PASSAGES

JAMES from page 18.

grew lonely and despairing. "Loving and being loved are the most important things in my life. After my lover's death I began to hate life." Despondency and inaction were hardly histele. He sang militant songs of his own

Yet he becathe AIDS vigil and poured all dependent on marijuana.

ning of last summer was he abfeunt, very for good. Typically, the battle to give p drugs, which another person might have concealed, James at once recorded in a series of Thomas Leland columns to encourage others in the same struggle.

These columns, and the series on Jim's death, were filled with the sort of thing everyone does and is ashamed to confess. Only someone of extraordinary courage would present such things to the world, helping people with similar shames and fears find the strength to go on. Such people enact a death ritual, a grieving ritual, and a spectacular mystery: that mere humans can endure so much and yet survive and triumph. His writing

Writing, they say, can be learned but not taught. James, whose reaction to all experience was to communicate, never studied writing but read widely from an early age ("A lots of Dickens. I used to daydream about the Artful Dodger doin' stuff with the other boys"), knew just what he wanted to say and had no trouble getting there. He was a joy to edit

he knew what made a sentence and what was necessary for a paragraph.

As an editor himself he sought to annoy and arouse his readers. If an issue of Wiggansnatch looked dull, he would run up a reader's survey on masturbation or write vicious letters to the editor under assumed names. If readers still weren't upset, he'd revile the fake letter writer in the next issue, and keep it up till he had full-scale feuds going among his readership. For range of subject, excellence of production, and sheer outrageousness, nothing has replaced it.

His vision quest

By August, though he spoke of it to no one, James, long aware that he was HIV positive, appears to have guessed things in his body were going wrong. He then decided to tie up some spiritual loose ends by going to a shamanic homestead in chilly eastern Washington, where there was no electricity, running water, or much heat. Despite a cough that began soon after he arrived, he insisted on undertaking sweat lodges and a four-day fast and refused to consult a doctor.

On September 29, hardly able to breathe, he was rushed across the mountains to Harborview. His parents and three brothers arrived from Georgia soon after. Every witch for 200 miles beamed energy at the place. Many shared the vigil in his room. Unable to speak or laugh with tubes down his throat to allow him to breathe, Laughing Otter requested comic books and "tacky mobiles" over his bed until his exhausted body gave up. The pneumonias both curable were too far advanced for treatment by the time he returned to Seattle.

In his last Lavender Magick column he speaks of the joy of learning to listen to the wind and the trees on the land. I could wring his neck for not wearing four thermal undershirts while he listened.

Is it possible James did not know how greatly he was loved? How much his nine years in the northwest had mattered to the many communities that claimed him as their own? How much he will be missed, and honored, as ancestors and heroes are honored, by the pagans and witches and faeries and Gay people and all the humans living on the land who come after him?

The energy disperses, and what it sets in motion only a god can predict. Regret is undying, and we who dwell on the Earth listen in vain for the vast, preposterous hoot of otter laughter.

John Yohalem

A public ritual and service for James Moore/Laughing Otter will be held at the Institute for Transformational Movement, 1607 13th Avenue at 7:30p.m. on Sunday, October 30th, the witches' New Year's Eve! Come in costume and bring a potluck dish.

20

• Seattle Gay News

AIDS UPDATE

Protest in front of FDA building in Washington, DC

by George Bakan

SILENCE DEATH

FD

30

hasz

from phone interview with Michael Davidson

What follows is a phone interview with Seattleite Michael Davidson, Worker World Party, who was at the Tuesday ACT-UP shutdown of the Federal Drug Administration offices in Washington, D.C.

Michael prefaced his phone report by declaring the event, "A great success. All the national news was there, and the mood was very up. People were very happy with the demonstration."

BILL from page 1.

Madiga for moving the bill, while Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) threatened to kill the bill by tying up the legislation with obscure parliamentary maneuvers.

Some of the key controversies in the bill negotiate as follows:

The guideline for consent, counseling and confidentiality in HIV testing and counseling

October 21, 1988

DA

has

Activist reports

CUILTY

Photos by Patrick Rumrill

The day started at 7:00 a.m. There were 1,600 people from all over the country, Boston, L.A., New York. I couldn't spot any other people from Seattle. It seems ACT-Up really put this together well. Other major National Gay/Lesbian organizations did not seem well represented.

By the end of the day I counted 7 bus loads of people arrested, in all. 175 people were charged. The main charge was loitering with

were eliminated, except as they apply to authorized anonymous testing sites.

A stipulation is included that education programs are not to be "designed to promote or encourage, directly, homosexual or heterosexual activity or intravenous substance abuse" but that they shall provide "accurate information about various means to reduce exposure to and transmission of"

one charge of resisting arrest.

The FDA is housed in a modern 17 story building. Office workers were inside and were not sent home for the day. Many were supportive, cheering and waving to us from inside. There are three main entrances to the building and all three were completely blocked by protesters, about 100 at each entrance. Police were there in large numbers, 300 or 400, decked out in full riot gear. There was an unbelievable number of police cars, with units from city and federal enforcement.

Action Heats

At about 11:00 a.m. a large plate window on the West side of the building was broken demonsators from Los Angeles went into the build Of

of action from the ponurse that caused a lot At noon, an effigy of Ronald Re

ned, draped over a stop sign. What & At was incredible.

some trash time they burned Reagan, overturned and the plate glass doors afere At 12:30 two protesters over another were broken.

building across the street which so part of the FDA complex. That is where we hour

press conference.

Demonstrators had climbed on top of the police buses at this point. The police didn't like that. They responded by mass arrests. Police just opened the trap doors in the top of the buses and started stuffing protesters inside. Police were very rough.

When the first bus went to leave for the jail, the crowd stopped it by lying down in front. Police just kept arresting people.

Early in the day, demonstrators claimed the flag pole and had banners flying. The front of the building was plastered with posters and banners as well.

A tractor trailer and delivery van were trapped in the delivery area by the protesters. The delivery van was from Air Express, bright white and new. The van driver got angry and started calling the protesters "faggots." Several protesters sat down and prevented the van from leaving while other ACT-UPers spray painted slogans on the van in red paint. The delivery van and tractor trailer didn't leave until the end. After the spray painting, the demonstrators blocked Fisher Lane, an access street, with police barricades moved from other areas.

Chain Saw Attack

Guardian Tree Service is a business next to the FDA. A right winger came out of the business with a chain saw all revved up theatening the crowd. The police did nothing at first. After the crowd surrounded the man as a defense mechanism, the police reacted ordering him back into the Tree Service building.

Police attempts to unblock the delivery drive and street met with resistance. As the cops began getting nasty they were reminded by legal observers that they had taken to immediate action to stop the chain saw attacker.

All in all, the cops acted baffled. They didn't seem to understand what was going

on.

People stayed until 4:30 p.m. when the crowd dispersed.

The day was a great success. It is part of a building anger and movement about AIDS. ACT-UP is taking an important lead.

For me this protest was very important.. Why is the FDA holding up these drugs? Why does it take 10 years for approval when some of the drugs are already being used for other diseases?

Too many people are dying.

Editorial note: Thanks Michael and to all the other protesters. Good work.

HIV.

►Testing of state prisoners was limited to those convicted of sexual assault, prostitution, intravenous drug offenses and other "high-risk" prisoners, and is tied to a separate authorization for matching federal and state funds.

The bill now goes to President Reagan for signing into law.