“This beautiful day started with trouble in lower Manhattan.
More than 100 people were arrested during a protest.
Demonstrators were demanding more money in the war against AIDS.”
In the spring of 1987, an upstart activist group started making noise.
And changes to help people with HIV/AIDS.
Well, ACT-UP was the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power. It was a direct action, political activist group that started in March 1987.
My name is Sarah Schulman and I'm the author of “Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT-UP (NY), 1987 to 1993".
Schulman, a journalist and former ACT-UP member, says the group accomplished a lot in a short period of time at the height of the AIDS crisis.
“In six years, ACT-UP achieved incredible victories for people with AIDS. Some of the most outstanding wins were that ACT-UP forced pharmaceutical companies and the Government to change the way they researched medications for AIDS.
ACT_UP forced the Food and Drug Administration to make experimental drugs available to people who were sick, even if they had not been approved,
ACT-UP made needle exchange legal in New York City, which meant that people who were using needles for intravenous drug use could exchange them for clean needles, so that they could avoid transmitting HIV through blood contact.
ACT-UP Stopped the Catholic Church when they tried to interfere with condom distribution in the public schools.
ACT-UP ran a four-year campaign to make sure that women with AIDS could get benefits and get access to experimental drugs.
And, really, ACT-UP transformed how Queer people and people with Aids felt about themselves and how we were represented in the mainstream media.
So ACT-UP was a very bold and daring organisation because people were fighting for their lives.
So at one point the Catholic Church4 in New York City was fighting public schools, who wanted to make condoms available to students to save their lives.
And ACT-UP thought, you know, this is a state of emergency. We can’t just sit back and let the church do this, it could cause people's deaths.
So they made a very bold move of, in December 1989, disrupting Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, demanding that the church stop hurting people. Not only Queer people, but anyone who was trying to protect themselves from HIV,
“Schulman says the controversial protest at Saint Patrick's marked a shift in the way the LGBTQ community stood up for itself.”
It was considered a real changing moment in gay politics and Queer power because it was really the first time that people with AIDS stood up to such a fixed, large source of power in New York City as the Catholic Church.
Treatment for HIV/AIDS has improved dramatically since the 90s, but because HIV/AIDS still exists, ACT-UP still exists to advocate for health care reform and research, as well as for the rights of people with HIV/AIDS, and the early years of ACT-UP may serve as a template to other activist groups.
I mean, I think the most important is:
To be focused on concrete goals.
Educate yourself so that you are the expert.
Design the solution that's reasonable, winnable and doable.
To present it to the powers that be
And if they refuse, to do creative, non violent civil disobedience, so that you can communicate to the public through the media and pressure institutions to change.
There's a programme on youtube where Sara Schulman talks about her book,
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT-UP (NY), 1987 to 1993
In the above programme, Sara recommends a film about life as an ACT-UP Activist, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP
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