Speaker 1: What We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: People are chanting and at leaf flitting, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, a bunch of them got in the middle
Speaker 2: of the road, sat there with their signs and holding
Speaker 2: hands with each other in the middle of Wall Street.
Speaker 2: They stopped traffic. They were doing a die in. Basically,
Speaker 2: they were laying in the street. They weren't moving. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the police flooded the street, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to get the images of the people who were
Speaker 2: on the floor protesting, so I was just dodging around
Speaker 2: them with the camera and I was shooting between the
Speaker 2: policemen's legs, trying to document this because it was just
Speaker 2: so important. The group would go on to name itself
Speaker 2: act Up the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet Jean Carla Musto, a filmmaker
Speaker 1: who was part of the small but mighty group of
Speaker 1: lesbian activists during the AIDS crisis. We'll also learn about
Speaker 1: her role and act up the political group that strived
Speaker 1: to end the AIDS epidemic and that would shape queer
Speaker 1: life for generations to come. From my Heart podcast, I'm
Speaker 1: Jordan and Solve and this is what we loved. My
Speaker 1: first introduction to AIDS was when I was in the
Speaker 1: seventh grade. It was two thousand and seven and my
Speaker 1: health class had reached the chapter on sex. My Texas
Speaker 1: public school teacher was a Christian man, and he made
Speaker 1: it clear that if we had sex before marriage, or
Speaker 1: if we were gay, we would get HIV, which would
Speaker 1: turn into AIDS. And I remember he told us that
Speaker 1: if we got AIDS, we'd die fast and painfully. I
Speaker 1: carried that fear with me well into my adulthood, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I was a senior in college when
Speaker 1: I learned that people living with HIV today can live long,
Speaker 1: healthy lives. But what my health teacher told me about
Speaker 1: people living with AIDS was true forty years ago. If
Speaker 1: you contracted HIV then it was essentially a death sentence.
Speaker 1: But that all changed because of one revolutionary queer group
Speaker 1: called act UP. My next guest, Geen Carla Musto, is
Speaker 1: an Emmy nominated documentarian now, but in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: when actup was founded, she was one of their videographers,
Speaker 1: documenting the peak of the AIDS crisis on her camcorder.
Speaker 1: She was part of a small group of lesbians in
Speaker 1: the male dominated organization that would go on to shape
Speaker 1: act Up's legacy. But before joining this radical group of activists,
Speaker 1: she grew up in a conservative Italian family in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. Deep down though, she knew she was different.
Speaker 1: Why don't we start at the beginning, When did you
Speaker 1: know you were gay?
Speaker 2: I knew I was different from a very early age,
Speaker 2: and I just remember being so in love with my
Speaker 2: best friend's kindergarten teacher. I even remember her name, Miss Gaudreau.
Speaker 1: I think it was.
Speaker 2: But you know, the idea of thinking that someone is,
Speaker 2: for want of a better word, really hot. You know,
Speaker 2: five year old kid is thinking, oh, she's so fabulous,
Speaker 2: and she was kind and sweet, and all my friends
Speaker 2: who were in her class said how fabulous she was.
Speaker 2: And I had someone who wasn't that great as a
Speaker 2: kindergarten teacher. So I think that also made the longing stronger.
Speaker 1: So there was more than a physical attraction, but an
Speaker 1: energy attraction.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's always about that for me, it's a force field.
Speaker 2: It's not just physical attraction. I knew that was different.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a name for it. Yeah, so I
Speaker 2: can't really say I knew I was gay then, but
Speaker 2: I knew I really loved women then in a special way.
Speaker 1: Well, so you knew you were different, But did you
Speaker 1: ever think about telling anyone or coming out when you
Speaker 1: were growing up?
Speaker 2: Well, in the environment I was in kind of a
Speaker 2: working class upbringing on Long Island, it would have been
Speaker 2: virtually unheard of to be out in my high school.
Speaker 2: I knew of nobody who was out in my high school.
Speaker 2: If the boys were deemed effeminate, they would be kicked
Speaker 2: in the hallway, they would be pushed, shoved, and a
Speaker 2: lot of bullying. And among the girls, lesbian was a
Speaker 2: scary word.
Speaker 1: Then, Oh, tell me about that. What that meant was even?
Speaker 2: It even drew up more images of, you know, someone
Speaker 2: who was hated and vild. It was something that certainly
Speaker 2: didn't want to be called. You don't want to be
Speaker 2: called a lezi wow or yeah, lesbo or not. When
Speaker 2: I was in high school, no, and I felt really
Speaker 2: different than all my friends, sometimes very isolated.
Speaker 1: So what was it like coming out?
Speaker 2: So after high school, I went to college and I
Speaker 2: studied films, which was for me a lifelong passion because
Speaker 2: my immigrant family, I think that was part of the
Speaker 2: way they assimilated. And so in college I hooked up
Speaker 2: with this group of fellow odd ducks, and you know,
Speaker 2: we were all film majors, and it was a very
Speaker 2: non sexual kind of group. But we we were like
Speaker 2: family women, no men and women. And so when we graduated,
Speaker 2: and I graduated from undergrad one by one, we all
Speaker 2: came out to each other. Nearly it was about seven
Speaker 2: of us and five were queer. So we all came
Speaker 2: out to each other because three of us were about
Speaker 2: to go into an apartment together, our first apartment together.
Speaker 2: And I still remember my friend Jeff and this diner
Speaker 2: in Long Island, that's all sitting at a booth near
Speaker 2: the window, and I said to him, well, you have
Speaker 2: to understand something. If we're going to live together, I
Speaker 2: may occasionally want to bring a woman home. And he
Speaker 2: just started rolling laughing on the floor. He was rolling laughing,
Speaker 2: and it was just this kind of incredible moment when
Speaker 2: we all let the walls down and we all recognize
Speaker 2: that we were family in more than one way.
Speaker 1: What was it like coming out to your parents?
Speaker 2: So I didn't really come out until after college. That
Speaker 2: was when I've started to feel safe enough to do that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I come from My father didn't come to this country
Speaker 2: until he was in his twenties. It's a very traditional
Speaker 2: Italian family, Catholic Italian Catholic, and I was having a
Speaker 2: pretty active life on Second Avenue and Twelfth Street, this
Speaker 2: apartment where my friends and I ended up at, and
Speaker 2: I had even a serious girlfriend. At this point, I
Speaker 2: just really felt it was necessary to come out to
Speaker 2: my mom, at least because I'm close to her. It
Speaker 2: was always, you know, my father and I always had
Speaker 2: a kind of complicated relationship, but I was close, very
Speaker 2: close with her. And so one day when she was
Speaker 2: in the basement, I went up to her and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, look, I have to tell you something. I'm
Speaker 2: a lesbian. And she flinched like an arrow had pierced
Speaker 2: her heart, and she even like put her hands up
Speaker 2: towards her heart and her head went down, and then
Speaker 2: she slowly looked up at me and she said, well,
Speaker 2: I always thought my sister was a lesbian, you know,
Speaker 2: so you know, for me, it was just first of all,
Speaker 2: it was a relieving moment, but it was also one
Speaker 2: that just shows you how pervasive the closet was. You know,
Speaker 2: this this sense that you know, you felt like you
Speaker 2: were just going to be crushed, You were going to
Speaker 2: be excommunicated, not just from the church, I don't know
Speaker 2: that the church was very important to me at that point,
Speaker 2: but from your family.
Speaker 1: While living in New York after college with her best friends,
Speaker 1: Jean was working odd jobs to make ends meet and
Speaker 1: building her queer family. But around the same time, she
Speaker 1: started noticing that the young gay men in her life
Speaker 1: were becoming mysteriously ill and then we're disappearing. These men
Speaker 1: were healthy and strong, but were suddenly getting dementia and
Speaker 1: going blind. They were becoming covered in purple skin lesions
Speaker 1: from a rare cancer called kapasi sarcoma or CHAOS for short.
Speaker 1: Jane was realizing that the young gay men around her
Speaker 1: weren't just disappearing, they were dying. Well, now, Jane walked
Speaker 1: me through the moment that you first heard about AIDS.
Speaker 2: Well, my friend Jim, his best friend, got sick very
Speaker 2: suddenly and died, and we were all kind of devastated
Speaker 2: by that because he went so quick. That was the thing.
Speaker 2: You didn't even get a chance. You just heard somebody
Speaker 2: was sick, and then poof, you know, a few weeks
Speaker 2: maybe a few months later, you hear that they died.
Speaker 2: And even twenty one yet, so you know, young people
Speaker 2: were dying mysteriously, and you would hear about other cases.
Speaker 2: You know, I was selling cheese, I think down at
Speaker 2: the South Street Seaport. You know, I remember this one
Speaker 2: guy who worked on the floor. All of a sudden
Speaker 2: he got very gaunt, and you know, then jury was gone.
Speaker 2: It saying, what is happening? These young folks are dying.
Speaker 2: And in the East Village where I lived at the time,
Speaker 2: you would see these guys, these walking skeletons, who had,
Speaker 2: you know, these markings that they showed ks or who
Speaker 2: just look like they were old men, and they were
Speaker 2: these young guys.
Speaker 1: You were noticing that something was odd. All of these
Speaker 1: young people around you that were otherwise healthy and beautiful
Speaker 1: and young and sprightly, were all of a sudden becoming
Speaker 1: gaunt and sickly. And dying.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a very strange time because it was
Speaker 2: a time when if you're in your twenties, when you're
Speaker 2: experiencing all the enthusiasm and the freedom of coming into
Speaker 2: your own life, figuring out what your own life is
Speaker 2: going to be on your own, but also there are
Speaker 2: scary things out there that are kind of unknown at
Speaker 2: the moment.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, gene transmission among lesbians is possible, but rare,
Speaker 1: and a lot more rare than gay men. So for you,
Speaker 1: how was AIDS impacting your life at that point.
Speaker 2: Well, the issue of AIDS was not so much for
Speaker 2: me about fear of personal risk. The reason I was
Speaker 2: interested was because of the homophobia that to me just
Speaker 2: all came up to the surface all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: It almost became the party line to be homophobic. And
Speaker 2: one of the key reasons I cared so much about
Speaker 2: homophobia that was driving the AIDS crisis at that time
Speaker 2: is because my first real girlfriend, Diane, she was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with Hodgkins' loomphoma. And the first stage when you're being
Speaker 2: treated for Hodgkins loomphoma is you have to undergo surgery
Speaker 2: because they have to stage you. Essentially, they have to
Speaker 2: see how much the cancer has spread throughout your lymph system.
Speaker 2: And so this was a major surgery because coming out
Speaker 2: of it, we were going to find out how sick
Speaker 2: she was. So the day of her surgery, I remember
Speaker 2: being in the hospital waiting room all day just in
Speaker 2: such anxiety, and her mother kind of dropped in about
Speaker 2: midway through it, and her mother, who at the time
Speaker 2: she didn't have exactly the closest of relationship with, and
Speaker 2: I was just shocked that when the doctor came out
Speaker 2: of the room, even though I was the one who
Speaker 2: had all the contact with him, me and.
Speaker 1: Diane, you'd been going to the appointments.
Speaker 2: It was you know, he came in and he just
Speaker 2: said to Diane's mother, come on in. They were going
Speaker 2: to talk about Diane's prognosis. And I was just left
Speaker 2: in the waiting room. And it really that that moment
Speaker 2: really kind of obliterated me in a way. It was
Speaker 2: just this extreme moment of feeling cut off even from
Speaker 2: my family because I am was my family. We were
Speaker 2: family to each other. So that experience really showed me
Speaker 2: a glimpse of the kind of homophobia these guys were experiencing.
Speaker 2: That's what motivated me to get involved.
Speaker 1: That gave you so much empathy and compassion for all
Speaker 1: of these gay men that were also now engaging with
Speaker 1: the healthcare system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just a totally scary time, and homophobia
Speaker 2: made it at times tragic. Just they inflicted unnecessary tragedy
Speaker 2: too often into what was already a health crisis.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Jeene grabs her camquorder and joins
Speaker 1: the front lines of the fight against AIDS. It's nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six. The CDC has just reported that there's been
Speaker 1: an eighty nine percent increase in new AIDS cases. Thousands
Speaker 1: are already dead. Some people say their entire friend group
Speaker 1: is sick at this time. The CDC also reports that
Speaker 1: on average, AIDS patients have a little over a year
Speaker 1: to live once diagnosed. Politically, Ronald Reagan is the president
Speaker 1: despite cases nearly doubling year over year since the beginning
Speaker 1: of his term. He has just said the word AIDS
Speaker 1: publicly for the very first time. The government is way
Speaker 1: behind on trying to control the virus. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: small organizations start popping up across America to help AIDS
Speaker 1: patients in the only way they can to die as
Speaker 1: comfortably as possible. One of them is called the Gay
Speaker 1: Men's Health Crisis. By this point, Gene is passionate about filmmaking.
Speaker 1: She's enrolled at NYU to get her master's degree in telecommunications.
Speaker 1: It was there that she would first become involved in
Speaker 1: the fight to end AIDS. So now, how did you
Speaker 1: get involved with AIDS activism?
Speaker 2: Well, it's part of my going to graduate school. I
Speaker 2: was also a teacher's assistant, and so this particular class
Speaker 2: I was assisting on was a lab where the students
Speaker 2: in the class had to partner with an organization to
Speaker 2: make educational videotapes that would help the organization achieve its
Speaker 2: goals or get its message across. So this was the
Speaker 2: class where representatives from all these different groups would come
Speaker 2: in and make their pitch. They would tell the students
Speaker 2: who they were and why they needed this video, and
Speaker 2: at the end of the pitch session, students were going
Speaker 2: to pick which group they wanted to work with. I
Speaker 2: remember some of the examples, like someone from the dental
Speaker 2: training school came in and they wanted someone to film
Speaker 2: a dissection of a cat, and there was someone else
Speaker 2: who wanted to show root canals. It didn't seem like
Speaker 2: any of these projects were that, you know, extremely palatable
Speaker 2: to me. Yes, And so here comes Joey Leanti, who
Speaker 2: was then the director of publications at GMHC Gay Men's
Speaker 2: Health Crisis. And Joey got up and he was just
Speaker 2: the most charming and personable guy, and he basically told people,
Speaker 2: I'm from Gay Men's Health Crisis and we're trying to
Speaker 2: get the word out about AIDS and AIDS prevention and
Speaker 2: AIDS awareness, and we'd like someone to come and make
Speaker 2: some video. I was with us. So at the end
Speaker 2: of the class it was time to make decisions, and
Speaker 2: I was just blown away because all of these gruesome
Speaker 2: projects got picked and the only one who didn't get
Speaker 2: picked was Joey Leanti. Wow, And that just showed me
Speaker 2: a couple of things. I mean, what I interpret from
Speaker 2: that experience was a people were really scared. They didn't
Speaker 2: want to be associated with AIDS people at that point,
Speaker 2: some of them still didn't know how it was transmitted,
Speaker 2: so you know, they just thought casual contact, I guess,
Speaker 2: could be a cause. So you know, I felt bad
Speaker 2: and I went up to Joey and I said, look,
Speaker 2: I'll volunteer for you. What do you need and.
Speaker 1: One of the first you weren't even a student in
Speaker 1: the no I was.
Speaker 2: The teaching assistant. So I began volunteering for GMHC. I
Speaker 2: started volunteering more and more and they really needed someone
Speaker 2: to run in and like the multimedia aspects at GMHC.
Speaker 2: So that's when they hired me. I think that was
Speaker 2: nineteen the end of nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: So you went to go work for them, fact, I
Speaker 1: want to go.
Speaker 2: Work, Yes, I went to go work for them full
Speaker 2: time and I started the multimedia unit. So I started
Speaker 2: doing a weekly cable show called Living with AIDS. And
Speaker 2: Living with AIDS was supposed to be everything that the
Speaker 2: mainstream media wasn't doing because some of these early news
Speaker 2: stories that you would see usually if there was a
Speaker 2: person with AIDS, they were shot in silhouette and their
Speaker 2: voices were garbled because they could not go on camera
Speaker 2: without facing repercussions. People were getting thrown out of their apartments,
Speaker 2: they were getting thrown out of stores. You know, they
Speaker 2: were real parias.
Speaker 1: So this was some of the first programming in existence
Speaker 1: to showcase people living with AIDS.
Speaker 2: Some of the first Yes.
Speaker 1: While GMHC was doing amazing work to fill in for
Speaker 1: the government's negligence. Many in the gay community still felt
Speaker 1: like there were gaps. GMHC was a service organization, but
Speaker 1: there was no group dedicated to holding the government responsible
Speaker 1: for finding a cure. Gay people were angry about this,
Speaker 1: and that anger was about to become mobilized. On March
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven, a group of these angry
Speaker 1: queer people held their first protest on Wall Street during
Speaker 1: the morning rush hour. Jean heard about the protests from
Speaker 1: her friends, so she grabbed her camcorder and headed downtown.
Speaker 2: I heard that there was going to be this protest downtown.
Speaker 2: I knew people were angry, and I knew people were
Speaker 2: starting to feel like it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Enough what GMHC was doing.
Speaker 2: It wasn't enough because it was not allowing for the
Speaker 2: anger to become political. The anger had to become political,
Speaker 2: had to become powerful. GMHC was preventing suffering, So I
Speaker 2: think it was a you know, I admire GMHC's mission,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, I also agreed with people
Speaker 2: who felt like there needed to be more. This was
Speaker 2: a tragedy and we needed to get out in the
Speaker 2: streets and start making change. So I went down to
Speaker 2: Wall Street. It was kind of a cold March day,
Speaker 2: and there were a bunch of luminaries from the movement
Speaker 2: all standing up, just dressed in regular business attire, but
Speaker 2: they were holding signs that you were really critical of
Speaker 2: the government.
Speaker 1: What did some of them say, Well.
Speaker 2: One of them was this monstrous picture of Ronald Reagan
Speaker 2: outlined on like a recent yellow with his eyes like
Speaker 2: burning coals. So people are chanting and a leafleting, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, a bunch of them got in
Speaker 2: the middle of the road, sat there with their signs
Speaker 2: and holding hands with each other and just started chanting.
Speaker 2: And in the middle of Wall Street. They stopped traffic.
Speaker 2: They were protesting. They were doing a dying. Basically, they
Speaker 2: were laying in the street, in the middle of Wall Street,
Speaker 2: and they weren't moving. The police were there, they were
Speaker 2: trying to get them out of the way. They basically
Speaker 2: were hauling them out on stretchers, and people weren't moving.
Speaker 2: Everybody was determined that they were going to get arrested.
Speaker 2: I remember this energy just made me go into a
Speaker 2: different frame of mind because normally when I go when
Speaker 2: I shoot an action, I'm very studied or I'm focusing
Speaker 2: on holding the camera steady or whatnot. But all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, the police flooded the street, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to get the images of the people who were on
Speaker 2: the floor protesting. I also wanted to make sure nothing
Speaker 2: happened to them, So I was just dodging around them
Speaker 2: with the camera and I was shooting between the policemen's
Speaker 2: legs and what not, trying to get trying to document
Speaker 2: this because it was just so important. This was the
Speaker 2: first protest of this group, and then the group would
Speaker 2: go on to name itself act UP, the AIDS Coalition
Speaker 2: to Unleash Power.
Speaker 1: What was going through your mind when you saw this
Speaker 1: scene of all of these people holding each other's hands
Speaker 1: on the street blocking traffic. Is that the moment where
Speaker 1: you thought to yourself, I have to be a part
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: It really was because the energy. First of all, the
Speaker 2: energy seemed a little bit younger. It seemed like at
Speaker 2: the time, more can with the energy of my generation.
Speaker 2: It just felt more in tune with that, and the
Speaker 2: atmosphere was electric, you know, it really was electric. It
Speaker 2: felt like we found our voice in that moment.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty seven, Act UP was in full swing.
Speaker 1: They were dedicated to ending the AIDS crisis. Their main
Speaker 1: focus was to get promising drugs into the bodies of
Speaker 1: AIDS patients immediately by staging protests against targets like the
Speaker 1: FDA and Big Pharma. Part of their strategy was to
Speaker 1: become masters of media. Their demonstrations were so dramatic that
Speaker 1: the media couldn't help but cover them, and this would
Speaker 1: put pressure on their target to respond to their demand.
Speaker 1: To plan these protests. They'd meet every Monday night at
Speaker 1: the lgbt Center in New York, and the meetings were
Speaker 1: electrifying for a lot of queer folks. These meetings became
Speaker 1: much more than just time to get organized. They became
Speaker 1: a place where many people found their chosen family for
Speaker 1: the first time. So what were these meetings like the
Speaker 1: act of meetings.
Speaker 2: Well, if you walk in the LGBTQ Community Center now
Speaker 2: on Thirteenth Street, you'll see a very polished kind of building,
Speaker 2: very slick. But if you walked into that building back
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven, you'd see a kind of dilapidated
Speaker 2: old school building that was being repurposed as a gay center.
Speaker 2: And so the room we were in was this huge room,
Speaker 2: kind of hideous big room with these pillars and about
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty folding chairs maybe and a little
Speaker 2: propped up platform as a stage, and every seat was
Speaker 2: filled at the height of act up. Not only was
Speaker 2: every seat filled, but the walls behind were layered sevent
Speaker 2: deep with people who were there for the meeting. So
Speaker 2: it was this amazing, energetic high school that none of
Speaker 2: us had ever had.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really powerful.
Speaker 1: So what was the mood like in these meetings?
Speaker 2: We felt like at that moment we were in the
Speaker 2: most important room in the world. We really did feel
Speaker 2: like if we fought hard enough, we'd find a current
Speaker 2: end this. But that was the general energy in the room.
Speaker 2: But you asked for mood, there were many different moods
Speaker 2: going on. There were, you know, the people who were
Speaker 2: kind of in a cruisy mode. You know, everybody was
Speaker 2: looking around. It was really kind of in.
Speaker 1: A live moment. Did you befriend any of them? Did
Speaker 1: you hook up with any of them? What was the
Speaker 1: kind of the culture like, was it professional?
Speaker 2: The reason why I It's not just me. Other people
Speaker 2: felt the same way that this was the high school
Speaker 2: we never had. So we're talking about nineteen eighties. We're
Speaker 2: talking about going to high school in the seventies, being
Speaker 2: so closeted and not being able to celebrate who we
Speaker 2: were as gays and lesbians. So we would go out
Speaker 2: together and that was so much fun, going to Laasqualita.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's still around, but this one
Speaker 2: wonderful drag club, staying out there all night, you know,
Speaker 2: dancing together on the dance floor, and then watching these
Speaker 2: wonderful drag shows. Just being out there a mixed group
Speaker 2: of people having you know, a lot of fun. That
Speaker 2: was to me sort of the highlight of the social
Speaker 2: aspect of being an act up at that time.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Gene an act Up take on
Speaker 1: Cosmopolitan magazine, it's nineteen eighty eight and act Up is
Speaker 1: making serious progress and this year alone they would pressure
Speaker 1: the FDA to speed up its drug approval process so
Speaker 1: that dying AIDS patients could get experimental drugs and fast.
Speaker 1: They would also go back to Wallston to protest Big
Speaker 1: Pharma charging exorbitant prices for those same drugs, and they'd win.
Speaker 1: Gene loved being part of act Up and was growing
Speaker 1: close with the small but mighty group of lesbians in
Speaker 1: the organization. These lesbians not only took on men's AIDS issues,
Speaker 1: but women's AIDS issues too. For example, they went up
Speaker 1: against the CDC, who by this point didn't even recognize
Speaker 1: AID symptoms that were specific to women, like cervical cancer.
Speaker 1: This meant that there were a lot of women going undiagnosed.
Speaker 1: It's because of these lesbians that women became part of
Speaker 1: the conversation around AIDS.
Speaker 2: We were in a minority, you know, especially in the beginning.
Speaker 2: We weren't usually in the chairs. We usually were standing
Speaker 2: in a certain section of the back as group. We
Speaker 2: needed to get to know each other if we were
Speaker 2: going to work together, and so we started this whole
Speaker 2: tradition of dyke dinners, women who were active in the movement.
Speaker 2: But these dyke dinners were so important because it seemed
Speaker 2: inevitable that an oportunity to make a protest would come up.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you were part of this really famous
Speaker 1: protest that ACTUP had done against Cosmopolitan magazine. Cosmo. Tell
Speaker 1: me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, the Act UP action against Cosmopolitan magazine. This protest
Speaker 2: that happened in January nineteen eighty eight, was really an
Speaker 2: outgrowth of the women getting together at these dyke dinners
Speaker 2: because we were ready. And then one day we were
Speaker 2: sitting in a diner in the West Village and one
Speaker 2: of the members, Rebecca Cole, walked in with the Cosmopolitan
Speaker 2: magazine that had this article and threw it on the
Speaker 2: table said what do we can do about this? We
Speaker 2: all looked at this piece, which was giving dangerous information,
Speaker 2: particularly to heterosexual women, basically saying you don't have to
Speaker 2: worry at all about AIDS. You know, women don't get
Speaker 2: it through normal heterosexual sex. You know, if they have
Speaker 2: healthy vaginas, that protects them.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It was against the science at the time, and
Speaker 2: we also really wanted to help women and AIDS because
Speaker 2: they were really neglected. By eighty seven eighty eight, there
Speaker 2: were actions starting to coalesce around gay mal issues, but
Speaker 2: women were still kind of in the background and that
Speaker 2: needed to change. So we saw this article, we saw
Speaker 2: it was giving out misinformation, and we decided that we
Speaker 2: were going to organize a reaction to it. The first
Speaker 2: thing we did is we decided we wanted to talk
Speaker 2: to the author to see if he would print a retraction.
Speaker 2: Who is the author, doctor Robert Gould. So we arranged
Speaker 2: a time to speak to him. So I went in
Speaker 2: with four other women from the group I was filming.
Speaker 2: They were talking to him, and just one by one
Speaker 2: they went around and they pointed out to him where
Speaker 2: this article he had printed was factually inaccurate. It was
Speaker 2: drawing the wrong conclusions, and it was giving women a
Speaker 2: sense that they were in at risk. And you see,
Speaker 2: the thing is, if at the end of that he
Speaker 2: would have said, I'll take this under consideration and perhaps,
Speaker 2: you know, the next week printed a response, we would
Speaker 2: not have had a demonstration. But the thing was, at
Speaker 2: the end of this he said, nope, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 2: I'm convinced that what I'm saying is right.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So the women we all started talking about the demonstry.
Speaker 2: And that was really the magic of act up, that
Speaker 2: anything could happen if a group came in with a
Speaker 2: good idea, we do an action and everybody would get
Speaker 2: on board. And it was so inspiring for this group
Speaker 2: of women, this group of about five or six of us,
Speaker 2: that the men all in the room were totally on board.
Speaker 2: They got it. And so that day it was a freezing,
Speaker 2: freezing cold day in nineteen eighty eight. Smoke is coming
Speaker 2: out of everybody's mouth could it's so cold, and their
Speaker 2: faces have that kind of pallor with the red cheeks
Speaker 2: that you see people have when it's really cold out.
Speaker 2: And we gathered outside Cosmo and we had a demonstration,
Speaker 2: chanting things like say no to Cosmo, say no to
Speaker 2: Cause Home for Ever, very Cosmoli more women die Again.
Speaker 2: It was the kind of energy that I had experienced
Speaker 2: at Wall Street, where you know, I'm running with the
Speaker 2: camera trying to get everything that's going on at this action.
Speaker 1: And what was the eventual outcome.
Speaker 2: Well, although Cosmo did not print a direct retraction, two
Speaker 2: months later after we did this, they printed a really detailed,
Speaker 2: accurate article about women and condom use, and this was
Speaker 2: true effective sexual education. And after our protests, Cosmo actually
Speaker 2: became exemplary and what it put out there. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I thought that the overall outcome was positive. The women
Speaker 2: in Act Up we really saw that we were a
Speaker 2: group to contend with, that we really had a voice,
Speaker 2: and our voice continued to grow and became very influential.
Speaker 1: Actups work would go on to influence the creation of
Speaker 1: groundbreaking drugs in the late nineties that would save countless
Speaker 1: people's lives. And their activism playbook would go on to
Speaker 1: influence the racial justice movement, the climate movement, and the
Speaker 1: reproductive rights movement. But at the height of the AIDS crisis,
Speaker 1: Jeane was losing steam. Even though she was experiencing amazing
Speaker 1: camaraderie and victories, she couldn't hide from the fact that
Speaker 1: her friends were still dying. By the early nineties, aides
Speaker 1: had been taking the lives of queer people for a
Speaker 1: decade and there was still no cure. There wasn't even
Speaker 1: effective treatment despite actups progress. For Jeane, the constant loss
Speaker 1: of the friends she had made, the bonds she had formed,
Speaker 1: was demoralizing. It sounds like you are accomplishing so much
Speaker 1: with this amazing group of queer friends that you've made,
Speaker 1: But I also think we have to talk about death,
Speaker 1: because that's such a huge part of why the movement
Speaker 1: was happening. And I think for as much as the
Speaker 1: group accomplished and actually managed to change America, many of
Speaker 1: your friends were dying at the same time, and I
Speaker 1: wonder what it was like for you to live in
Speaker 1: that dichotomy.
Speaker 2: I really started to get burned out around well ninety
Speaker 2: three ninety four because I had been working full time
Speaker 2: at GMHC and doing UP since nineteen eighty six eighty seven, right,
Speaker 2: so I'd been at it a while, and so many
Speaker 2: of my friends had died, supervisors at GMAC, people I
Speaker 2: worked with at GMAC, but also you know in act
Speaker 2: UP friends started to die, and I just it's like
Speaker 2: everyone who died, it really left a hole in the
Speaker 2: fabric of our social life at that time, I felt,
Speaker 2: especially when there were some people whom I was very
Speaker 2: close with. Ray Navarro was part of the Video Affinity Group,
Speaker 2: so I spent a lot of time hanging out with Ray.
Speaker 2: And when I started going back and looking at the
Speaker 2: videos that we did in the beginning where we were
Speaker 2: all doing our protests but also being campy and queer
Speaker 2: and all that. Well, then to look at footage of
Speaker 2: him just weeks before he died, was it was you'd
Speaker 2: have recognized these guys anymore they had, you know, raised case,
Speaker 2: he went blind, he was a skeleton. I mean, it
Speaker 2: just got so sick and being around that up close,
Speaker 2: like going and caring for him in the hospital and
Speaker 2: all of that. You know it it kind of took
Speaker 2: the wind for me personally a bit out of my sales.
Speaker 1: For you, not only did you have to live the
Speaker 1: loss of all these young friends, but you had documented
Speaker 1: them fighting for their lives on tape. And I wonder
Speaker 1: what it was like for you to sit with all
Speaker 1: of that material.
Speaker 2: Over time and actually working with these archives that originally,
Speaker 2: you know, I thought, oh, these are images of death,
Speaker 2: but really working through that in my subsequent videotapes helped
Speaker 2: me working through it and really seeing that no, this
Speaker 2: wasn't the archive wasn't a sad thing. It's a record
Speaker 2: of who we are and of our history, and these
Speaker 2: are treasured objects. Yes, they come with a lot of
Speaker 2: baggage or a lot of different knowledge at times, but
Speaker 2: it made me really value the archive and appreciate it.
Speaker 2: But the experience of the AIDS crisis really formed me.
Speaker 2: It taught me the importance of fighting back, being who
Speaker 2: you are, of working together. I mean, these are all
Speaker 2: things that I learned and act Up.
Speaker 1: What do you think is act Up's legacy.
Speaker 2: Well, there are a number of from parts to its legacy.
Speaker 2: Certainly there's the achievements, the changing the definition of a CDC,
Speaker 2: the access to the drugs that would eventually, you know,
Speaker 2: give us effective treatments that people who have access to
Speaker 2: these drugs, for the most part, got well and were
Speaker 2: able to live their lives into old age. The other
Speaker 2: thing I think UP did is it changed the expectations
Speaker 2: of what group, a political group could do, that they
Speaker 2: could come in there with more than just anger, that
Speaker 2: they were going to come in there with a really
Speaker 2: smart message, with graphics that would you be worthy in
Speaker 2: any art gallery, with writing that was as deep an analytic,
Speaker 2: that would you know in a way change the canon
Speaker 2: and most of all the energy and the money raise
Speaker 2: because future groups would be influenced by Act UP.
Speaker 1: So much of this show is about passing down history
Speaker 1: from one generation to the next. And I want to
Speaker 1: know what you want young people to know about this history.
Speaker 2: Well, I want young people to know that they're part
Speaker 2: of a movement and that all of this work was done.
Speaker 1: So that.
Speaker 2: We'd have a future. So much of the change was
Speaker 2: made possible by the earlier activism. I mean, my age
Speaker 2: group was really influenced by the people who had rioted
Speaker 2: at Stone Wall, or the people from the Women's movement
Speaker 2: or the you know, civil rights movement, all of these movements.
Speaker 2: They're so important because they laid the groundwork for where
Speaker 2: we are today.
Speaker 1: In other words, what you're saying is that each generation
Speaker 1: can look back to the one before it to not
Speaker 1: only be thankful, but to have takeaways into what they
Speaker 1: can bring to the next movement, in the next issue,
Speaker 1: in the next fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're lucky. You have kind of this whole history
Speaker 2: that I think it's really important to own and to
Speaker 2: utilize because it's a really fabulous history. I mean, people,
Speaker 2: what people did is truly amazing.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. 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
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Speaker 1: The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved
Speaker 1: was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshino Zaki,
Speaker 1: Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey pat Our. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norble. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jay Bronson and rockel Willis. If you loved this episode,
Speaker 1: leave us a rating, and follow us on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: and Spotify. And thank you for listening. I'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.