ACT UP 39!!! AIDS Activists Protest Trump Attacks on HIV/AIDS Programs and Healthcare, ACT UP Marks 39th Year by Protesting ICE and War Profiteer Palantir
On a sunny Saturday, March 21, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) marked its 39th anniversary of fighting the AIDS epidemic by protesting the Trump administration’s slashing of HIV/AIDS budgets while increasing budgets for ICE and the current war on Iran.
As part of ACT UP’s anniversary, the group is honoring member Mark Milano, who was a longtime AIDS and healthcare activist who died of cancer in early January. He was a leader in the early years of ACT UP and later in the Trump resistance movement through Rise and Resist. Additional ACT UP NY members who have passed away in recent years to be remembered include Nanette Kazaoka, Alan Timothy Lunceford-Stevens, Mel Stevens, Kathy Ottersten, Gerri Wells, and others.
I attended with action with my kid, who was at the ACT UP 29 demonstration with me, a decade ago. Now grown, they brought a friend, greeting many of the activists who’ve known them all their life. We recalled Elizabeth who greeted them with a hug at the action, Andy who screamed, Mark who was there as always, all three gone.
Standing at the AIDS memorial, Jay Walker introduced everyone, recalling Mark Milano, an activist who’d been part of both ACT UP and Rise and Resist.
“He created wins that I benefit from,” said Jay, who confessed he’d been doing demos with Rise and Resist for 10,000 years. “I like to think Mark’s energy is smiling down on us.”
Jennifer Flynn Walker followed, recalling Milano and ACT UP.
“The very best people are in ACT UP, are, not were, that is the tradition,” said Flynn-Walker.
“I want to talk today about someone who carried the banner. You don’t fight because it was easy. You do it because it was right…. He was at every demonstration… He was in ACT UP when it was hundreds and when it was dozens. I can still hear Mark screaming. I recall Milano declaring that Al Gore’s greed kills. And changing US trade policy, laying the groundwork for PEPFAR, the program that saved 26 Million people. He refused to think people are disposable. He was a proud media whore, understanding the way activism works, with big splashy images. Let us carry that banner. We will not go away, ACT UP. fight back, fight AIDS!!!”
Mark Hannay followed by recalling Mark’s work with Rise and Resist, the Cough and disruption of Trump’s inauguration.
“Trump care makes us sick!!!” we screamed.
“You elected a fascist,” we all jeered at Trump was taking his oath of office.
Jerry, Mark’s partner, followed.
It's been loss after loss of late.
Jay called for us to remember those who are gone.
Andy,
Keith,
Tim,
Mel,
Gerri,
Otter,
Bob,
Dean Johnson
Elizabeth Owens,
Name after name of people who were here.
Name after name.
We remember you, we followed.
People who are gone, but still remembered.
Eric Sawyer, one of the co-founders for the group, followed. “Jay referred to the similarities between the current occupant of the white house and Reagan, the doddering old man who was there when this started, who thought we were disposable.” Sawyer recalled Larry Kramer calling him in 1987 asking that he come to the Center for his speech about AIDS. He thought we’d all die if something wasn’t done. He wanted us to start a group that would engage in civil disobedience, like the civil rights movement, with waves of arrests. “Our first action would be on Wall Street, screaming ‘Sell Welcome’ on the floor of the market.”
And the group fashioned a response to the carnage. Sawyer was instrumental in the global response, helping push Bush to create PEPFAR, and keeping the funding going administration after administration. He has court this week, because of his recent DC arrest, calling for those in power to support full funding and allocation of PEPFAR funds. The money is there. Congress has allocated. They refuse to spend it.
Last summer, the Trump administration and its congressional allies enacted spending cuts of $1 trillion that decimated federal healthcare and HIV/AIDS programs and the agencies that operate them. These funds were essentially reallocated from the fight against AIDS to dramatically increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Since Trump took office, funding for ICE and CBP has tripled to nearly $200 billion. The ICE portion expanded the personnel who abduct mostly Black and Brown immigrants and their families from their communities and imprison them in concentration camps before deportation. “The living conditions in these camps are inhumane, and healthcare services are nearly non-existent resulting in numerous deaths including people with HIV,” said ACT UP NY member Ryan Foster.
To accomplish this work, ICE contracts with software company Palantir Technologies, which profits handsomely and has an office in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Activists are calling for divestment from Palantir Technologies and the defunding of ICE and the war effort.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is using its new additional funding of $155 billion to wage an unauthorized war against Iran and fund weapons to Israel in the Palestinian genocide. Activists are demanding an end to the war in Iran and the Palestinian genocide.
Finishing speeches we marched and staged a die at Palantir Technologies, in Chelsea at 620 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10011. This location serves as a key hub for their East Coast operations, focusing on financial services and media.
“We’re not going back,” we screamed.
“We’ll never be silent again.”
"Health care is a right!!!"
“Who do you have to blow to get arrested around here,” wondered Virginia, the police not arresting us.
Finally, we stood up and declared victory.
The world is changing as are we.
But ACT UP is still here, pushing and reminding on a gorgeous spring day.
We all get old and sick. It's magnificent to fight while we can and to remember.
Out for a snack after the demo, we talk about our lives and bodies, how the demo went and what’s next.
Cypress mentions a group he’s in, dedicated to the five remembrances:
“Aging: I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot escape it.
Illness: I am of the nature to get sick; I cannot escape it.
Death: I am of the nature to die; I cannot escape it.
Separation: All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change; I cannot escape being separated from them.
Karma: I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions; my actions are my only true belongings.”
Walking about in the sunlight after the demo, I’m thinking about the strange confluence of events the last few months, Mark Milano’s zoom meeting, the one he insisted we all join, in which he dropped the news that his cancer was getting worse, not better. I knew it when I saw him last march at our reading at the Center for the Friendship and Fighting book, the one in which his interview runs throughout the story, and the service he gave for Nanette afterward.
I thought about getting off the call zoom with tears in my eyes and running to see Ryan’s one person show, what happens to boys in Chelsea, his story about life and death in New York City, his body flying through the air, presumably flung through the air after a date gone wrong in Chelsea. And there he was standing on the scaffolding in Chelsea, courageously leading our chants. None of our bodies are disposable. None of us are, no kids in ICE detention, no kid in Iran, no protester in Iran, no one with HIV or AIDS.
I thought of the years of AIDS demos, started in 1993, the ashes in the air, the ghosts joining us for the anniversary actions.
In her observations of the an activist blog. Kate put the day in a much more colorful, much more telling and candid way:
ACT UP's 39th
March 21, 2026
Today was the protest in Observation of ACT UP's 39th anniversay. I joined in 1990, so it's "only" been 35 years for me, but still hard to imagine that it has been that long. It's a protest about money for AIDS and healthcare, not warfare, a perennial theme, but it also has a theme of remembering Mark Milano. I pushed for a civil disobedience in honor of Mark, who did so much of it in his lifetime, and Ryan ran with that, so there was a plan to block 6th ave with banners at the very end. We started out at the AIDS memorial, an oddly shaped spot where the microphones tend to be set up so that anyone sitting is either behind them on the stone benches or too far away on the park benches closer to 7th Ave. The beginning of these things is always a lot of greeting and mingling, with activists you see all the time and some you see more rarely. Banners are hung, t-shirts get sold, and the speeches begin. I was half-heartedly following along on the planning chat and I knew there was concern about the number of speakers, but there really were way too many speakers. And some of them, instead of giving a pithy call to action, droned on sounding like lecturers in policy or the history or activism. "This would be better for a conference," I said to Ben during one speech. Towards the end of the speeches people who had been standing for too long began to leave. I was sitting with Andy, Cypress, and Ben and we started to yell "Let's march! Time to march!" Heckling doesn't work as well from behind, and Jay who was MCing stubbornly stuck to the program. At the end of the speeches, Jay invited the crowd to say the names of lost activists and people with HIV/AIDS. Without specifying a time frame, a hail of names from the whole epidemic came pouring out. "This could go on for a long time," I said. The reading of the names on World AIDS Day takes 24 hours and I don't even know if that's the whole country or just NYC. As we were gearing up to march, a young ACT UP member I don't know, came bustling over and asked if I could speak to a reporter. I had been warned there might be press looking to speak to us ACT UP dinosaurs. This guy was from The Advocate, so I answered his questions. Then I joined the March, chatting with various people as we made our way down the street. Not only was healthcare a theme of the march, it was a topic of many conversations. As we walked, one activist told me about her hip pain and her upcoming steroid shot. Having had steroid everywhere from my foot to my neck, I warned her about the burning pain o the steroid when its first injected. Another activist, when I invited him to block the street with us, told me couldn't because he had just started chemo and radiation for stage 2B colorectal cancer. Then, stooping for a beverage with Ben and a couple of activist friends, another activist told us about the emergency surgery for his bleeding ulcers and about the cyst on his kidney. People's health was a constant topic of conversation way back in ACT UP as people with HIV/AIDS compared notes and shared treatment research and anecdotes about things like bitter melon enemas. Now it's more about aging, and the wear and tear on our bodies. Bob Lederer turned up beside me in the march, and told me about the book he's writing. It seems like everyone is writing a book these days. His is about "activist heroes" - he is careful to include she-roes and trans people - which I appreciate since people tend to think of the men when they think about ACT UP. He says he is writing about people who faced real consequences for their activism and persevered. I promised to be interviewed at some point, but just send we arrived at Palantir and Ryan scrambled up the scaffold to hang a banner and I had to slip through the crowd to get in position for the die in. Lying on 6th ave, looking up at the blue, blue sky, I felt strangely relaxed. Once we had been down a while and the press had rushed into take their photos, Ben broke the pose a little to take a few photos of his own, hilariously winding up with one of both our legs, which he labeled and posted, although I"m pretty sure my rainbow sneakers probably didn't need the label. Once we got up, the small group of that had been planning, rushed to block 6th ave with the two main banners. I couldnt tell what was happening on the right side, I just saw multiple officers talking to Ryan, but then that banner was forced back, opening that lane. We all sat down in the remaining lane chanting,"we're queer, get rid of Palantir." A cop came along and gave us a first warning, but Ben and I had suspected the new, mellower NYPD might not arrest us. Sitting anywhere without back support is painful and lately I keep getting cramps everywhere but especially my hands and legs, so I keps having to change position, often kneeling instead of sitting. "None of them have plastic cuffs," Ben said to me. "They don't have buses, either" I said. They had one van, not enough for a whole group. We pointed out to the others that they were clearly not prepared to arrested us, "What should I do?" Ryan asked me. "Declare victory and then we'll go," I told him. Afterwards Ben and I and a couple activist friends wandered down 6th ave. to what for many years was a health food restaurant but is now kind of a japanese take out place. We bought various snacks and beverages, protesting is thirsty work, and settled down at one of the few tables. I had expected chatting, or debriefing, and there was a little of each but most of the conversation was unexpectedly dark. We talked about assisted suicide, and the underground forms it took during the bad years of AIDS, about the final parties. Ken, who knew Basquiat, talked about how his death was not the accidental overdose people think it was, but an escape from worsening symptoms. He also told us about a couple he knew who had a suicide pact but then one man did it without telling the other and the police conviscated the drugs so the other man could not do it. I told them about the Very Sick client, and how, unexpectedly, death has become such a theme of this blog and how it hovers around me, gossamer thin, so delicate I could put my hand right through. Cypress talked about a Buddhist group he attends where they focus on the five remembrances: I cannot avoid aging, I cannot avoid illness, I cannot avoid death, I must be separated from all that is dear to me, and the only thing I own are my actions. Ben was trying to write it down. "There are also four remembrances," said Cypress. "Four remembrances sound easier to remember," I quipped before I could stop myself. On the train on the way home, Ben and Ken talk about their college age kids, both of whom identify as LGBTQ, and Ken pulls up pictures to show us how his son throws big dinner parties and has a tribe of friends. When I switch to the R, I really start to feel the pain in my lower back intensifying. I know the cats have probably been busy knocking things over, and I also know whatever is on the floor is staying on the floor for now.
