“all ye who enter here abandon good taste. ”: and other reflections from the best organizer of my generation, RIP Andrew Vélez
Velez as I remember him, smiling, leading, and joking.
Andrew Velez
stood up paraphrasing Frederick Douglass, during the ACT
UP Chelsea Clinic Town Hall! We learned long ago, power concedes nothing
without a demand. Power is never
transferred voluntarily in the
epidemic. Health care is a right. We are not talking clothes for a party
here. We are talking life and
death. So join ACT UP, he
explained. ACT UP needs you. Join us.
My friend was close to him, knew his family, and
had been with him just before it happened.
Earlier
in the year, his poetry had burned in Paris.
And he
was lost.
The tides were hitting hard.
I look at facebook.
My friend Jay Blotcher posted a
note about another friend:
“A man of great heart, deep conviction, and scalding wit has
been taken from us. Veteran AIDS activist and ACT UP New York member Andrew Vélez
died today (May 14) in a Manhattan hospice. He was 80.
There will be a private family funeral, and a public memorial service at a
later time. Donations in Vélez’s memory may be made to ACT UP New York,
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and the Latino Commission on AIDS.
But Andrew Vélez, the thirty-year veteran of ACT UP, who
remained active until this winter, was about the best organizer I’ve ever
known.
If you got to a demo and Andy was there, you knew it was going
to be good.
It was going to be powerful.
I followed who he chanted for,
who he screamed at.
He invited us all into the party.
“I’m having to be a little more discerning,” he explained to me last
year standing outside of Borough of
Manhattan Community College, where his granddaughter was about to sing.
For a decade or so there, I used to see him everywhere.
An activist, he was interested in public space.
He laughed at people who aspired to good taste or thought they
should work with police or ask for permission,
debating “whether they should get a permit.”
“– No –“
he replied.
I know everyone has a
favorite story about Andy Vélez. But I’ll never forget Andy
showing up at a reading for our book The
Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting
New York’ Public Spaces at the old Brecht Forum during the peak of
Occupy. We were discussing privately
owned public spaces we had a legal right to occupy. “You should occupy one on Broadway,” he replied
during the question and answer session, instigatingOccupy
Broadway, a direct
action gesture of occupation as creative resistance. A veteran of an AIDS
activist movement which has always used the city as a stage set for street
actions, Vélez not only thought we should occupy a plaza on Broadway, he helped us plan it. After the session, he talked
with a few organizers. People compared notes, planned a meeting, set a date and
started organizing. A week later, we were making plans. A week or two later, we held a 24 hour theater performance
with Mike Daisey, members of the cast of Hair, Penny Arcade, Rev Billy and Countless others.
“Long time AIDS activist Andrew Vélez was there talking with several
activists.
Throughout Occupy
Broadway, we spoke with reporters. With two hours to go, Andy Vélez stood smiling, recognizing
we were really going to do it. He’d battled Bloomberg before. And
he was more than happy to see a counter-narrative to Bloomberg’s New York by
and for the 1% take shape. My friend Peter filmed Vélez talking.
Vélez explained that when he met a representative from the City after he’d
helped organize a zap at the Mayor’s house, he was taken by how uptight the man
seemed to be. “Don’t’ worry, I am only attracted to heterosexuals,” Vélez
declared attempting to put the man at ease. From Occupy Broadway to ACT UP,
Vélez has made a career for standing up for what is right in this world,
through direct action, play, and a little fun.”
The action was an audacious feat of organizing and theater.
And it would not have happened if Andy had not brought his
spirit to the reading, followed with plans, sans ego, and helped us along
the way.
That
fall Sunday afternoon a few years ago,
we went to visit Elizabeth, also known as Sister Mary Cunnilingis of the Church
Ladies for Choice. Welcoming us in, she showed us her Church Lady gear and
memorabilia. We shared stories about activism, friendship, harm reduction, and
a generation of reproductive rights activists. There is nothing simple about
friendship, noted Elizabeth, acknowledging the fights and skirmishes that have
worn on AIDS affinity groups such as the Church Ladies. “There are people I
would walk across the street to avoid, but not until there is a cure,” she
explained, paraphrasing ACT UP icon Andy Vélez.
“But until there is a cure, I am going to work with them.” Until there is a
cure for living, we all are going to depend on each other. After all, none of
us is going to get out of here alive.
It is the image of a city of friends that
still inspires me, I explained to Elizabeth as we gossiped.
For Vélez,
it was all part of the sartorial splendor of
queer activism.
After taking part in actions with the
Radical Homosexual Agenda, parades without a permit, actions at the Mayor’s
House after a man was entrapped by the police, in Harlem wearing fake butts to highlight
the point that people without health
insurance have their butts hanging out there, he finally let me interview
him in April of 2009.
His
interviews found their way into four of my books and countless articles and blogs.
During the interview, he told me about getting
arrested, sitting being processed:
“What I said to the police was, “Look, we’re gay. We have tickets
tonight for Bette Midler at Radio City Music Hall. We’ve got to get out of here
soon if we’re going to make it back to NY in time.” —Andrew Vélez to the police
in Meriden, CT, after having chained himself and ACT UP colleagues to the
entrance of a biotech company producing bogus medication.
Andrew Vélez and company did make it to Bette’s show on that evening 1992.
Bette had long supported the queer public sphere, performing at the baths.
Queers had long reciprocated, showering Midler with their love and support.
When Vélez and his colleagues from ACT UP returned for their court date weeks
after the concert, “the judge said that rather than being arrested we ought to
be applauded for what we’re doing as outstanding citizens and he totally threw
the case out,” Vélez recalled in our interview years later. Getting arrested
and going to Bette Midler concerts—for many that was what queer activism was
all about. Play, direct
action, and performance were essential ingredients of the very serious, but
sometimes campy, approach of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) to fighting
the AIDS carnage. Susan Sontag (1964/2001, p. 63) reminds us, “There is a
seriousness in camp . . . and often a pathos.” This was certainly the case with
ACT UP.
Andrew always made us feel good about ourselves.
He appreciated our strengths, embodying
a humanistic philosophy of activism.
Rather than demean, individual strengths are appreciated and
celebrated. Vélez recalled different “talents” people brought to ACT UP. Early
in ACT UP, the group held a talent show. Rather than sing or perform, many
brought distinct skills not recognized outside the movement. Michelangelo, for
example, put a whole banana into his mouth and showed he could remove it
without leaving teeth marks to roars of approval. “Use who you are,” Vélez
noted, smiling. “This is where it becomes fun.”
For Vélez and others in
ACT UP,
direct action and theater
overlapped.
Even civil disobedience was a form a theater, as well as
a means of resistance to oppressive social mores. “They started telling us
about hell, and I was so busy jerking off all the time and stealing from the
donation plate, that I knew that was not the place for me,” recalled Vélez (2004) in aninterview with the ACT UP Oral History Project, describing his childhood. “So I
headed right for the theater, and that’s where I found my first tribe,” Valez
confessed. “I auditioned for something and got into some off-Broadway play,
when I was in my teens.”
“More often actions were
planned right at a meeting,” noted Vélez. “And there were occasions when a meeting was shut
down and we simply marched out and got up to Gracie Mansion and had a
demonstration right then and there.”
Direct action would get the
goods over and over. Vélez referred to a specific moment when the group helped connect direct
action and services. ”A social worker told us at a Monday meeting that there
was a mother who had a young child who weighed 44 lbs and was unable to get her
office to approve nutritional food supplements for him. Immediately, a group
formed and within a day or two, they had gotten a photograph of the manager of
that office. Three days later, we were picketing outside that office with the
manager’s face on the posters. And the kid got his supplements.”
The street actions were a form of theater.
The arrests were also part of an approach to challenging
forms of oppression, through outrageous, often embarrassing demonstrations
which exposed injustice. “We were known enough so that people didn’t want to
see their photographs on posters, with blood on them. People didn’t want to see
us walking around their office building, chanting their names,” explained Vélez, in his
interview with the ACT UP oral history project. “It doesn’t matter how powerful someone is, in
terms of what the world calls power. People do not like to be embarrassed.
They’re afraid of that. And, that was one of the things that we learned that really
works. And, one of the most powerful tools that ACT UP had was, we had no shame…It
was a blast,” (Vélez, 2004). Vélez and other AIDS activists would say or
do whatever they needed to do to make a
point, regardless of whom they offended.
If this meant risking arrest, then so be it. For ACT UP, risking arrest was always part of
the performance. It was a gesture liked
to acts of resistance of oppressive mechanisms of everyday living. It also used the city as a work of art.
RebelFriendships
Jay
Blotcher helped me bring
Andy to convene a panel as part of the
book launch for my book
Rebel Friendships in 2015.
Many of my heros of activism, Jim Eigo, Elizabeth Meixell, and Karen Ramspacker
were there.
Jay Blotcher and Andrew Vélez, whose friendship in ACT
UP helped inspire the story, offerred commentary.
Vélez confessed ACT UP had been there for him in good times and
rough ones. It had been there for him when his world felt like it was
falling apart. And really it helped save his life. There were so many
stories.
Jay Blotcher described the ways people met and continued to
experience joy, even the midst of the chaos during the early years of ACT
UP. None of it was simple.
Terri reminded
everyone that there are multiple forms of friendships still propelling ACT UP,
with people across genders and sexual orientations, including straight
people. She and several other participants suggested I consider the
distinct meaning of women’s friendships, their categories, history and
understandings. This may be the next project.
Several audience members
asked about my participation as a straight man. Its not a
category that speaks to me at all as Foucault reminds us. Its more interesting
to live on the boundaries. Being not quite queer was always fine
for me. That’s an interesting space to be in anyway.
"You are queer," Andrew Vélez chimed in.
He always made us feel good Jay commented today.
He always made us
feel good.
In April of 2009, he
described his relationship with Blotcher.
“It
was really democracy in action on the floor in ACT UP,” explained Vélez. “And a democracy is a
damn tough thing to run if you are doing it for real.” One night, AIDS
activists would be in a meeting followed by a trip to a club or sleeping with
someone from the group. The next day, they would be in the street being
arrested, a wink connecting a moment between arrestees and lovers with the
events of the night before.
Here
the practice of building relationships was grounded in a range of activities,
from meetings to demonstrations to meals to experiences in jail to trips to the
bathhouses. And these friendships came to include many of the essential
components of friendship, including “enjoying one another’s company, remaining
useful to one another, and sharing a commitment to larger social good” (Bellah
et al., 1985, p. 115). These friendships helped those involved feel comfort and
intimacy, allowing them to persevere through adversity and stay engaged. Andy Vélez
confessed he had thought of leaving AIDS activism. “I remember one night in
those early weeks, I was sitting,” recalled Vélez.
“We had benches. And I was sitting on a bench, and I
was feeling totally overwhelmed. And I didn’t know a soul. When I went down to
the Wall Street action, I didn’t know anyone. Later I learned that one of the
people was Peter Staley. Pete and I have now been friends for over twenty
years. We still work together to fight the epidemic. But we didn’t become
friends right away. I don’t remember when it actually began to be that Peter
very clearly began to be my friend. I knew Peter before he knew me. But on this
particular night that I’m referring to, I was on the verge of getting up and
leaving and thinking this is too much. I feel too much like an outsider here.
And instead, I turned to this guy next to me and made some remark about the
lunacy that was happening. I think he laughed. And that was Jay Blotcher. And
that was the beginning of a friendship that still exists—t wo decades and
counting.”
The
movement was a space where people depended on friendships, creating a culture
of resistance to the epidemic’s onslaught. “When you talk about friendships,
the interesting thing is how much work people could do with one another without
knowing very much about their lives outside of the actual movement,” Vélez
continued. “So people could work together, make posters, do flyers, do all the
kind of stuff.” Many of these relationships served as the basis for
transformative AIDS work.
BS What about
friendship? How does friendship support
or undermine this? This was the central
theme of our interviews.
I interviewed him one
last time in January of 2018 after our
friend Ravi had been detained by ICE during his regular check in. My friend was being deported. I was feeling
down.
“I know,” Andy said, looking at me with
understanding, after the crazy day.
He understood.
Simple and caring.
That little gesture
of empathy helped get me through.
And we began our interview.
BS: Okay, sitting with Andy. When we did that reading
at the, on the friendship book…. at the Bureau of Queer Services... you
mentioned that ACT UP had saved your life. Or helped at some point when things
were a little down, and I wanted to get a picture of that.
AV: Well it gave me a purpose when I was not recovered
from a very bloody divorce.
BS: Okay.
AV: So I had a focus and something where I could serve
a purpose of something of value.
BS: Serve a purpose. Yeah. I mean, why do we all do
this? To feel like you're doing something meaningful.
AV: For different reasons.
BS: Yeah, absolutely.
AV: Because many people have lost someone and just
wanted to ameliorate the loss by doing something of value.
BS: Pray for the dead but fight for the living.
AV: Yeah. And maybe hope they would come back.
BS: Yeah. It's very hard. But you've been able to
stick with it for a couple years now... or decades?
AV: A little over 30 years.
BS: So how have you been able to stick with it all
this time?
AV: Hm... I don't think I ever lost sight of the
importance of what we were doing. It wasn't an ego thing for me. Or maybe
occasionally, but really not. It was... in part what drew me to ACT UP and the
movement... you can call it that, but I've never called it that... What drew me
to it was the sense of the injustice and from childhood on, I've always had a
very strong sense of unfairness and injustice. Seeing really poor people in
Puerto Rico lining up with tin cans to get water from pipes along the roadside
because they didn't have running water.
BS: You grew up in Puerto Rico?
AV: Part of the time.
BS: What about church? Did you have church when you
were growing up?
AV: I had theatre.
BS: How was theatre...?
AV: It was a certain void... I was going to church in
NY just simply because it was a place to go to and a sense of belonging which I
never had when I was growing up. And then they started laying onto me things
about... like my Sunday school teacher, this soft-cheeked, white-haired old
lady with a sweet voice... I once said to her, "What is hell like?"
and I must have been... I don't know... 11, something like that. 11, maybe 12.
And she said, "Well, dear, if you take a match and light it and put it
against your finger and burn your finger, that's an infinite little bit of what
hell is like forever and ever and ever. So I didn't keep going much to church
after that. Because I was so guilty about stealing from the collection plate
and masturbating and doing various things -- mainly those two -- and I had
skipped two grades in school. So I was already in school with kids who were two
years older than I was. Guys who were shaving and all of that. And my high
school, it was the theatre group. I somehow found my way there and started
appearing in shows, and hi-ho-fiddledy, the actor's life for me. I was in an
Off-Broadway play for a while. Not a commercial thing, but some women's theatre
school. And then went for the full --
BS: With ACT UP, it had some famous comradery and some
famous floor fights, and then there was the Tell it to ACT UP. Now, what did
you think of the Tell It to ACT UP?
AV: Well, Bill Dobbs is such a... hotster and I never
thought well of him. I still don't. I don't know that it served any
particularly good purpose. It was just so nasty.
BS: Cause you could just write anything on the sign.
BS: People trust each other gradually. There's a lot
of wounds.
AV: Or they never trust each other.
BS: Right. Well... the best thing about ACT UP could
be the worst thing. There were just some times that, like a lot of things in
life, some of the best things are these crazy personalities and people in
stories being --
AV: It started crazy. You don't get much crazier than
Larry.
BS: [Laughs] But also you had some famous... they also
dealt with a lot of conflicts in productive ways. That's the thing I'm trying
to think of, cause in life we're gonna have conflicts. That's gonna be life.
There's gonna be a decision about a tactic that's one thing or another thing.
At the action today, there was a conflict about --
AV: What saved us in ACT UP was even in times of great
rancor and there certainly were those... was that we were dealing with --
especially in those early years -- literally life and death. I mean... many
people around now wouldn't even know who David Feinberg is. Not long before he
died, he came to rage at an ACT UP meeting about how ACT UP had failed him.
BS: Hadn't saved him. How do you respond to that?
AV:I was sorry for him that he was dying and
understandably frightened, which I think played into a lot of why he spoke the
way he did... But if we failed him, it wasn't for lack of trying.
BS: Yeah. I remember when I first came into the
movement in '93... Fear and Loathing in '86 and Queer and Loathing came out in
'94. I remember laughing at the lunacy of it. It gave me permission in some
ways. I wasn't laughing; it was deadly serious. People were dying and -- I
adored the writing. It allowed me to laugh and I think that's what I
appreciated, is that's another way of dealing with the crazy.
AV: Oh yeah, absolutely. Laughing was good. I remember
at the FDA action we were all stuck in buses that were being arrested because
other activists were blocking the buses that people started and the bus finally
got rolling, all of us were with our hands behind our backs, which I hate. And
people... if you turned a certain way, you could raise your hands up like this,
and we started tugging our ears and singing Carol Burnett's "It's so nice
to have been here with you." It was great.
BS: Yeah. That's ACT UP though, right? Was there ever
a moment... For you, you famously have sort of said, "After the epidemic,
I will cross the street and walk away from -- How did you put it?
AV: That when the epidemic was over, I have an
invisible list of names and when the epidemic is over, I will never have to
speak to any of them again. But that's from then. I don't feel that way now.
BS: How come?
AV: I think I've become kinder and gentler. And I'm
much more forgiving. There's still people I think are jerks and I can't stand
and I don't want to waste any time talking with them or... it's just time
wasted. Cause time is really precious and the older you get, the more precious
it becomes. But I'm more forgiving.
AV: So, good for him. In activism, you don't have to
like it... You just have to be willing to do the work. And in fact, if you say
you like it, that means you're definitely cracked.
BS: Yeah. So maybe it isn't the friends, it's doing
the work. Being in the movement. Not really about friends always.
AV: Absolutely. I always thought, what is it we need
to do? And very often when I'm at a meeting and it's going off the rails
because people are getting caught up with stuff, either induced by them or
others, that what I'm good at is stepping in and saying, "Could we get
back to what the point is here?" And variations of that.
BS: WIth HIV/AIDS --
AV: I learned that by being raised by two people who
should never have been married, and I was always the negotiator. So it was a
world class experience in preparation.
BS: It's hard. Everybody's got a different strategy.
Today, at the action, when there was this ambulance that had Ravi on it and
Williams from city council started sitting down in front of the ambulance and
then Rodriguez does and then Juan Carlos does, and then we all do and then the
police are pulling us away. Part of us --
AV: Did they not arrest all the people they pulled
away?
BS: They eventually did. But I'm thinking, "We're
blocking an ambulance, but we don't know where this ambulance is going, so I
don't really know," but I also understand the rage people felt. They went
up to the 11th floor, spent all day, took this guy who has some minor tax
violation... He's a wonderful person. His whole community is saying,
"Please keep him here." There's this rage. I think there's a place
for that. What are we supposed to say, peacefully, "Okay, take our friend
away"? You know? This organizer that we love? It's heartbreaking. But some
people scolded some of the people and some of the anarchists were like,
"Well I don't believe in God and I listen to you," you know? Like,
don't scold us for -- It's hard. People have different approaches. There's no
right approach.
AV: Even if he wasn't a good person, it's an
injustice.
BS: It's an injustice. Yeah.
AV: I don't have a litmus test for "Oh I'm
willing to do this for so-and-so because he's a great guy." The issue is,
is there an injustice happening here and what can we do about it?
BS: Right, and that's what it's about. You've always
had a sense -- and not everybody has this sense -- of "there's a movement,
and it isn't about me." There's a lot of folks who think it's about
"me getting my picture taken," and that's part of the beauty of it
but it also can be very --
AV: And early on, more or less, the first ten years or
so was fun seeing yourself spread all over. Not only domestic, but
international newspapers. I remember when I created the first blood action and
it was up in Albany and I had these kits, ziploc bags with sponges and blood
for our faces and our hands, and there we are in glorious technicolor. That was
fun.
BS: Wow.
AV: But eventually... maybe for some not...
eventually, it was, "Okay, so what else you got?" And I was good -- I
still am good -- at thinking of actions and focus. And when you're not afraid
to throw a turd in the punch bowl, it gets you a lot of freedom.
BS: That's right.
AV: I was at an all day seminar yesterday about people
aging with HIV. And there's quite a few people there -- it was at NYU -- they
wanted to come away from the day with "Where do we go from here and what
do we do about this to address it?" I said, "I have an activist
mentality. When I walk into a room almost anywhere, I look around and I'm
already thinking, 'Hmm, that would be good for dropping a banner over there.'"
When I first started speaking yesterday -- I was actually the last speaker of
the day -- I said "Queen Elizabeth comes into the story, but you'll have
to wait till the end to hear about her." So then I talked about various
things about activism and I said, "All of you here have to be thinking,
'What can I do?' when you walk out." And I said, I found out a couple
years ago that my granddaughter -- who was 7 at the time -- loves Queen
Elizabeth. And I thought about that, and what she... She told me what she loved
about her is that she's a real person and that she became a queen when she was
so young, and when she goes to England, she wants to meet the queen. So I
thought, "This is a girl with aspirations." So I thought about it for
a couple of days and I said I went into what I call my 'activist mode.' I wrote
a letter to the queen. I told her all about my granddaughter and what she liked
about her and that kind of stuff, and I said, "I thought I may get an
answer to this, because I know the queen has people who read her mail and pick
out things. But I won't get an answer if I don't do it. And that's where you
all come in. You know people who have been working in the epidemics, you know
how much bullshit goes on. So you have to name it and do what you can to get
rid of it." So I said, about a month after I wrote the letter, I got this
big envelop from Buckingham Palace filled with pictures and a letter from the
Lady in Waiting, she identified herself, said, "Her majesty wanted me to
tell you how much she enjoyed your letter." I gave it to my granddaughter
for Christmas that year. When she opened it, she started to read. She looked at
me and said, "Is this real?" I said, "It's very real." I
said I wrote a letter, and I gave her a copy of my letter too. And later, she
said "I love my present. I can't believe that I have two pen pals --
Adriana and Queen Elizabeth!"
BS: You gotta try! There's a guarantee you won't win if
you don't try. You won't always win when you try, but there's one sure
guarantee if you don't try. So... within all the -- if you were to give advice
to somebody entering activism, how do you keep the focus vs. get pulled into
the personal? Cause if you're doing activism --
AV: First of all, be awake and aware to what strikes
you as important. Some issue that you care about, that you can connect with.
And remember that everything you are, a totally insufficient jerk, or whatever
ways you have of putting yourself down, can be of value. Or useful. So you just
have to get in. Do it. And you will learn a lot. It's in fact an amazing
ongoing learning experience in activism. And how you are today, and if you stay
with it, and how you will be tomorrow or a year, or ten years from now... It's
amazing how much changes. And things you never thought you could do, you can
do.
BS: So stay on that stuff. The personal stuff gets a
little messy.
AV: If you're going to focus on your inadequacies,
you're lost.
BS: You're lost.
AV: And you are totally inadequate. You are a jerk.
You're not as gorgeous as you thought or hoped you would be. All of that is
just chatter. Old tapes.
BS: But did any of the floor fights ever draw blood?
Did they ever wear on you?
AV: Well for a lot of the time, for several years, I
was one of the facilitators. So that was a specific task, and I loved it. I'm a
trained psychoanalytic psychotherapist. I used some of what I do. Instead of
screaming at people, get quieter. Screaming is just out of control. Just speak
a little lower. And then you also have to know, sometimes you can't fix
something and you just have to let it go.
BS: Yeah. Let it go. Don't let it touch you. That's
what Lidell said to me. He said, "I just don't let things get inside."
AV: Yeah, and it can touch you, but that doesn't mean
it has to overcome you. Your being touched by something or upset is a natural
human reaction. So let it be.
BS: I don't mind being touched. I was touched today. I
was deeply sad, but I'm okay --
AV: But you're talking a different kind of touch.
BS: Ego wounds, where I feel, "Oh that person
thinks I'm stupid -- " and then you start to question yourself "Are
they treating me like a child?" and you react, and that's a whole other.
AV: A lot of the time, don't say anything. Just let it
be. Don't feel you need to get a hard on and prove yourself.
BS: Go on.
AV: It's more important... what is the real issue
here? I don't know -- how come you don't know what the real issue is? Then find
out. [Pause] Are you writing a piece or something?
BS: Yeah.
But you've got a crystal meth meeting, I don't want to
keep you. I would. I love to gossip with you.
AV: In about another five minutes.
BS: Any other advice to the young activist? Any other
final words before you sign off?
AV: Discouragement is a natural part of it. You have
to be able to tolerate being discouraged. Activism is not something to do
alone. Just like life is not. So if you speak up, you will find some support.
Either you'll find someone just as crazy as you... there are people there and
you'll either share a laugh, or just look at each other and shrug. One of the
best examples of that is -- one of the early ACT UP Monday nights... it was
like a tsunami there of yelling and people carrying on and whatever. It was
before we really instituted Roberta's rules of order, and this guy was sitting
next to me and I had the impulse to just get up and leave. And I was able to
stop myself because I had the thought "What brought me here is more
important than the sense of inadequacy that I feel right now," and I
turned to the guy -- mind you, it was 1987 -- I turned to the guy sitting next
to me and I said, "This place is nuts," or something like that. And
he agreed and that was Jay Blotcher and that was the start of our friendship.
BS: 30 years later. Well thank you. You're my hero.
I'm just grateful to get a coffee with you, regardless.
He was the best organizer I’ve ever met.
Interview
with Andy Vélez
April
8, 2009
Andy Vélez, a long time member of the
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, suggests that one of the first things ACT UP
helped activists do was to disabuse their view of good taste. That would have to be thrown out if activists
were going to get anything done. AIDS /
queer activism is based on a direct action ethos which requires letting go and
learning to cope in such moments. Yet,
when one comes out on the other side, a profound sense of freedom and
satisfaction replaces such inhibitions.
Talking about play and improvisation Vélez, recalled a recent moment of
fighting a pattern of harassment against queer men on prostitution charges
which have raged on and off in New York for many years. From 2008 -9, such events have been on the
upsurge.
“Its both scary and fun planning
these things. You never know when you
would come up with something. Like just
recently around the Coalition to Stop the Arrests. I was at a meeting and they were talking
about an upcoming rally that was going
to happen and weather they should get a permit– No – for a rally in Sheridan
Square. But that was something on the
agenda for three and a half weeks off.
And I’m like, ‘what are you waiting for? Too much time. You’re letting way too much time pass.’ I said, ‘You know what?’ And this is off the top of my head. I said, ‘Valentines is coming up. I think we need to give the Mayor a
Valentines. We should go to his house on
79th Street.”
It was a relatively modest number
of people who went up there, but it happened to be a day in which the media was
hungry for something. And of course
tying it in with Valentines Day cause it was Valentines Day was perfect. We got huge coverage. And a meeting the following week with Christ
Quinn and a whole bunch of people, including from the Mayor’s office. It was mostly damage control on their part.
BS: But its tough to get a meeting. I remember with XXX zoning, we couldn’t move
anything ten years ago. Yet with this
thing where you’ve basically harassing people for cruising, which the police
have been doing forever, all of a sudden they are apologizing. So what is it that makes the police have to
respond?
Because we got a lot of media
attention focused on him and we embarrassed the Mayor who wants to be god and
be re elected. And one of several signs,
the sign I made said, “DUMP the MAYOR.”
So, its like his nightmare coming to life. And that’s not stuff he wants to hear, even
from crazies. That’s why that meeting
came about. And that’s why (NY Police
Commissioner) Kelly has backed off. If
it wasn’t in an election year and at a time when the Mayor is trying to get
every backing, including from the Gay Community. And I’ll say this within the
context that as far as I’m concerned he’s closeted. And that’s just not being touched. And I don’t see any reason to touch it. I mean he finally and belatedly came out in
favor of gay marriage.
"If the mayor can't or won't put an end to these
abuses, then we'll have to get a new mayor," Andy Vélez, a coalition member, told the crowd.
For more on the actions, see;
Humm, Andy. 2009.
Police Charged with False Arrests of Gay Men at Adult Video Stores.
The Gotham Gazette (2 February).
Osborne, Duncan. 2009A. Bloomberg's Home Targeted In False Arrests
Protest
Osborne, Duncan. 2009B. 150 Rally Near Stonewall Site To Demand Prostitution
Arrests End. Gay City News. (22 February). Accessed 25 May 2009 from http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20267179
Osborne, Duncan. 2009C. Arrests at porn-video shops
are obscene, gays say
The Villager.
Volume 78 - Number 39 / March 4 -10, 2009. Accessed 25 May, 2009 from
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_305/arrestatporn.html
“Born in the Bronx in New York, March 9, 1939
Back in the early 1960’s I participated in some
anti-war demonstrations here in New York.
At the time I didn’t become as deeply involved, not even remotely as I
did in the epidemic. But I knew that
that war was wrong and I knew it from early on. And that was a very, very
unpopular position to have at the time.
I remember nearly losing my job at an add agency. First they tried to joke with me when they
heard that I was going to anti-war marches, which were very modest in number at
the time. There are times to talk about
what you believe in and there are times to just shut up because it’s a waste of
your bad breath. And one of the things to do an activist is to pick your
moments. One of the owners didn’t speak
to me and it actually played a part in me looking for another job. At the time those events were very sparsely
attended and there were often more people on the sidewalk shouting angry things
at us than there were people in the marches themselves. And the police were totally pro the war.”
Vélez would carry
signs declaring “Middle Class Against the War” to distance himself from the
profile of the hippy anti-war protester.
And I remember going to the UN and it was
gigantic. It was easily 100,000 thousand
people. And I thought now, I don’t have
to do this anymore because clearly something has happened. My participation doesn’t matter and I can go
on to other things, which I did. Not
political but…
BS: Gay liberation or other?
No, sexually I had been with both men and women in my
life and I was pretty comfortable with that.
In the late 1960’s I got married and that and a family were the focus of
my attention.
When I first began hearing about GRID. People weren’t even talking about HIV
then. They started to jump from GRID to
AIDS. So someone didn’t have HIV, they
had AIDS. And I began hearing about it, I
guess in the very early 1980’s. And I
separated from my then wife in 1982 and we were divorced five years later. And it was around the time of the divorse, by
that time I was hearing more about people who had AIDS. Its difficult to describe what it was like
and what was happening, that people were literally collapsing, falling down on
the sidewalks and dying. “I don’t
know. He seemed fine.” “He went to the hospital last night and
dead.” That kind of stuff. And I didn’t think it had anything to do with
me because I didn’t go to bathhouses. I
wasn’t a habitué of any number of the sorts of places that people who were
falling sick seemed to going to. I was
more concerned about herpes at the time.
And happy when the brits discovered a cure for that.
I did begin to be aware that there was a lot of
repugnance and fear on people’s part about AIDS. And I felt badly for people who had a disease
that was apparently incurable, went through them rapidly, and couldn’t afford
the only inadequate medication. And were
dying in shame and alone in many cases.
So I saw this sign on a lamppost about an action down
on Wall Street against the high price of AZT.
And I didn’t know anyone in ACT UP.
I don’t think I’d ever heard of ACT UP.
I think I actually was over was at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center.
At the time, I was conducting/ facilitating groups for men who were coming out
because part of my background is that I’m a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.
On his training in
psychoanalysis being useful in activism.
Everything I have learned in life turns out to be
useful. And certainly my training was
very helpful in dealing with very challenging situations both individually and
with groups. The whole gestalt is there. I know how to spot things, recognize things,
see a difficult situation, anticipating it, knowing enough. We can avoid that whole thing by just doing
this, instead of doing that.
And so I remember one night at the Center when I was
running the group, I hear this lunatic screaming his head off. “You’re all going to die…” I didn’t know him at the time, but I came to
know that that lunatic was Larry Kramer.
He was exorting most of these, I guess mostly gay men, who were at this
meeting about how this epidemic, which wasn’t being called an epidemic yet was
going wipe them out, unless they did something about it. I sortov tuck that away in my mind. I went to this action on Wall Street, which
was scary. I didn’t plan to get arrested
and I didn’t get arrested on that particular occasion. I was still involved legally in a custody
suit for my then young children. And I
was very concerned that this could end up being brought up in court. And you have to remember that I’m talking
1987 and as much as there wasn’t the kind of support around gay issues that
there is now, however imperfect the support is now. My now ex wife had included something in my
diverse papers about my having a change of lifestyle, which wasn’t true and so
there was a concern on my part that they were going to bring up the whole gay
issue when in fact from my point of view it had absolutely nothing to do with
our divorce. And certainly not with the
quality of my parenting, which was terrific.
But anyway that was the story of my involvement with ACT UP.
I immediately started going to the Monday night
meetings. Within a few months, I was
chairing the actions committee. I became
involved in the media committee. Mike
Signorile and Jay Blotcher, they had been pals in college. And the three of us began going to the media
committee meetings that Vito Russo was heading.
Part of the experience of activism and I daresay this
is transferable to other movements is you have to be willing to tolerate
embarrassment, discomforts of different kinds.
You will run into people who think or feel they own the organization
that you are getting involved with or the movement you’re getting involved
with. So it can take time for people to
begun to recognize and respect that others have something to contribute. And it was like that in ACT UP.
BS: How do you coordinate a simple campaign?
Starts with a simple request – pills into bodies. We’re gonna use research, direct action,
mobilization, media, and some fun along the road. How did you see these pieces fitting
together? You were on the media and
action committees?
As far as sound bites are concerned, you have to learn
how to say headlines. And you learn
early on not to answer the question you’re asked by a reporter. You answer the question they should have
asked. And you can even say to them,
“that’s a really important question, but the one you should have really asked
is.” And then you say what you were
going to say and you say it in as briefly as possible so that they can’t really
cut it out. So they are either going to
use you and you are going to get across your message or they won’t be able to
use it. But most of the time, they end
up using it. We were really good as
saying things an eye catching way.
You also as an activist need to learn really quickly,
particularly when you are dealing with serious issues is: all ye who enter here
abandon good taste. So what is
conventionally good taste and manners, forget about it.
Now ACT UP remains, and I think this is a glorious
thing, a non violent organization. We
certainly were and are very confrontational.
And I guess somebody could argue throwing theatrical blood onto a punch
bowl or onto a table of food at a pharmaceutical company occasion is violence
of a sort and I won’t argue with that.
Yet we certainly never used physical violence against a person.
But we did learn early on how effective and powerful
it is to embarrass people. So you can do
way more with the photograph of a corporate president or the NY Times owner and
do a march, not just outside their office, but their home. Nobody, including Punch Sulzberger, liked
being embarrassed at home in front of his neighbors.
Talks about making a Warhol portrait of
Sulzberger. I still have it.
Strengths
This is where the creativity of the people you are
working with, its amazing how people come up with stuff. One of the great things and essential things
and essential things to learn is: no
matter who you are, you have something to contribute. Your exact experience, whether you’ve had
schooling, havn’t had it, no matter what you’ve done, if you’re willing to do
some work, who you are is going to be valuable, just out of your life
experience.
Media
And so somehow we got a picture of Sulzberger and I
did a black and white copy of it and colored it in sortov Andy Warhol deglo
style. But I added one thing to it. I added a toilet plunger and the message was:
Cut the Crap Punch. At that time, the
Times’ coverage of the epidemic was so pitiful and lame. They were still hemming and hawing about
using the term gay. And, of course, this
epidemic swept a lot of that stuff away because the numbers were so huge. And then people at the New York Times itself
began dying. And that made a difference,
some of whom left their insurance policies to ACT UP and that’s how ACT UP had
money for a while. We began getting lots
of money from insurance policies. The
Times slowly began changing.
Contrast this with Arthur Bell who went to the Post
and scheduled a meeting.
What I found was if I could get past the thumping in
my chest, the fear as I stepped off the sidewalk into a potential arrest
situation. And the various other
situations like after you go into the 92nd street Y after you buy
two tickets and you purposely fully get them in the middle of the row before
they can drag you out. You are going to
get a chance to say something.
Sulberger’s son, as a matter of a fact, was speaking
at the Y. And I was there with a guy who
has since died. And I just stood
up. 92nd Street Y is like a
cultural Mecca. People who go there are
so thrilled that they are being vaccinated with culture. So for rowdies to interrupt a scene there is
scary stuff. And actually a very well
activist was supposed to go in with me and said “I changed my mind. I’m not going in.” At the time, I was pissed. I was scared to. I’m more forgiving about it now. As it
happens the guy who went in with me, it was important to him because he was
ill. He has long since passed away. And he got so unraveled. He started screaming. When we stood up and I called out to
Sulzberger. We interrupted him and the
anger was huge from the audience. “They
are covering the epidemic.” And
so, you just learn to do those
things. I knew we weren’t going to be
arrested. I knew we were going to get
tossed. But we had accomplished what we
wanted to. I saw that Surlberger, he didn’t
have the anger, he was actually defensive.
So, we had made a point there and that’s what we did. We kept chipping and chipping away.
Friends and non friends.
And so as an activist you have to be willing to do the
work even when you are scared and disappointed.
And it can feel lonely. But if
you’re willing to do it, you will always find some, sometimes very few, who are
willing to participate. And they will
almost inevitably include people you don’t like. You do have to learn how to work with people
you do not like. You never know who is
going to end up being helpful and useful through the years.
BS What about
friendship? How does friendship support
or undermine this?
To me, those networks, that keeps me going. You’re inevitably going to meet some people
whom you feel simpatico with.
I remember in those early weeks when I started going
to the Monday night meeting of ACT UP.
That room was packed and it was packed with leather clad young
guys. It became the hottest place to be
in New York, literally because there was no air conditioning. It was wall to wall, not exclusively, but
mostly guys. And there was a lot of the
cruising arena kind of stuff. It was
very daunting and to someone new and an outsider, it could sortov feel like a
lunatic asylum. There was a lot of
shouting. It took a while for the
meetings to really hold a consistent form, where there were elected
facilitators, who would do quarters.
There were four of us for each three month quarter. And I actually enjoyed it tremendously. Its easier to be a facilitator.
BS: did you use your clinical skills.
BS: process counts.
Yes, because I always stayed calm. And I also always speak clearly. And encourage speakers who had to come up and
do a report, they’d sometimes mumble. And
I’d say, “You gotta speak up and speak clearly. They are gonna go for what you
are saying, but you need to speak.”
There were some brilliant people in ACT UP who couldn’t talk to a crowd for anything. They were scared of them. They were nervous. They were sometimes contemptuous of the
floor. So you had to support them in
order to get them to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. And some of them never resolved their
difficulties with that which is how the Treatment and Data Committee ended up
breaking away from ACT UP. Even though
they did tremendous work, they also aroused tremendous hostility from people on
the floor who were suspicious of them for various reasons, ranging from
political to racial. So, they broke away
and a new organization was formed, Treatment Action Group (TAG).
And so it was really democracy in action on the floor
in ACT UP. And a democracy is a damn
tough thing to run if you are doing it for real.
BS: But how did the friendship support it or undermine
it?
There are other friends I’ve had from ACT UP
internationally, actually, Paris, Germany, England. And people who I’m regularly in touch with. I will likely work at the International AIDS
Conference next year… And so I’m looking
forward to seeing some of them there.
And I quote “dated” a few people in ACT UP. There was lots of sex going on. That was not my prime motive or goal or
interest. I was pretty focused on the
work.
And when you talk about friendships, the interesting
thing is how much work people could do with one another without knowing very
much about their lives outside of the actual movement.
So people could work together, make posters, do
flyers, do all the kind of stuff that we learned to do and learned more and
more to cut corners on. I remind you
when ACT UP started there was no money so people were doing what is called
guerilla Xeroxing. And they were working
in offices, so they could run off 500 flyers.
This predates fax machines. So
when we started doing actions and could have walkie talkies, this was like a
big deal. So many of ht emeans and
methods that are available now would have been like science fiction. We were still racing to a corner to call
someone. Or to call AP and say “You need
to get here.”
BS: Well, that’s what’s so innovative. ACT UP’s Diva
TV anticipated the whole Indy Media, You Tube movement. Create a video of a person in a hospital gown
which says, “Your Ass Isn’t Covered.” Can you talk about how direct action was
able to communicate a message, creative direct action to advance goals. Why did they feel it was necessary. Direct action to direct services.
More often actions were planned right at a
meeting. And there were occasions when a
meeting was shut down and we simply marched out and got up to gracie
mansion. This was when Kotch was Mayer. And had a demonstration right then and there.
Two occasions come to mind. One was a social worker told us at a Monday
meeting that there was a mother who had a child who weighed 44 lbs and was
unable to get her office to approve food supplements, nutritional supplements
for him, liquid supplements. Immediately,
a group formed. Within a day or two,
they had gotten a photograph of the manager of that office. The office was on 31st Street
between 6th and 7th Avenue. Two or three days later that week, we were
picketing outside that office with the manager’s face on the posters. And the kid got his supplements.
So that was that.
BS: direct action got the goods.
Over the years,
we ran into each other at action after action.
Rise and Resist,
ACT UP, Occupy, everywhere.
But gradually the meetings slowed down.
This March, I reached
out to Vélez to try to get coffee or meet
up.
“Have to decline” he replied. “Planning to get to one of your
readings. Best, Andy”
“Thanks for all your support...through
the years and now. Big love to U!” I replied.
He was the best organizer I’ve ever met.
All day, we’re remembered him.
The spirit and philosophy of ACT UP
found its manifestation in decades of activism.
“I am heart broken. My dear
friend Andy Vélez has passed. I loved Andy like a brother. Andy no doubt
attended more ACT UP meetings than any other person - almost never missing an ACT
UP meeting since 1987, week after week, up until his recent fall and hospitalisation.
I attended many many
demonstrations with him and worked with him planning many actions, press
conference, and conference panels at AIDS Conference in several countries
around the world. I also had the pleasure of being
part of the Liaison Team he Chaired in several countries.
Andy always made me laugh, he
always had something witty to say about everything.
Andy, you were a hero, a
wonderful Activist and I will miss you dearly!”
I have never known a single LGBTQ
activist that has shown up and marched at more demonstrations for our community
than Andy Velez. He was at ACT UP from the get-go, and was still going to
meetings until his recent health issues. I got closer with Andy during my AIDSmeds.com
days, when he became
a loving moderator on the site's very busy community forums. Folks from around
the world got to know and love Andy online.
A huge thanks to his sons, Ben
and Abe, for letting me say my goodbyes to Andy three weeks ago at Bellevue. He
was so fucking proud of you both.
THANK YOU, ANDY, FOR FIGHTING FOR
ALL OF US EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE!
"Andy Vélez, an
internationally prominent AIDS activist, whose three decades of advocacy work
resulted in improved drug access and civil rights for people living with HIV,
especially in the Latino community, died on May 14, 2019 at Mt. Sinai Beth
Israel Hospital in Manhattan. He was 80.
His sons Ben and Abe Vélez said
the cause of death was complications arising from a severe fall in his
Greenwich Village building in April.
Until his recent accident and
despite several health challenges, Vélez had remained consistently active in
the AIDS and social justice communities, taking part in protests for ACT UP and
Rise and Resist. Vélez was a seminal member of ACT UP, joining the group in
1987, its first year of activity, and played a prominent role in its most
notorious demonstrations over the past 32 years.
Vélez was born on March 9, 1939
in the Bronx to Ramon Vélez and the former Dorothy Solomon. The family, including
siblings Eugene and Raymond (“Al”), soon relocated to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico,
where they lived a few years before returning to the Bronx. Vélez graduated
from William Howard Taft High School in 1955 at age 16. He attended City
College for a brief time, but interrupted his studies to leave home and escape
the abuses of his father. Years later, after attending night school, Vélez
would formally graduate.
Vélez earned a Master’s degree in
psychoanalysis in 1976 and worked with the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic
Studies under Dr. Phyllis Meadow in the Village. He maintained his own therapy
practice for two decades. Vélez had initially explored psychoanalysis for
personal reasons, suspecting that he was homosexual. In 1964, he was entrapped
by an undercover policeman in a Park Avenue South bar. Vélez spent the night in
the jail facility known as The Tombs, a traumatizing experience that would
provide the impetus for his activism. Vélez lost his position at the Housing
Authority when his boss learned of his arrest. He received a suspended sentence
of six months. But when Vélez pushed back legally with the help of a
progressive lawyer, his conviction was later reversed.
While he initially hoped to
become an actor, and appeared in several off-Broadway productions in the late
1950s and early 1960s, Vélez found success in other careers. He entered book
publishing in 1969. Over the course of 16 years he worked his way up to the
position of president of the prominent Frederick Ungar Publishing, managing the
company until it was sold in 1985. Notable among his literary projects was a
1984 collaboration with screen star Marlene Dietrich to update her 1962
bestseller Marlene Dietrich’s ABC.
Once he was divorced, Vélez began
to make active connections with the LGBTQ community. He served as a leader for
the Gay Circles Consciousness Raising Group for almost three years. One
evening, after his group ended, Vélez walked past the first meeting of a new
organization dedicated to addressing government inaction surrounding HIV/AIDS.
He was intrigued.
The group soon had a name: ACT
UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Vélez became involved in several ACT
UP committees, including the Media Committee and Actions Committee. He was
involved in high-profile demonstrations and civil disobedience arrest scenarios
that showcased ACT UP’s signature street theatre activism, such as chaining
himself in the office of a pharmaceutical company, or covering himself in fake
blood to symbolize the lives lost to AIDS because of government negligence.
However, Vélez found his niche
with the group’s Latino Caucus, which focused on the raging but neglected
epidemic in the Latino community. Significantly, Vélez and his colleagues
traveled to Puerto Rico to help organize a local ACT UP chapter in the commonwealth.
He was also a founding member of Queer Nation in New York City in 1990.
He was involved in many AIDS
educational and service organizations over the years, serving as an
administrator and bilingual educator for AIDSMEDS.com
for more than a decade.
His writing and activism intersected significantly when he moderated a
community forum on AIDSMeds.com
, where he directed
desperate people to lifesaving medical information. Vélez also wrote about the
epidemic for numerous community publications, including POZ, Body Positive, and
SIDA Ahora. For ten years he moderated the POZ Forum. He took part in
aggressive and effective treatment access work with Treatment Action Group, and
worked in a New York City HIV clinical trial unit, alerting affected
communities to their vulnerability to tuberculosis.
From the 1990s through the 2010s,
Vélez returned to his first love of theater by covering the scene for several
LGBT magazines, as well as by conducting interviews with jazz greats for All
About Jazz and the New York City Jazz Record. He penned liner notes for the CD
reissues of several Broadway musical classics, such as Finian’s Rainbow, The
Pajama Game, and Saratoga. He also provided liner notes for vocal collections
by legends such as Doris Day, Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, and Artie Shaw.
From 1990 to 1992, he taught courses in musical theater at the New School.
Among his in-class guests from the golden age of Broadway: Barbara Cook,
Sheldon Harnick, Elaine Stritch, John Kander and Fred Ebb. He was included in
the anthology Cast Out: Queer Lives in the Theater, a collection focusing on
out lesbians and gays currently working on the American stage.
Vélez became a prominent presence
on the international AIDS scene for more than two decades, working with
co-organizers of the International Conference on AIDS to guarantee the
inclusion and active participation of people with HIV. He also served for
several conferences as the official liaison to the activist community. He
served as a consultant to the Latino Commission on AIDS, and was a guest
speaker on HIV/AIDS issues at high schools and colleges across America.
Years ago, when asked how he
would like to be remembered, Vélez replied, “As someone who was able to help.”
Andy Vélez is survived by his
sons Ben and Abe, both of Brooklyn, his daughter-in-law Sarah, his
granddaughter, his younger brother Eugene (“Gene’) of Alamo, California, as
well as thousands of comrades in the global AIDS and LGBTQ activist
communities.
Donations in Vélez’s memory may
be made to ACT UP New York, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and the Latino
Commission on AIDS.
Emma Goldman refused to be part of a revolution where she couldn’t dance. My comrade Andy Velez, who died on May 14 at age 80, felt the same way.
As a leader in ACT UP and the AIDS activist movement, Andy was happy to do the hard work.
I can’t count the times he attended government hearings, lobbied politicians, handed out condoms, manacled himself to gates, spoke at funerals, and risked arrest over the course of 32 years of service to the LGBTQ+ and AIDS communities.
But immersed in this living hell, Andy also knew the importance of wicked fun. He’d invoke it during our life-or-death battles. To save our sanities.
Andy dressed in jewels and brooches for demonstrations. He created protest signs that simply said, “Cut the crap!” And when we found ourselves in a jail cell after a protest, he insisted we all sing 60s girl group songs.
If you accused Andy Velez of excess, he would promptly remind you that good taste should never get in the way of defiance.
His irreverence provided a laugh at crucial times during the early Plague Years, helping balm frayed nerves or crushed spirits as we continued to fight for our lives.
I learned sass, courage, wisdom, and hope from my ACT UP comrade Andy Velez. Being 21 years my senior, he insisted I call him Mother. In turn, he called me Sisterwoman from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
A diehard movie and musical theatre queen, Andy gave me a bonus education while in the trenches. I learned the difference between Marie Dressler and Maria Callas, Eddie Cantor and Eddie Fisher.
Thanks to his stacks of original cast albums on vinyl, I learned the magic of Sondheim and Rodgers & Hart. In 1990 and 1991, Andy hosted a Broadway Musical class at the New School in Manhattan. He made me his teaching assistant, so I got to meet legends like Barbara Cook, Sheldon Harnick, Elaine Stritch and Kander & Ebb.
Life was truly a banquet with Andy. I owe much to this indefatigable and fabulous soul. So does the rest of the world.
Andy Velez ... presente! (March 9, 1939 - May, 14 2019).” — by Jay Blotcher
Andy Velez was the Emma Goldman of ACT UP. He refused to be part of a revolution where he couldn’t dance.
He protested like a warrior. But he added irreverence to the mix. Andy dressed in pearls and jewels for demonstrations. His naughty jokes would easily defuse a stand-off with cops. When we were thrown into jail after a protest, Andy led us all in 60s girl group songs. Or at ACT UP meetings, when some blowhard went on too long, Andy would hold up one of his trademark laminated index cards that would say “Sit Down!”
Andy’s difficult past provided the fuel for his activism. A punishing childhood. Being jailed in 1964 after homosexual entrapment. Navigating a bitter divorce. Coming out at a time when gay was synonymous with AIDS. Andy possessed life lessons that most of ACT UP didn’t.
So Andy would guide the hotheaded youngsters. He modulated our fury. He knew that if you always carried anger in your gut, it would destroy you.
And woe unto the person who accused Andy of excess -- or suggested he tone down his tactics. He would fix that individual with a pitying glare and explain that good taste should never get in the way of defiance.
Andy was a supreme movie and musical theatre queen. I was one of his keen students. While I was learning AIDS activism in the trenches, Andy gave me a bonus education. Thanks to him, this diehard rock n’ roller learned the difference between Marie Dressler and Maria Montez, between Eddie Cantor and Eddie Fisher. Andy’s crash course included wicked Merman anecdotes. And mercy, that Monty Clift story. But I digress…
Andy bestowed stacks of his old vinyl on me. I enjoyed a steady diet of Sondheim, Jule Styne, Rodgers & Hart, Archie & Mehitabel. I officially became a musical theatre queen in training.
The tutelage escalated. In 1990 and 1991 Andy hosted a Broadway Musical class at the New School. He made me his teaching assistant, so I met the legends: Barbara Cook, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Sheldon Harnick, Kander & Ebb. And I rescued him one afternoon from a hostage situation in his apartment – perpetrated by Elaine Stritch.
Many stars became Andy’s friends. Not because he was a fawning fan. But because he was honest. He dazzled them with his encyclopedic knowledge, but also dispensed critical analysis that was illuminating.
Andy was an enthusiastic lover of the arts. But a discerning one. In 1995, we went to Rainbow & Stars to see Lorna Luft. Bless her heart, she was no Judy Garland. Nor even a Liza Minnelli. Halfway through the concert, Andy pushed a cocktail napkin across the table. On it he had scribbled “Gee, this sucks, Sally.” I spent the rest of the show squelching giggles.
So we come to this sad day. Even on the matter of death, Andy offered comfort and enlightenment. In 1988, my mom died. I was 28. I was a mess. I had only known Andy a few months in ACT UP, but he was there for my mourning period. Andy shared profound wisdom at the time. I was too grief-stricken for it to register. But the way wisdom works is that when you are ready to hear it, it comes through loud and clear.
Andy explained, “When a loved one dies, the conversation you are having with them does not end. The way you communicate simply changes.”
So, Andy, let’s keep the conversation going. Right now, I suspect you’re hobnobbing at one hell of a cocktail party, clinking glasses with Marlene, Eartha, Barbara, Betty & Adolph, Stritch, and, of course, your beloved Muggsy.
Keep the party going until we get there. Because we will reunite, just as the lyrics tell us in another gem Andy loved: the ballad “Some Other Time” from “On the Town”:
A long time activist and social worker, Benjamin Shepard’s scholarship is based on the ethnographic study of social services and social movements. He has worked on campaigns around public space, including community gardens, bike lanes, and public welfare issues ranging from education to AIDS services. For more info or to contact him visit:
http://benjaminheimshepardplay.blogspot.com/p/bio.html
New Book Out
Community Projects as Social Activism
http://www.sagepub.com/textbooks/Book232392
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