WEBVTT - Part One: ACT UP: How Angry, Dying Queers Invented Modern Activism 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.280 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:06.760 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:09.959 a weekly reminder that when there's bad things, there's people 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:13.840 fighting bad things, and one of the people who fights 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:20.160 bad things is my guest, Francesco Quarantine Post of Situation Room. 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:20.759 How are you. 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:22.000 I'm okay. 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.200 I feel like I have a cape on now, I'm 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.360 I'm all right. I am yeah, I'm sort of girding 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:30.440 my loins for the future bad things we have to fight, 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.320 but excited to talk about the bad things we fought 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:36.400 in the past with you, because maybe that's what we 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:42.400 need to, like, you know, just fuel this anti fascist 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:44.600 movement that we all, whether we know it or not, 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:45.120 are part of. 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:49.600 Yeah, we're kind of caught in it regardless. 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.080 Of our desires. Sorry, you're in it now. 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:53.920 No, it's okay, and actually that's a really Oh wait 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:58.760 before I get into using your natural transition into our topic. Instead, 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:02.920 I'm gonna talk about our producer, Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi, 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:06.760 and our audio engineer, danel Hi. 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:08.400 Danel Hey, danel. 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.840 Everyone's to say high danel Hi danel Our theme music 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:18.679 is written for us by Unwoman. So this week's topic 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:24.199 isn't happy, but it is pretty victorious compared to most 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.720 of what we talk about, and I also think it 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:30.920 has a lot of lessons for where we are at 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.800 right now in a very specific way that I will 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.319 try not to get too heavy handed with throughout the script, 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.760 because this week we're going to talk about one of 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.560 the most important activist groups in US history, one of 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.400 the most impactful, memorable, and successful movements I've ever studied. 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:53.080 And even when I heard about them, their successes were 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:55.480 like sort of downplayed. They were like, oh, they were great, 0:01:55.680 --> 0:02:00.400 little scrappy little group. But the more I read about them, 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:03.600 the more I realized that they kind of invented everything 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:06.400 about modern activism and ran across a lot of our 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:09.680 problems and found solutions for a lot of them. Because 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:14.239 this week we are talking about a little group called 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:20.320 the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as act UP. 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:23.280 I knew, I knew, I knew it, and I knew it. 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.640 I was like, wait, wait, wait, this is so fucking 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.640 act UP, which is great because maybe I am like 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.920 some listeners because I know in a little bit, but 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:33.840 I don't know a lot. 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:35.040 And I'm very. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:38.519 Excited because there's just a million books I should have 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:40.320 read and I haven't done that, and I'm sorry. 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.280 There are a million books about this topic and some 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:47.320 of them disagree with each other, and I haven't read 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:49.200 them all. And I was actually thinking about it. I 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:51.640 was like, it would be really easy to do a 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:54.519 twelve part or whatever on act UP, and I'm only 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:58.520 doing a two parter, and so I'm kind of I'm 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:00.960 going to tell the big and I'm going to tell 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.960 some of the details, but there's so many more details 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.080 that anyone listening to this should feel free to go 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:09.080 and learn about, because they're like big details. They're like 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.320 entire movements and entire cities that did entire successful campaigns. 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:16.280 When we get to understand act UP, we get to 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.760 understand something that runs counter to the narrative that people 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:22.480 tell about the AIDS crisis. I had always been presented 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:25.120 with his image of the gay male community, which is 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:28.240 the community most directly affected by the crisis in the US, 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:32.720 or one of the most directly affected communities. It was 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.200 not composed of helpless victims. And that's I'd always been 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:40.840 presented the sort of like angelic, dying old white man 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:45.840 as the like you know, icon of Tom Cruise. 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.000 I mean Tom cruise, Tom Cruise in Philadelphia. He wishes 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:51.960 Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:53.240 I haven't seen that. 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:55.600 What that actually so good? 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.880 Usually I do know something that's old enough to be this. 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.040 Yeah that re friends h huh yeah. Tom Crass couldn't have 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:06.280 played that role. He couldn't have. I mean, I don't know. 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:08.840 I have this weird soft spot for that scientologist. But 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:14.040 Tom Hanks at least his acting. Also the fact that 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:18.880 he's probably trapped. But yeah, the uh yeah, the idea 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.920 of this like middle class even like the Angels in 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.400 America characters kind of like middle class gay white gay 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:31.800 guy who is like, yeah, is the perfect victim for 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:34.080 this disease. 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:36.680 Right, Which is funny because I still like progress from 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:38.680 what came before that, which we'll talk about, which was 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:41.640 like you know, ah, these horrible degenerates got what was 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:47.480 coming to them, right, Yeah, But they were not helpless victims. 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.320 The veterans have act up talk about it like it 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:54.640 was a war, and it it was. They fought and 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.960 an awful lot of them died, Just a ton of 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:01.920 them died. But the writer Liz Heillyman put it simply, 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.320 in the US AIDS initially struck gay men a relatively 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:12.360 cohesive community that had considerable experience in political organizing. Act 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:15.400 UP wasn't like some outside force that came in and 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:18.240 saved people. And it wasn't like one gay man suddenly 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:20.680 had an idea and birthed a whole new form of activism. 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:23.280 Act UP. And this is one of the things that's 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.159 so interesting to me about it. It is directly part 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:28.960 of a lineage of decades of struggle for gay liberation 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.880 in the US. It brought together experienced organizers from all 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:37.800 sorts of movements and they put together a messy, imperfect, critiquable, 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:42.359 astounding movement that fundamentally shifted the conversation about HIV and AIDS. 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.839 It is a movement that saved countless lives, like easily 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.200 in the tens of millions. I don't know if I've 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.719 covered a movement that I can so directly say like 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.039 these five thousand people saved twenty million lives. But that 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:01.000 is a thing you can say say about act UP. 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:06.480 And they let other people's lives end in dignified ways. 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.600 They also land the groundwork for activism for decades to come. 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.039 And to be honest, I think we're at risk of 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:16.120 losing that connection in lineage, and that's part of why 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.680 I'm so excited to talk about them today. I'm kind 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:22.840 of curious. The first time I heard about Act Up. 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:25.479 It was a late nineties I was sixteen, and I 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.400 started taking art lessons from this like goth artist and 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.080 musician who became my mentor, This guy named Stephen Archer. 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.000 He's not related to this story, but he's the first 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:35.960 person I saw an act Up thing on and I 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:39.120 never shout him out, and he's a cool guy. He 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.080 had been part of the DC punk and goth scene 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.680 in the eighties and so on his leather jacket he 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:47.120 had a black pin with a pink triangle and words 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:51.000 in white that said Silence equals death, and this like 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:56.679 blew my suburban goth kid mind. I had no idea 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:01.000 what I was looking at, you know, and he explained 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:02.919 it to me, and it's such an iconic image and 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:08.040 a statement that it it stuck with me. Act Up 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:10.880 was really good at branding. That's one thing you can 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:16.280 say about them. Yeah, how did you first hear about 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.280 Act Up? When? Was how did that so? 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.760 When I was involved in the like anti Iraq war 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.720 movements and the global justice movements in New York City. 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.440 There were some like old heads. 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:31.400 And they weren't old like Vietnam War old heads, but 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:35.480 like the gen X old heads, right, so they're just 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:39.160 like a one generation younger again, like those who are 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:42.080 really active. And I am forgetting his name, but like 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:44.080 when you said Steve, I was like, maybe mine's a 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.880 Steve too. But yeah, this guy who was involved, I 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:52.400 think in United for Peace Injustice, who also wore the 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.160 like act up pins and you just see it around 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:58.640 New York as like this was once a battleground in 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:04.320 this fight and occasionally would be referenced as Yes, just 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:07.840 something that was like those who were organizing against their 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.280 very like for their very own lives because their friends 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:15.680 were dying every single week. And it's like just that 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:21.440 the enormity and the the like urgency of that moment. 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:23.760 I don't know if it can be restated. I mean, 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:25.800 I think we're seeing a version of that now with 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:30.000 the Palasaitian diaspora, people who are fighting against the genocide there. 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:33.640 But it is it is pretty amazing that there was 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.559 an entire people that you know, the American public was 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:38.400 trying to sweep under the rug. 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:44.120 Yeah, and just really rose to the occasion, you know, 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:48.280 this like monumental horror that they were facing and like 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:51.680 rose up to fight it, and. 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.960 The idea that it would was falling on like like 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:59.240 silent voices, you know, and and being men being met 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.240 with nothing just like either yes, you deserve it or 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.640 I think that actually is was from what I've read 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.559 and heard, the scariest part of the AIDS epidemic, in 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:12.080 the HIV epidemic was like pretending like it wasn't happening, 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:14.679 and that I think is what a lot of the 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:16.000 activists were fighting against. 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:18.600 Yeah. Absolutely, we're gonna talk about some of the specific 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:24.200 ways they did it. First, I want to draw historical 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.280 lineage through lines that I was surprised to find, but 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:29.640 I was really excited to find because I really like 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.760 remembering that we are part of a direct lineage where 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:35.640 you can say, oh, this person knew this person, knew 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.720 this person knew this person going back a long ass time. 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:42.200 I'm going to draw this back to the Spanish Civil War, 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:46.000 because why not after the fall of the Spanish Republic 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:50.920 to Franco's fascism, anarchists and other like republic people minded 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:54.000 people fled en mass and a whole bunch of these 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:56.360 anarchists ended up in New York City, where they hung 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.320 out with a bunch of theater kids and poets and 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:00.880 theory nerds and eventually hippies and eventually punks. 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:02.839 Fuck yeah, I love this. 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.480 I didn't know there was a lineage between people that 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:07.720 went to go fight in the Spanish Civil War and 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:08.800 the punk scene in New. 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:12.520 York, so that one's easy to draw. Oddly, interestingly, we 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:14.480 talked about it. There's this group called Up Against the 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.440 Wall Motherfuckers that was a late sixties movement in the 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.800 Lower East Side that was like white and Puerto Rican. 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:24.479 They were hippies, but they wore all black and motorcycle 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:26.920 jackets and were a gang. They were punks, and then 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:29.160 they liked pretty directly like when the punks came around. 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:31.320 I think there was like a lot of crossover and 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:33.240 they were like fighting cops and throwing down with the 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:35.240 black panthers and made it the whole thing about them. 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.200 But the guy who started at ben Mooream, he was 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:43.840 in these like book clubs with veterans from the Spanish 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:50.880 Civil War, And interestingly enough, these people who fled the 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:55.080 Spanish Civil War in terms of how they've influenced later activism. 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:59.400 The export that really spread the furthest wasn't anarchism the 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.600 political theory. It was a bunch of the organizing models 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.520 that they had developed in that battleground. For the past 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.800 few generations, especially the past few decades, mass movements across 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:15.000 the world have tended towards horizontal organizing and the promotion 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.480 of direct action as the way to get things done. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:25.000 And two ideas proliferated. One was the model of the 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.559 Affinity Group and the other was the model of the 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:28.400 spokes Council. 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:31.840 And I like, oh, this is bringing me back, Margaret. Yes, 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.040 spokes counsel of the Affinity Group. It's two thousand and four. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:39.880 Were organizing against the Republican National Convention. There's undercovers everywhere. 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:40.959 It's fucking great. 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:44.160 Yeah. I walked out of a mass arrest and none 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:45.840 of my friends wanted to get out of it. Like 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:47.520 I had a plan on how to get out of it. 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:49.320 You've told me this story. 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:51.480 Yeah, that's right, that's right. I have like one story 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.199 about the RNC and I tell it all the time 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:55.199 because you got caught, right, you got to rest at that. 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:57.240 Yeah, but I can't remember if we've decided that we 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.560 were arrested in the same spot. Did you hop over 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.360 and run through a graveyard? No defense. 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.040 I when the police were closing people near Washington Square Park, 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.000 they were like, they trapped in it. I think it 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.439 was the second day massarrests. On the first day, they 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:14.480 trapped everyone at the end of the block, and then 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.800 they started drawing the police line and squeezing people together. 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.080 And so I just walked past the police line while 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:23.760 they were drawing it and then stood on the sidewalk 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:25.880 and watched because I couldn't leave because there's still too 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.560 many police. Because like, one of my favorite lessons I've 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.360 ever learned is that while cops are in the process 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:35.160 of drawing a police line, their command is. Cops are 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.320 very simple machines. They can only follow one order at 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:40.800 a time, and the order is draw the police line, 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:43.720 not arrest people. So you can move past it while 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.160 they're drawing it. I've used I've gotten on mass arrests 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:47.679 three times using this trick. 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:52.600 Nope, but that would break the affinity group back to 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:54.760 what you were trying to explain. 0:12:54.880 --> 0:13:01.520 Right, well done behind Yeah, well, I was like, hey, 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:03.120 let's get out of here, and they were like no, 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:05.440 we're having too much fun. They're like, you know, the 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:07.839 bands playing, and I'm like, I'm getting out of here, 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:09.120 and you were just like bye. 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:09.960 Yeah. 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:12.080 And then I had survivor's guilt, and then I didn't 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:16.040 make a bunch of money in a lawsuit, but I 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.400 eventually lost from a different. 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.280 As I was thirteen thousand dollars as yeah, I bought 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:22.440 a new laptop with that. 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:23.520 Money and other things. 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.400 Obviously a lot of people like were like, I live 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:28.680 in Pittsburgh, I'm buying a whole ass house with my thirties. 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.000 Technically I know God anyway, so I didn't get to 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:36.160 buy a house. So infinity groups and spokes councils are 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.439 the building blocks of a lot of social movements. Or 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:42.280 affinity groups are the building blocks, and spokes councils are 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:45.560 the mortar that holds them together. An affinity group is 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:48.800 basically a group of like five to fifteen people that 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:53.560 shares affinity and common goals and strategies. And I would 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.360 say three to nine. Actually five to fifteen is what 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.719 people often say. My experience, I often see like three 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:03.160 to nine. But whatever. Spokes councils are decision making and 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:08.040 information sharing bodies where they someone from a group, such 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.320 as an affinity group, comes and speaks for that group, 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:14.319 and they are usually fairly directly speaking for that group 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:16.880 and can They're not there to express their own opinion, 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:18.760 They're there to represent the group. 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:23.680 It's a form of direct, directly democratic decision exactly. 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.440 Yeah. And these models infuse an awful lot of the 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.320 social movements of the era, I think, especially starting in 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.360 the seventies and eighties. If I were to map my 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.560 understanding the genealogy of social movements in the US, You've 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.560 got these sort of like proper movements fighting for civil 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.560 rights through approve channels in the fifties, which then moved 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.440 into nonviolent action in the early sixties, moving into more 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:49.960 big militant organizations in late sixties, which then, in response 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:54.000 to repression, moved underground and separated from mass organizing and 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:56.680 moved to clandestinity and like you know, blowing things up 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.120 and robbing people and stuff. In the early seventies, how 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:02.960 the weather underground and the Black Liberation Army grew out 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.600 of the Students for Democratic Society and the Black Panthers. 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:09.480 On some level, these are really broad strokes I'm drawling with, 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.240 And this all does come together because these things are 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.280 more related than people are like they're not. I mean, 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:19.720 every movement is separate, but they're also all tied together. 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:24.920 When these clandestine movements were hunted down, what was left 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:29.160 was really interesting and radical community organizing. All of these 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:34.680 hardened revolutionaries doing social work, setting up schools, building infrastructure, 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.560 doing the like less confrontational stuff that was still vital 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:46.080 to either social progress or revolution. And then slowly movements 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:48.720 grew back up again, and it was the movements growing 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:51.600 up at this point, the peace movement, the anti nuke movement, 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:55.400 the feminist movement, gay rights, food not bombs, civil rights, 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.560 social justice stuff, abortion, clinic defense, Earth First, and act 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:04.440 UP that took on this decentralized leaderless or leader full 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.840 depending on who you ask, character that has since defined 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:12.400 protests for so long. An act Up, I'm going to argue, 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.200 was kind of an early culmination of this model. It 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.120 brought together the veterans of all of these different movements 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.480 into one place and focused them on one major goal, 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:31.280 how to help stop the AIDS crisis when it comes 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.000 out of all kinds of movements, its most immediate legacy 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:36.200 was the gay liberation movement, which we've talked about in 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:38.240 the show before they get a whole week of it. 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:42.160 A while back, queer folks were decently well organized in 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.360 militant and they had been for about a decade at 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:48.680 this point when the AIDS crisis hits. Then in nineteen 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:52.680 eighty one, on June fifth, the CDC announced a strange phenomenon. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:55.720 A bunch of gay men in LA were getting types 0:16:55.760 --> 0:17:01.280 of pneumonia that are seen in immunocompromise people. It's sort 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:03.840 of cropping up among gay men in cities around the country. 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:07.600 Soon enough, by nineteen eighty two, they suspected it was 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.159 some kind of sexually transmitted infection that was behind this. 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:14.840 And the first name they gave it was grid gay 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:20.919 related immune deficiency or even more informally and more evilly, 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:21.920 gay cancer. 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:23.120 No. 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:27.880 Yeah, there were three other groups of pay related. 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.440 Like how unscientific do you have to know? What calls? 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:32.720 Ye it's gay related? 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:35.520 Yeah, I don't know. There's a bunch of gays. What 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:37.080 can you who's to. 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.560 Know there's a relation here? I'm not going to look 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:41.800 into it. Who's called gay related? 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:46.160 Yeah? There was three other groups of people that were 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:49.879 also immediately getting it. Hemophiliacs who needed like blood transfusions 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:55.679 and stuff ivy drug users, and Haitian immigrants. By August 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.880 nineteen eighty two, the CDC named it Acquired Immune deficiency syndrome, 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:05.040 or AIDS. And at the start, there were two theories 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.639 about what caused AIDS. And what's interesting is that, like 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:12.000 this gets like way political about some people were like 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:16.960 wildly mad at each other about what causes AIDS. Sure, 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:19.840 and I'm not going to get into the ins and 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:22.040 outs of the political parts of it because it is 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.440 messy and people that you don't expect would have opinions 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:29.639 that turned out to be incorrect. One of these two theories, 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.000 which will call the correct theory but they called the 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.600 new agent theory, was that there was a specific pathogen 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.200 causing AIDS. The second theory, which we'll call the nope 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:44.920 they were wrong, was the multi factoral theory, which was 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.640 basically the idea that there's like something that in semen 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:50.520 where if you get too much of it, it suppresses 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:54.280 your immune system. And this isn't as like wacky bunk 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.200 science as it immediately sounds. There was like people who 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:02.120 actually were affected by it and like had some reasons 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:05.640 to think about some stuff like we're developing this theory 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:09.159 and it was incorrect. 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.040 The too much gum theory, yeah, the too. 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:18.879 Much cum theory yeah, which is Yeah. They did a 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.520 lot of like work around, trying to work backwards to 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:23.480 be like, Okay. 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.560 Sometimes you can be too gay. We're trying to think of. 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:28.640 A way of less come involved. 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:29.320 Yeah yeah. 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:34.240 Yeah. So there's this new bad thing going around killing people, 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:40.080 and right away people are organizing. By May nineteen eighty three, 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:43.040 two men with aids and a doctor friend and then 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.040 one of their partners as an editor, get together and 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.679 publish one of the first safer sex guides in history. 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.560 Almost all like I used to when I had a 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:56.520 different publishing life. I like once read an awful lot 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:04.520 of old Victorian sex manuals. Yeah, yeah, and old Victorian 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.600 sex manuals are like they're all like sex is bad. 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:11.280 If you're going to do it, feel bad about yourself, 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:12.760 and then do the following. 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:16.320 Right and enjoy it whatever you do. 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.040 Yeah, And there were to be clear, there were people 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.600 like smuggling in actual safe sex practices and often going 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:25.760 to jail for it, and it ties into the history 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.639 of birth control and all of this stuff. But and 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.120 like the wild idea that the female orgasm is real. 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:33.800 Was this like whole big thing people were fighting for 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:39.679 in the early twentieth century anyway, in terms of like 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:47.000 modern sex positive safer sex guides, this is like one 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:48.920 of the first ones, if not the first one. It's 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:52.120 called how to Have Sex in an Epidemic one Approach, 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:57.720 And it was the first advocacy for condoms for gay 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:02.440 male sex because before before that, people did not routinely 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:06.560 use condoms because there was not a risk of pregnancy, right, 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:10.359 So that was one thing, and then they actually were 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.080 into the multi factoral theory. They were into the too 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.120 much com theory. But like it's not because they were 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:17.199 like fools. 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.159 But this is what's interesting about this moment is like 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:25.480 it kind of reminds you of any epidemic, I mean, 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.640 in COVID nineteen right any pandemic where you're like people 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.359 are dying literally right now, and you're trying to figure 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:34.919 out whether it's a Chinese virus leaked by a lab 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:37.760 or whether it you know, came from someone eating a 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.200 pangolin who had a cold. You know, like it's like, 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:43.359 who the fuck cares, Let's save some lives right now. 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:46.880 But the but of course it is so much easier 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:48.720 to deflect. 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:51.960 And you know, I don't know, make some money off 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.720 anti China rhetoric by by nasaying. 0:21:56.880 --> 0:21:59.240 By basically just focusing on the forest. 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:01.119 And missing you know, focusing on the trees and missing 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:04.320 the forest of the fact that people are dying. Yeah, absolutely, 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.240 and politicizing it. So it's just like and so that's 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:09.840 just crazy because in a year they had lost the 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:12.960 like I mean, I know that there was still the stigma, 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.399 but you stopped calling it grid and started calling it 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:16.720