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Friday, March 7, 2003
(with plenty of help from our friends in DC and
Nashville)
From the New York Times Magazine cover article on
Senator Bill Frist, May 11, 2003:
“Once, on the night of Bush’s State
of the Union address, while I was waiting in his office lobby,
an aide told me that the senator wanted to see me right away.
When I entered his office, Frist was leaning over his desk,
his face slightly flushed. “The White House just called,” he
said. The president, he explained, was going to champion
in his speech a proposal that Frist had been working on for
years—to triple financing to $15 billion over five
years for the fight against AIDS in Africa. “This is
big,” Frist said. He started to pace in the room. “This
is big,” he said again. Later, after the speech, he
said, “I told the president, ‘You just saved
hundreds of thousands of lives,’ and he looked at me
and said, ‘We just saved a lot more than that.”’
It was after midnight, but Frist lingered in his
empty office. “This is why I went into politics,” he
said. “This is it! This is it!”
But within days it emerged that the White House
had found the money for the proposal, in part, by slashing
other health financing. And after Frist bowed to many of
Bush’s conditions that caused the various financing
proposals to founder in Congress, a leading AIDS organization
put out a news release saying, “Senator Frist Sabotages
Key AIDS Initiatives.” Protesters soon appeared
outside Frist’s Washington home at 6 a.m., blaring
sirens, while others stormed into his Senate office hours
later, yelling, “Frist is being a doctor of rhetoric
instead of a doctor of action.”
When a photo of Frist appeared in the paper, looking
ashen, his friend Reinhardt told me: “Poor Billy. I’ve
never seen him look so beleaguered.”
6AM - Protesters awoke Senator Frist at his
home in Northwest Washington, DC yelling, “BE
YOUR OWN MAN, BILL FRIST!” into the bullhorn. Frist
has withdrawn support from important AIDS legislation
several times in recent months. --photo by Allison Dinsmore
Later that same day...
Mark Rifkin of Philadelphia leads AIDS protesters as
they barge into Sen.
Bill Frist's office on White Bridge Road in Nashville.
--GEORGE WALKER IV /
STAFF
--
Associated Press
March 7, 2003
AIDS activists rally outside Frist's Nashville office
By AMBER McDOWELL
(Nashville, TN) A small group of protesters who claim Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist is backing off support for international
AIDS funding staged a noisy confrontation at his office here
Friday, a few hours after about 20 others gave the senator an
early wake-up call outside his Washington home.
"Bill Frist gets all this publicity, because he's the only doctor in the
Senate, that he's this champion of health care. But that isn't the reality," said
Nashville protester and AIDS patient Sandy Katz.
Katz and six others pounded on the office's locked doors for
several minutes before pushing past surprised staffers who
threatened to call police. After several minutes of shouting
and passing out leaflets, the group left peacefully.
Outside, they argued that Frist has allowed his allegiance to
the White House to interfere with his commitment to the AIDS
fight by not reintroducing a bill from the previous Congress
that would have given billions of dollars to the effort.
"I'm horrified about the prospect of millions of people dying from AIDS,
and the United States is in a position to do something to prevent it," said
protester MaxZine Weinstein, 37, of Dowelltown. "Frist said he was going
to do something and now he's backing out.
"Frist is being a doctor of rhetoric instead of a doctor of action."
Frist, a surgeon who has done volunteer work treating AIDS in
Africa, has long been a strong and vocal supporter of international
efforts against the disease.
Last year, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Frist introduced legislation
that would have given $2.5 billion in 2004 to the effort,
including $1.2 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria. The measure passed in the Senate,
but died in the House.
He hasn't reintroduced the bill this year because he is instead
working with "Senate Democrats, Republicans and
the White House to craft the best legislation possible," his
spokesman Nick Smith said. Bush announced last month in his
State of the Union speech plans to triple U.S. spending on
AIDS to $3 billion over the next five years, but the Global
Fund was not mentioned as a possible recipient.
Frist "applauds the president's proposed funding increases,
which if approved would represent an unprecedented commitment
to fighting global AIDS, and hopes that a bill might be passed
to address global AIDS concerns in the very near future," Smith
said.
But that's not how the protesters see it.
Katz and the others want any money allocated to the AIDS fight
given to the Global Fund, which they call the "only
timely hope for people with AIDS in developing countries." The
protesters argue that implementing a new program will take
years, leaving 6 million people currently infected with the
disease to die.
"I feel very lucky to be alive - alive because I have access to those
medications. It's horribly tragic that many of people that have the same disease
I do are dying because they don't," Katz said.
Smith said the Global Fund has received $1.2 billion in funding
during its two years of existence and has only paid out about
$300 million. And over the next five years, the organization
will receive $3.3 billion from pledges, Smith said, including
$1.65 billion from the United States.
In Washington, about 20 people blared sirens, flashed lights
and distributed fliers outside Frist's home near the Capitol
beginning at 6 a.m.
University of Maryland student Sean Barry, a member of the national
Student Global AIDS Campaign, helped organize a group of
student protesters from his school and nearby George Washington
University.
"We had a sleepover party the night before to get as many people there
as possible," Barry said.
"We wanted Senator Frist to know he can't betray people living with AIDS
without receiving public criticism. He has a very positive public image, people
admire him, but at the same time behind closed doors he's backtracking on promises
he made last year because of White House pressure."
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