A Closer Walk Screening
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
February 5, 2003
Los Angeles, California

The revolution that Jonathan Mann and I hoped to ignite with A Closer Walk was based on the idea that how you define a problem, determines what you do about it.

Now, one of the biggest problems with AIDS for the past twenty-five years, has been that the general public has been absent from a battle that clearly has to be fought on all fronts. Ordinary people in this country and abroad have consistently misunderstood AIDS. Have been misinformed about the true nature of the disease and its underlying causes. And have suffered from a massive failure of leadership on this subject. In short, ordinary people have been removed, have been isolated, from what has now become the worst public health crisis, and the greatest threat to global security, in human history.

So the idea of A Closer Walk was-and is-to engage the general public in a battle that cannot be won without soldiers. People. But soldiers have to know their enemy. People have to understand what AIDS is really about. So A Closer Walk is about passing knowledge along to people. Because knowledge is power. And if we the people are going to rise up and help put an end to AIDS, we are going to need knowledge. We are going to need power. And we are going to need each other.

Now I realize that some of you may be feeling overwhelmed or indeed uncomfortable by some of what you have seen and heard tonight, and as a way of dealing with those feelings you may be asking, what can I do? So let me try to respond to that for just two or three minutes.

At the practical level, this is not rocket science. We can all do something, according to who we are. When I interviewed Kofi Annan at the United Nations, he said, "Look, you Bob, are a filmmaker. I'm a diplomat. An actor can lend his voice. A wealthy person can give money. If you're not a wealthy person you can still put an orphan like Hassan through school; or provide medication for one of Paul Farmer's patients in Haiti; or volunteer for a vaccine trial; or, if you're a parent, you can simply talk to your children. And if they're adolescents or teenagers, you can listen to your children.

And, if you're the President of the United States, you can take the first step that President Bush took a week ago, and begin to provide some real leadership on this issue. And I'd like to congratulate the President for that.

And I'd like to say, Mr. President, we have a tool in A Closer Walk that will help make the case to Congress, the American people, and the world that we need to do more; that we need to give more; and that we need to act now.

Since President Bush spoke to the nation last week, 80,000 people have died, needlessly of AIDS. Eighty-thousand people. In one week. And 80,000 next week. And 80,000 the week after that. And not just in Africa and the Caribbean. But in India. China. Russia. Throughout Eastern Europe. And in our own vulnerable communities here in the United States.

So while we tell ourselves how terrific it is that we now have an AIDS advocate in the White House, let's not forget that until real money, and real programs, and real drugs start getting to real people and saving real lives, it's just going to be more of the same. And more of the same is no longer acceptable. Write your Senator or Congressperson and tell them that we can no longer be whistling past the global graveyard. We need to be vigilant. We need to be compassionate. We need to stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings. We need to walk to the walk.

We can all do something, depending on who we are.

And we can help. Visit acloserwalk.org, and on this web site you'll find plenty of simple, effective ways to join the revolution, stay with the revolution, and help put an end to AIDS. A Closer Walk is not just a movie. It's a movement, whose success depends on you.

Finally, I would ask you to consider that we are all in this for the long haul.

And what that really means is that once you know about AIDS in the world, you can never again be the same.

I watched this happen to myself over a period of six years. This coming-upon-you of a kind of wisdom and sense of fulfillment when you reach out to those who suffer, and when you simply are with them. And it's a wonderful thing, because even as this knowledge becomes a part of you, you change. You become more human. Your life is enriched. And you have to pass the knowledge along. Otherwise, as Kofi Annan says, 'it all becomes hollow'.

Let's not make this a hollow night. Let's make this a moment in history. Because with this screening of A Closer Walk the ripple effect begins. We will do everything in our power to get this movie on the movie and the television screens of this nation and the world.

What you can do, is to take this knowledge we have given you ladies and gentlemen, and share it with six other people. And then make sure that those six people share that knowledge and share this film, with six other people. That's what you can do.

So the five hundred here tonight become three thousand. And those three thousand become eighteen thousand. And they become hundreds of thousands, and then millions, and the ripple we send forth tonight becomes a mighty roaring wave of compassion and commitment that says we will be silent no longer. We will no longer flee, no longer hide, no longer separate ourselves.

Ariel Glaser died of AIDS on August 12, 1988, at the age of 7 years and one week. As her family drove north from Boston after Ariel's funeral, a brilliant rainbow appeared over the wet farmlands of southern Maine. "It was glorious", her mother Elizabeth wrote.

And that rainbow makes me think of the span of time between that sad day some fifteen years ago, and this day, in the City of Angels. A day that is so full of hope, and promise, and the spirit of Ariel and Elizabeth. And that span of time reminds of something that Martin Luther King wrote from a jail cell in Selma, Alabama, some thirty years ago. 'The moral arc of history is long. But it bends towards justice'.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, as we await new prophets to lead us out of the darkness into the promised land, let us be prophets among ourselves.

Be human. Value life. Walk the walk. Thank you and God bless us all.