Act up March 1987: New Yorker Maer Roshan writes about the early days of the groud that redefined street activism – Bold beginnings
Maer Roshan
Had Nora Ephron not fallen ill on March 10, 1987, it’s safe to say that the course of gay rights may have been set back by at least 10 years. But as it turns out, hours before she was to address an overflow crowd at New York’s Lesbian and Gay Community Center, Ephron, the author of When Harry Met Sally …, came down with the flu. Larry Kramer, the author of Faggots, was recruited to speak in her place.
Angry and depressed about AIDS, Kramer used the occasion to issue his now-famous jihad, exhorting the city’s gay community to rise out of its apathy to fight a plague that had already snuffed out 5,500 New Yorkers. Electrified by Kramer’s performance, a group of activists formed the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power that night, and within months its Tuesday night meetings at the center became the hottest ticket in town. Hundreds of young men and women packed the room each week in crisp white T-shirts and inescapable SILENCE = DEATH pins, the new uniform of the radically chic. Kramer paced the floor like a cornered general, railing against enemies from Ronald Reagan to the pope. Sweating under the harsh fluorescent lights, he worked the crowd to a fever pitch before falling limply to his seat.
“What are we going to do?” he concluded one week in a hoarse whisper. Suddenly, a slight woman in back stood up and shrieked, “Act up! Fight Back! Fight AIDS!” The entire crowd was on its feet. Next to me, a hollow-cheeked acquaintance strnggled up from his wheelchair and joined the chorus, pumping a fist joyfully in the air. He was just 30, and two months later he was dead. ACT UP, however, lived on.
By the end of the decade the group had spawned 100 chapters worldwide, shrewdly melding politics with performance art to court a steady stream of press. Among its successes, ACT UP forced companies to speed up the process that put drags into the hands of desperate patients, led the charge against drug-company price gouging, and demanded reform from an arrogant medical establishment. By exporting the group’s message from gay ghettos to hetero bastions such as Shea Stadium and the New York Stock Exchange, it forced straight Americans to confront not only AIDS but also homosexuality.
Roshan is the former deputy editor of New York magazine and editorial director of Talk. He is now launching a new magazine called Radar.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
