And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

by Randy Shilts

dream, a memory that had no real part in his waking life today. At times, he wondered what he had been thinking all those years. Of what had he been so afraid? It wasn’t just being Catholic. The edification of thirteen years of Cincinnati parochial schools dissipated within months of his arrival at Ohio State in 1968. There, he grew his hair long and answered the call of the Bob Dylan songs he played incessantly on his beat-up stereo. “The first one now will later be last,” Dylan said. The times, they were a-changing.

“The problem lies not in evil personalities or traitorous acts, but rather in the political orientation which believes that an oppressed group gets what it needs by being careful not to offend the powerful,”

“The problem lies in the desire to protect the little that we have gotten by not risking a fight for what we deserve. The problem lies in believing that what we have gotten is somehow a favor given by politicians rather than the politicians’ recognition of what we have the political power to demand and to get.”

Harold Jaffe, for example, was an experienced

he had