The fight against Proposition 64. Banner in the Stop LaRouche campaign office

Proposition 64 was put on the California ballot of 4th November 1986.

Under the American electoral system, citizens can vote on various ‘initiatives’ as well as candidates in their elections. Proposition 64 – an initiative relating specifically to people with HIV/AIDS – was put on the ballot by Lyndon LaRouche and his supporters.

LaRouche generated fear and paranoia to achieve dangerously high levels of electoral support.  A political maverick, he was associated with everyone from the Ku Klux Klan and Republican Party on the right to the Socialist Workers Party and the Democrats on the left. *

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he came up with a range of conspiracy theories. These included Henry Kissinger as a Soviet agent and the Queen of England as head of an international drug cartel. In 1973 he predicted that an epidemic would threaten humanity at some point in the 1980s.

When HIV/AIDS emerged in 1981 he was quick to declare that his prophesy had come true. He then demanded a multi-billion dollar budget to implement a national programme to eradicate the disease. But even the right-wing Reagan adminstration rejected his proposals as too extreme and unrealistic. In consequence, LaRouche set his sights on individual states instead.

Proposition 64* was a watered down version of the measures he had originally called for. Even so, proposals that he put on the California ballot included:

• The classification of AIDS as a disease that is easily spread.
• Mandatory HIV testing of various ‘high-risk’ groups (no prizes for guessing who they were!)
• The public naming and subsequent quarantining of those who tested positive.

Somewhat bizarrely, LaRouche decided to name his lobbying group the ‘Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee (PANIC)’.

Given Ronald Reagan’s failure to provide any real leadership on the AIDS crisis, LaRouche’s campaign of misinformation was frighteningly effective. Three months before the vote, it was reported that nearly half of all voters supported quarantining.

My Part in the Defeat of Lyndon LaRouche

By coincidence, I happened to be in Los Angeles in the build-up to the November 4th ballot. It seemed appropriate, then, that I should offer my support (as a gay man, as an AIDS activist, as Chair of Nottingham AIDS Information Project – take your pick) to the Stop LaRouche campaign.*