On March 10, 1987 – ACT UP (The AIDS Coaln to Unleash Power) was effectively formed at the Lbian and Gay Communy Servic Center New York when Larry…
Contents:
GAY HISTORY – MARCH 10, 1987: ACT UP (AIDS COALN TO UNLEASH POWER) IS FORMED IN NYC [VIDEOS]
When ACT UP began, s founrs uld not have gused how high the group would soar; they would have been even more surprised by the particular nflicts that brought down to the time ACT UP was born, 1987, tens of thoands of Amerins—mostly gay men—had died of AIDS, and more were dyg every day, even as the ernment remaed largely different. Early that March, Larry Kramer, the wrer and activist who had helped found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, livered a speech at New York’s Lbian and Gay Communy Servic Center, on Wt Thirteenth Street.
It also took on surance practic like the excln of sgle men who lived predomantly gay neighborhoods. 6 tra when he had a “revelatn” that he was not bisexual but gay. “Beg a practil person, ” Schulman tells , he searched the phone book and found somethg lled the Gay Swchboard.
There was, and he attend one meetg, then another, and for the next five years he led a gay youth Rso, another ACT UP stalwart, is bt known for “The Celluloid Closet, ” his 1981 book about homosexualy and homophobia film. ) As Rso told a crowd, he had AIDS, but that wasn’t what was killg him:If I’m dyg om anythg, I am dyg om homophobia. And, pecially, if I’m dyg om anythg, I’m dyg om the sensatnalism of newspapers and magaz and televisn shows, which are terted me as a human-tert story—only as long as I’m willg to be a helpls victim, but not if I’m fightg for my polics of AIDS—“gay-related immune ficiency, ” or GRID, was an early signatn, as if a medil ndn might have a sexual orientatn—was evably a nontatn wh homophobia.