The following talk, "Remembering Danny," was given at a Feb. 5 tribute to Danny Sotomayor, a Chicago AIDS activist who died 18 years ago. Sotomayor's editorial cartoons and photos are on display at the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture through early March. The talk and Short Fuse, a film about Sotomayor, were also at the institute.How do we commemorate or remember someone? It can be hard.
First there's the sadness that comes from remembering, the grief and the loss, but you can't stop there because Danny is not just someone we lost.
We can't lose the value of his work, what it meant and what it inspired. Work that was integral to a life lived fighting for change, dignity, and justice.
We can't forget any of that.
Grief can't overshadow what he did and who he was because Danny provoked us then and now to think, to get angry, to act up.
Remembering the good about him is easy. His good friends, including Lori Cannon and Victor Salvo, can tell you about his charm, humor, and not the least his good looks and—I have to say it—his sexiness.
There was his joy in life so evident in his love for Scott McPherson, author of Marvin's Room. I'm sure you've heard of that movie from the play with Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Diane Keaton and Robert De Niro. Yes, I know the Oscar girls are already thinking, "Oh, that's the role Diane won an Oscar for."
Well, remembering Danny, commemorating him, saying these few things, doesn't just make me sad.
I get angry. He had it all.
The first nationally syndicated gay cartoonist, a Latino, Puerto Rican and Mexican, real Chicago, from Humboldt Park—so that's why he's going home now, after all this time, to the place that gave him a rich background, and his strength.
Remembering more, I get angrier. His cartoons debuted in January 1989, then syndication in 1991—and gone Feb. 5, 1992. And you can see his work, now, in Humboldt Park, at The Institute for Puerto Rican Arts & Culture, where a community is ready to claim him as a hero.
Things have changed.
It can be hard to believe just how much things have changed. Back then there was talk of tattooing and quarantining people with AIDS. Socalled religious people openly blamed entire communities for getting sick and led a charge to harm them even further, to destroy them. Our own president [ Ronald Reagan ] couldn't bring himself to address what we all now accept as a public health crisis, and not the judgment of a vengeful God.
Now, Danny's humor and politics, his passion to change things fast—that all can come home. He couldn't wait for this time. He had to get things done fast and all that was cut short by hate.
But that just made him angry and determined. That brings me to something I know I can't forget.
We should be commemorating someone alive in this room, right now.
Danny not only had it all, the richness of who he was, the love of family like Scott and his friends, the talent, the career in a trail he blazed all himself, despite all this, he was up against it, big things, things he met with activism.
Those things he fought—well, I won't lecture on politics—let's just say Danny fought indifference and hate.
Danny, the totality of his life and work was engaged in a fight to get what came for him too late: treatments for HIV, justice and the right to be here for those who didn't count, gay men like him.
Remembering this is everything because as I get older, in good health, feeling comfortable, even like I belong here—it's something Danny fought for, and we're still fighting for… When I wonder how come I can't marry my German boyfriend and bring him here… And I feel like I'm just surviving.
Then I look at Danny's life, that despite everything, the hard, work, the struggle, the talent— Danny's gone.
People can be harmed and even destroyed because of who they are.
Just this week our Congress is debating "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—you know, the law from our dear friend Bill Clinton, a law that destroys people because of who they are.
More than 13,000 lost their jobs. There's a jobs program Congress. Are you listening? Well, remembering Danny and who he was, that's everything.
Because when he was up against it, laws that enshrine hate because so many are indifferent, Danny took all that he had, and did all that he could.
He got angry, he fought back, he acted up and fought AIDS.
And no one can take that from us. And that's what we commemorate—his life, a life of struggle against it all, the life of a hero.
In the early 1990s, Gabriel Gomez was a member of ACT-UP Chicago,though he became more widely known for his collaborative video work with Queer Nation Chicago and the Joan Jett Blakk campaigns for mayor of Chicago and president of the United States. Joan, a Black drag queen, was a spokesmodel that Queer Nation used to lampoon the exclusion of LGBT candidates and issues from electoral politics. After Gomez finished his Ph.D. program at Northwestern in 1996 he went into teaching and, today, he is a full professor in the Library, Information and Media Studies Dept. at Chicago State University. Photo of Gomez by Tracy Baim
