Junkie Pneumonia

Originally published in the Ann Arbor Agenda in April 1992.

Please note that all statistics are from that time.

In the late 1970s, while the epidemic known as “disco fever” swept through the U.S., an epidemic known as “junkie pneumonia” raged among injection drug users in New York City. Unlike disco fever, junkie pneumonia was not the subject of intense media scrutiny or public outcry. No movies were made. Few people were aware that large numbers of injection drug users were inexplicably dying of pneumonia. Those few who did notice these deaths did not feel compelled to investigate the public health puzzle they posed. Junkies die all the time. Nor did anyone bring this less danceable epidemic to the attention of the fevered populace. Bringing the epidemic to the attention of the public would not have made much difference. Undoubtedly, some people would have voiced the opinion that people who shoot drugs deserve to die while most would have shrugged and kept dancing. Investigating the epidemic as the potential public health menace it was, however, could have had a profound impact on hundreds of thousands of lives. Had anyone bothered to investigate the deaths of these drug users, they would have found that they had an immune system disorder that we now call AIDS.

Re-Membering Thanksgiving

Gloating and Gluttony Then and Now
by pattrice jones
Originally published 2004 on various IndyMedia sites.
Revises 2003 essay originally published by Press Action.

Thanksgiving, 2003 — Bush the executioner grins and pardons a turkey before flying to Iraq. He’s earned that self-satisfied smirk. All over his United States, citizens celebrate conquest over platters of flesh. Too full of turkey to think and too full of themselves to question, they let out their belts and watch TV. Tomorrow they go shopping!

***

“Body parts are everywhere!” That’s what one US soldier had to say about the saddest city in Iraq, according to an AFP report. It’s also an apt description of the state of US dinner tables during the festival of gloating and gluttony known as Thanksgiving.

This year, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving in the wake of the taking of Falluja. Waving “drumsticks” and fighting for “wishbones,” complacent Christians will gorge themselves without fear, safe from the threats of gay marriage and Iraqi self-determination. Stuffing themselves beyond satiation, they and their children will partake of the proud Puritanical tradition of ruthless, reckless expansion.

Colonization is nothing to crow about. When Columbus blundered into a hemisphere populated by 70-100 million people and countless unique species of flora and fauna, he set into motion a chain reaction of repression and rebellion that continues to this day.

Conquistadors of the Senses

by pattrice jones

First published 28 November 2006 by FreezerBox Magazine.

Throwing the homosexuals to the hounds sounds like a metaphor for the Republican Party’s electoral strategy of recent years, but it actually happened back in 1513 in what is now Panama. Then, governor Vasco Nunez de Balboa condemned 50 homosexual Indians to be torn apart by dogs.Seen by both Catholic Conquistadors and Protestant Pilgrims as a sign of godless animality, same-sex pleasure was ruthlessly suppressed throughout the process of the subjugation of the Americas. Today, the conquest of the senses continues, as billions of people and animals are forced to forgo all kinds of natural happiness so that a privileged few can enjoy the empty gluttony that has brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe.

When Columbus blundered into the Caribbean, sexual freedom — including full acceptance of homosexuality — was the norm in the region.

Warlords & Condom Queens

This essay was originally published in September of 1993 as an OUT in Left Field column in the LGBTQ newspaper Between the Lines. OUT in Left Field ran from March of 1993 through January of 1995; Between the Lines was distributed throughout the state of Michigan, USA.

I was hard at work on the promised column on tactics for the queer rebellion when I heard something on the TV that pushed me over the edge. So, that column will have to wait while I ventilate.

What set me off was hearing yet another newscaster refer to an indigenous Somalian leader as a “warlord.” (If you’re thinking, “oh no, now she’s off on foreign policy . . . no wonder they call this column ‘out in left field,’” please bear with me and read on. The relevance to the domestic concerns of U. S. queers will become clearer as we go.)

Leaving aside the question of whether or not this particular so-called “warlord” is evil incarnate, let’s think about words and pictures.