Our group, which forced the US to step up in fighting Aids in the 80s and 90s, favoured direct action over debate
As we move into a new phase of the Covid crisis, it is hard to miss how the pandemic reveals the fissures in our society. Communities and countries of poor people of colour cannot access vaccines that are readily available to the most powerful and protected. Covid has been compared to Aids, but today’s pandemic is a collective public experience while Aids – especially during its height – was a private nightmare. Our group, ACT UP, fought to get it out into the public consciousness.
Five years after science first noticed the pattern of illness that would come to be known as Aids, 40,000 people were dead in the United States and the government and pharmaceutical companies were doing nothing. ACT UP (The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) was founded in 1987 to use direct action to end the Aids pandemic. I was an active member of this grassroots political organisation, having covered the crisis as a journalist in New York since the early 80s. In many ways, Aids activism was one of the most successful social movements in recent history.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3g1havg
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