#ronald johnson

[cutiewithawakenedheart]

"I saw the wind moving on a meadow

& the meadows moving under the wind

lifting, settling & accumulating."

----Ronald Johnson

[explore-blog]

Sound is sea: pattern lapping pattern... Matter delights in music, and became Bach. Its dreams are the abyss and empyrean, and to that end, may move, in time, the stones themselves to sing.

If you love music and love science, this is for you.

[yourdailyqueer]

Ronald Johnson (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 25 November 1935  

RIP: 4 March 1998

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Poet

[aemperatrix]

Ronald Johnson, Sunflowers

[aswithasunbeam]

When [Edward Stevens] gets tagged by John Adams to go to the colony of Saint Domingue, he’s a Consul General in diplomatic terms, but his real purpose is to set up ministerial relations with Toussaint Louverture. From the moment he is on the ground, Edward Stevens takes the task of building that trust with Toussaint Louverture. That is what he wants to do through his entire tenure. He does this, he establishes trust, he always conveys respect, and he is ever the subordinate. From his tenure there, which is from 1799 to 1801, he is a subordinate of this man of color. And I’ve tried to find another instance in American history where that occurs, where a white man of stature puts himself under the authority and is perfectly at ease with being the subordinate of a Black superior, and I’ve not come up with one….An extraordinary moment occurs between Toussaint Louverture and Edward Stevens, from the very beginning of their relationship. At their first meeting, they sit down, and they’re talking about reopening economic ties…the subordinates of color in the room are hashing it out with Edward Stevens, and Toussaint Louverture gets up and dismisses everybody from the room, and he and Stevens stayed in the room together. They’re at the governor’s palace in Saint Domingue. Louverture reaches across and he grabs Edward Stevens’s hands. They’re sitting in a room alone, holding hands, and they come to the agreement, and Louverture says to him, “I will implement the things that you said, as you said them.” From this moment, from this very priceless moment, and again I’ve tried to find another moment like this in American racial history where two men of different colors sit down and grab each other’s hands in this intimate way, and their bond is built over that moment. From it Edward Stevens begins to write in his letters back to the United States, they’re filled with talking about Louverture’s character, his leadership. Very little if ever does he mention Louverture’s color. For Edward Stevens, Louverture is a man, not a Black man. For Louverture, Stevens is a man, not a white man. These two men truly worked together as human beings, not as two human beings of different colors, and that is the key to strong, vital, and profitable Dominguan-American relations during the time of John Adams.

Ronald A. Johnson, discussing his book, “Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance” on episode 052 of the podcast Ben Franklin’s World.

Edward Stevens is famous for being Alexander Hamilton’s childhood friend, and for later saving Hamilton’s life when he contracted yellow fever in the 1793 epidemic. However, in his work as United States Consul General to Saint Domingue (modern day Haiti), Stevens was an important figure in his own right. His relationship with Toussaint Louverture is fascinating and unique, but so frequently lost or overlooked.

[outweek30]

NEW YORK [June 26, 1989] — Health Commissioner Stephen Joseph's much maligned proposal to curtail anonymous HIV antibody testing, and implement mandatory name reporting and aggressive contact tracing for those who are infected with HIV, was abruptly vetoed by State Health Commissioner David Axelrod one week after it was unveiled. [...]

Under the proposal, physicians would be required to report to the Health Department the names of all people who test positive for HIV, the virus thought by many to cause AIDS. Health Department employees would then ask those who test positive to voluntarily disclose sexual and needle-sharing partners, who in turn would be contacted by the Department of Health. [...]

A group of 46 AIDS service-providers, physicians and activists released a joint statement at a June 14th [1989] press conference, condemning Joseph's proposal. The statement declared, "We should not forget the most basic public health lesson learned over the years of the AIDS epidemic: measures of compulsion or coercion directed at persons who are HIV infected drive these people away from medical care and treatment, and it is a massive disincentive to their entry into the health care system. This will particularly affect women of color and their children who must use the health care system for prenatal and perinatal care." The group recommended expanding anonymous testing and counseling centers that already exist.[...]

Ronald Johnson, executive director of the Minority Task Force on AIDS, told the assembled media that Joseph's policy is most damaging for people of color. "There is a very real fear of discrimination in Black and Latino communities," he said, contesting the benefits of mandatory reporting. "It's a cruel hoax to talk about clinical advantages of HIV testing, while many cases get nowhere about health knowing the reality of the health care system, which often entails waiting periods of two to four months [for access to treatment]," he continued. "Joseph must talk about services that are currently available. We can't wait for services to trickle down," he said.

[...]

The activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which sponsored morning and evening demonstrationts at City Hall on June 8th [1989] to protest the proposal, called for Joseph to be removed from office. With hundreds of police officers surrounding City Hall, nearly 200 demonstrators disrupted early morning traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, and temporarily shut down the nearby Department of Health building. "First you don't exist, now you're on a list," stated an ACT UP flyer prepared for the demonstration, referring to Joseph's decision last summer to halve the city's official estimate of city residents who are HIV positive. [...]

"Contact tracing has been the trend for the last three years," said Veneita Porter, director of the New York State Office of AIDS Discrimination. "There is a lot of pressure from the federal government to make New York a test case to see how tracing works. But it can only work in an environment where there is no discrimination and where treatment is available for everyone. This situation certainly does not exist here."

Joseph said he would recommend keeping HIV reporting separate from the reporting of other sexually transmitted diseases in order to avoid "archaic" quarantine laws. But several activists said they fear that Joseph's proposal would play into the hands of right-wing supporters of quarantine and other repressive measures. "It's something we have to be very wary of," said Porter.

— Chris Bull, “Axelrod Vetoes Joseph’s Test Plan,” OutWeek Magazine No. 1, June 26, 1989, p. 6.

[sseureki]

a different world (1987)

[smallpressdistribution]

"As the morning advanced the sun became bright and warm, cloudless, calm, serene. / About nine an appearance very unusual began to demand our attention" -Ronald Johnson

Good morning internet XO, SPD