about rk

i shoulda died
longtime ago so
everything troublewise
i conjur is pure
gravy

AIDSwise in dog years
(mad in the noonday)
that’s alotta sauce
even for me . . .

—rk

Richard Kearns is a 60-year-old gay man alive with AIDS in Los Angeles for thirty years. He is a long-term survivor. He considers his intercommunity advocacy to be as much of a part of his HIV treatment regimen as his big pharma HAART (highly active anti-retroviral treatment) prescriptions, as much as his qigong breathing exercises (from of Traditional Chinese Medicine), as much as his daily medical cannabis use.

“It’s what I do to stay alive,” he says.

Kearns is a proponent of “cultural activism” as well as political activism, a notion he developed from first nations’ political theory. “Our aim must be to change hearts,” says Kearns, “and to do that we need to tell our stories, paint our pictures, add our presence to the social mix. Not simply bandy about statistics or half-baked generalizations. Not merely be outraged at injustice. We need to speak from the authority and detail and power of our own experiences. Ours must be the flesh and blood of public health care policy discussions. We need to be a cultural presence. Nor can we expect anonymous visibility to be very effective. What does it take to change a heart? What did it take to change yours?”

• AIDS activism & cannabis advocacy — Kearns was infected with HIV in 1980 and diagnosed in 1987. His primary tool of AIDS and cannabis activism used his blogsite of nearly five years, http://aids-write.org, which he calls a cross between “poetry and journalism,” and in which he anthologizes and writes about his life from where he stands or sits, from time to time. As these things sometimes go, that site was hacked during a prolonged medical crisis. Now he publishes AIDSoverSIXTY.com. Kearns is also a member of SCHAC (Southern California HIV Advocacy Coalition), an AIDS lobbying organization at the state level, a member of Being Alive, Los Angeles and a client at APLA (AIDS Project Los Angeles). Kearns considers his PAN (Patient Advocacy Network) service and board membership a part of his AIDS activism. He has also been a presenter at many POZ Life Weekends for the Life Group LA, an empowerment group for persons facing the challenge of HIV infection, not only as a qigong instructor, but also as a storyteller circle leader and lecturer.

• publications specialist — Kearns is a writer, editor, photographer, graphic designer, teacher (including adjunct instructor of Journalism at Loyola Marymount University for 12 years before retiring), writing coach and poet, working in the industry for nearly forty years. His blogsite, https://aidsoversixty.wordpress.com/, “helps keep me alive day-by-day.” Kearns also specializes in niche marketing, computer-generated high-quality four-color low-print-run publications with high per-copy specialized readerships (such as poster-newsletters). He has published “too much fiction and non-fiction to keep track of.”

• conference & event planner — Kearns has been a conference and seminar organizer for different non-profit organizations for more than 40 years. These have been at the national, regional, state and local levels, monstrous multisession things down to single meetings and storefront activism sites.

• public speaker — Kearns is at ease in a university classroom as well as in front of a microphone and a crowd. He has read his poetry to and addressed different city councils & administrative bodies throughout the southland on cannabis as well as AIDS issues, including the city councils of Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Torrance, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Lawndale, San Diego, many LA neighborhood councils, city committees. He has spoken with legislators in Sacramento about AIDS and medical cannabis issues. Kearns has also spoken on panels and organized local town hall meetings on the topics of his activism

• exercise expert — Before Kearns was a political/cultural activist, he was a gym activist, earning ACE (American Council on Exercise) certifications first as a group exercise instructor and then as a personal trainer. His ACE specialty certifications include working with pregnant & post-partem women, the elderly, and HIV-positive populations. Kearns taught weekly Qigong classes for Being Alive LA and for the Life Group LA’s POZ Life weekend for many years. He set up training programs for HIVers in several area gyms, and presented on the topic at different exercise seminars.

 

AIDSoverSIXTY in the elevator / mission statement: a reader’s journal & virtual public artspace for poz platinum points of view, lgbt political & cultural activism & other metaphoric narratives of the struggle for social justice

i shoulda died
longtime ago so
everything troublwise
i conjur is pure
gravy

AIDSwise in dog years
(mad in the noonday)
thats alotta sauce
even for me

virus & self? am i
infected
respected
protected
rejected
inspected
detected
defected
elected
expected
short-texted
reduced
numbered
dropped
tracked
dated
sated
rated
hated
inflated
conflated
deflated
re-stated
medicated
pilled
filled
filed
fled
fussed over
fixed
avoided
feared
wondered at or
forgotten
asked or called or
heard
dead yet or
on my way or
loved?
(pick all above)
what part of me is
HIV?
—rk