research and education.
San Francisco under Dianne Feinstein mounted the most aggressive campaign to confront the crisis.
"In 1984 alone, San Francisco poured 7.6 million into AIDS programs, while New York with triple the case load spent little over one million dollars
In the mid-1980s, San Francisco spent more on AIDS than the entire federal government under President Reagan. When Supervisor Harry Britt brought Feinstein the first AIDS funding proposal in 1982, the mayor simply told him, "Fund everything"
"Season of the Witch", David Talbot
and she approved its doubling every year and never blinked an eye
Not only were other large cities lagging behind, but some of those cities tried to dump their AIDS patients on San Francisco.
Probably the most outrageous was in 1983 when a hospital in Gainsville Florida put a seriously ill patient on an airplane, and deposited him at San Francisco General Hospital
When the patient did passed away Mayor Feinstein commented on the inhumanity of that, and how sad the young man had to spend his final days as a Medical Outcast thousands of miles from home.
but NOT San Francisco, it was there right up front when others turned their backs and ignored it. The healthcare workers at SF General had a special ward, to treat and bring comfort to those who were suffering, before anyone knew what it was about. They were truly heroes, while the Jerry Falwells and Anita Bryants were going around saying they deserved what was happening to them.
My wife worked for City Planning for the City of San Francisco at the time, and they lost so many young people in that department
That is why I get particularly upset when some feel so inclined to trash Senator Feinstein. I suspect they know very little about her. She was a giver, and a compassionate person who spent hours visiting AIDS patients in hospitals, travelling around and meeting with mayors of other cities through the U.S. Conference of Mayors to establish and AIDS task force in 1984. The Reagan administration should have done that, but instead turned a blind eye to that because of political considerations from their "moral majority" base
This happened in the aftermath of the People's Temple and the assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. She brought the city together at one of the lowest points in its history
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