Badpuppy Gay Today

Tuesday, 25 March, 1997

It was late in the afternoon and when Ann Northrop answered a call from GayToday, she'd just been released from jail, after a much-publicized ACT UP demonstration. Ms. Northrop, a prominent New York activist and journalist, was one of approximately a thousand angry protesters who invaded Wall Street on Monday morning. Some threw fake blood on stock exchange buildings, while others were aiming, as Ms. Northrop put it, "to protest the immense greed of the pharmaceutical industry," and put a stop to "business as usual," on the busy "big business" thoroughfare. The spirit of ACT UP was unbowed as its members stood up to a phalanx of carefully prepared and militaristic police. Two protesters were hospitalized with minor injuries and expectations about lengthy periods for jail-processing proved incorrect. None of the 73 protesters arrested were kept overnight. Most were charged with disorderly conduct. Over half of those arrested were women.

Ann Northrop was on her way as she spoke, to another ACT UP rally. Obviously, as she noted, the fiery organization to which she has belonged for over nine years, is hardly inactive. "Reports of the organization's death have been premature," said another activist. CNN Headline News, which ran scenes from the protest throughout the day, showed clips of flying ACT UP banners from other East Coast cities. Its reporter interviewed a obviously animated protester who effectively spelled out to America and to the world what ACT UP members are up against: myths the general public swallows, that there's no desperate need for AIDS activism any more, no longer any reason to mount struggles against establishment bureaucracies.

"These demonstrations won't stop until a cure is found," said the demonstrator, "The AIDS crisis is not over. Many people think the new protease drugs are a miracle cure. There is no cure for AIDS. Many people are dying. Many people cannot take these drugs because they're too toxic. Many people are failing on these drugs. The virus is breaking through."

Some activists, such as Sean Strub, Executive Editor of POZ Magazine, said there is also a need for local organizations and for individuals everywhere, to pressure the Congress to fund free needle exchanges, a need that has thus far been rebuffed as "condoning drug use" by ignorant, moralistic politicians. It is vast numbers of young women (between ages 13-20) who have older intravenous-drug-using boyfriends, and who are being infected by the virus in increasingly alarming numbers.

Elizabeth Taylor, according to the POZ editor, told the most recent International AIDS Conference (Vancouver) that a failure to fund needle exchange is "a measured act of premeditated murder." A series of scientific surveys has proved without doubt that free clean-needle-exchange programs save lives.

ACT UPers made poignant pleas to Congress to put an end to vulgar profiteering such as that which now infects the pharmaceutical industry. Stricken people who can't afford such drugs are resigning themselves to the inevitability of death. "This is not right," shouted a handsome Latino youth at reporters, "It isn't right these companies should make so much money when people can't afford them and those people are dying. Congress should stop them from overcharging."