Part Two: ACT UP: How Angry, Dying Queers Invented Modern Activism

Margaret finishes talking with Francesca Fiorentini about the AIDS activists who changed the world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
your weekly podcast in which your host is very excited
and happy because she thought that she was out of snacks.
But then she went and she put a stool next
to the cabinet and looked at the top, at the
back of the top cabinet and found a whole bunch
of protein bars that were just passed where my arm

(00:25):
can reach.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
So I didn't think it take you to get desirable
snacks these days, Like what's the You have to like
plant it out in your week.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Right, Yeah, this is a thing. I live early enough
that shipping takes often about a week for anything I
order online and then a lot of the stuff around me,
if they don't sell it at Walmart, I probably can't
get it, so I thought. I.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
But I will say, you don't have to live in
a rural area. You just have to live with a
tall man who likes butterfingers or whatever, because he will Matt,
my husband will hide all of the snacks like out
of my reach. Literally, there's like so much. There's a
wonderland of like bad snacks that like a child would eat,

(01:13):
like nerds ropes. Yeah, that are the top shelf, and
I like, haven't seen it.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
We are getting you a step stool.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
A fucking kitchen. Yeah, I don't even want to know
what's up there. I really don't.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Oh okay, I just befriend tall women.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I even identify as a tall woman.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
You are a tall woman, but you needed a stool
to get the snacks.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
And that's the thing is, I think I'm tall enough
that I don't need a stool. When I finally I
got a stool for other people so when people come
over they can like get the stuff out of my cabinets.
And then I left it in my kitchen after one
of my friends left, and I was like, this is
so nice. You know that the cabinet that goes above
the fridge, that's like where you put stuff to die.
You know that you are never ever going to think about, You're.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Never gonna find you never get it.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I just can't use it.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Now thanks to the wonder of the step stool.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
See.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
See, for me, I've realized I am the only short
person that I am friends with all of my friends.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's actually you have a lot of friends of all
genders who are very tall.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I have all I am I am inclusive with my
tall friends. They're they're all tall, and I look like
their child.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
They're just all the time, all the time.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
But I never have to worry about somebody reaching things
for me because one of them is always around. And
then I get to go, hey, can you do that thing?
And they you know everything we talked about, the thing
we talked about, and then they get something down for me,
and then I watch and it's fun.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
And this podcast is based on the idea that you
already listened to part one, so you know who's talking,
but in case you don't, I'm Margaret Kiljoy. Guests here
is Francesca Fiorentini Hi, and producer is Sophie Lichterman. Our
audio engineer who's not here is Danel High. Daniel soub Sophie.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Oh, Danel Hi, buddy, I love you.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
It's at the point I think I've mentioned this before.
It's at the point where now I like, if everyone
doesn't say Hi, Daniel, I get like it's confused and
everything's going to be terrible. But our theme music was
written for us by un woman. Yeah, and our heroes
of today are act up and they we did the
we did the like big picture a little bit on

(03:40):
a lot of the stuff they did on Monday, and
I'm gonna get in some of the more of the
specifics because they're really fun. One of the most famous
actions was against the Catholic Church. Act UP was working
to distribute condoms and schools and the Church was trying
to stop them. And now you might be thinking, why
would the Catholic Church have anything to say about what
happens in public schools? And you would be right to

(04:02):
think that, because they shouldn't have any say in what
happens in public schools, right, No reason why they should keep.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
All that shit on your in your own lane, yeah,
trying to get public funds for it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Still, I did read this analysis that basically claims, and
I only found it in like one kind of anecdotal source,
that the Catholic Church in New York City had an
incredible amount of power before act UP and that act
Up in these actions and basically how the Catholic Church
behaved during AIDS crisis. And I'm going again, I'm going
to say the Catholic Church, not Catholics, but the Catholic

(04:37):
Church acted so badly that it has less political power
in New York than it used to is one thing
I read. But that was a very offhanded statement that
I read.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Why what did the Catholic Church ever do? Name?

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, one bad thing.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah, it came that the Pope kind of keeps uh
san slurs and yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
But that's because it's Pride month. He's trying to be
down with the lingo.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
I just of all people to like forcibly out, that
would be the fun one.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
He kind of wants to. Yeah, yeah, either forcibly outing him,
I think he wants to forcibly out others.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
I just really appreciate the fact that he makes Biden
look young. There you go, look at the positive said
at least there's one person who's older than Biden.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
However, better position on Palestine than Biden exactly.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Even even the Pope knows you shouldn't murder children.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
So you're like if you're like, oh my god, Biden's
so old, and it's like, have you seen the Pope.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
He's just out here slurring. He's so old. He just
simply cannot Yeah, he's slurring his words and then using slurs. Yeah, both,
that's a great combination.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
And yet sorry, no, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
I can't stop bringing up the Pope in conversations with
people this week, because.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
I find I find it so fascinating because he's like,
I know, and I'm like, and I I don't mind
that I've been called an abomination or whatever. But it's
also like kind of fun to have the Pope that
pisses off all of the new converts to Catholicism from
the right wing, because there's this whole like tradcast thing
where people are like Protestants who are like, oh, I'm
gonna be Catholic because it's somehow more right wing, and

(06:19):
then they join and they're like, what are all these
people of color doing here? Why is the mass? In Spanish,
You're like, do you know what the word Catholic means?
It means universal, which has some problems like colonization problems
behind the idea of believing that your faith is universal
and should applied to everyone. But it also isn't nationalist. Okay,
who would you rather get.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
A drink with Joe Biden or the Pope?

Speaker 4 (06:42):
It's the Pope. The Pope every time, every single time.
Who knows what he's gonna like, what's gonna come out
of his mouth? He's gonna have up so many people.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
He's gonna have He's gonna come up with a slur
that none of us even heard of from the old times.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's gonna be sur Is against me and that sounds fun.
So anyway, Act Up. A lot of the analysis around
act UP that I read has to do with like
people talking about the Catholics and the Jews and the
Protestants within act Up and how people would behave, you know,
in different situations. And so the Catholics and the Jews

(07:20):
were like, fuck, yeah, let's go after the Catholic Church,
and the Protestants were a little bit more like, oh,
we should be careful around that. People will accuse us
of being an anti Catholic organization, whereas like quite understandable,
and whereas all the Catholics are like, oh, we don't
care if we get accused of that, that's us who cares.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Well. The Catholics have a more I mean, there seems
to be more of a radical tradition. I mean, we
talked about Daniel bar again the last time I was
on oh yeah, one of the totes I was on
a couple times ago, and it was just like the
Catholic Church, Catholic workers are more of a like, yeah,
working class radical tradition. I mean, I'm not saying it
doesn't exist in the Protestant Church, but like it's not
a movement you can really point to.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Right and if so, it's like a whole nomination like
Quakers or something it exactly, rather than like mainline Protestantism
or whatever. So most of the people are like, no,
we're going to do this big die in at Saint
Patrick's Cathedral and so on December tenth, because that basically
the church is going around saying you can't distribute condoms
in schools, and you can't talk about safer sex, and

(08:21):
you can't encourage anyone to possibly have sex in any
way or whatever because we're the fucking Catholics. And so
December tenth, nineteen eighty nine, they plan this die in
and they're like compromise.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
You know.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
People are like, oh, let's do something rowdy, and people
are like, no, it's not. So the compromise is going
to do this dye in where they're going to go
and then to not disturb everyone at prayer, but so
kind of mess things up. They're all going to fake dead,
act dead in the middle of it. You know, I
think it's two minutes after the opening line of the.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Service starts inside the service.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Inside the service, yes, while people are also outside protesting.
But when the time came, a couple individuals were like, now,
fuck this, We're fucking angry, and they were not polite.
Someone went up and took the Eucharus, took the you know,
the the little bit of bread the Catholic seat that

(09:15):
is literally Jesus' flesh, and they crumpled it up after
they spit it out, and like, you know, this is
a really big deal. And then someone started shouting, you're
killing us, you're killing us, because they were those policies
kill people. There's a body count attached to in the

(09:37):
middle of the AIDS crisis refusing to teach safe sex.
You know. Yeah, more than one hundred people were arrested
of this action, and at first everyone's upset, including with
an act up. A lot of people are like, oh no,
we were like, we really screwed it up. We were
you know, it made front page news all around the world.

(09:58):
Most people were mad, but it changed things and it
was actually one of the most successful actions they took.
And actually some of the people who were within act
Up who were mad, were like, yeah, I know, I
was wrong, Like it was actually really sweet.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Action turns out like a mass action inside of a
mass is incredible, a mass action mass a mass action. Yeah,
and taking the body of Christ and being like, oh,
this is stale, gross, you're killing us.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Another time, they stormed the CBS Evening News during the
start of the first Golf War, shouting AIDS is news,
fight aids not arabs.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Oooh love it speaking of intersectional Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
When repeat villain of the show Rudy Giuliani came to
power in January nineteen ninety four in New York City,
his whole thing was he was the villain, like last
week or the week before when we talked about community gardens.
His whole thing is he wanted to cut public funding
and privatize the city. He wanted to cut fifteenthoud city jobs,
not cops, though cops, of course, we need all the

(11:03):
caps never get And so the Human Resources Administration took
a heavy cut, and the Department of Aid Services was
under that. The Department of Aid Services had started in
nineteen eighty five, seven hundred and forty people work there,
providing case workers for sixteen thousand AID patients. In the city,
Giuliani was considering cutting it entirely. Act UP, fuck that plan.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
It is up.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
One thousand people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. They hung
a thirty foot banner on City Hall that renamed it
the AIDS Hall of Shame. Protesters blocked the Mayor's office.
Protesters blocked the Manhattan Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Battery Tunnel,
and the Midtown Tunnel. Nice and they they half won.
They stopped the AIDS agency from being cut entirely. It

(11:48):
was still cut by three point one million dollars in
the city, started offering fewer services, but considering they were
going to lose.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
It all completely lose that is wild. Yeah, when you
still don't have it under control.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah yeah, it's still this like and you are like
the center of this crisis is New York City, you know.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Act UP also built community health clinics and buddy programs.
They formed buyers clubs for necessary drugs, including some that
were smuggled into the country or produced illegally, so you
have like whole underground labs producing AIDS drugs. Nice. And
these clubs also would help people trade with one another.
And when I I'm doing a little bit of conflation
of the aid's movement. More broadly, with act UP, It's

(12:35):
one of the things about it being an all volunteer
organization is that a lot of things be like, oh
act UP did this, and then someone be like, oh,
it was actually this other group, and then later someone's like,
well that group was part of act up, and then
other people argue about it. So I'm a little bit
blurry with some of this around.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
You know, let me get the street. So act up
is not necessarily like again like a top down organization
with staff, right, is it more of it's decentralized, so
anyone can like be part of act up or do
you an act UP action if you're in San Francisco
or Philly or New York? Or is it kind of that,
Like I know it's not occupy that's quite decentralized, but

(13:10):
that same vibe.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
It's closer to that there is. Like I do know
that act Up at its peak, Act Up New York
had a million dollar budget that it was working with,
and a lot of that came from like merchandise sale, right,
mm hm. But I also know it's all volunteer, and
so I'm I'm actually I'm a little bit uncertain about

(13:34):
whether it was totally the UH franchise activism like food
and nott bombs or occupy where anyone who agrees to
the following can be this totally. I know that all
the act Up groups were coordinating and that they were
all autonomous, so I don't think that you had to
get like permission, but I think you did. It was
like part of something where act Up groups in one
city would call on act Up groups in other cities

(13:55):
and they would coordinate things together. They would plan these
like huge actions, well five thousand people, but a direct action,
you know, in different cities. By coordinating together. Volunteer medical
workers were risking their licenses by administering drugs intravenously and
patients like when it wasn't yet approved and things like that,

(14:15):
all because government action was too slow and it wasn't
centering the needs of patients. Act Up Philly took over
an aid's hospice that had lost its funding. Act Up
Boston squatted places for people to live, so a ton
of people were losing their jobs because they're sick and
then are suddenly homeless, right right. They fought the I
in s the precursor to ice over, the banning of

(14:36):
immigrants with AIDS. They more or less developed modern safer
sex education.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
That's fucking wild, right, Like two things that we take
for granted now that the you know, everyone, no matter
what political stripe, takes for granted. Of course, yes, they're
trying to like roll back right, the right is trying
to roll back sexed and whatnot. But like the idea
of like safer sex, of like learning how to use
a condom, distributing condoms like to most degrees, that's like

(15:05):
a settled issue. And the fact that we have like
gay rights activists and AIDS activists to think for that
is just incredible.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Absolutely, Like I took so much of this for granted.
I grew up, you know, in the nineties as this
was happening, right, But I was, like I was a kid,
you know, I mean I was a teenager, and so
like I got sex education in school, and like, you know,
and I don't you know, I couldn't tell you exactly

(15:35):
where the line is of like how much they influenced
my sex education in like you know, the mid nineties
or whatever.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
But we also missed the like disease free fucking situation
that was happening in like the early seventies. So you know,
you take some, you lose some.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
I grew up like basically being like if I have sex,
I will die because I grew up like at the
peak of the AIDS crisis, and so it's like everyone
sex dies. That's what I learned. And and it wasn't
even people like I mean, you have to do a
little bit of scaring people, right, yes, yes, but you
know you can certainly take it too far.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, some of the nuns were like perfect.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, exactly totally. Sometimes act up participants when they would
go to an action, they would bring or be given
a photo and a name of someone who had died
of AIDS to keep in their pocket during the action.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
And if they were arrested, you would give the dead
person's name instead of your own. Wow.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
That's just fucking deep.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
So beautiful, I know it. It's like there's nothing like
remembering that what you're doing is like weighty and matters
like that. You know, they weren't always of one mind,
like AIDS activism in general. A lot of AIDS activists
fought against government regulation and red tape. That's like what
we hear the most about, right, but there was actually
a bunch who were also fighting for regulations, specifically of

(16:58):
all the alternative treatment, because anytime the medical establishment fails,
grifters come in and sell snake oil, right, And so
there's people who are absolutely there just to make money
off the dying and desperate.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
That's what I've remecked in.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, shit your pants, And I don't think
in one week we can give every part of act
UP it's due, but I want to focus on some
of the individual groups now within it. One of the
most influential affinity groups with an ACT UP was called
Grand Fury, which is an art collective made up of
eleven people. They took their name. I think this is

(17:36):
one of those things where if of a certain age,
you just know where their name came from, and I don't,
so I had to look it up. There's a car
called a Plymouth grand Fury and it was the model
car that NYPD drove, and they were like, we're just
going to take that name. Fuck it. They also took
it because grand Fury sounds like grand Fury and it
sounds like I'm very angry, and they liked it.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
They wound up becoming one of the most influential art
collectives in history. They came from graphic design and advertising
as much as anything else, but they were directly inspired
by and consider themselves in lineage of the Situationists of
France and the Gorilla Girls in the US. And maybe
one of them still works in advertising and designed the

(18:19):
ad you're about to hear, but probably not. But here
you go. So grand Fury in the beginning, so you know,
we have questions about structure, and I absolutely did too.

(18:39):
Grand Fury started off as like because I would read
some articles and be like six people, eleven people, ten people,
like all of these different numbers were being thrown out
and finally like their actual their own stuff is like
eleven people. And they were like, it started off as
whoever shows up to the meeting. It was kind of
like a working group meeting. Basically, it's like who wants
to go to like the propaganda meeting. You know. Then

(19:00):
they became a fixed collective by the end of nineteen
eighty nine, they were like, Okay, we are now a
specific art collective. We have a specific name. We are
doing this thing. It is this these eleven people. Half
of them had or would lose their partners to AIDS
like had already or would. Their most iconic piece of
art is the Silence equals Death poster. This is the

(19:22):
black poster with a pink triangle and the word silence
equals death. Yes, every piece of art they did they
put directly into the public domain for anyone to use.
And they were intersectional as fuck. A lot of what
I know about the intersectionality of act UP comes through
their work. I'm sure there's other things written about it.

(19:42):
They made posters pointing out that prisoners with AIDS suffer
the worst of all that It's like the life expectancy
of a prisoner with the AIGE is half of that
of someone outside of prison.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
I cannot imagine that suffering.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
I know. I know. They fought the myth that women
don't get HIV. Okay, my favorite posters is just like
this photo of a big erect cock with the words
sexism rears its unprotected head and men use condoms or
beat it. This is a slogan they used all the time,

(20:15):
and then AIDS kills women at the bottom. Another slogan
they used a lot was women don't get AIDS. They
just die from it. Ooh, and they took out a
full page ad in the New York Times for that one.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Fuck that's get them, get them. I mean, I just
think that it's wild, like the idea that you'd like advocating,
and again we just said that they you know, there
are a lot of the origins of safe sex practices
can be traced here, but like, it is still wild
to me that, like, you know, at any point in history,
using a condom would be considered radical, right, or considered

(20:53):
you know, like subversive. Yeah, and this is a movement obviously,
they're like literally taking care of one another. I mean,
I think that's so, I mean, and that I think
speaks to its success because oftentimes there are movements where
you're not directly involved. It doesn't involve you know, you
or your livelihood necessarily, and it can be harder, can
feel more nebulous. You don't have the name of someone

(21:14):
in your pocket and you're not fighting for your own
survival and to keep yourself safe. So I love that
about yeah, this movement.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, Now there's so many things that we yet we
take for granted, but it's like people fought and died
over condoms. You know, right, like and it's like the weekend,
like we well, we no longer take it for granted
because everyone has to work like eight jobs. But you know,
there was a period in America where because a lot
of people got to take uh yeah, a lot of

(21:44):
people got to take the weekend for granted. So another
thing that they brought a lot of attention to the
media at the time would talk about the innocent victims
of AIDS to differentiate them from the gay man and
the drunk the junkies. Right, if you got it from
blood transfusions and heterosexual sex, you were an innocent victim
of AIDS. So Grand Fury and the rest of the

(22:08):
movement would use the slogan all people with AIDS are
innocent and do like huge put the slogan everywhere they could.
There was one shirt that they made that was ubiquitous
among people in the movement and their supporters, which said
read my lips and it was a photo of two
sailor men kissing. They also really personified the act Up

(22:29):
method of working both inside the system and against the system,
because yeah, they took out full page ads and they
also paid for some billboards. One billboard, but they also
did a bunch of crime. That's what I'm talking about.
In the second one billboard, they did read welcome to America,
the only industrialized country besides South Africa without national health care.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Still true, although maybe in South Africa there's national healthcare.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Well, they put the same billboard back up in twenty
eighteen and they just modified it to remove beside South
Africa because South Africa and now the nationalized hellsware.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Ah. I knew it.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
I used to all the time, like just basically threatened
to my health insurance plan for a very long time
was to move to a developed nation.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, I know that's going to be mine very soon.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
They also weep pasted and did other crimes. They did
a New York Times wrap around, which is where you
print it. It's funny. It's the style of protests that's
going to be mostly gone soon, which is fine. Things change.
You print a fake front page for a newspaper and
then go through the city and replace all the newspapers
in the newspaper bins and shit and theirs was really

(23:39):
fucking well done. This was just a front page done
super professionally that actually showed what the news should be.
And they called it the New York Crimes, and the
subtitle was not to be confused with The New York Times.
The headlines read things like, thousands of New Yorkers may
be dying in the streets because they're going to pay
attention to the homeless issue. Women and AIDS are government's

(24:01):
wilful neglect. Inmates with AIDS inadvertent political prisoners. What about
people of color, race effects survival?

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
But they did an awful lot more than just art.
They believed in art for the sake of action. There
was this drug. It was the first drug, the first
approved drug for AIDS was called azt and had terrible
side effects and it didn't work long term. When it
was brought to the market, it was the most expensive
pharmaceutical ever brought to.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Market Jesus fucking Christ.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Which is funny because now it's like not that expensive
by like it costs ten thousand dollars a year for patients,
which is about twenty five thousand dollars in today's money.
And so this is like the first company that did
the like, what if we fleece the shit out of
people who are fucking.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Sick or in Diana, that's so cruel yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
The company that owned AZT Burrow Welcome. It was one
of their biggest money makers, so they could profit off
of the dying and marginalized. So on September fourteenth, nineteen
eighty nine, seven members of Grand Fury snuck into the
New York Stock Exchange using falsified badges because they're fucking
professional artists and printmakers. Two of them pulled out cameras.

(25:17):
The other five climbed up to a balcony then handcuffed
themselves to I couldn't figure out exactly, but I'm guessing
the railing. They dropped a banner that read cell Welcome
after Burrows Welcome. Then they blew air horns over the
sound of the opening bell and dropped fake money onto
the stock trade floor, which their money read shit like

(25:38):
fuck your profiteering. People are dying while you play business nice.
And then they put Grand Fury as the signature. They're like,
slogan was like a cursive thing. I think it was
just that literally the logo of the car, but I'm
not sure. Grand Fury and cursive in place of the
treasury signature. Within days, the price of AZT fell down
to less than seven thousand dollars year. WHOA, so that's

(26:02):
still way too high. But you're talking like thirty percent drop.
I've read one place that was twenty percent drop, and
then I read another place at a very specific number
that was way more than that. And I don't know
the actual number. But I like grand Fury. Now I'm
going to talk about the least splashy group related to
act UP that I like.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Grand Fury too very much. A contender for dopest group thus.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Far, I know, but hear me out as next group.
It's not a competition, but it's kind of a competition.
Not nearly so splashy. But one of the groups I
think we could learn the most from. Chicago. Act UP
formed the Committee for Sustainable Activity and Care or SEASACK,
which was one of the first hay activism burns people

(26:47):
out groups I've ever heard of. I'm going to quote
about them from one of their spiritual successors, which is
called the Jane Adams Collective, to a group that currently
does work in New York City. Seasack realized that the
continue theyknewed stress of activism, along the trauma of the
AIDS epidemic and the violence of the police, was taking
a toll on the organization. They noticed not only a

(27:08):
greater degree of burnout from core organizers, but also greater
inter group conflict. Despite numerous successes, Seesack was made up
of mental health workers and lay people and it was
charged with ways of reducing stress and post traumatic dysfunction
within act of Chicago. They only existed for a short period,
less than a year, but they helped usher in some

(27:28):
innoative techniques to reduce the negative effects of trauma that
were used by ACTUP chapters not only in Chicago but
other cities. So basically, they got together a bunch of
mental health professionals and shit and were like, how do
we stop the traumatic trauma of this activism? And so
they came up with a bunch of ways to do it.
They hosted monthly, a monthly free talk series where you

(27:52):
could show up and talk about what's stressing you and
I don't think it had to be like activism related.
And this was extra good for the people care taking
people dying of AIDS, right, because there's this whole thing
that Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Mean, were there support groups? I can only imagine there
were there. There are like support groups for people dying
of AIDS. Yeah, I know, there's support groups for people
who are caring for those who were terminally ill. But
it's just like that, Yeah, that was that's so much
plus repression from the cops, plus New York City in general.
Let's be real, like I've organized there. It sucks. It's
just kind of like it's fun, but it's also sort

(28:27):
of real. It's just draining.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, well this started in Chicago, but it did go
to New York. But yeah, no, like realizing and learning
and thinking about what to do about the fact that
the people care taking the people also need care to
be cared for you. They brought in veterans from other
movements to talk frankly about the trauma they'd face through repression,

(28:50):
which also of course ties you into the lineage of
all these different protest movements, right, so that people didn't
feel so alone, you know, you get to talk to
some like former Black Panther about how horrible and traumatic
what they experienced. Was maybe you feel better about the
trauma you're experiencing. They had after every big action, within
a couple of days, they had what were called affirmation parties.

(29:11):
All the participants of the action would show up and
to quote Jane Adams collective again quote. No matter the
success of the action, individuals would get up and say
what it meant to them to be part of it,
thus reconnecting to the solidarity on the street with After
the action, in a social setting, there's drinks and music
and dance. Often tokens, flowers, coins like an AA, et

(29:34):
cetera of thanks would be given to the participants of
the protests.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Oh that's so sweet. I love as eye. Why didn't
I have that one?

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Right?

Speaker 2 (29:43):
This is this is kind of what I was saying about.
How like I think that there's like some stuff that
we need to reconnect with from this era.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, because also the other thing people do is after
an action, there's always or anything, really I mean literally
anything a show, uh, you know, an event, fundraiser, whatever
it is. You always have this like, okay, let's do
like a debrief for whatever it is, or a post mortem.
And you're like, I don't like post Like this feels
like more work. Why does this? Why do we have

(30:12):
to do more work? Why don't we just be positive
about what we just did a party exactly and throw
a party and reconnect, especially if you were out on
the streets you might have gotten arrested, you might have
got brutalized, like shit might have been scary, you know,
And so having reconnecting with the community and also being like, hey,
there's good stuff here. It's not just us getting like

(30:34):
roughed up in the streets is so important, and the.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Like tokens of appreciation, Like I feel like this is
you were talking earlier about how movements need to be sticky,
and I know that that was like a little bit
like externally focused, but I think internally matters too. Someone
comes to their first action and someone is like, thank
you for being at that action, like here's a flower,
or here's a coin that you only get for having

(31:00):
been at that action or whatever. Like. Also, organizers would
reach out to the action participants, either in person or
in phone, to check up on them a couple days after.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Hey, that's a lot of work. That's like a million
dollar budget, that's nothing. These all volunteers. I mean, that's
also saying like, look, we don't see you just as
like bodies, you know, we don't see you just as
like people who can get arrested. We want you in
this for the long haul. We want you to know
you're valued. Right, which is God, that's so much work,

(31:34):
I know, but it also probably like kind of feels
good when you're like, first, we're building this thing.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Right Before the party would start, they would start by
reading the names of those in the community who had
dietabates and one more quote from Jane Adams the Jane
Adams Collective, which is named after a person named Jane Adams.
So I don't know as much about as I want to,
but Jane Adams Collective said quote. Finally, participants that face
traumatic situations, police abuse, arrest, or a recent death of

(32:02):
a friend from AIDS would be invited to speak as
a veteran at the next organizing meeting. This changed their
status from isolated victim to appreciated and connected veteran with
experiences to share with the group. It allowed the individual
to organize their feelings and find value and lessons for
them to share. This reduces the effects of learned helplessness

(32:22):
while creating context for their experience. Which all of these
quotes are not from a like here's about act up.
It's from a manual about movement mental health. That's why
it is written. It's like written by mental health professionals.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
There was something you said earlier about like the cop
part or like not policing people that I think is
really interesting because I think that's another sort of thing
that a lot of movements can fall into today. And
my line on it is like, you know, there's everyone
wants to defund the police except for the police, the
cop in their.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Head, you know, like yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
We kind of we're shitty to each other and we
are perfectionists with one another. We definitely try to like
cancel each other for this that you know, transgression rather
than kind of like making it broader, checking in being
like understanding and like so much of toxic I think
movement culture comes from like undiagnosed and untreated like mental

(33:24):
illness or distress, you know, or trauma of the work itself.
So they knew it. They were like, we need we
have to actually be well, Like if we're alive, we
fucking better live good. Yeah, because so many people are dead.
So it's like that's kind of the other thing. It's
like not to be too much like this is COVID,
but COVID absolutely, you know, drove home, Like what is

(33:48):
the value of like living? Like what do we do?
Like where do I want to be if the shit
is ending or if you know, what do I want
to do with my time? And I think if you
see people dying all around you, you live so differently.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, totally. I like, I think that's such a good
point that the stuff comes from people who are very
smart and very good at organizing, whose backs are against
the fucking wall, right, And I yeah, I think that
this idea of like I talk about it sometimes with friends,
is like like mental health first aid. You know, like

(34:23):
I grew up learning how to put a band aid
on a wound or even you know, I grew up
learning how to treat punctual wounds and reasonably serious injuries, right,
But no one told me after you experience a traumatic event,
here are some basic steps you can take to keep
the wound from infecting. You know, I know how to

(34:44):
wash out a physical wound, but I didn't know how
to wash out a mental wound. And one of the
main answers is always comes down to things that encourage
people to have agency. So if like you're in a crisis,
when you act with a agency, it causes less of
a lasting traumatic effect on you, which isn't to say

(35:06):
the trauma isn't real and the trauma doesn't happen. You know.
It's like if someone slashes you in the arm. You're
not going to be like, ah, I'm going to just
not have been slashed, But you have to deal with
the slash and how you do that changes how it
impacts you going forward. You know. Yeah, I really like
I learned actually almost all of that from some of
the people involved in a Jane Adams collective, and I

(35:28):
just want to like shout them out. They're a collective
of anarchist mental health workers, both social workers and psychologists
who focus on mental health care for people in social movements,
and they've written a bunch about it, and I think
they're cool, so you should check their books out.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
All right.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
The next group that I'm going to have compete for
coolest would be the group that is most angry. That
before I talk about them, I'm going to talk about
a word from our sponsors, and we're back, because now

(36:03):
I'm going to talk about some of the spiciest of
the people. This group is called Queer Nation. Its founders
come from act Up in New York and they got
their start at the same LGBT Services Center, the center,
but they are more militant, and a lot of people
from act UP don't like them, and they like are
an aren't part of act Up in kind of an

(36:24):
interesting way. They were formed on March twentieth, nineteen ninety.
They are not AIDS focused. They are queer rights focused
in the middle of the AIDS crisis. As far as
I can tell, you know, I've already basically said ACTUP
invented everything. I'm going to add to that list. I'm
going to add two things to that list. I'm going

(36:44):
to add the reclamation of the word queer and I'm
going to add queer theory. So this group, more than
anyone else that I've been able to find, is responsible
for the popularization of the reclamation of the word queer.
They're not the first people who are like, oh, this

(37:05):
insult I'm called I'm gonna go buy it on purpose,
like people have been doing that forever, you know.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah, But I like it's actually a dope word because
it's got the cue, you know, it's it's just a
kind of a good word.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
I know, it rules. It's my favorite word for my
sexuality for two reasons. First, it doesn't answer any specifics
like I could be like, yeah, I'm a pan romantic,
somewhat saffic, trans, feminine, lesbian or something right, all these
like specifics. Yeah, and I get why that's useful for
some people or not sexy. Yeah, I just tell you

(37:38):
I'm queer, which says who I'm attracted to is between
me and the people with whom I have mutual attraction,
which is sexy as hell. I agree, And I am
totally fine with being like my sexualities. I'm a queer
trans woman. It's fucking fine. I also like queer because
as a history of militancy, it comes out of reclamation.

(38:00):
Like a lot of my friends identify as faggots, queer
used to have a not dissimilar connotation as something sketchy
and edgy to say or identify with. And I like
that about it. And I owe that word and its
reclamations to some really angry queers who started doing that
shit in nineteen ninety. Queer Nation set out to basically
force people to come to terms with homosexuality, but put

(38:23):
it in people's faces, all the stuff that the right
wings like. People are like, well, I don't mind what
people do behind closed doors, but why do they have
to be so in your face about it, and almost
everyone is like, we're not in your face about it.
I just want to hold hands with my fucking girlfriend, right.
Queer Nation was like, yeah, we're gonna be in your
fucking face about it.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, you should see it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
The first action that they took was they went to
a heterosexual bar, Flutie's Bar on April thirteenth, nineteen ninety
and uh showed up and played Spin the Bottle at
a straight bar.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
That's great. Yeah, I mean that's basically like I mean,
I don't mean that like equate it, but that's like
kind of and you know, that's an action of integration, right,
that's like we deserve to be here, we deserve to
be on all spaces, like deal with it.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, absolutely, And it's it's wild to think about how
for so many people of so many different marginalizations, just
existing in public is confrontational and edgy. Right, Like if
I wear a dress to the store, depending on where
I am, I'm like doing a political action, not because
I want to be, but because it's like dangerous for

(39:27):
me to do. Right.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Another thing that Queer Nation invented or developed the chant
we're here, we're queer, get used to it.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
Great chance. I know, I can't say we're here without
wanting to say we're queer. Get used to it. And
I'm not queer, and I don't think I should be
saying it that much, but it's my favorite chant.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
It's still a good chance. Unfortunately, I'm so grow up
the Simpsons that I think we're here, we're here, we're queer,
and we don't want any more bears.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
I don't remember that episode.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, it's like all I remember about the episode. It's
not about bears. Is in like a large, hairy homosexual
needs to be clear, it's it's it was like an
episode of The Simpsons where like bears are attacking the
town or something I don't remember, and so people protest
against it and someone chants that, and it's in my head.
It's probably the first time I heard that chant. One

(40:24):
of the ideological successors of queer Nation is the modern
group Bashback, and I remember the first time I was
out as queer was at a Bashback convention in Chicago.
I was there with my boyfriend. I wasn't out as tranced,
even to myself at the time. I was just a
boy named Margaret and I held his hand as we
took to the streets in all black and pink, chanting
one in ten is not enough. Recruit, recruit, which is

(40:46):
I think the modern version of we're here where queer
get used to it, which is the like, We're going
to take these things you say about us and like
throw them at you, be like, yeah, we are at recruiting,
what do you want? And I really liked it because
I had just and recruited. I met a really cute boy.
I thought I was straight, So anyway, Queer Nation. They

(41:09):
also almost certainly where Bashback has its name. Queer Nation
went to protest with banners that read things like dikes
and fags bashback, I.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Fucking love that, Like that's so great.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah. They're also pointed to regularly as one of the
founders of queer theory. They showed up at the nineteen
ninety Pride Parade in New York City, where the Manifesto
printed a long, double sided sheet I think called queers
read this, or read some of it? It opens. How
can I tell you? How can I convince you, brother sister,

(41:42):
that your life is in danger, that every day you
wake up alive, relatively happy and a functioning human being.
You are committing a rebellious act. You, as an alive
and functioning queer, are a revolutionary There is nothing on
this planet that validates, protects, or encourages your existence. It
is a miracle that you are standing here reading these words.

(42:04):
You should, by all rights, be dead. Don't be fooled.
Straight people own the world, and the only reason you
have been spared is that you're smart, lucky, or a fighter.
It also said queer can be a rough word, but
it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can
steal from the homophob's hands and use against him.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Ooh, that's so brilliant.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, a sly and what is it? Ironic weapon we
can steal from the homophob's hands. Yeah. And then the
last piece in it is the reason it was controversial
even among act up. The last piece on it was
called I hate straits, and it includes the line I
hate having to convince straight people that lesbians and gays

(42:48):
live in a war zone, that we're surrounded by bomb blasts.
Only we seem to hear that our bodies and souls
are heaped high, dead from fright, or bashed or raped,
dying of grief or disease of our personhood. I hate
straight people who can't listen to Queer Anger without saying, hey,
all straight people aren't like that. I'm straight to, you know,

(43:09):
And it ends with go tell them until they have
spent a month walking hand in hand in public with
someone of the same sex. After they survive that, then
you'll hear what they have to say about queer Anger. Otherwise,
tell them to shut up and listen. It's really interesting
because this piece, it starts off like I hate straits, right,
it actually does a fairly good job of saying, like, no,

(43:30):
I hate straight people who don't let me be angry
about heterosexuality compulsively running the world right, Like it even
includes it's like I hate everyone who says hashtag not
all straits, you know, basically like it uses that same
terminology that I think people like later developed when they
were like complaining about not all men or whatever.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Right, yeah, not all men. All lives matter. It's just
like the fragility of the powerful is just you know,
so it permeates every single movement. And also to see that,
you know, it sounds like some allies even are like well,
just so you know, like I'm I'm cool, and it's like,
this is not about you and your feelings, right, And

(44:10):
it kind of like abdicates responsibility when you just want to, like,
you know, save your own ass and make sure everyone
knows you're you're the cool straight right. And I think
that is sort of the emotional labor of like we're
tired of doing some of this work because you'll never
know what it's like. And that's how I tried to
explain too. I mean, I sometimes try to explain it,

(44:33):
and I'm I'm better, I'm worse at it. But I
think for me, when it dawned on me that like,
like if I was confused about queer theory, if I
didn't get it, it was because I'm not queer. If
I didn't understand like you know, like trans people, it's
because I literally would never understand what it was like
to feel like you were in a body that was

(44:54):
not yours, that was the wrong body. I will and
I will never understand that, just like pure and once
you sort of like let that wash over you, I
feel like then you can really be a better person
and an ally because it's not fucking about my understanding,
it's about whether I believe in human rights or not.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Right. Yeah, Like, I I don't know what it's like
to be a personal color. I never will, like right, okay,
I you know, I will just listen to people about
their experiences and believe them, you know, right.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Exactly exactly. You don't have to like go I mean
you can, like me, like do some testing and figure
out whether bigotry exists. But it does. But yeah, yeah,
I think that's I don't know, but yeah, it's not
even that radical. But I can imagine that for at
the time when they're like really trying to build and
like gay Straight Alliance, right, that was that, you know,

(45:50):
I think that was a lot of people's kind of
liberal on ramp to you know, activism, and that had
to include straight people. It was a gay straight alliance,
like we're working to get right.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
But hear me out, Okay, So I started the Gay
Straight Alliance at my high school as a as a
straight kid. There was no gay people in my gay
straight alliance. We most of us were gay. Yeah, Like,
but it's interesting thing where Gay Straight Alliance is like one,
it is actually good to be an alliance with people, right,

(46:21):
It is like genuinely good, but it's also it's an out.
It's a way of saying like, you don't have to
come out of the closet to join the Gay Straight
Alliance in a way that you have to come out
of the closet in order to join the gay club
or whatever, right, right, right right, because like when I
came out, like the next school over, the head of
the GSA was an out gay kid and it was hospitalized,

(46:44):
you know. Fuck. And it's funny. The way we started
my Gay Straight Alliance was I had been going to
these regional GSA meetings and these two teachers who were
so obviously in retrospect lesbians, They weren't out. One was
the woman gym teacher and the other was the like
butch social studies teacher with a hyphenated last name. They

(47:05):
weren't together, no, I don't think so, and they like
cornered me in the stairwell where like the bad kids
hung out in the morning, you know. And they were like,
did you know that teachers can't start student groups? And
I was like huh. And they were like, here's all
the paperwork, it's all filled out. Do you want to
start the Gay Straight Alliance? And I was like I

(47:26):
do what a brilliant idea I have had.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
That's so funny they got to the credit. Yeah, that's
so great. Slash did all the work for you. Yeah
I didn't. Yeah, but teachers could like join later on.
I felt like.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
They were advisors. So these were the teacher this like
the the group had to be started by students, but
it needed teacher advisors.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Any right, right right, Yeah, I'm like trying to remember
how the politics of clubs worked in my school, right,
But anyway, Yeah, No, that's a really good point about
gay straight alliances. But yeah, I think that's interesting because
like liberals wouldn't like that because you don't want to
demonize the people you're supposed to be, you know, lobbying.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Mm.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, totally exactly. And so a lot of people an
act up were really upset by by this, and other
people were really excited by it, you know. And and
that's actually one of the things that I hearing people
who are in act up talk about it that they
kind of in retrospect, they're really excited about. They're like,
we could disagree about things like we It wasn't everyone

(48:33):
had to accept everything that everyone else did. It's that
you didn't kick people out so you were like, I mean,
I think I'm sure some people were kicked out, but like,
you know, overall, you were like, Okay, well, these people
are doing things that isn't how I would do it,
you know, and that doesn't stop. But it doesn't occur
to you to then be like, now I'm going to

(48:53):
put all of my effort into fighting queer nation, you know.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Yeah, but again that's sort of part and parcel of like,
you know, dire circumstances requires more alliances and requires more
diversity of tactics, right, because what the fuck do we
have to lose?

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Yeah, and like you're gonna kick that person out. They're dying,
you know, right, right, and queer nations started. This is
the era where homosexuality hit mainstream discourse in the US,
and it is a dangerous moment. Trans people are discovering
this now. I mean, it was still part of the
earlier stuff too, So once homosexuality entered the mainstream discourse,

(49:34):
violence spiked. By April nineteen ninety, violence was up one
hundred and twenty two percent since the start of nineteen ninety.
Like in a four month period, violence went up one
hundred and twenty two percent on April twenty eighth. I
wrote twenty twenty four into my script, but that's not

(49:54):
when it happened. I will bet money it's nineteen ninety,
but it might be nineteen ninety one. I'm so sorry
the future listening to this. A guy named a gay
bar named Uncle Charlie's I'm so good at my job.
It was bombed with a pipe bomb and this injured
three patrons. It sent them to the hospital. It was

(50:15):
like minor injuries and the police were immediately like, oh,
this isn't a bias related crime, just a regular run
of the mill, not hate related bombing of a gay bar.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Jesus.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Within hours after the blast, Queer Nation had a thousand
queers in the street to protest. Wow and actually eventually
the bomber was caught. It was one of the first
attacks on you of soil by a radical Muslim group
that had targeted the bar for homosexuality. Alongside a bunch
of other like New York City landmarks. Queer Nation soon
spread across the country also, but they also took field

(50:51):
trips like individual groups. On May twelfth, they launched the
Queer Shopping Network, where they went to a Jersey City
mall to flyer about queerness with info about like famous
queers in history and safe sex tips, and it was
titled we're here, We're queer and we'd like to say hello.
Oh And I like that because it's they're doing both.
They are going to put out the flyer that says

(51:13):
I hate straits and then explain its position. They're also
going to a you know, a mall in Jersey City
to be like, hey, queer people exist and we're fine.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
You could even be one.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting. That's sort of
it reminds me like the I think it was a
Z's who has like a bit about you know, Muslims,
just like there need to be more positive images of them,
just like eating a sandwich, like yeah, talking about a
video game. You never see those depictions. But yeah, It's

(51:50):
what's incredible about this is how much these movements are
meeting people where they're at, Like, even if they're very
radical themselves, and even if their tactics are radical, it's
like the targets are so a mall also media massive target.
I mean that was that to me feels like a
very distinctly eighties thing, right, Like Yeah, that understanding that

(52:12):
you have to fuck with the media because they are
driving this narrative broadly. And if you don't hold The
Times accountable or hold Cosmopolitan accountable, you know, like they're
legitimate targets and you can affect thespective, the perspective of
the country if you do that.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah, totally. And I'm going to talk about one final
aspect of act UP that they were heavily involved in
to save even more uncountable lives because act UP, along
with others during the AIDS crisis, developed needle exchange programs
and fought for the legalization of needle exchange programs, which

(52:51):
they did in that order, which is the correct order
to do life saving work. Start when it's illegal, if
it needs to be done, and then demand that it
become legal. Possession and non prescription sale of needles was
illegal in a bunch of states, eleven of them in
nineteen ninety one. These are the states with the highest
incidents of AIDS, so illegal needle exchanges started up, providing

(53:13):
clean works to intravenous drug users. Some of these actually
pre date act UP, like the National AIDS Brigade in
Connecticut that started in nineteen eighty six. San Francisco had
Prevention Point act Up, Boston had the Ivy League, plus
New York and the East Bay act Up also did
needle exchange.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
That was probably more that's great and it's just a good,
good pun.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Especially in Boston.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Yes, yeah, but I mean that's so that's so radical
in itself, like first start doing something illegally. It's like
abortion clinics were the same thing. I mean, underground abortion providers.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Yeah, totally. Study after study was showing even back then
that access to clean needles greatly reduced the spread of
AIDS among needle drug users and it did not increase
the incidents of drug use. So there's like, like at
one point in the mid nineties, they were referencing six
different studies that have been done because Clinton kept being like,

(54:07):
oh well, I'll get to it. So some of these
exchanges started to be run by cities, which was complicated.
A journalist writing at the time named Liz Hileyman wrote
about the needle exchange for the Love and Rage Anarchist
Federation in nineteen ninety one. She wrote, state programs tend
to exclude activists, and her tailored to meet the needs

(54:28):
of bureaucrats rather than drug users. For example, a pilot
needle exchange program in New York City required drug users
to come to a central facility located across the street
from the police station. Why would anyone come to my drug?

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Come on now?

Speaker 2 (54:46):
And this is like around the same time that you know,
as they're trying to do activism to help street sex
workers have access to condoms. Yes, cops are going around
and you know, arresting women for having condoms pocket because
that could be seen as evidence that they are doing
sex work, which of course meant that fewer sex workers
use condoms, which meant that HIV continued to x sex workers. Yeah,

(55:12):
but the government, the federal government wouldn't help out, even
as cities did their like awkward and sort of sometimes
well intentioned and sometimes not things. Congress passed its first
law that said or statute that said no federal money
for syringe distribution in nineteen eighty eight. That same statute
is still in effect in some ways today.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yeah, what's gonna say.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
In nineteen ninety six, the Foundation for Aids Research determined
that syringe exchange programs dropped HIV infections in New York
City by two thirds Jesus Christ, Clinton still wouldn't. Like
Clinton had said something basically like, oh, once we have
evidence that it'll it doesn't cause more drug use or whatever,
we'll do it. And so then they were like, here's
six studies, and he was like no, never mind.

Speaker 3 (55:57):
Still no, yeah, and yeah, anyway you might get to it.
But I'm just reminded of the most recent freak out
during the pandemic, where I think the Biden administration included
like clean needles in a kit for drug users. I
believe it was like federally funded in part, and the
right freaked out about it. Yeah, and they were removed.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Yeah, I believe it.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
They keep doing it, like they're they're trying to pass
more legislation. They keep on trying to rescind federal funding
for safe drug use while simultaneously, you know, decrying the
fentanyl crisis. It's like, you literally have no plan and
you're not serious about stopping this.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Yeah. Absolutely. In nineteen ninety seven, Act Up New York
started a campaign for federal funding of needle exchange, and
to be fair, this is one of the ones they
didn't win, but they sure drew attention to the issue.
A thousand people marched on Clinton's birthday party in Manhattan
in June. They formed the National Coalition to Lives Now,

(57:00):
with an exclamation mark at the end because it was
the nineties, and they marched on like the Department of
Health and Human Services. By October nineteen ninety seven, a
bunch of the Presidential Advisory Council on AIDS, so they
were going to resign and mass if he didn't start
funding needle exchange. Activists interrupted the president to ask about
this policy, and they were like willing. They'd like go

(57:21):
to his fundraisers and shit, and they would get like
tackled and attacked by supporters in order to do so.
And what they were successful at they didn't get the
federal funding. The New York Public Department of Health said
the nineteen ninety sixty percent of injection drug users had HIV.
After a decade of syringe activism, it went down to

(57:42):
ten percent by two thousand and one. That is how
you save lives.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
They didn't still being discussed. I'm sorry, I'm just like
there's been there are just these things that like and
I think this safe drug use and needle exchange and
harm reduction is one of like the biggest no brainers,
next to like, do we need more money for cops? No?
But that one is like, there is so much evidence
this saves lives, but it is so politically somehow still

(58:12):
politically toxic, even though everyone has family members, everyone has
friends who've suffered, who've died. Like, you know, you've got
fucking Gavin Newsom in California vetoing laws to create like
statewide harm reduction programs even though it's been approved by
the legislature and the studies are there, But no, he

(58:34):
cannot do it. It's just seen as politically toxic. There's
too many of these issues where people can be just
so fucking cowardly.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Yeah. In two thousand and nine, the federal band was
like briefly rescinded, but then Republicans to control of the House.
In twenty eleven, it was reinstituted. And I asked a
friend of mine who works in harm reduction about this.
I was like, hey, do you like where's that currently?
Because there's a lot of news articles, but they're all
like two years old, three years old, at least the
ones that I found. And so my friend told me
that In twenty eighteen, the consolidated Appropriations Act allowed for
federal funds to support syringe service programs, but those funds

(59:05):
can't be used to buy the actual needles. You can
do everything else, but you can't buy the needles, even
with federal funds, which is one of the cheapest parts
of running a harm reduction clinic.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
What does that even mean? Would you like, like here
you can three D print a needle and they give
you the blue print.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
I think you go out and buy the needles yourself
with with other funds, but the you know, and then
a lot.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
Of civic funds can't be used for needles.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Yeah, and that's their like way of threading that needle, uh,
running the needle. I love harm reduction services because they
operate when it's when it's legal and when it's illegal.
I like drove up to an HIV place once to
get tested and this like guy met me in the
parking lot was like, do you need some needles? I

(59:51):
was like, what, No, I'm here for HIV testing. He's like, oh,
never mind. And it was it was during a period
where the state I was in it was illegal. There
was like a it constantly happens right where harm reduction
services will be like doing their thing and then like
some Republican will be like, now it's a crime, yes, yeah,
and then they just keep doing it. It just means
that someone who's not associated with the clinic is hanging

(01:00:12):
out in the parking lot giving away needles, which yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
That's actually like wonderful. And like I was saying, do
you think yeah, and I think that I do feel
like the abortion rights and reproductive rights movement needs to
take a page out of that. It's like, these are
going to be happening no matter what. And if y'all
can like ping pong with the fucking legislation as much
as you want, but people need this life saving care.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Yeah, totally. And that you know, no idea that guy
in the parking lot was. That man was like, I'm
gonna go do a crime every day that SAMs like
get caught or until the laws change, because he was like,
I'm gonna fucking stop people from dying, and like that
anonymous hero is my fucking hero.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
You know, hell yeah, anonymous hero.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
So in nineteen ninety six, AIDS deaths took their first
dip in the US thanks to new drugs, safer sex education,
harm reduction, and just all the things that act UP
fought for. Like there's no I mean yes, there's other
people involved, absolutely, the researchers, absolutely, the people doing this

(01:01:20):
other work who weren't necessarily part of act UP. Act
UP is not alone in having done this, but they
were part of a movement that worked. Act UP New
York is still around, it is still non hierarchical and
all volunteer. It's not as big as it used to be.
They're also nonpartisan and they don't endorse politicians, but they
are very vocal about supporting Palestine. And so all the

(01:01:42):
like silence equals death with the triangle watermelon like act
UP seems to fucking approve. You know, that's not a
misappropriation of that iconography. And I want to end by
describing one more action, the final action that was taken
by a guy named Steve Michael, the founder of the
DC chapter, because before he did this action, on May

(01:02:06):
nineteen ninety eight, he died. He died due to AIDS
related pneumonia. His last wish was a political funeral, So
one hundred people proceeded in silence for half a mile
up to the White House holding his open casket while
he wore an ACT up shirt, his loved ones gave
eulogies in front of the White House and condemned the

(01:02:27):
Clinton administration for their legacy of.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Inaction and amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yeah, that's just fucking beautiful. Like we all die, you know,
like let's figure out how to make it mean something.
And that is the story about how a nonpartisan, politically pluralistic,
horizontal direct action group has saved millions of lives and
even continues to do so from actions they took thirty

(01:02:57):
forty years ago, and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
The struggle continues. I mean, this is fucking wild. I mean,
this is like the kind of militancy that we need
about everyday human rights and health rights that we don't
always have and see, and the kind of bravery that
we need. But like, what I love about this movement
is also that it kind of laid the groundwork for

(01:03:21):
the future, so that yeah, we're still fighting these harm
reduction fights. We're still fighting for you know, whatever it is,
safe injection sites and whatnot. We're still fighting I mean
for equal access to like healthcare or universal care right,
or the lowering of you know, pharmaceutical prices and all this,
and for visibility and for human rights, for queer people.

(01:03:42):
So it's just I don't know, there's not to again
go back to the and I know, the like, you know,
reproductive rights movement was militant at some point, but it
feels like it hasn't been. Like the act of is
still radical, Like this is still a rat desire to
like harm reduction is still radical. And I don't feel

(01:04:05):
like every movement that can can say that that is one,
you know, won these gains over the you know, the
last few decades. Yeah, one random thing I was watching,
there's a Netflix stock on Hulu called like the Dark
Side of Comedy and being a stand up. I was like,
I gotta watch this. It's actually a it's it's a
Netflix stock. What did I say? It's a Vice doc
on Hulu and and like the third episode is about

(01:04:28):
Andrew Dice clay right, a massive like homophobic and sexist,
you know whatever, shock comic, and the gay community was
trying to protest because he was like invited to host
on SNL and blah blah blah, which was seen obviously
as a massive you know, you know, condoning of his

(01:04:49):
fucking rhetoric and all this shit. And they basically like no, no, no,
it wasn't snl. It was he was gonna have this
whole movie series. And they targeted execu katives in Hollywood
who they knew were gay and went and plastered posters
around the town being like you endorse Andrew dised Clay's homophobia,

(01:05:10):
Like you endorse like homophobic haate and like their faces
these random executives, and it fucking worked. It was like,
oh shit, we like you're making money, You're profiting off
of this. So in that same I don't know the
idea of like having a community, I know, the gay
community not a monolith, the queer community not a monolith,

(01:05:31):
but being able to like call out those folks in
high places, you know, whether it is in yeah, the CDC,
or in industries or in newspapers and be like even
outing them, like I know you're gay. Are you literally
going to make a profit off this? Are you literally
going to ignore the death in the street. That's just
such a strategic tactic.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Anyway, and androdised Clay is these movies didn't get made, but.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
All poor guy, he's a tour and make them of
money that way.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Yeah, him and Rob Schneider can go co headline the
shittiest comedians in the country.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Tour Rob Schneider getting kicked out of some like some
hospital in Canada, like was like, hey, you want to
do a fundraiser for us? Like what are you doing?
What is this a terrible idea? And they like ended
as set after ten minutes or some shit.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
I saw something that was like, why the fuck are
people still booking Adam Sandler's eighth closest friend.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
He had a Netflix special, Rob Schneider next Netflix special,
like a couple of years ago. Like Rob Scheider couldn't
have got a Netflix special when he was popular, you
know what I mean? Like, yeah, what are we doing?
They literally go after boomers who are losing their mind
about whatever woke? But I fucking love act Up. I
think it's it's such an incredible model. But for sure,

(01:06:54):
the affinity groups, the things that have something to do
with like your direct life, your livelihood, you can unity that,
I feel like is the takeaway?

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
Yeah, there's so much the set up, the systems for care,
keep the people engaged, who the people who are engaged,
make sure that they specifically feel welcome and special for
being part of your movement. Like there's just so much,
like the fact that they managed to create this like open, warm,

(01:07:24):
inclusive movement of angry people yelling at people, you know,
without I mean, yes they yelled at each other too,
but they had like I don't know, And there's so
much more. A lot of work has been done more
recently about act Up and there's like all kinds of
stuff you can look at and different takeaways that people
have come from it. Have whatever. Have I claim that

(01:07:47):
I got a snack between the first half and the
second half, but the snack is starting to wear out
and I'm beginning, so.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
We should do plugs.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
It's time for plugs. That's what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Plug.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Yeah, So what do you got?

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Just what do I got? I got a podcast called
The Bituation Room. It's news comedy. It comes out every
Wednesday morning and then there's a couple other Wednesday and Friday.
So listen to that or watch it on YouTube or
twitch at Franny Feo fr A and i fio, which
is where you can follow me on all the things.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
So you're saying, if people who listen to my show
but I only talk about history, want to know about
what's actually happening, they can go to your show. Is
that what you're suggesting.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Totally trying to interesting. I'm here get more news.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
My news that isn't news is because I've told you've
been telling me about it for a month. Is that
I am kickstarting my debut novel called The Sapling Cage.
I've written many novella's and at one being Adventurer of
your own choosing legally distinct from Chooser and adventure who
sent me a seasoned assystem at letter At one point
that was a long time ago. But now I have
a novel coming out. It's called The Sapling Cage, and

(01:08:51):
it is coming out from Feminist Press in September twenty
twenty four, and it is being kickstarted now. When listen,
you're listening in the future, in which case I hope
that everything's okay in the future. Sure, and uh, you
have enough food and water. That's what I got. See
you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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