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, with Mark and Elizabeth and Andy, now gone, and Eric and Jim and company, still here. 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.
Jennifer Flynn Walker followed, recalling Milano and ACT UP, beginning what would turn out to be the speech of the day.
"The very best people are in ACT UP.
I mean that. Not were. Are. Because what ACT UP built doesn't belong to history — it belongs to us, right now, on this street, in this fight.
That is the tradition we stand in today.
And I want to take a moment to honor one of the people who carried that tradition on his back when it would have been so easy to walk away.
Mark Milano.
When ACT UP was at its height, Mark was there. And when the crowds thinned — when the meetings went from hundreds to dozens to a handful of people in a room — Mark was still there. He never left. He understood something that all of us in this work need to tattoo on our hearts: you don't fight because it's easy. You fight because it's right.
Mark was at every protest. And when he was there, you knew he was there — because Mark Milano had the loudest voice in the room. Not just the biggest lungs. The clearest moral vision.
When Al Gore — then a presidential candidate — was working to prevent South Africa from importing lifesaving generic AIDS medications to protect pharmaceutical profits, Mark was in his face. Think about that. A man who wanted to be President of the United States was letting people die on another continent for a patent. And Mark Milano said: not on my watch. He disrupted that campaign event and he helped force a reversal. People in South Africa and around the world, are alive today because Mark showed up loud and refused to back down.
I can still hear Mark Milano yelling, ACT UP, Fight Back, Fight AIDS (3 times)
My name is Jennifer Flynn Walker and I’m the chief of the fightback team at Popular Democracy, a network of 48 of the most badass community organizations in this country. We come from different places, different fights, different frontlines. But we are connected by a single belief — that power doesn't give up anything without pressure. Without disruption. Without people like Mark Milano who stay in the room even when the room gets small, and raise their voice even when the powerful would rather not hear it. I had the honor of working closely with Mark while I was at Health GAP. He took the time to teach me the science behind HIV medications. He took the time to teach everyone the science behind HIV medications. He also called me up and took the time to teach me about retirement funds.
ACT UP taught us that the most radical thing you can do is refuse to accept that people are disposable.
Mark deeply believed that every single human being was worth fighting for and he never stopped even when his own illness made it difficult for him to do so. He showed up, over and over, time and again. He put his body on the line. He called other activists to check-in. He never gave up on any of us and he never gave up on the fight. He was a self professed media whore. He believed that everything, we, the moral majority, had to say was important to be heard by the masses. I hope we remember that.
Let us carry that lesson into every fight we take on — for housing, for health care, for workers, for immigrants, for everyone this system has decided doesn't count.
They thought ACT UP would go away. They think we'll go away.
We won't. The spirit of Mark Milano won’t let us.
Silence equals death. And we are not silent.
Thank you to each and every one of you in the streets today. You matter. I will fight for you.
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 thought
about the
strange confluence of events the last few months, Mark Milano’s zoom meeting
last fall,
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
talk and Nanette's memorial; his interview runs throughout
the story.
I thought about all the zaps with Mark, at Trump's
inauguration, when the war started in Iraq,
on the streets, when Tommy Tompson,
the Bush era Health and Human Services
secretary was in town.
I thought about getting off the Zoom call 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 school 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.
