Artist Nan Goldin leads protests at the Guggenheim and the Met over their reputation-laundering of the Sacklers' opioid epidemic fortunes
The Sackler family (previously) is one of the richest in the world, and if youâve heard of them, itâs probably because their family name adorns so many art galleries, museums, and academic institutions around the world: but they way they got that money is less-well-known.
The Sackler fortune was made through the family pharma company, Purdue, which used illegal tactics, fraud, bribery and disinformation campaigns to deliberately create the US opioid addiction (read about it here), whose death toll puts the Vietnam wars and other great national scars in the shade. Whatâs more, Purdue is recycling the tactics it developed to trick, coerce or bribe doctors into overprescribing its flagship product Oxycontin in other countries, creating fresh mountains of corpses and mountains of cash.
The Sacklers are pretty much Exhibit A when it comes to using philanthropy to launder the reputations of capitalismâs most immoral, rapacious beasts. As Anand Giridharadas has forcefully argued, one of the major functions of âcharitable givingâ is to deflect attention away from the blood on a billionaireâs hands (the other function is to allow billionaires to turn their pet theories into public policy, and here the Sacklers also shine, helping to destroy the life-chances of a whole generation by funding privatization efforts that shut down public schools and replace them with underperforming âcharter schoolsâ).
Nan Goldin is a legendary photographer who nearly died when she got hooked on the Sacklersâ products after a routine surgery. Sheâs the founder of a pressure group called PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), which is modelled on the AIDS activist group ACT-UP, following their example with high profile, flashy direct actions that lift the rock on wrongdoing and its enablers.
This weekend, PAIN targeted both the Guggenheim and the Met in New York; groups of activists dressed as normal museumgoers trickled into the Guggenheim and fanned out in small cells. Then Goldin entered the building and drew a small crowd (her work hangs in the Guggenheim) and at an agreed-upon signal, the activists showered âprescriptionsâ from the atrium railings on every floor of the Guggenheim, in which Robert Sackler, MD prescribes massive amounts of Oxytocin to Solomon R. Guggenheim â calling attention to the massive sums that the Guggenheim has taken from the Sacklers, and the massive credibility that the Guggenheim has returned to the Sacklers, helping to make them synonymous with philanthropy, rather than murder.
Goldin let the protesters in a call-and-response that made their message and demands clear: âWe want their money. For safe-consumption sites. For harm reduction. For treatment. Itâs time, Guggenheim! Take down their names!â Then the chant broke out: âOxy money is in the halls! Throw them out if you have the balls!â
The prescriptions that PAIN showered the Guggenheim with bore a quote from a discussion between Oxytocin inventor Robert Kaiko and Purdueâs Richard Sackler, revealed in a filing by Massachusetts Attorney General in a lawsuit over Purdueâs wrongdoing in the opioid epidemic: âIf OxyContin is uncontrolled, it is highly likely that it will eventually be abused ⊠How substantially would it improve our sales?â
The protesters staged a march without a permit from the Guggenheim to the Met, ignoring police entreaties to stick to the sidewalk, and staged a rally where survivors of opioid addiction and those who lost loved ones told their stories and called for the Sacklers to be brought to justice, their fortunes turned to helping those whose lives they destroyed and extinguishing the wildfire of addiction they deliberately set.
Masha Gessenâs moving account of the day for The New Yorker reveals the power of the action, and illustrates how inequality and the proliferation of ever-richer billionaires connects directly to misery and death. There are no good billion-dollar fortunes.
https://boingboing.net/2019/02/11/no-good-billionaires.html
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