It is not often that I open an index to a history archive and begin crying. But that is exactly what happened as I just started reading an extensive list of not only names and events but subject matter that shows we as LGBT's, even when fighting for the right to have a plague lifted from our midst, are much more than the depraved hedonists we are portrayed as.
I didn't start tearing up because I am some sort of sentimental type or if I had read the name of a loved one lost. These activists were becoming the pebble in the shoe of forces that to this day are still fully intent in crushing our ability to exist. They managed to change the course of political and social forces by standing up for themselves when no one else would. At a time when churches were a familiar fixture in civil rights marches or actions their absence was telling to the communities they served. There were no churches telling their flock to join the march to get HIV treatment covered by the VA. Instead sometimes small but rarely silent groups would march anyway.
Just a cursory look at the index sans HTML gives us an idea of the breadth of knowledge we lost from an event that could have been reined in:
AZT 3/24
African Americans and 2/32
Anemia and 2/32
Approval 2/32
Clinical Trials 2/32
Decision to take 2/33; 3/10
Barr, David 2/53; 3/21, 3/27
Bars/Clubs 2/45
The Bar 2/48
The Pyramid 3/32
Bauer, Amy 2/25
Berlin 2/61
Black, Roger 3/6
Books 3/3, 3/4, 3/5, 3/6
Bordowitz, Gregg 2/30, 2/45, 2/47; 3/17
Boston 3/5
Bowen, Peter 2/58
Breast Cancer 3/39
CDC (Center for Disease Control)
Changing the Definition of AIDS 2/25
Candido 3/11
Capitalism 2/34
Carrasco, Cesar 3/11
Chicago 2/13, 2/59
Civil Rights Movement 3/39
Class (see ACT UP: Members' Demographics) 2/33, 2/34, 2/35, 2/47, 2/48
I saw ACT-UP as both something desperate and cunningly brilliant. Activities like throwing animal blood on those ignoring pleas for help was disgusting but so effective to a culture so focused on demonization of us that it would recoil in horror from the thought of our bodily fluids touching them. The targets of these actions themselves were creating the ignorance that made such tactics effective.
Of course by using these tactics the Fear Department ratcheted up their propaganda to direct the public to not accept these tactics.
Columbia University has a feature film length program on youtube of the ACT-UP project titled United in Anger.
The videos of the oral histories themselves apparently require players I don't want or need but as you can see from the index are quite extensive.