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AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international,
grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...
political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through
direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to othe ...
, medical research, treatment and advocacy, and working to change legislation and public policies.Crimp, Douglas. ''AIDS Demographics''. Bay Press, 1990. (Comprehensive early history of ACT UP, discussion of the various signs and symbols used by ACT UP). ACT UP was formed on March 12, 1987, at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
. Larry Kramer was asked to speak as part of a rotating speaker series, and his well-attended speech focused on action to fight AIDS. Kramer spoke out against the current state of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which he perceived as politically impotent. Kramer had co-founded the GMHC but had resigned from its board of directors in 1983. According to Douglas Crimp, Kramer posed a question to the audience: "Do we want to start a new organization devoted to political action?" The answer was "a resounding yes." Approximately 300 people met two days later to form ACT UP. At the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, in October 1987, ACT UP New York made their debut on the national stage, as an active and visible presence in both the march, the main rally, and at the
civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a stat ...
at the
United States Supreme Court Building The Supreme Court Building houses the Supreme Court of the United States. Also referred to as "The Marble Palace," the building serves as the official workplace of the chief justice of the United States and the eight associate justices of th ...
the following day.Stein, Marc,
Memories of the 1987 March on Washington
for
OutHistory.org
', August 2013. Accessed October 11, 2015
Inspired by this new approach to radical, direct action, other participants in these events returned home to multiple cities and formed local ACT UP chapters in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Rhode Island, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and other locations. ACT UP spread internationally. In many countries separate movements arose based on the American model. For example, the famous gay rights activist
Rosa von Praunheim Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky (born Holger Radtke; 25 November 1942), known professionally as Rosa von Praunheim, is a German film director, author, painter and one of the most famous gay rights activists in the German-speaking world. In ov ...
co-founded ACT UP in Germany.


ACT UP New York actions

Much of the documentation chronicling ACT UP's history is drawn from Douglas Crimp's history of ACT UP, the ACT UP Oral History Project, and the online Capsule History of ACT UP, New York.ACT UP New York: Capsule History
Actupny.org
/ref>


Wall Street

On March 24, 1987, 250 ACT UP members demonstrated at
Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for ...
and Broadway to demand greater access to experimental AIDS drugs and for a coordinated national policy to fight the disease.ACT UP New York: First Demonstration Flyer
Actupny.org
/ref> An op-ed article by Larry Kramer published in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' the previous day described some of the issues ACT UP was concerned with.Kramer, Larry. Interview with Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard. ACTUP Oral History Project. February 16, 2005. MIX: The New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival. December 11, 2005
Actuporalhistory.org
Seventeen ACT UP members were arrested during this
civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a stat ...
.ACT UP New York: Capsule History - 1987
Actupny.org
/ref> On March 24, 1988, ACT UP returned to Wall Street for a larger demonstration in which over 100 people were arrested.ACT UP New York: Capsule History - 1988

/ref> On September 14, 1989, seven ACT UP members infiltrated the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
and chained themselves to the VIP balcony to protest the high price of the only approved AIDS drug, AZT. The group displayed a banner that read, "SELL WELLCOME" referring to the pharmaceutical sponsor of AZT, Burroughs Wellcome, which had set a price of approximately $10,000 per patient per year for the drug, well out of reach of nearly all
HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immu ...
positive persons. Several days following this demonstration, Burroughs Wellcome lowered the price of AZT to $6,400 per patient per year.ACT UP New York: Capsule History - 1989
Actupny.org
/ref>


General Post Office

ACT UP held their next action at the New York City General Post Office on the night of April 15, 1987, to an audience of people filing last minute tax returns. This event also marked the beginning of the conflation of ACT UP with the Silence=Death Project, which created a poster consisting of a right side up
pink triangle A pink triangle has been a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity and love for queerness. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the ...
(an upside-down pink triangle was used to mark gays in
Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
) on a black background with the text "SILENCE = DEATH." Douglas Crimp said this demonstration showed the "media savvy" of ACT UP because the television media "routinely do stories about down-to-the-wire tax return filers." As such, ACT UP was virtually guaranteed media coverage.


''Cosmopolitan'' magazine

In January 1988, '' Cosmopolitan'' magazine published an article by
Robert E. Gould Robert Emery Gould (March 20, 1924 – February 25, 1998) was clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College, and chief of adolescent services at Bellevue Hospital. Gould was known as outspoken advocate on social issues, includin ...
, a psychiatrist, entitled "Reassuring News About AIDS: A Doctor Tells Why You May Not Be At Risk." The main contention of the article was that in unprotected vaginal sex between a man and a woman who both had "healthy genitals" the risk of HIV transmission was negligible, even if the male partner was infected. Women from ACT UP who had been having informal "dyke dinners" met with Dr. Gould in person, questioning him about several misleading facts (that penis to vagina transmission is impossible, for example) and questionable journalistic methods (no
peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...
, bibliographic information, failing to disclose that he was a psychiatrist and not a practitioner of internal medicine), and demanded a retraction and apology.Maggenti, Maria. Interview with Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard. ACTUP Oral History Project. February 16, 2005. MIX: The New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival. December 11, 2005
Actupralhistory.org
When he refused, in the words of Maria Maggenti, they decided that they "had to shut down Cosmo." According to those who were involved in organizing the action, it was significant in that it was the first time the women in ACT UP organized separately from the main body of the group.Carlomusto, Jean. Interview with Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard. ACTUP Oral History Project. February 16, 2005. MIX: The New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival. December 11, 2005
Actuporalhistory.org
Additionally, filming the action itself, the preparation and the aftermath were all consciously planned and resulted in a video short directed by Jean Carlomusto and Maria Maggenti, titled, "Doctor, Liars, and Women: AIDS Activists Say No To Cosmo." The action consisted of approximately 150 activists protesting in front of the Hearst Building (parent company of ''Cosmopolitan'') chanting "Say no to Cosmo!" and holding signs with slogans such as "Yes, the Cosmo Girl CAN get AIDS!" Although the action did not result in any arrests, it brought significant television media attention to the controversy surrounding the article. Phil Donahue, ''Nightline'', and a local talk show called "People Are Talking" all hosted discussions of the article. On the latter, two women, Chris Norwood and Denise Ribble took the stage after the host, Richard Bey, cut Norwood off during an exchange about whether heterosexual women are at risk from AIDS. Footage from all of these media appearances was edited into "Doctors, Liars, and Women." ''Cosmopolitan'' eventually issued a partial retraction of the contents of the article.


Women and the CDC'S AIDS Definition

Following their participation in the Cosmopolitan protest, ACT UP's Women's Caucus targeted the Center for Disease Control for its narrow definition of what constituted HIV/AIDS. While causes of HIV transmission, like unprotected vaginal or anal sex, were similar among both men and women, the symptoms of the virus varied greatly. As historian Jennifer Brier noted, "for men, full-blown AIDS often caused Kaposi's sarcoma, while women experienced bacterial pneumonia, pelvic inflammatory disease, and cervical cancer." Since the CDC's definition did not account for such symptoms as a result of AIDS, American women in the 1980s were often diagnosed with AIDS Related Complex (or ARC) or HIV. "In this process," Brier explained, "these women effectively were denied the Social Security benefits that men with AIDS had fought hard to secure, and won, in the late 1980s." In October 1990, attorney Theresa McGovern filed suit representing 19 New Yorkers who claimed they were unfairly denied disability benefits because of the CDC's narrow definition of AIDS. At an October 2, 1990, protest to raise attention for McGovern's lawsuit, two hundred ACT UP protesters gathered in Washington and chanted "How many more have to die before you say they qualify," and carried posters to the rally with the tagline "Women Don't Get AIDS/ They Just Die From It."Brier 2009, p. 174. The CDC's initial reaction to calls of the revising the AIDS definition included setting the threshold of AIDS for both men and women at a T cell count of under 200. However, McGovern dismissed this suggestion. "Lots of women who show up at hospitals don't get T cells taken. No one knows they have HIV. I knew how many of our clients were dying of AIDS and not counted." Rather, McGovern, along with the ACLU and the New Jersey Women and AIDS Network, called for adding fifteen conditions to the list of the CDC's surveillance case definition, which was eventually adopted in January 1993. Six months later, the Clinton administration revised federal criteria for evaluating HIV status and making it easier for women with AIDS to secure Social Security benefits. The Women's Caucus's role in altering the CDC's definition helped to not only drastically increase availability of federal benefits to American women, but helped uncover a more accurate number of HIV/AIDS infected women in the United States; "under the new model, the number of women with AIDS in the United States increased almost 50 percent." Members of the ACT UP Women's Caucus collectively authored a handbook for two teach-ins held prior to the 1989 CDC demonstration, where ACT UP members learned about issues motivating the action. The handbook, edited by Maria Maggenti, formed the basis for the ACT UP/New York Women and AIDS Book Group's book titled Women, AIDS and Activis