play and ideas: ACTing UP for Our Friends: a Thirty Years of ACTING UP to END AIDS! #ACTUP30 #30Anniversary #30Years

Photos by Erik McGregor above, Babara Ross and this writer.


This writer and friends, including Reginald Thomas Brown act act up 30.

Some time after the election, I got in a discussion with a friend about ACT UP and the Resistance. People were looking for an organizational model that could help us push back. One man suggested ACT UP’s model of open meetings, affinity groups, and loosely affiliated direct actions would help spur the resistance. Another suggested its utility had played out. For sure, no one can be sure what is the best model moving forward. But the swirling of street actions coming out of the Resistance, the ACT UP style Rise and Resist meetings, born from the same location where ACT UP was born, suggest there is something to be said for the utility of its model, now thirty years in the making. Suffice it to say, ACT UP represents a style of direct action, stretching back to the ant-war and Gay Libation days, through the worst years of the AIDS crisis, into the Global Justice, and today’s resistance movements.

Riding over the action, I ran into Jim Fouratt, whose been at this for decades, strolling down the street away from the action. Everyone seemed to be there. Joining the action, I started running into friend after friend, Michael who had been out of town, Annette, Andy, Amanda, Eric, Jim, etc. Its now been twenty years that I have been going to ACT UP demos in New York, my first in San Francisco in 1993. The group has marked my growing up and learning to find a voice.

“Single Payer Now!” people screamed as we walked past the old St Vincent’s location toward Union Square.

Someone was carrying sign declaring: “Pence Loves Fags” and “Eat Ass Pray Love!”

“Eat Ass Pray Love!!!” people started screaming. “Eat Ass Pray Love!”

A group of younger activists were smiling, walking along.

I recalled Bob Kohler, the old Gay Liberation Front icon and ACT UP member, who died ten years ago.

“Wash your ass!” we chanted at his funeral march. “Wash your ass!”

Members of VOCAL were carrying pictures of activists from their group who had died in the last year. Every year the list of losses grows.

““Healthcare is a right,” the crowd screamed. “Health care is a right.”

Bryn Marie and I talked about the ACT UP youth caucus coming to meetings now.

I told her I was sorry I was not able to make the Monday night meetings.

You make the actions, she replied. That’s good enough.

I stumbled into my friend Brian, AKA Harmonie Moore, of the Church Ladies for Choice.

“My first ACT UP was the Monday after Pride in 1990. They needed someone to drive the flatbed truck back to Long Island City. I volunteered. And the whole room applauded. I drove the van back and arrived in a part of Long Island City where there were still prostitutes all over the place. Oh my I thought. I met most of my friends in ACT UP. There were all these guys I wanted to know in the meetings. Ed Ball, David Buckingham, Babbit…”

All these years, we still see each other at the Drag March every year.

Walking, I stumbled into Sharonann Lynch, of Médecins Sans Frontières, who I met when I first started going to ACT UP events in the late 1990’s. She helped organize ACT UP Memphis, going to her first ACT UP New York demonstrations in 1995, with the Bridges and Tunnels budget actions.

At Union Square a man was carrying a sign in tribute to Keith Haring.

Members of the Youth Caucus started mcing.

And veterans talked.

Mark Milano greeted Eustacia Smith, who first got arrested with ACT UP at the ten year anniversary demonstration in 1997. Milano pointed out that several of the activists – Sharonann Lynch, Smith, Mel Stevens - who had taken part in the Gore’s Greed Kills zaps over big pharma and international drug pricing were there. This small wave of actions helped move international drug pricing onto a global agenda, become a compelling target for the burgeoning global justice movement. These activists helped us see that we are all connected in this. AIDS transcends borders. So we have to stop it from spreading everywhere. We are all connected in this.

Some younger activists with the black block held a sign.

And speakers started.

“Thank you for saving my life,” charged several.

“Thank you.”

“Housing is health care!” charged Reginal Thomas Brown of VOCAL, one of the dozens of AIDS activist groups building on ACT UP’s legacy of connecting issues related to HIV and housing and questions about access to basic safety net services.

Mark Hannay pointed out that ACT UP has always argued for universal access to healthcare. He argued the time is now for universal access. With the collapse of Trumpcare, its still a message worth pushing.

Jim Eigo, the poet of ACT UP, followed. Jim was leaving SexPanic! when I moved here in the fall of 1997. We met at actions and talked. He shared his writings which found their way into four of my books. Its been a pleasure to see him and hear his story the last few years, as he re engaged with ACT UP.

But there are so many stars and movements that grown out of ACT UP. Bob Lederer, who can be seen briefly in the early meetings of the Treatment and Data committee of ACT UP in David France’s How to Survive a Plague, and I talked about some of the heroes of the movement, including Housing Works, the Harm Reduction Committee and so many others, who have not been featured in some of the movies about ACT UP.

Eigo recalled the early days of the Ending the Epidemic initiative. Charles King and Mark Harrington hatched the plans in jail in DC during the International Conference on AIDS, recalled Eigo. King had been working on the issue for years before as part of the Campaign to End AIDS. He pointed out that ending the epidemic means expanding Medicaid and Medicare through the Affordable Care Act. It means preventative medicine. It means connecting sexual health in a holistic perspective. It means ending homelessness. What it does not mean declaring victory and leaving. It means zero deaths and zero new infections. It means ending it everywhere. Eigo concluded with a simple vision. I hope one day to be here truly celebrating zero AIDS deaths with a younger generation. It’s a hope we all have.

But several speakers stood up to point out that ending the epidemic means ending criminalization, ending transphobia. Ending the epidemic means ending it everywhere.

ACT UP showed us how we could all fight for that. It showed us how to stand up for ourselves, for care, for lust, for being freaks, for being different and building our communities up from that. When people with AIDS are under attack, it taught us to fight back. When our friends are under attack, it taught us to fight back.

Thank you act up.

ACT UP, Fight Back, Fight AIDS.