Foreword
Living with AIDS in this country is like living through a war
that’s happening only for those people in the trenches…Every time a shell explodes you look around
to discover that you’ve lost more of your friends.
But nobody else notices, it isn’t happening to them.
- VITO RUSSO, 1988
♦ BACKGROUND INFORMATION ♦
We chose to focus on the role that government played in the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Through our video, we tried to convey the extent to which budget and policy decisions made in New York City in the 1970s contributed to the increasing incidences of HIV and AIDS. Beginning in 1975, a fiscal and political crisis left New York City without the resources to pay its operating expenses or the ability to borrow money from the public. This crisis was rooted in global economic changes, but had a major effect on New York City. Then, the NYC banks decided to stop lending money to the city, a move that could have caused the city to ultimately declare bankruptcy. The EFCB (Emergency Financial Control Board) was appointed to balance the city’s budget so that it could once again borrow money from the public. It called for severe budget cuts in the city’s spending. Agencies with health responsibilities were particularly hit hard. The numbers of hospital workers, bed, and days providing service dropped tremendously.
As for the start of AIDS, most researchers believe that the HIV infection first appeared in New York City during the 1970s and spread rapidly among men who had sex with men and injection drug users. It then spread, throughout the 1980s, to the wider sexual and drug networks. In New York City, 41% of AIDS cases were related to injection drug use, compared with 25% nationally.
Other decisions made during the fiscal crisis contributed to the inadequate HIV prevention services. Most health educators were laid off in 1975, so the Department of Health lacked the means to communicate health information to the public effectively. In the city’s low-income minority communities, it took the Department of Health more than a decade to establish a network of AIDS educators. During this interval, the HIV infection proceeded to spread rapidly.
♦ INTERVIEWEES ♦
For our project, we decided to interview former Mayor Ed Koch, to see his view on the government’s policies during this time. We also conducted an interview with Dr. Gerald Oppenheimer, a professor at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College and CUNY’s Graduate Center. We would like to sincerely thank both interviewees for their time and their extremely helpful input towards our projects.
♦ THE TECHNOLOGICAL ASPECT ♦
The most difficult part about this project was the technological aspect. Many of us were not technologically advanced, and so we found the end product to seem distant in our minds. It was extremely difficult and time-consuming to bring together the perfect blend of pictures and videos and background music in order to effectively convey a certain idea about our topic. In addition, it was a tricky process to find images and videos on AIDS that were both appropriate and relevant. Oftentimes, they were one, but not the other. Also, we had to make sure we did not use more than 30 seconds of any video clip or piece of background music. In other words, we had to constantly make sure we were within the limits of copyright laws. Finally, when we thought we had the final product, we realized, to our dismay, that the volume was fluctuating throughout the video. This was a tedious problem, but it was one that had to be fixed. At Professor Napoli’s suggestion, we used the user-friendly and free Levelator to normalize the audio of our entire documentary; it worked smoothly and perfectly.
♦ SUMMARY ♦
On the whole, we all learned a lot about our topic through research. Some of us did not even know of this event in history, because it is not one that is discussed in history textbooks. Today, the topic is often overshadowed by other impending world news. Two of us even took formal classes on the history of New York City, and still we had never heard of this event until we had done the research on our own.
We also learned about the complexities behind producing a documentary film. All in all, this project was a wonderful learning experience!
We sincerely hope you enjoy this website that we have spent our semester working on. We have worked alongside our TechFellow, John Sorrentino, and our Professor, Phillip Napoli. Only with their help and support were we all able to put together our documentary film!