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ChatChat - Claudia Cragg


Jun 11, 2011

In this interview, Claudia Cragg speaks with Jim Geary who, in October 1981, formed the first support group in the world for people with AIDS and served as The Shanti Project’s executive director in San Francisco for seven years. He developed the agency into an internationally acclaimed model of AIDS services.

 

Now he has recently released his memoir Delicate Courage which tells the story of his revolutionizing AIDS care and his "poignant crossing from joy to grief" as his lover faces his own AIDS diagnosis. Geary’s memoir concludes with journal entries he kept following his lover’s passing which are interwoven with "after-death" communications he believes he has shared with his now deceased partner of 20 years. 

 

The conversation begins with Geary’s recollection of his early activism to protest The Briggs Initiative and the emotional onslaught of the assassinations in San Francisco of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone which coincided with the Jonestown "massacre" in which many San Francisco residents took their own lives. [See also, Sean Penn's 'Milk'].

 

You can read more about Geary at www.delicatecourage.com