After Larry Kramer’s death, an impassioned speech made by the HIV activist and writer almost 30 years ago has resurfaced – and it is just as relevant today as it was then. This is the transcript of a speech Kramer delivered at New York's Cooper Union in November 2004. Can you hear me? Kramer insists that nobody would take the AIDS epidemic seriously until millions of people started taking to the streets in protest against government inaction. Larry Kramer at the after-party celebrating the 2011 Broadway opening of his 1985 play “The Normal Heart.” Donna Aceto. His volatile brand of advocacy fueled a movement that forced the government and the world to finally pay attention to those who were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “Forty million infected people is a f**king plague and nobody acts as if it is,” he says. Larry left us today at 84 years old. I hadn’t heard about the speech. I was just a kid when I walked into my first ACT UP meeting, just weeks after Larry Kramer’s movement-launching speech in March of ’87. That, of course, was nothing new. “I don’t know what kind of organization to start. He was a playwright and novelist in 1983, as he saw friends around him die of what you then had to On Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart, and Playwriting As Screed. Kramer’s death was announced on Wednesday (May 27), plunging HIV activists across the world into mourning at the loss of an extraordinary campaigner. That was the title of an inspiring speech activist, author, and my friend Larry Kramer delivered in 2007 on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of ACT UP at the NYC’s LGBT Community Center on 16 th street calling on LGBT people to stop self-limiting their asks from society. More from Variety “All those pills we’re shovelling down our throats? “What does it take? His first writing credit was as a dialogue writer for Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, a teen sex comedy. By 1991, Kramer was sick of the apathy that flooded activist groups and addressed it in the famous “plague” speech. LARRY KRAMER : Do you think our enemies care … About 32 million people have died from AIDS related complications. Parts of this essay were adapted from a speech Larry Kramer gave at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Forget it. These NYU Students Want to Know Your LGBTQ+ Travel Plans Post-COVID, Former Rep. Katie Hill to Matt Gaetz: Take My Name Out of Your Mouth, Sponsor of Arkansas Anti-Trans Bill Says Kids Might Identify as Cats, Winter in a Summer Town (Provincetown, That Is), STD Testing Plummets as Resources Diverted to COVID-19, Sec. Until we get our act together, all of us, and until we learn to plug in with each other and fight and make this president listen, we are as good as dead. Several years later, Kramer helped found the direct-action group ACT UP, which staged protests informing the government, drug companies, and more that AIDS activists would not be ignored. Amid the earliest-known AIDS cases in 1981, Kramer held a meeting in his New York City apartment to discuss  the disease. “ACT UP has been taken over by a lunatic fringe,” he said, adding that its activists couldn’t agree on anything. He also penned the 1978 novel Faggots, which attracted controversy over its derisory portrayal of promiscuity and drug-taking in the gay community. “Every person I talk to in every city, in every agency — gay, straight, AIDS— is as despondent as they can possibly be,” Kramer said. But I would hear of it soon enough. “Of the 2,639,857 faggots in the New York city area, 2,639,857 think primarily with their cocks. It was there that he critiqued recent failures by organizations he’d founded. Larry’s life became part of the steep learning curve I desperately climbed that year. Larry Kramer delivered a long and fiery speech at Cooper Union last Sunday night. He concludes: “And I say to you in year 10, as we face a figure of 40 million infected people, the same thing I said to you in 1981, when there were 41 cases: until we get our act together, all of us, and until we learn to plug in with each other and fight and make this president listen, we are as good as dead.”. “We are as good as dead,” Kramer said of any future failure to organize. I don’t know how to write anymore articles cause I have said what I have said to you tonight in one form or another for 10 f**king years.”. Kramer’s best-known work is the autobiographical 1985 play The Normal Heart, depicting the devastation caused by the AIDS crisis on the gay community of New York City. In 1978, Larry Kramer published ‘Faggots,’ which was to become a seminal work in the canon of gay literature. Nobody knows. Forget it. AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to the words of Larry Kramer from that Queer Liberation speech last year. In an interview with the New … 94, No. Required reading and/or viewing for everyone: At a ceremony last night in New York, the incomparable Larry Kramer received the inaugural Larry Kramer … Larry Kramer taught me the importance of a catastrophic imagination. When Koch spoke at a GMHC AIDS Walk, Kramer alone stood at the front of the opening ceremony outside Lincoln Center with a sign saying, “Ed Koch: The Worst!” “And I don’t know what to do next.”. “Every person I talk to in every city, in every agency, gay, straight, AIDS, is as despondent as they can possibly be,” Larry Kramer continues. Larry Kramer Speech at Cooper Union. I was just a kid when I walked into my first ACT UP meeting, just weeks after Larry Kramer’s movement-launching speech in March of ’87. Larry Kramer's entire speech was (yet again) another call to action for gay men. “Larry asked me to bring a bunch of my pretty boy Fire Island friends and to stand up and volunteer to help with forming the protest group as boy bait to encourage others to join,” Sawyer said. Full text of Larry Kramer's March 13 speech. "I don’t know what to write anymore. A longtime HIV survivor who underwent a liver transplant several years ago, Kramer died of pneumonia amid the current pandemic, although not from it. Only a few days after Kramer’s passing, Webster was generous enough to have a long conversation about life with Larry, from their first meeting in … Larry Kramer speaking in 1991 (YouTube) After Larry Kramer’s death, an impassioned speech made by the HIV activist and writer almost 30 years ago has resurfaced – and it … ... (ACT UP) into existence in 1987 via a fire-and-brimstone speech. I’ll tell you what it means to me. Kramer, who lived with HIV himself, is survived by his husband and partner of 29 years, architectural designer David Webster. I didn’t even know who he was.