It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful Quotes

“During the first nineteen months of the [AIDS] epidemic, the New York Times wrote about it a total of seven times. During the first three months of the Tylenol scare in 1982, the New York Times wrote about it a total of 54 times. By 1983, AIDS had claimed more than two thousand lives, while seven people had died of Tylenol poisoning.”
― Jack Lowery, It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

“Though gay white men became the first group of people visibly associated with AIDS, we now know that HIV was first an epidemic among intravenous drug users and communities of color, going back at least to the 1960s and ’70s.”
― Jack Lowery, It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

“Do you resent people with AIDS? Do you trust HIV-negatives? Have you given up hope for a cure? When was the last time you cried?”
― Jack Lowery, It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

“That free time is one of the biggest barriers to activism was, in a way, proven in the summer of 2020, as the protests over George Floyd and the slew of other Black lives lost became the most attended protests in American history. Up to twenty-six million Americans participated, a number that would be unthinkable were it not for the converging COVID-19 epidemic and the unprecedented amount of free time that accompanied it.”
― Jack Lowery, It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic