And are you comfortable sharing his illness with the listeners?

He had a wicked advanced kind of a psoriatic arthritis.

I mean, they have medications now that are helpful, but his arms and legs were twisted and then atropied and they had to like amputate his feet and amputate his legs and And anyway, I had to lift him out of his wheelchair and onto the airline seat.

So we go in in Virginia somewhere and then we fly to Texas and change planes.

And as we change planes, I thought he was a Marine, right? This big strapping little crew cut looking dude comes over and says, Hey, that's my seat.

And the plane is two thirds empty, you know? And I was like, bro, pick a seat.

The fucking plane's empty.

This

The days of quietly accepting government policy were over.

Well, first, GMHC started.

And that was like the first group, support group of any kind for people with AIDS.

They didn't even call it HIV back then.

But the very first support group, I think it was like a phone hotline or something, was started by Larry Kramer and several of his friends in New York City for people that had this gay cancer or this new disease.

And that became...

GMHC, which is Gay Men's Health Crisis, and that was like the first organization.

You shared your involvement and support for the medication strike, but how did the decision for you and Charles Perry to escalate the protest to a hunger strike come about? And what roles did you and the wider inmate collective play in organizing and sustaining that escalation to intensify the medication strike for improved HIV AIDS care in prison?