Dionne Warwick reflects on her commitment to fighting AIDS

The Advocate's Julie Bolcer reports:
Almost 30 years have passed since Dionne Warwick and friends Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder recorded their smash-hit charity single, “That’s What Friends Are For.” The song generated over $3 million for the American Foundation for AIDS Research and heralded a new era of celebrity-driven fundraising and activism.

Some things have not changed for the New Jersey-born performer whose career has spanned five decades of hits.

“Lyrically, it’s the same message of ‘I’m going to be there for you,’” said Warwick, 70, before a September town hall she organized on HIV/AIDS in New York City. “Friends are the ones who are there for you. That’s exactly what this is all about. Being human. Having humanity.”

The town hall, presented with Harlem United Community AIDS Center, drew nearly 200 audience members, most of them African-American, to ask questions and hear perspectives from leaders in the health, policy, advocacy, and religious communities. Panelists included Warwick, actress Sheryl Lee Ralph — a member of the original Broadway cast of Dreamgirls and founder of an HIV-charity called The DIVA Foundation, and Rae Lewis Thornton, the first African-American woman to tell her story of living with AIDS to a major publication, Essence, in 1994.

“Education is really the key,” Warwick said. “We have to know what we’re fighting in order to be able to fight it.”

She speaks from experience. Warwick lost her assistant to AIDS in the 1980s before the disease even had a name and before Rock Hudson had put a face to it. Her assistant, initially thought to be suffering from cancer, would be the first of many among her colleagues to face the disease.

“I’m a performer. The industry I am in has lost a multitude of talented people,” she said. “That’s when I had a very strong message sent to me to stop talking and start doing, and as a result of it, my advocacy started getting known throughout the country."
The rest of Miss Warwick's interview can be read here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sunny von Bulow dies after 28 years in coma

Image
After spending nearly 28 years in an irreversible coma, heiress and socialite Martha "Sunny" von Bulow died Saturday in a New York nursing home, according to a family statement. She was 76. Von Bulow was subject of one of the nation's most sensational criminal cases during the 1980s. Her husband, Claus, was accused of trying to kill her with an overdose of insulin, which prosecutors alleged sent her into the coma. He was convicted of making two attempts on her life, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. He was acquitted in a second trial. His retrial in 1985 received national attention. (Via CNN )
Read more

Ric Alonso resigns from pageant association after porn revelation

Image
Kevin Hogan wasn't the only person this week ambushed out of a job for his participation in the gay adult film industry. FOX News reports : Ric Alonso and his partner of 21 years, Ernie Koneck, have both been both prominent power players in the Southern California Scholarship Association — an incorporated not-for-profit association — which produces the Miss Hollywood pageant, an official preliminary to Miss California, and a feeder to Miss America. Alonso is listed as the first “major sponsor” for 2011 scholarship donations, while partner Koneck has been the pageantry point of contact and is featured in photographs alongside the smiling young sashed pageant contestants. On Tuesday, Alonso was exposed by RadarOnline as adult film actor and producer "Jake Cruise". FOX News adds: Following the revelation, Koneck announced his resignation Tuesday as Executive Director of the Southern California Scholarship Association, and said Alonso was in no way involved in the Miss Holl
Read more

Make Jerry Curl Great Again

Image
You can't consider yourself a writer if you don't write. In recent years, I have probably said those words to myself so often that they could be considered a mantra; a mantra that I don't want to embody but one that is nonetheless true. I don't write anymore. I don't write to faraway friends. I don't write to remember. I don't write for pleasure. I don't write for release. I don't even Tweet. At a recent job interview (for another job I didn't really want), I was asked what I would do for a living if I could do anything. Without even thinking about it, I said I would be a writer. But that was a stock answer. It's the answer I've always given to that question. But this time the answer felt phony. It felt forced. It didn't feel like me anymore. The real, ugly, scary truth is that I don't know if I still got the right stuff to be the writer I wanted to be. While I have always questioned the validity of my own voice (my
Read more