Aids Coalition To Unleash Power

ACT UP was effectively formed on March 10, 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York . Larry Kramer was asked to speak as part of a rotating speaker series, and his well-attended speech focused on action to fight AIDS. Kramer spoke out against the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which he perceived as politically impotent. Kramer had both founded the GMHC and recently been dismissed from its board of directors. According to Douglas Crimp , Kramer posed a question to the audience: "Do we want to start a new organization devoted to political action?" The answer was "a resounding yes." Approximately 300 people met two days later to form ACT UP.

ACTIONS

Because ACT UP and its affinity groups organized so many diverse actions in a relatively short period of time, it difficult and perhaps counter-productive to classify them in any particular way. As such, the actions are presented in no particular order with no particular weight given. Accounts of the actions are drawn from Douglas Crimp's history of ACT UP as well as the ACT UP Oral History Project .

Wall Street

On March 24th, 1987, 250 ACT UP members came to Wall Street to disrupt the opening bell and protest against what they saw as exorbitant prices for the new antiviral drug AZT . Bourroughs Wellcome , a Pharmaceutical company, had recently acquired the patent for the drug and begun selling it for approximately $10,000 per year per patient, well out of reach of nearly all HIV positive persons. In this case, it seemed especially egregious because the original research and development of the drug done in the 1960s was partially federally funded. Larry Kramer had an Op/Ed article published in the New York Times the previous day which described some of the issues ACT UP was concerned with. Members partially occupied the trading floor and delayed the sounding of the opening bell. Additionally, some members hanged in effigy Frank Young, the commissioner of the FDA at the time. Seventeen ACT UP members were arrested for Civil Disobedience .

General Post Office

ACT UP held their next action at the New York City General Post Office on the night of April 15, 1987, to a "captive audience" of people filing last minute tax returns. This event also marked the beginning of the conflation of ACT UP with the Silence = Death Project , which created the famous poster consisting of a right side up pink triangle (an upside-down pink triangle was used to mark gays in Nazi concentration camps) on a black background with the text "SILENCE = DEATH." Douglas Crimp speaks of the "media savvy" of ACT UP at this demonstration, because the Television Media "routinely do stories about down-to-the-wire tax return filers." As such, ACT UP was virtually guaranteed media coverage.

Cosmo

In January , bibliographic information, failing to disclose that he was a psychiatrist and not a practitioner of Internal Medicine ), and demanded a retraction and apology. When he refused, in the words of Maria Maggenti, they decided that they "had to shut down Cosmo." According to those who were involved in organizing the action, it was significant in that it was the first time the women in ACT UP organized separately from the main body of the group. Additionally, filming the action itself, the preparation and the aftermath were all consciously planned and resulted in a video short titled, "Doctor, Liars, and Women: AIDS Activists Say No To Cosmo." The action consisted of approximately 150 activists protesting in front of the Hearst building (parent company of Cosmopolitan) chanting "Say no to Cosmo!" and holding signs with slogans such as "Yes, the Cosmo Girl CAN get AIDS!" Although the action did not result in any arrests, it brought significant television media attention to the controversy surrounding the article. Phil Donahue, Nightline, and a local talk show called "People Are Talking" all hosted discussions of the article. On the latter, two women, Chris Norwood and Denise Ribble took the stage after the host, Richard Bey, cut Norwood off during an exchange about whether heterosexual women are at risk from AIDS. Footage from all of these media appearances were edited into "Doctors, Liar, and Women." Cosmopolitan eventually issued a partial retraction of the contents of the article.

NIH demonstration

In May 1990 , ACT UP organized a large choreographed demonstration at the National Institutes Of Health (NIH) Campus. According to Kramer, this was their best demonstration, but was almost completely ignored by the media because of a large fire in Washington, D.C. on the same day.

Seattle schools

In December 1991 , ACT UP's Seattle chapter distributed over 500 safer-sex packets outside Seattle high schools. The packets contained a pamphlet titled "How to Fuck Safely," which was photographically illustrated and included two men performing fellatio. The Washington state legislature subsequently passed a "Harmful to Minors" law making it illegal to give sexually explicit material to underage persons.

STRUCTURE OF ACT UP

ACT UP was intentionally organized as leaderless and effectively Anarcho-democratic . This was intentional on Larry Kramer's part - he describes it as "democratic to a fault." It followed a committee structure with each committee reporting to a coordinating committee meeting once a week. Actions and proposals were generally brought to the coordinating committee and then to the floor for a vote, but this wasn't required - any motion could be brought to a vote at any time. Gregg Bordowitz, an early member, said of the process:
:"This is how grassroots, democratic politics work. To a certain extent, this is how democratic politics is supposed to work in general. You convince people of the validity of your ideas. You have to go out there and convince people."
This is not to say was in practice purely anarchic or democratic. Bordowitz and others admit that certain people were able to communicate and defend their ideas more effectively than others. Although Larry Kramer is often labeled the first "leader" of ACT UP, as the group matured, those people that regularly attended meetings and made their voice heard became conduits through which smaller "affinity groups" would present and organize their ideas. Leadership changed hands frequently and suddenly.

Some of the Committees were:

---Action Committee

---Finance Committee

---Outreach Committee

---Treatment and Data Committee

---Media Committee

---Graphics Committe

Institutional independence

ACT UP had an early debate about whether to register the organization as a nonprofit in order to allow contributors [tax exemptions . Eventually they decided against it, because as Maria Maggenti said, "they didn't want to have anything to do with the government." This kind of uncompromising ethos characterized the group in its early stages; eventually it led to a split between those in the group that wanted to remain wholly independent and those that saw opportunities for compromise and progress by "going inside institutions and systems they were fighting against ."

LATER YEARS

ACT UP, while extremely prolific and certainly effective in its heydey, suffered from extreme internal pressures over the direction of the group and of the AIDS crisis. After the action at NIH, these tensions resulted in an effecting severing of the Action Committee and the Treatment and Data Committee, which reformed itself as the Treatment Advocacy Group (TAG). Several members describe this as a "severing of the dual nature of ACT UP."

In recent years, with the changing nature of the AIDS crisis, ACT UP's membership has dwindled, though many chapters continue to meet.

INFLUENCE

In the early 1990s , Activists from ACT UP founded two other direct action Gay Rights groups, Queer Nation and Lesbian Avengers .

In 2000, ACT-UP/Golden Gate changed its name to Survive AIDS, to avoid confusion with a fringe organization known as ACT UP San Francisco.

CRITICISM AND CONTROVERSY

The organization, or offshoots of it, have at times faced criticism for being too militant. Their disagreements with Cardinal John O'Connor on LGBT rights led to a 1989 event at St. Patrick's Cathedral , in which activists interrupted the mass to yell slogans and throw used condoms at the alter. Another activist, when given a consecrated Eucharistic Host, which Catholics believe to be the sacramental Body of Jesus Christ, crumpled it on the ground in a completely unplanned, yet much publicized action. As a result of the St. Patrick's Cathedral action, ACT-UP was publicly condemned in the media for its militancy and disrespect, however, as many ACT-UP members pointed out, without the controversy and negative press, their issue would have gotten no attention whatsoever.

In other cases there are internal issues leading to schisms and splintering.

REFERENCES

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Aids Coalition To Unleash Power