We have listed many of George Bush's crimes against humanity that he committed over the pond, but let's talk about his crime against humanity here at home. This was how his administration ignored the AIDS epidemic while thousands of people were dying every year.

It’s a Disgrace to Celebrate George H.W. Bush on World AIDS Day

At the presidential debate Bush was asked:

Mr. President, yesterday tens of thousands of people paraded past the White House to demonstrate about their concern about the disease, AIDS. A celebrated member of your commission, Magic Johnson, quit, saying there was too much inaction. Where is this widespread feeling coming from that your administration is not doing enough about AIDS?

Looking annoyed, Bush listed what his administration was doing before saying, seemingly irritated, “I can’t tell you where it’s coming from. I am very much concerned about AIDS. And I believe we have the best researchers in the world at NIH working on the problem.” But then he added:

It’s one of the few diseases where behavior matters. And I once called on somebody, “Well, change your behavior! If the behavior you’re using is prone to cause AIDs, change the behavior!” Next thing I know, one of these ACT UP groups is saying, “Bush ought to change his behavior!” You can’t talk about it rationally!

Just after midnight on December 1, World AIDS Day, I learned that President George Herbert Walker Bush had died. And I was dismayed not just that the hagiography afforded dead presidents would overshadow Bush’s own appalling legacy on AIDS, but that his death would eclipse the tens of millions of lives we should be remembering today.

When I teach AIDS history, I always show a clip of ACT UP’s October 11, 1992, “ashes action” at the White House, in which brave activists took the cremated bodies of loved ones who had died of AIDS and hurled them onto Bush’s lawn. (If you’ve never seen it, I dare you to watch without crying).The ashes action is brilliant not just for how raw it was but also for how it held a powerful man to account without civility.

[video:https://youtube.com/watch?v=bWbzinqIlPk]

And The Band Played On is a movie about the progression of the AIDS epidemic and how when the Reagan administration was ignoring it was moving into the nation's blood supply affecting children who had hemophilia and men and women who had received blood transfusions. Of course it is more than just that. It follows the history of the epidemic, but through the movie is the fact that it's being ignored by the government. The activists group ACT UP pushed congress into getting off their asses and doing something about it.

[video:https://youtube.com/watch?v=jkHuCzYhvD4]

Cleve Jones came up with the idea for the AIDS Quilt

I imagined families sharing stories of their loved ones as they cut and sewed the fabric. It could be therapy, I hoped, for a community that was increasingly paralyzed by grief and rage and powerlessness. It could be a tool for the media, to reveal the humanity behind the statistics. And a weapon to deploy against the government; to shame them with stark visual evidence of their utter failure to respond to the suffering and death that spread and increased with every passing day.

The AIDS Quilt displayed on the National Mall with more than 40,000 individual Quilts made into panels of 6 quilts each.

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a haunting documentary of 5 people who are represented in the AIDS Quilt. The movie follows the people from their earlier lives throughout the progression of the disease and the people in their lives up to their creations of their Quilts to when it's displayed on the Mall. If you get the chance to watch the whole movie do.

[video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1tR57NA0gl8]