When We Rise - Season 1, Episode 03: Part III

Trailer

1981. The murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, which were ruled manslaughter by the all white/all straight jury, mobilized the gay community even further where they are now making inroads at the political level, Cleve who is working for a state assemblyman. With the birth of Diane's baby, Diane and Roma's relationship takes a turn where Diane feels a need to focus on her new job as a nurse at the hospital, and taking care of Annie. Ken is operating a center for youth at risk, most of those kids who have come from elsewhere, some who are gay, and have no support at all and thus largely end up on the street otherwise. And the new sexual freedom that gay men in particular feel they can now exhibit partly manifests itself in public sex in bathhouses. The gay community begins to be rocked once again when large numbers of gay men, especially in larger urban centers, fall ill with immune damaged systems, more often than not leading to death. The disease is initially coined gay related immune deficiency (GRID). Ken sees it among the gay youth at the center. Cleve and his friends, who frequent the bathhouses, notice brown lesions on some of their skin, which is eventually known as Kaposi Sarcoma (KS) and which is an indication of that immune breakdown. Dr. Marcus Conant, Cleve's friend who is treating many of those afflicted, wants Cleve, as a known voice in the gay community, to act as a liaison between the gay community, and health officials and researchers in finding out the cause and the transmission of the disease, the speculation that it is a communicable disease spread by gay sex. Pat, working for public health, has some preliminary but thus far inconclusive data, which may not be sufficient answers for Ken, Cleve and the gay community. The gay community is turning on itself, the witch hunts for the tell-tale signs of the brown lesions. Diane, on the front line at the hospital, feels that Roma and their friends have abandoned their gay male sisters at this crucial time in their lives. It may take the disease spreading into non-gay male populations for the world truly to take notice and care.

Genre: Drama, Documentary