editor, GQ

What is most revealing about Jim Nelson's THE AIDS DENIERS (GQ September 4 2001) is his own myopia. It never ceases to amaze me how different one is treated when one isn't white. It is beyond Nelson's scope to comprehend that as a Chicano I claim both Latino and Native American heritage. As far as my qualifications as an artist and writer, my resume speaks for itself. Being dismissed and minimized by a racist bigot is something I am used to. What is most distressing about Jim Nelson is when he starts making sweeping comments about minorities in general. He attempts to misconstrue a passing observation of mine into a facile remark allowing him to refer to African Americans as "O.J.'s people." If that wasn't bad enough Nelson goes on to describe Pat Christen's dilemma after being criticized by a group of HIV positive gay men as a situation where she has to explain why, "My people did this to me." My people? Does he really believe gays, blacks and Mexican Americans think in such a tribal manner? Ugh! Me Tonto, you smart white man!? As far as I know neither Pat Christen nor Jim Nelson is HIV positive or gay. Whose people is Jim Nelson speaking about? CEOs who live in mansions in the Oakland Hills? The Bantu of the bushland? Maybe some wild Apache from the desert? Such assumptions only buttress my argument that when it comes to minorities, including gays, Jim Nelson's thinking is no better than your average cracker from Selma, Alabama.

It may be news to Nelson but David Pasquarelli and Michael Bellefountaine are not my leaders. We work as equals - a concept that escapes Nelson who seems to be of the opinion black and brown people are incapable of thinking for themselves. Whether it is South African President Thabo Mbeki standing up to the multinationals by refusing to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of his national health care budget or an ACT UP San Francisco member attacking an AIDS Industry CEO for absconding with millions of public dollars, it seems that, like an official from the U.S. State Department, Jim Nelson, not the ignorant natives, knows what is best for all concerned.

Having gone to her multimillion dollar federal funded agency, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during a time of great hardship and need I found myself, in the name of services, being referred to a crack ridden cockroach hotel where I was mugged in the hallway at knife point. Had Jim Nelson done his own fact checking he would have found out that I never shouted, "straight white woman you should die!" a statement Pat Christen attributed to me in her initial police report and later stated in court under oath that everyone from ACT UP San Francisco "chanted." The very idea that Pat lied is quite beyond Nelson's myopia. No doubt he is of the opinion white people, especially rich ones, always tell the truth. To report what I did shout, "You are not worth $170,000!" goes to the crux of the matter. Money for services not, for CEO salaries. Money for universal health care, decent housing, and food, not bogus AIDS drugs that kill.

That tens of thousands of gay men at the end of the eighties and early nineties died from AZT poisoning is only a passing concern for Jim Nelson. As are the numbers of gay men disfigured from the use of protease inhibitors including Larry Kramer whose distended belly was featured in the twentieth anmniversary AIDS issue of Newsweek. Nor does Nelson mention the number of deaths from AIDS drug side effects. As many as half a dozen gay men from San Francisco's HIV Prevention Planning Council have died in the past few years from AIDS drug poisoning including Dick Pabich, Tony Leone, Bill Thorne, John Blake West and Randy Wendelin, all drug treatment advocates. Which begs the question, just who is in denial here? Michael Bellefountaine may be "fat" and David Pasquarelli may be "skinny" and Ronnie Burk may be having a bad day at the dentist after a third root canal but you can be sure none of us are disfigured, much less dead, from the "life prolonging" AIDS drugs Jim Nelson touts like a company ad man for Glaxo Wellcome. After all the self-congratulatory award ceremonies, fund raising cocktail parties, clinical trials and drug company conventions, one thing is clear, the safety and well being of the HIV positive is hardly a concern of either Pat Christen, Jim Nelson or the pharmaceutical industry.

As assitant managing editor for GQ I would like to believe that now that Mr. Nelson has shown such a concern for the plight of black Africa we will be seeing more articles in his magazine devoted to children starving in Somalia or a hard hitting expose on the subject of birth defects from AZT clinical trails being conducted on pregant women in Kenya and Nigeria. Maybe an in-depth article with health expert Dr. Gary Null on why AZT is so harmful and should be banned, not exported, to Africa. I would like to believe it but I won't be holding my breath.

GQ will continue to represent what it has always represented - conformity, blind consumerism for the sake of corporate profits and white male privilege at its worst. Why am I not surprised?

Ronnie Burk

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Ronnie Burk is the author of THE RACIST CLICHE IN THE USA (RACE TRAITOR # 9.) His biography can be found in The Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 209 Chicano Writers: Third Series. He has been a member of ACT UP San Francisco since 1996.