10. " Hillary in '16 says Republicans lead the way" Clinton has apologized and retracted her statement..

...about the Reagans. Failing to acknowledge that is dishonest at best.

[Bluenorthwest]

15. Oh why don't you take me to court and sue me? She has failed to clearly state the truth and to

make amends. In this DU community her supporters have displayed a lack of empathy and a full stock of ignorance about this event. She needs to explain to America what the Reagans really did, which was a genocide of neglect. She also needs to explain how she made such a massively stupid statement. She should know better. She has heard hundreds of times the exact and painful truth about the Reagans from fist hand witnesses.
The convention that nominated Bill had two speakers who painted very clear pictures of the Reagan/Bush apathy toward HIV/AIDS. Elizabeth Glaser and Bob Hattoy. Hillary heard those speeches before she was First Lady. Glaser said 'my daughter did not survive the Reagan administration' and recounted her personal meetings and rejections by Reagan and Bush. Bob Hattoy, in a speech effusive with praise for Bill Clinton, said these words, with Hillary and a prime time national TV audience watching, I was over joyed:

" AIDS is a disease of the Reagan-Bush years. The first case was detected in 1981, but it took 40,000 deaths and seven years for Ronald Reagan to say the word "AIDS." It's five years later, 70,000 more dead and George Bush doesn't talk about AIDS, much less do anything about it."

So this gloss over with a bunch of sparkly emoticons an insults routine is not sufficient to this moment. I am furious not only at your candidate but with her supporters and the Party that allows this sort of horrible, horrible rhetoric.

Nominate her, I vote for her. But I never forgive the Party and spend the rest of my life making sure the negative spirits which have possessed it be banished. Do you understand?

You still think this is a trifle. You are mistaken.

[Major Hogwash]

11. Kicked and recommended.

And so should everyone here.

[Kalidurga]

13. Well there was a reason Bill couldn't talk about AIDS much...

http://prorev.com/blood.htm

He was a big player in AIDS hitting the African Americans harder than any other group.

[tabasco]

14. H. Clinton was lying when she was talking about the Reagans

and she knew she was lying, just to pander to republicans. She lied when she didn't have to - a trait of a pathological liar.

[Laughing Mirror]

18. "It would become part of my obsession as President," he says

Obsession? Then he launches directly into his self-pitying, self-defense mode: "You think you've got it bad. Think of all the shit I had to go through just to get here. Now give me some respect."

It really would be interesting to go back and see how he treated the AIDS epidemic as governor of Arkansas, if it was part of his 'obsession' as governor.