Badpuppy Gay Today

Monday, 24 March, 1997

ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) the famed but loosely affiliated worldwide groupings of activists devoted to making government, industry and the citizenry pay attention to AIDS, is now ten years old. Though some chapters remain militant (such as in Paris or in New York for, at least, today) most do not, and local memberships have dwindled as the organization's primary goal-- drawing public attention to AIDS-- seems to find an increasing acceptance in the mainstream. Even so, however, some die-hard New York activists will mark ACT UP's tenth anniversary with a Wall Street demonstration to be held this morning. The protest will focus on ridiculous drug prices, a matter of life and death for people with AIDS.

Ann Northrop, LGNY newspaper columnist and co-host of the Gay Cable Network program, Gay USA, writes she won't be able to watch her own afternoon performance today as a feminist defender of gay cloning on the Montel Williams Show. She plans instead to be protesting with ACT UP on Wall Street and expects to be jailed. Her Monday afternoon fate is bound up, as she puts it, with a need to "protest the immense greed of the pharmaceutical industry." Northrop writes: "And when I get there my colleagues and I will be trying to stop business as usual. For that, we will be picked up, thrown in police vans, and hauled off to some precinct, where they will take four hours or twenty-four hours or forty-eight hours to process us (pre-emptive punishment). Then we'll spend some months going to court occasionally until the charges are dropped or we agree to some kind of penalty like community service."

Between 1988-1992 ACT UP pricked the conscience of the nation with its bold, boisterous focus on drug prices, F.D.A. inaction, and those homophobic politicians like Jesse Helms, who'd have reduced federal AIDS-funding, based on a murderous belief that gay citizens deserve death. As it became clearer, in spite of Republican delusions, that AIDS affects all segments of the population, the anger that fueled ACT UP groups began to subside somewhat. Some activists simply burned out. Others found niches in the establishment, working for major drug companies where they now attempt to recommend faster action. AIDS activism has thus traversed a rowdy route that has led, for some, from anger to acceptance. "Once clamoring at the dining room door," writes Frank Bruni of the New York Times, ACT UP members have "gained a place at the table." Some former and current members charge, however, that drug company recruits from ACT UP simply joined the establishment instead of challenging it. There may yet be another angry rivival, some predict.

Disrupting a sermon by John Cardinal O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and spreading condoms at church-services, ACT UPers also gained fame in the late 80's as they interrupted trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. In San Francisco, AIDS protesters stopped traffic on the Golden Gate bridge, and thousands lay down in the streets of New York to do the same. The early energized group found its 700 members meeting in Manhattan's Cooper Union. The early meetings were conducted according to anarchist codes. Those present voted on actions. Direct action was the organization's main political strategy. Today, however, ACT UP membership in New York has, according to reports, dwindled. Even so, says Ann Northrop, the spirit of ACT UP is alive and many of its old comrades-in-arms and their friends are returning for a reunion, one made poignant because so many invaluable people have perished. "We can't go backwards," says Northrop, "but we can relish our memories and celebrate those living and dead. After all, aren't we doing this for each other?"

Many high-profile AIDS activist groups elsewhere, such as Miami's CURE AIDS NOW, seem resigned to lives no longer lived under media spotlights. Founded and built by Bob Kunst, a fiery, headline grabbing critic of government inaction, CURE AIDS NOW began its transformation from high (1985-1991) to low-profile (1992-present) after its newly-formed, conservative governing board expelled founder Kunst. Thereafter, social service, or meals on wheels, replaced activist fervor. "Its an old story," says a former member, "conservatives just don't like the spotlight. They'd rather deliver groceries....quietly. They never seem to understand they'll be delivering to continuous and growing lines of AIDS patients if they flee from activism, failing to goad established power-holders into addressing real problems. Kunst always knew how social service plays second fiddle to activism, that we must reach over the heads of patients affected, bullying the slow politicians and drug companies into making necessary reforms for patients who'll die without them."