There was news of a threatening syndrome at the AIDS 2006 conference, although it wasn’t reported in the hundreds of scientific papers. And it is only slightly related to AIDS.

It’s booaphobia.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn’t the only senior politician around the planet over the years who has refused to go to an AIDS conference. Jean Chretien, a decade ago, wasn’t at the conference in Vancouver (and despite what conservative columnists and bloggers say now, Chretien was roundly condemned at that time).

Brian Mulroney, to his credit, did go to an AIDS conference. And was booed. His Irish side was able to take it in stride. I hate to say it, with his record on the environment and AIDS, Mulroney is beginning, perhaps, to look better than any of his successors in either major Canadian political party.

On Friday, Canadian Press reported on Health Minister Tony Clement (reprinted in The Globe and Mail, available online for two weeks)

During a candlelight vigil, he was heckled by members of the crowd as he lit candles in honour of different groups in society that have been greatly affected by AIDS. By week's end, Mr. Clement said he'd had enough, given that Canada has doubled its domestic funding for AIDS and is about to announce additional funding beyond its current $800-million commitment to the international effort.

Today’s image conscious politicians don’t want to appear on television being heckled and booed. Although at the AIDS conference, both Bill Gates and Bill Clinton were able to handle it. Clinton took care of some protestors demanding more support for health care workers simply by saying, “I agree with you.”

Politicians of many political stripes, in many countries, have developed booaphobia.Politicians should be booed in a demoracy when a citizen feels it is justified.

For more than 2,500 years, handling hecklers was part of the job description. And why not? If you couldn’t handle the hecklers, if you couldn’t bounce back from boos in a public forum, it was a good sign you couldn’t tackle the job you were after.

Go back to ancient Athens. Read, if you haven’t, if you have reread, The Persian Wars by Herodotus, and especially The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, about the fierce public debates that first democracy had over vital issues or war, peace and mismanagement of war.(And there were likely equally fierce debates in various tribal councils for thousands of years before that).

Or the Roman republic where the campaigns were held in the open, in the public forum and not only did the aspiring consuls and candidates for lesser offices have to deal with boos from the crowd, they had to deal with hecklers hired by opposing factions (as well as hiring their own paid hecklers). Imagine a candidate for consul refusing to come on a stage at the forum because he might face a few boos.

With the rebirth of democracy, first in England, then in some parts of Europe and later in North America, once again the aspiring politician had to face the public forum. Those meetings were loud, raucous and more often than not fueled by liberal amounts of alcohol (and bribes to boo).

Until the adoption of the secret ballot and even after, Election Day was marked by loud arguments, bribes, drunkenness, attempts (often successful) at ballot box stuffing, rousing platform orations to get out the vote (or to shout down those orations).

I am sure that few if any of today’s “Blogging Tories” (and their Liberal and NDP equivalents) who are so outraged at a couple of hisses and boos at their party meetings or election town halls have ever read an account of a political meeting in Canada in the nineteenth century when Conservatives booed Liberals and Liberals booed Conservatives and often got into fights that spilled out into the street. (Or in the U.S. where Republicans booed Democrats and Democrats booed Republicans).

The pamphleteers beginning in the seventeenth century with the advent of the printing press and then the partisan papers of the nineteenth century make most of today’s strident bloggers, blow-hard radio hosts and self-satisfied columnists look like contented housebound pussycats.

Radio changed the dynamics, but not by much. Election rallies were often broadcast live, Franklin Roosevelt had his fireside chats and politicians from Adolf Hitler to Winston Churchill to the dull William Lyon McKenzie King addressed their nations by radio.

But in the democracies the politician who wanted to get elected still had to face the public, hence the whistle stop rail tour.

Then came television. The live broadcasts of the U.S. political conventions didn’t come across well. It was one thing, apparently to take part in the exciting atmosphere of the event and another thing to watch it on television.

So politicians began to retreat to the studio or carefully controlled events, with carefully screened guests.

The image managers and spin-doctors took over, and they were paid a lot of money to make sure their clients looked good. And clients didn’t look good if they were even challenged, and looked worse if they were heckled or booed.

These days it is a fact of life that politicians require bodyguards. But is it the job of the bodyguard to stop hecklers as has become common? Our nineteenth century ancestors would likely have been appalled if the police dragged a heckler away from a political rally. If it looks like a heckler is going to turn violent, the bodyguard should make sure their charge is safe, if a faction is causing so much trouble that it could become “a breach of the peace,” then the police should intervene. But otherwise there should be respect for the democratic tradition and let the boos bloom.

There is also an apparent feeling these days that we should be polite to politicians, even though in most polls the majority of politicians rank lower than used car salespeople.(Journalists don’t rank that well either)

It’s time politicians, especially those who have a loud and persistent fondness for the good old days, began to measure up to their political ancestors and take the boos in stride.

Standup for democracy. Boo a politician.

10:07 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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CBC News assigned me to photograph the 2006 AIDS conference in Toronto last week. I didn’t attend many sessions, just the ones our science writers were covering. I shot the day of protests on Wednesday and the vigil Thursday evening. I did watch most of the coverage provided by CBC News as host broadcaster.

The CBC had two bloggers at the conference.

Quirks and Quarks producer Pat Senson

St. Michael’s hospital physiotherapist Julie Hard

I also found the blog by San Francisco’s 3D Dancer interesting.

Here are my thoughts.

The vigil

CBC photo gallery AIDS 2006: The Vigil

The AIDS vigil at Toronto’s Dundas Square on Thursday evening is best described as a solemn celebration. Vigils in Toronto a decade ago were sad and solemn, tears and candlelight and choking silence.

It’s seems only yesterday that soon after I returned from a year of living in England, that I read a one paragraph brief in Discover magazine about this mysterious new disease that was affecting gay men (then) in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Now it’s been 25 years and too many friends who aren’t here any more. (There was a display of AIDS quilts in the CBC atrium. One was in memory of my friend Jim Jefferson, who I knew as a journalism student at Carleton University and who, as a reporter for The Globe and Mail in the late 1970s was one of the first journalists in North America to come out publicly).

I arrived early and it was soon clear that the Vigil would be a celebration as students from the Etobicoke School of the Arts, students born years after the pandemic began, rehearsed a medley from Rent.

At first the crowds were rather sparse, but as the sky darkened, Dundas Square (recently developed by Toronto in hopes of making this city’s Times Square) filled up…everyone, it seemed, arrived at the last minute.

The saddest moment for me was when Sonya Marie Coté told a story called “Christian’s Exit” which reminded me of the struggle of my friends with HIV/AIDS, struggle for daily dignity, the struggle to stay alive, the struggle not to give up.

The most controversial moment was during the lighting of the candles, when a couple of voices in the crowd heckled Canadian health minister Tony Clement by yelling out “Where’s Harper?” a reference to the Prime Minister’s decision not to attend the conference. What as far as I know the rest of the media did not report, but which I mention in the photo gallery was that many others began to “Sssh,” angry perhaps that the heckling was distracting from the solemnity. On the other hand, those who have lost their friends have a right to be angry.

The one thing I found slightly disconcerting was when the audience was asked to call out the names of the dead. The names came at random, there was none of the orderly reading of names that I have done in the past at one vigil, and in other AIDS vigils as well as remembrance for others who have died in crashes and attacks.

A few yelled out names, and then there was silence, no more names and the Vigil moved on.

One of the names someone yelled was my friend James Thatcher. After James was diagnosed he emerged one of Toronto’s most respected activists, once handcuffing himself to a door at the Ontario legislature at Queen’s Park. James, who had always liked to party, left money in his will so his friends could have a real celebration of his life. It was held in a neo-gothic hall at University of Toronto’s Hart House, with lots of good scotch and good food. And why not, it was his money. It was a great party (everyone dressed to the nines in suits and ties) tinged of course with great sadness.

After the moments of silence, as glow sticks (safer than candles) were raised in the dark, the students from the Etobicoke School of the Arts returned to the stage for the upbeat, but still AIDS related, songs from Rent.

The protests

CBC photo gallery: A day of protests

Protests are part of any AIDS conference. But times have changed. On Monday, some members of ACT UP and other protestors, angry at the Bush administration’s AIDS policy showed up outside the crowded press room in the early afternoon. The majority of the reporters ignored it, busy, on deadline, filing on the conference opening, the talks by Bill Gates and Bill Clinton.

There was another similar demo on Wednesday morning, mainly by sex workers, which got some more attention (including from me)

But to get attention, a protest must have imagination. That’s what happened when those in favour of continuing the Insite safe injection site in Vancouver stopped traffic at the cross roads of Toronto, Yonge and Bloor.

The local media was out in force. If there was anyone was there from the international media, I didn’t see them, although the demo would have been a good news peg to write a story about the absolute necessity for safe injection sites and needle exchange.

Shortly after one, the protestors went into the intersection and used banners to stop traffic in all four directions. There were just a handful of police on one corner. The traffic was at a stand still for about 10, perhaps 15 minutes. The senior cop kept glancing at his wristwatch, and at the appropriate time, approached the demo leader, told him it was time to wrap up and that part was over, although a spokeswoman for the Insite program had a press scrum after the streets were cleared.

AIDS 2006:A time to deliver Retrospective gallery created for the new CBC.ca science and health sites. A mixture of wire photos and my work.

9:44 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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