Week 10: ACT-UP

In response to this weeks newspaper articles covering the AIDS epidemic in the United States from 1980-2000 I watched the documentary “United in Anger” which covered the history of AIDS activist movement ACT-UP.  In the article “AIDS Activist Group Harasses and Provokes To Make Its Point” it only begins to sum up the ACT-UP movement. The article describes the group of activist as using militant tactics such as dressing as clean-cut, white males to gain access to government buildings so they can handcuff themselves to the building and begin to make a scene through shouting or playing dead.  This is only example of how ACT-UP members physically and loudly shoved their movement in people’s face.

ACT-UP used the slogan “silence=death” to urge those who have ignored the AIDS crisis (those in power aka the government) to speak out. In the movie, one woman compared the AIDS epidemic to the Vietnam war where the people in power didn’t care about the lives of people without power.  In this ‘war’ they faced battles of corporate greed, social indifference, and government neglect.   Individuals stressed how there was no information available while thousands of people were dying daily.  This was because the epidemic was happening to a specific population(s) where it was viewed as “giving them what they deserved”.  In other words, in result of their immorality this disease was their punishment from God.

Since those in power were doing nothing about the epidemic, the only way to get the movement going was to use forceful in-your-face tactics. The movement ACT UP gained numbers instantly. The outlook of many individuals that were HIV positive was that if they were going to die soon, they might as well try and help save the lives of others by spreading the awareness. Hence, people all over the country would gather all the money they could to travel to join the ACT UP movement.  The film provides live footage of thousands of people outside of government buildings and FDA buildings making a riot.  Another tactic the ACT UP movement used was the use of media: film, newspapers, sound, and pictures. Since these were all new technologies it was a way for the movement to get their words out to the public. The documentary was filled with live footage that provided images words could never describe. Whether it was the large number of people protesting or people being brutally beaten from the police or those who were in the severe stages of AIDS. Here was a movement filled with seriously ill people that were not going to be ignored.

One of the main focuses of the ACT UP movement was to gain access to drugs being tested. As stated in the article “AIDS Coalition Targets FDA for Demonstration”: people would be able to choose for themselves, working with their doctors, whether they want to risk taking a drug because of the possible benefits.  At this point in history it took up to 10 years for a drug to be approved for on the market. Those who were HIV positive knew thousands were going to die before drugs were released.

Therefore, with militant tactics the movement gained numbers from individuals all over the world to help raise awareness about the epidemic of AIDS that no one else was doing anything about.  Without this push for drugs to be released, (hundred) thousands of more lives could have been taken from AIDS. And maybe the government would have never done anything about it because it was affecting those who were deviant in a white-heterosexual society.