Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: The Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: And at nine twenty nine and fifty five seconds, I
Speaker 2: say go and we stand up. We unfurl the banner,
Speaker 2: and we each have a pocket sized marine foghorn. These
Speaker 2: things are fucking loud, and we all raised our hands
Speaker 2: and boom. Nobody heard the opening bell. This this piercing screen.
Speaker 2: It felt like time was standing still. Everything stopped. Every
Speaker 2: the Trader's like, what what the fuck is this? They're
Speaker 2: like confused, and then they're putting two and two together.
Speaker 2: Those fuckers got inside. I was smiling from ear to
Speaker 2: ear because I knew we had pulled it off and
Speaker 2: that their anger and their homophobia and their hatred was
Speaker 2: going to turn to our benefit.
Speaker 1: As a gin a kid growing up religious and in
Speaker 1: the South, I thought being gay was the worst thing
Speaker 1: I could ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to unlearn that by seeking out our history, and what
Speaker 1: I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance,
Speaker 1: and love. In this episode, we'll meet Peter Staley, one
Speaker 1: of the most impactful AIDS activists in America. We'll learn
Speaker 1: how his own HIV diagnosis motivated him to stage some
Speaker 1: of the most infamous protests in American history with Act UP,
Speaker 1: and how those protests led to the creation of HIV
Speaker 1: drugs that would save millions of lives. From My Heart podcasts,
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan and Solves and this is what We loved.
Speaker 1: The other night, I found myself at a gay club
Speaker 1: at two am with my best friend Kevin. The floors
Speaker 1: were sticky from vodka, soda spilling, and sweat. They were
Speaker 1: blasting the Brat album. Kevin pulled me up onto the
Speaker 1: stage to dance in front of everyone, and after a
Speaker 1: few songs, I looked out into the crowd. Some people
Speaker 1: were making out. One shirtless guy was doing poppers, a
Speaker 1: few people were there with their friends like me, and
Speaker 1: some were just happy to be dancing on their own.
Speaker 1: My eyes filled with tears looking at all of them,
Speaker 1: and when I turned to Kevin, he was crying too.
Speaker 1: We hugged each other. I think we were just overcome
Speaker 1: by the joy. Creating this sh and meeting so many
Speaker 1: queer elders affected by AIDS has shown me just how
Speaker 1: privileged I am to have moments like that. My next guest,
Speaker 1: Peter Staley, is one of the many people. I have
Speaker 1: to think he helped pioneer the HIV drugs that literally
Speaker 1: brought many queer people back to life from their deathbeds
Speaker 1: in the nineties. His activism also ensured wide access to PREP,
Speaker 1: the drug that prevents the spread of HIV. In the eighties,
Speaker 1: he was the poster child of act Up, the political
Speaker 1: organization that pushed the government and society to slow the
Speaker 1: wave of queer death caused by AIDS. But he wasn't
Speaker 1: always out and proud. In fact, he didn't come out
Speaker 1: until he got his own HIV diagnosis, just as the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis was beginning to build. So why don't we
Speaker 1: start at the very beginning, When was the moment that
Speaker 1: you knew you were gay?
Speaker 2: I'd give most credit to uh Kirk and Spock of
Speaker 2: the original Star Trek moved right when I was hitting puberty,
Speaker 2: around I don't know, ten or eleven, I'd moved to
Speaker 2: the suburbs of Philadelphia. And with today's TV, it's it's
Speaker 2: almost hard to believe, but back then, there was no
Speaker 2: nudity and not a lot of opportunities. When there was
Speaker 2: just men's bodies, you know, just shirtless, and there was
Speaker 2: occasional shirtless scenes in Star Trek, and that was the
Speaker 2: show I loved, and I was like, why am I
Speaker 2: obsessed by these stirring spock especially Kirk. And then there
Speaker 2: was you know, a couple famous Zulu scenes, one particular
Speaker 2: where he becomes a swordsman, old school swordsman, shirtless, running
Speaker 2: through the ship, threatening people with his sword, and he
Speaker 2: was all hot and sweaty and crazy and ripped. So yeah,
Speaker 2: all those are kind of seared into my head. That
Speaker 2: was your gay awakening, that was my gay awakening. So
Speaker 2: I knew that I was attracted to men's bodies, not
Speaker 2: women's bodies. And even before that, I knew that that
Speaker 2: was wrong.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Just growing up school yard stuff, the F word was
Speaker 2: frequently used towards any kid that was not popular, But yeah,
Speaker 2: towards me. I was a bit of a loner and
Speaker 2: a music geek.
Speaker 1: What kind of music?
Speaker 2: I started studying classical piano as soon as I got
Speaker 2: to Philadelphia, like when I was nine, And when I
Speaker 2: was thirteen, my parents bought me a grand piano and
Speaker 2: I got a much better teacher, professor at the local college,
Speaker 2: and he became like a second father figure for me.
Speaker 1: I read that you went to Oberlin for college? Was
Speaker 1: that for classical piano?
Speaker 2: It was that's how I got in.
Speaker 1: And were you still in the closet? I was.
Speaker 2: I still hadn't had gay sex. So I get to Oberlin.
Speaker 2: I'm there for over a year, still living in the closet,
Speaker 2: still pretending to be straight. And my sophomore year, I
Speaker 2: see this flyer put out by the Gay and Lesbian Union,
Speaker 2: which was one of the earliest gay and lesbian student
Speaker 2: groups in the country, founded right after Stonewall. But it
Speaker 2: was all over campus, just a eight and a half
Speaker 2: by eleven sheet that said a night of gay and
Speaker 2: lesbian short films about us, about our lives. They had
Speaker 2: the list of films and one of them had a
Speaker 2: bunch of asterisks said noe X rated and it was
Speaker 2: I forget the name of it. It was like Alan
Speaker 2: and Paul or something. It was about two guys. It
Speaker 2: was going to be the short documentary about how how
Speaker 2: gay men have sex, and it said it was X rated,
Speaker 2: and I was like, hmm, I've actually not seen gay sex.
Speaker 2: I hadn't even dared to buy a magazine or anything,
Speaker 2: so I thought since it was a night of film,
Speaker 2: the theater would be dark. I could sneak in a
Speaker 2: little late, find a seat in the back. Nobody would
Speaker 2: know I was there. It's exactly what I did. And
Speaker 2: then we get to Alan and Paul or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You had to watch all the films first.
Speaker 2: Couple other little documentaries and it was the most hysterical
Speaker 2: thing ever. It was a bunch of queer old men
Speaker 2: in San Francisco who decided to make the director who
Speaker 2: decided to make this documentary for younger gays, to show
Speaker 2: them how gays hook up and have sex. And it
Speaker 2: was done like an animal documentary of how lying mate,
Speaker 2: oh wild in the wild, how the lions would scope
Speaker 2: each other out, you know, get to know each other first,
Speaker 2: touch noses then and with Attenborough's deep British voice going,
Speaker 2: and then they spotted each other across the field, and
Speaker 2: there was that vocal, not British but in a deep
Speaker 2: baritone over the entire thing. And it starts with a
Speaker 2: cocktail party and two guys spot each other from across
Speaker 2: the room and he describes the gay gaze, you know,
Speaker 2: they not looking at each other's eyes and then looking
Speaker 2: back and not looking away. And that's how you knew
Speaker 2: so you learn about that. And then they go up
Speaker 2: and they start chatting and they get friendly really fast,
Speaker 2: and then one of them says, let's go, and then
Speaker 2: it cuts to them going into a bedroom and meanwhile
Speaker 2: the guys sing and then they start the foreplay and
Speaker 2: you know, and they start kissing and unbuttoning each other's
Speaker 2: shirts and by the time they reached the first button,
Speaker 2: I have to cross my leg. I was just they
Speaker 2: were very hot men on the film, and I was
Speaker 2: just going crazy. I said, Okay, I am going to
Speaker 2: do this. I've been wondering for a decade since I
Speaker 2: was a little boy, and this is nuts. I am
Speaker 2: going to do this somewhere somehow, and I don't want
Speaker 2: anybody to find out. I still want to keep my secret.
Speaker 2: But I am going to London in early January to
Speaker 2: check out the London School of Economics for a possible
Speaker 2: junior year abroad. My parents are going to let me
Speaker 2: go there by myself for a week, and nobody knows
Speaker 2: me in London. I'll be turning twenty while i'm there.
Speaker 2: So I land in London in the morning and I'm
Speaker 2: walking around and back then there was an active red
Speaker 2: light district in Soho, and right on the edges of
Speaker 2: the red Light district there was a gay porn shop.
Speaker 2: I was like, bullseye.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Six hours after landing, I'm in my first gay establishment.
Speaker 2: I'm alone in this square room with magazines and all
Speaker 2: the walls, and this thirty something old guy behind the register,
Speaker 2: the first homosexual I've ever met.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I look at the magazines and I work up
Speaker 2: the nerve to talk to him, and finally I say, Hi,
Speaker 2: I just got here from the States and wonder if
Speaker 2: you could help me with some advice. I think I'd
Speaker 2: like to go out dancing tonight. Do you have any suggestions?
Speaker 2: And oh, well, it depends on what you're looking for.
Speaker 2: You're looking for guys my age, you want guys your age.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, sheepishly going my age. And he said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you'll be wanting to go to Heaven. I'm like, oh
Speaker 2: my god.
Speaker 1: They had Heaven the Wow. Okay, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: The largest gay dance club in Europe. When you walk in,
Speaker 2: it's like Heaven exactly. It's at my doorstep. He said,
Speaker 2: if you like, I was thinking of going tonight and
Speaker 2: we could meet at a pub at like eleven and
Speaker 2: then I could show you how to get there, and
Speaker 2: I thought that was so nice. I was, oh, that's
Speaker 2: so nice. And he's like, you know, he's like making
Speaker 2: his moves right right right. I'm clueless, so I said sure.
Speaker 2: So we met at the pub and he brings me.
Speaker 2: I walk into heaven. We're at this long coat check
Speaker 2: in my big puffy winter coat, and the bathrooms are
Speaker 2: on the other side of the coach check and all
Speaker 2: the stream of guys, shirtless, sweaty, beautiful young men were
Speaker 2: walking by to go to the bathroom and they were
Speaker 2: all checking me out. I was like the new meat
Speaker 2: in town. Wow. And it literally was like walking into
Speaker 2: actual heaven. I was like, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this these are my I found my tribe.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I found my tribe the first night. And I had
Speaker 2: like multiple opportunities to choose from within two hours, but
Speaker 2: believe it or not, I decided to be a gentleman
Speaker 2: and go home with the guy that brought me.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: He could tell it was my first time, and he
Speaker 2: asked me how old I was and I said, well,
Speaker 2: what time is it. He said it's one thirty years
Speaker 2: said I just turned twenty.
Speaker 1: Wow, so that was your first sort of gay experience.
Speaker 2: January ninth, nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: Wow. Not long after that is when the New York
Speaker 1: Times article comes out about AIDS. To tell me about
Speaker 1: your first time learning about that, because it sounds like
Speaker 1: it was right as you were sort of coming of
Speaker 1: age and coming into your own well.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that article. I wasn't in New York.
Speaker 2: I went back to Oberlin. I don't think I heard
Speaker 2: about AIDS until a year later. In fact, that was
Speaker 2: mostly because the American press ignored it. The first nightly
Speaker 2: news story on age happened in eighty two, not eighty one,
Speaker 2: when the disease broke. I mean, imagine if that happened
Speaker 2: with something like COVID. I mean so, I think it
Speaker 2: was a year later, and it was just like like
Speaker 2: a general newscast. It didn't really register. Nobody was talking
Speaker 2: about it on campus. I didn't have any conversations about it,
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until early eighty three. Then I get
Speaker 2: to New York. I had given up piano and decided
Speaker 2: I wanted to work on Wall Street for ten years
Speaker 2: and then run for Congress, and on the weekend start
Speaker 2: finding the gay bars and everything closeted bond trader on
Speaker 2: Wall Street during the day.
Speaker 1: Were you out to friends in New York?
Speaker 2: Only the guys I was meeting at the bars that
Speaker 2: summer in eighty three, at a gay bar with a
Speaker 2: guy about my age and I'm twenty two, who was
Speaker 2: also pretty closeted. He said, I hear, it's only really
Speaker 2: happening to the older gays who have sucked with like
Speaker 2: a thousand guys, which is not completely devoid of truth.
Speaker 2: Kind of the early deaths were the crowd in their
Speaker 2: thirties and forties who had been partying hard all through
Speaker 2: the seventies, and there was just zero condom use in
Speaker 2: eighty three. And I didn't pick up the gay newspaper,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know any of the politics, nothing, and
Speaker 2: stayed oblivious to all of it.
Speaker 1: When was the moment that it became real for you
Speaker 1: my diagnosis tell me about that.
Speaker 2: It was two years later. I had had this wonderful,
Speaker 2: really fabulous two week tourd affair with a guy my age,
Speaker 2: a bartender that had kind of come to a natural finish,
Speaker 2: and I obviously had some STD I didn't understand and
Speaker 2: know what to do with, and so I asked one
Speaker 2: of my gay mentors, one of the older gay men.
Speaker 2: Do you know of any gay doctors in New York?
Speaker 2: And his doctor was Dan william And unbeknownst to me,
Speaker 2: he was one of the frontline AIDS doctors in New
Speaker 2: York because he was a gay doctor who had a
Speaker 2: huge practice of gay men. He was on the front lines.
Speaker 2: And so I went in to see him and I
Speaker 2: had the STD taken care of. But then I get
Speaker 2: this cold and I go in to see him about
Speaker 2: this cough. And by that point he had been losing
Speaker 2: so many patients. I didn't know this, And I go
Speaker 2: in there and he had gotten into the practice of
Speaker 2: any of his gay patients coming in for anything, he
Speaker 2: would do a standard CBC complete blood account, and he
Speaker 2: had this trick because if it showed a low white
Speaker 2: blood cell count, it was a tip to him that
Speaker 2: this might be yet another patient of his that had HIV.
Speaker 2: So it was just a cold that brought me in.
Speaker 2: But the CBC had a low white blood count. And
Speaker 2: on November fifteenth, nineteen eighty five, I got called at
Speaker 2: my trading desk by the nurse in my doctor's office
Speaker 2: at work and he's like, we need you back for
Speaker 2: more blood. Work, and I said, what is it? He said,
Speaker 2: a low white bud cell count. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: what could that be? What might that mean? He said, ah,
Speaker 2: he'll talk to you about that. And I'm really you know,
Speaker 2: I'm on my trading desk. I'm pushy as all hell.
Speaker 2: I'm an aggressive bond trader, right and I'm like, na,
Speaker 2: you can tell me what might mean. I really pushed him,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, we do see that a lot
Speaker 2: in our patients with HIV. And in a flash, all
Speaker 2: the denial and ignorance and youth and innocence just emptied
Speaker 2: out of me. And I knew It's like duh, I
Speaker 2: was this young gay guy fucking in New York, which
Speaker 2: is ground zero for this AIDS crisis. I've been hearing
Speaker 2: about and thinking I'm immune, so you.
Speaker 1: Go in and get the additional tests. What was the
Speaker 1: moment of diagnosis?
Speaker 2: Like, well, I knew right then it was that. And
Speaker 2: the country was in a total panic about AIDS. There
Speaker 2: was lots of AIDS all over the news stand but
Speaker 2: in the worst scariest possible way, America was in this
Speaker 2: a Bola like panic. Parents were pulling kids out of
Speaker 2: school if there were rumors about other kids. Shit like that.
Speaker 2: A family with hemophiliac boys was burnt out of their
Speaker 2: home in Florida. All of this was happening when I
Speaker 2: get this news, and I was actually I had a
Speaker 2: guy I had met in Amsterdam was staying with me
Speaker 2: and I was taking him to Disney World that weekend. Wow,
Speaker 2: he even knew less than I did. And we had
Speaker 2: to La Guardia. I scoured the news stand for anything
Speaker 2: about HB and there was one science magazine that had
Speaker 2: a cover story on everything that was known about the
Speaker 2: disease from a scientific standpoint, written in layman terms, and
Speaker 2: I snatched that up and read it on the plane
Speaker 2: about three times. And when we got to our hotel
Speaker 2: outside Disney World, I broke down and just started sobbing.
Speaker 2: And the guy who was dating was also named Peter,
Speaker 2: and he was so scared for me. He didn't know
Speaker 2: what was going on or how to come for me.
Speaker 2: And I said, it's part of me, it's genetically integrated.
Speaker 2: I'm fucked.
Speaker 1: Peter had just learned that he was living with HIV.
Speaker 1: By the end of that year, nineteen eighty five, there
Speaker 1: would be nearly sixteen thousand Americans dead In nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: a man named Larry Kramer founded a group called act UP.
Speaker 1: It stood for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Made
Speaker 1: up of mostly people in their twenties, their goal was
Speaker 1: to bulldoze any barrier in the way of ending the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis, insurance companies, big pharma, and the government itself.
Speaker 1: Act UP members became experts on infectious disease and masters
Speaker 1: of drug policy. They staged dramatic protests that would catch
Speaker 1: the media as a time tension and direct public pressure
Speaker 1: toward their targets. Peter was on the Treatment and Data Committee.
Speaker 1: Their goal was to accelerate treatment for HIV and to
Speaker 1: stop the death But Peter didn't hear about act UP
Speaker 1: until he got to work one day on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Tell us how you ended up getting involved with act UP.
Speaker 1: You are one of the most prominent members of act UP,
Speaker 1: But how did you get involved with actub?
Speaker 2: Well, on my way to work in March of eighty seven,
Speaker 2: you're still a I'm still trading bond Wall Street. I
Speaker 2: got handed a flyer on my way to work. It
Speaker 2: was the very first act UP demonstration. I didn't see
Speaker 2: the demo because I was at my trading desk.
Speaker 1: This is the Wall Street demonstration.
Speaker 2: Yeap Wall Street one we call it. And I was
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, wow, uh. And there was a
Speaker 2: discussion on the trading floor that was very painful to hear.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the Well, the head trader.
Speaker 2: Who was one of my mentors at work, he said, well,
Speaker 2: if you ask me, they all deserve to die because
Speaker 2: they took it up the butt. I just died inside
Speaker 2: hearing that. But when I got home that night, I
Speaker 2: turned on the national news and there was the demo
Speaker 2: on the National news.
Speaker 1: You hadn't taken part in the no I did even.
Speaker 2: See it, and I had the flyer in my hand,
Speaker 2: but they looked so determined. And the FDA Commissioner went
Speaker 2: on TV and he had some snippets of response saying
Speaker 2: that they were going to tweak some regulations here or there.
Speaker 2: Already they were getting a national response. And I said,
Speaker 2: this is this is hope. This is the only hope
Speaker 2: I've seen. And I got to the very next meeting
Speaker 2: and I never missed a meeting after that.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, what was the problem that you were trying
Speaker 1: to solve with Act of.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the primary things from day one for
Speaker 2: Larry Kramer and many in the room was and I
Speaker 2: think it was the right thing to make the top focus.
Speaker 2: There was so much to work on with AIDS. There
Speaker 2: was housing issues, et cetera. But certainly, if we didn't
Speaker 2: figure out how to stop the relentless tide of death,
Speaker 2: if we didn't work on the research side of it,
Speaker 2: on trying to find some therapies that would buy us
Speaker 2: some time or even a cure, getting that going in
Speaker 2: a major way as it should have happened in eighty
Speaker 2: one was job number one, and it's what I focused
Speaker 2: on for sure. There was a group called the Treatment
Speaker 2: and Data Committee that focused on it like a laser light,
Speaker 2: and I joined them pretty early on.
Speaker 1: So ACTUP is really famous for all of these traumatic
Speaker 1: attention grabbing demonstrations, and you all had targeted the Food
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration, different pharmaceutical companies. One of the demonstrations
Speaker 1: was at the Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1: Tell me why you all chose the Stock Exchange and
Speaker 1: the story behind that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I finally left Wall Street, went on disability, came
Speaker 2: out publicly, became one of the spokespersons for the movement,
Speaker 2: started doing lots of national TV and as soon as
Speaker 2: I did that, the thing I was dying to do
Speaker 2: was design actions and carry them out. I loved the
Speaker 2: mission impossible. I just love pulling off the impossible. And
Speaker 2: T and D would give me the ideas of the targets.
Speaker 2: The Treatment and Data Committee and we had been following
Speaker 2: act since its launch, which happened the same month ACT
Speaker 2: UP was born. Turns out one drug is not enough
Speaker 2: to fight HIV, so it would add a few months
Speaker 2: if you were near the end to your life, but
Speaker 2: then it would stop working because the virus would mutt
Speaker 2: around it. But the company burrows welcome.
Speaker 1: The pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 2: Pharmaceutical company, they slapped this obscene price. It seems it
Speaker 2: seems low today, seems cheap, but at that time it
Speaker 2: was the highest price of any drug in history, ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year. The country was shocked at the price.
Speaker 2: Even some government officials were like, this is that's shocking, And.
Speaker 1: For contexts, this is the only viable drug market drug
Speaker 1: right that's treating AIDS.
Speaker 2: So there was so much pressure that first year that
Speaker 2: the company eventually they lowered the price. By the end
Speaker 2: of that first year twenty percent, down to eight thousand
Speaker 2: and then the precursor to Act UP San Francisco was like,
Speaker 2: that's not enough, and they staged a demonstration at a
Speaker 2: Burrow's welcome warehouse in January of eighty eight. That blew
Speaker 2: my socks off. I was like, Yeah, that's what you do.
Speaker 2: You say that's not enough, and you hit them harder.
Speaker 2: In September of eighty nine, we decide to do a
Speaker 2: huge demonstration on Wall Street in front of the Stock Exchange.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, hmm, nobody's actually gotten onto the floor
Speaker 2: of the Stock Exchange. So I made that my mission impossible,
Speaker 2: and within a few weeks we figured it out how
Speaker 2: to get in, how to bypass security.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you figure that out?
Speaker 2: You know? The great thing about age activism is that
Speaker 2: it was a queer movement, queer based, and that gives
Speaker 2: you the largest spy network in the world.
Speaker 1: You mean to say, there's a gay person.
Speaker 2: We are everywhere. Wow, we are everywhere. There are tons
Speaker 2: of us in the White House, and there are endless
Speaker 2: numbers of us on Capitol Hill, in the military, on
Speaker 2: the Stock Exchange. I was a bond trader, you know,
Speaker 2: we are everywhere. And there was an Act UP member
Speaker 2: that worked not the stock floor trading floor, but there
Speaker 2: were commodities floors next to it. He worked on one
Speaker 2: of the commodity's floors and he was my spy. He
Speaker 2: told me about where all the entrances were. I told
Speaker 2: him to start taking all of the entrances to work
Speaker 2: to figure out which looked the least secure. And it
Speaker 2: turns out there was one right below the famous arches.
Speaker 2: There was an entrance right under there. That's just a
Speaker 2: few steps down, one security guard, no metal detector, and
Speaker 2: two steps up and you're on the floor stock Wow.
Speaker 1: So how like a trader? Wow?
Speaker 2: So he scoped it out. My boyfriend at the time
Speaker 2: was a videographer. We acted like tourists. During lunch break,
Speaker 2: we filmed all the traders that were smoking outside, and
Speaker 2: then he zoomed in on their badges, and then we
Speaker 2: had one of our artists do a mock up, and
Speaker 2: we took that to the shops, their countless shops in
Speaker 2: New York where you get fake id's made, and we
Speaker 2: showed them this thick, hard white plastic with black lettering
Speaker 2: that was grooved dug into the plastic, and we made
Speaker 2: up fake names and fake numbers, and we had them
Speaker 2: all made up and we looked like traders. And their
Speaker 2: security had just was haphazard. They had photo IDs, but
Speaker 2: they didn't have to show them to get in, and
Speaker 2: there were no electronic turnstiles at this point anywhere in
Speaker 2: New York that came in the nineties. Yeah, we got lucky.
Speaker 1: So you guys go in. Their security sucked. You guys
Speaker 1: go in and tell me how the demonstration worked.
Speaker 2: Well. We discovered an old antique balcony and nobody was
Speaker 2: up there. It was just this old VIP visitors gallery,
Speaker 2: but it was over the trading floor. It was perfect
Speaker 2: and there was nothing blocking you from walking up the steps.
Speaker 2: And we came loaded up. We wore suits, we had
Speaker 2: stuff strapped to our bellies, everything we needed for the action,
Speaker 2: and we timed it for the opening bell. We walked
Speaker 2: in with the smokers who were who were getting their
Speaker 2: last cigarette before the nine point thirty bell. We followed
Speaker 2: them so there was a rush, so the security guard
Speaker 2: would be overwhelmed looking at everybody walking through, just passing quickly.
Speaker 2: And we look the part and he let us on
Speaker 2: and nine to twenty five we walk up the balcony.
Speaker 2: We kneeled down so that we're below the banister and
Speaker 2: can't be seen when we're up there. We stay down there.
Speaker 2: We unpack everything, including a big long chain which we
Speaker 2: chained to the banister in a loop. We pull out handcuffs.
Speaker 2: We handcuffs ourselves to do the chain, to make it
Speaker 2: a little harder to get us out of there. I
Speaker 2: have had a huge banner strapped to my belly, a
Speaker 2: big black banner that we unfurled that said sell Welcome, Burrows, Welcome.
Speaker 2: And I look at my watch, which is timed perfectly
Speaker 2: to the real time. Two of us stay on the floor.
Speaker 2: They have hidden cameras in their pockets, and their job was,
Speaker 2: once the demo was going full hog and the traders
Speaker 2: were all looking up at us, they would pull the
Speaker 2: cameras out of their pockets, put them up to their
Speaker 2: chest high or so, point it towards us, and take
Speaker 2: a couple of pictures, put it back in their pocket,
Speaker 2: walk off the floor. And we had a runner outside
Speaker 2: who already had notified associated press that we were up
Speaker 2: to something. And at nine twenty nine and fifty five seconds,
Speaker 2: I say go and we stand up. We unfurl the banner,
Speaker 2: and we each have a pocket sized marine foghorn, which
Speaker 2: says on the side of it, do not hold close
Speaker 2: to your ears because in danger, you'll break an ear drum.
Speaker 2: These things are fucking loud, and we all raised our
Speaker 2: hands and boom. Nobody heard the opening bell was this
Speaker 2: piercing scream. It felt like time was standing still. Everything stopped.
Speaker 2: Every The traders like, what what the fuck is this?
Speaker 2: They're like confused, and they look up. They see us,
Speaker 2: They see the banner sell welcome. They knew about the demo.
Speaker 2: They get the memo internally saying there's a demonstration outside tomorrow,
Speaker 2: be careful, so they knew there was an aide demo.
Speaker 2: And then they're putting two and two together. Those fuckers
Speaker 2: got inside. They're in our sanctum. The fagots got in
Speaker 2: and they went ballistic. They were frothing. You know, I'd
Speaker 2: worked with these guys. I was smiling from ear to
Speaker 2: ear because I knew we had pulled it off and
Speaker 2: at their anger and their homophobia and their hate was
Speaker 2: going to turn to our benefit. And the AP developed
Speaker 2: the cameras for us, and the picture that I wanted
Speaker 2: was out on the AP wires before we were even
Speaker 2: sent to jail. That day, we were going to be
Speaker 2: on the front of the New York Times, in the
Speaker 2: front of the Wall Street Journal the next day, and
Speaker 2: that their anger was also going to be part of
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 1: What was the result of that demonstration?
Speaker 2: The company lowered the price again. Wow three days later,
Speaker 2: Wow boom. And it never gets better than that. It
Speaker 2: never feels better that it were. Activism rarely works that fast.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Peter, you're achieving all these victories with
Speaker 1: act UP and this is one of them. But around
Speaker 1: this time, aid's deaths also keep increasing here over year,
Speaker 1: And I wonder if you have a story that kind
Speaker 1: of epitomizes what it was like to sort of be
Speaker 1: in between that. On the one hand, you're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of success with the demonstrations, but on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the numbers that you all want to get lower keep
Speaker 1: getting higher.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It got hard. I mean, we obviously
Speaker 2: we became within a year of our existence, we became
Speaker 2: the movement to jour Every American had heard of act
Speaker 2: UP by nineteen eighty nine. Let's say, we were on
Speaker 2: the national news constantly after that, and we were scoring
Speaker 2: lots of victories of the FDA. You know, we got
Speaker 2: pretty much everything out of the FDA after our first
Speaker 2: big national demonstration. Within nine months we got almost everything
Speaker 2: out of them, and pharmaceutical companies started doing what we
Speaker 2: asked them, and so all these victories, but the ultimate
Speaker 2: goal was just getting worse. So we were winning battles
Speaker 2: and losing the war, and it was brutal emotionally. Plus
Speaker 2: our lives were getting filled with more and more memorials.
Speaker 2: We were losing members. You know, every Monday night meeting
Speaker 2: at the Center would start with an announcement of who
Speaker 2: had died in a moment of silence, quick moment, and
Speaker 2: then we'd move on. I think I think it really
Speaker 2: hit me, particularly at Vito Russo's memorial. Vito Russo was
Speaker 2: one of actup's greatest and definitely our best public speaker
Speaker 2: by a mile, and just widely beloved, one of these
Speaker 2: selfless activists who was just an amazing person, and we
Speaker 2: all watched them get sick. He got KPOSI sarcoma and
Speaker 2: he died in late nineteen ninety and had a huge
Speaker 2: memorial that was at the Cooper Union Hall in the
Speaker 2: East Village, packed to the hilt, and Larry Kramer was
Speaker 2: one of the eulogies an infamous eulogy. He's widely hated
Speaker 2: for it by many of the activists that I'm friends with.
Speaker 2: He stood up and he thundered, we killed Vito Russo,
Speaker 2: and he ripped us to shreds us, the activists for
Speaker 2: not having fought hard enough. And while many in the
Speaker 2: room were just livid at what he was saying, for
Speaker 2: some reason, you know, Larry was like a father figure
Speaker 2: to me, and he just hit a nerve and I
Speaker 2: just broke down sobbing. It was hard, you know, the
Speaker 2: kind of the death beginning to tear us apart, and
Speaker 2: then we really were started attacking each other. In the
Speaker 2: months and years after that, at.
Speaker 1: The peak of the AIDS crisis, act UP was clocking
Speaker 1: serious victories. They had pressured drug companies to lower their
Speaker 1: prices on drugs like AZT. They had also pushed the
Speaker 1: FDA to speed up approval of potential life saving drugs. But,
Speaker 1: as Peter says, while they were winning battles, they were
Speaker 1: losing the war. AIDS debts were still increasing year over year.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, Peter broke away from act UP
Speaker 1: with his other committee members to form a nonprofit called TAG,
Speaker 1: the Treatment Action Group TAG members worked with government scientists,
Speaker 1: drug company researchers, and FDA officials to speed up the
Speaker 1: development of new HIV therapies. The group also produced a
Speaker 1: policy report that influenced the government to increase their AIDS funding.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, President Clinton appointed Peter to the
Speaker 1: National Task Force on AIDS Drug Development, and in ninety
Speaker 1: five a breakthrough happened. Peter, it's the mid nineties now,
Speaker 1: and you've gotten very involved with the scientific community, and
Speaker 1: a lot of your activism has involved bringing them in.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what was it like when you first heard
Speaker 1: about this new regimen that was coming out.
Speaker 2: Act UP tears stuff apart to the bulk of T
Speaker 2: and D splits off in January ninety two in to
Speaker 2: TAG the Truman Action Group. We start working very very
Speaker 2: closely with segments of the scientific establishment in partnership to
Speaker 2: get things, to grease the wheels, and to speed things up.
Speaker 2: Act UP had already done the bulk of the work
Speaker 2: by guilting the country to do something and by loosing
Speaker 2: the federal purse strings for EIGHTS research. We were getting
Speaker 2: over a billion dollars a year. We had money to burn,
Speaker 2: and we just had to spend it wisely and do
Speaker 2: the right research, and Tag was intimately involved with the
Speaker 2: development of this new class of antivirals called protease inhibitors.
Speaker 2: And then many of us were in the room when
Speaker 2: the results got released. We had been through so many
Speaker 2: moments of dashtope, so many moments that it was it
Speaker 2: was very hard to believe. But we also at that
Speaker 2: point were very adept at the science and this was
Speaker 2: rock solid stuff we were hearing. The studies were good
Speaker 2: and the data was just astounding. So it was it
Speaker 2: was surreal. And whenever we went to an AIDS conference overseas,
Speaker 2: we would add a vacation at the end of it,
Speaker 2: you know, to blow off steam. And I was with
Speaker 2: David Barr and Mark Carrington and Gregan's Alvus and we
Speaker 2: all went to Vancouver Island and chilled out for a
Speaker 2: few days smoking weed with David on the beach on
Speaker 2: Vancouver Island after the Vancouver AIDS conference and I'm like,
Speaker 2: so we're going to live wow? Yeah, And He's like,
Speaker 2: I guess. So it just didn't It was so hard
Speaker 2: to wrap our head around. But within weeks we all
Speaker 2: went on the regimen that have been on the slides,
Speaker 2: and a month after that, all of us saw our
Speaker 2: viral loads go from the tens of thousands or hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands to undetectable, which doesn't mean it's gone. We
Speaker 2: knew that it wasn't a cure, but undetectable meant you
Speaker 2: might live in a natural lifespan, and it was just
Speaker 2: it was hard to wrap our heads around it.
Speaker 1: Do you think that in our lifetime we'll see a
Speaker 1: cure for this?
Speaker 2: I'm convinced we will during my lifetime, and I'm much
Speaker 2: older than you, I'm sixty three. Now. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of cure research happening now since the theory was proven
Speaker 2: that you could with a few cases of people that
Speaker 2: have gone through very dangerous bone marrow transplants and been cured.
Speaker 2: But bone marrow transplants obviously are not a practical cure
Speaker 2: for most of us. But there's a possibility that gene
Speaker 2: therapy might save us. And in fact, we just had
Speaker 2: the first clinical trial, phase one clinical trial in a
Speaker 2: handful of people with HIV doing a gene therapy that
Speaker 2: had the potential to cure them theoretically. Sadly, it did
Speaker 2: not work out as easily as we had hoped, but
Speaker 2: that door has been opened, and I think we'll get there,
Speaker 2: So I think I'm gonna see it.
Speaker 1: What do you think that day will be like for you?
Speaker 2: Oh? My god, amazing. There's a scene at the end
Speaker 2: of Longtime Companion, a beautiful tear jerker AIDS film, where
Speaker 2: they ending in like a dreamlike sequence when Aids is
Speaker 2: cured and it's all on fire island speech and all
Speaker 2: the characters who have died during the film they're all
Speaker 2: back and everybody's hugging each other. I think there'll be
Speaker 2: a lot of remembering of those we lost.
Speaker 1: You know, this show is about history, but it's really
Speaker 1: about different generations of queer people talking to each other.
Speaker 1: What do you want all the young people to know
Speaker 1: about all of those years that you fought so hard
Speaker 1: for us to be able to live lives that are
Speaker 1: so different. What do you want us to know?
Speaker 2: Well, these are different times. These are even harder times
Speaker 2: than when an act up was around. It's harder to
Speaker 2: change things today. But you can write the next chapters
Speaker 2: and just look at the video of us and to
Speaker 2: see that, you know, we we were your age and
Speaker 2: we pulled it off and you can too, And you're
Speaker 2: part of that history. You know. When I got into
Speaker 2: act up by, I didn't know any of my queer
Speaker 2: history before that, and I was oblivious, and somebody told
Speaker 2: me I should sit down and watch a documentary called
Speaker 2: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. I sat down
Speaker 2: and watched that had three or four gargantuan cries watching it.
Speaker 2: It's a stunning documentary. I'm part of an amazing community,
Speaker 2: just amazing history, and we can do that.
Speaker 1: What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolvus. New
Speaker 1: episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
Speaker 1: to tell your story, email us at Buttweloved at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com, or send us a message on Instagram or
Speaker 1: TikTok at but we Loved. We are a production of
Speaker 1: The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved
Speaker 1: was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshena Ozaki,
Speaker 1: Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey pat Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Me and Maya Howard. Original music by Steve Boone.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Rokel Willis. If you
Speaker 1: loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.