Image from AIDS Activist Video Collection (NYPL), via Visual AIDS.
AIDS activist who focused on the needs of women living with HIV/AIDS and wrote a real talk column for the People With AIDS Newsline called ‘KOOL AIDS WITH ICE.’
(Note: Although it’s my understanding that De La Cruz was cisgender and heterosexual, the history of AIDS activism is inexorably tied with the history of LGBTQ+ health advocacy, so I wanted to highlight her work here. Also, the archived version of KOOL AIDS WITH ICE is a must-read.)
I got a lot of love and support [from the gay male community] but I also had women's issues. I needed to hear what other women had to say. That was really important. When I walked into a room and there were twenty five women in this room and they were all seropositive or were dealing with AIDS, all of a sudden I wasn't the only one. – Iris De La Cruz
Iris commanded attention, always bursting into a room, turning an outsider into a friend with a blunt remark, confronting people who looked at her struggle with drugs and prostitution and finally with AIDS as shameful and telling them she was not ashamed. – Beverly Rotter (Iris’s mother) from Reflections on Iris De La Cruz
The world’s worst patient
Takes no shit
And people say she’s hostile.
Don’t they know she’s a soldier
In a war?
And she’s fighting for her life.
from “The World’s Worst Patient,” by Iris De La Cruz, 1989.