by Andrew Coile
ACT UP/D.C. is dead, and frankly, I’m glad. Both ACT UP and other “direct action” activists had a consistent record of choosing incredibly inappropriate targets for their actions.
The pre-cursor to ACT UP’s own bad aim occurred when activist Gerry Green tried to disrupt the Volunteer Dinner for the Whitman-Walker Clinic in 1988, because Dr. Anthony Fauci was the guest speaker. Green claimed Fauci was a “murderer.” Fauci is a good scientist and a bad bureaucrat, but this does not make him a murderer.
The next target of rage was the National Institutes of Health in 1990 to protest the slow pace of AIDS research. An NIH memo said that ACT UP planned “destruction of government property.” I thought that this was insane! Just where did they think the money was going to come from to replace the damage?
What was accomplished? ACT UP members got their faces on TV, and confronted dedicated people who were already working 10 to 12 hour days trying to find effective treatments and cures for AIDS while protesters held signs saying, “We die—they do nothing.”
And while they were hurting those trying hardest to help us, efforts were on to gut the funding for AIDS research at that very moment over on Capitol Hill.
Where some strategic lobbying could have been extremely effective in getting additional AIDS funding, ACT UP was instead conducting a “media event.”
ACT UP then decided in 1991 to target the Food and Drug Administration, which was accused of holding up new AIDS drugs from approval. Someone obviously hadn’t done their homework. As Dr. Curtis Scribner of the FDA explained in a 1990 article in the Washington HIV News, drug companies are required to submit certain paperwork to get drugs approved; if the paperwork is incomplete, the FDA lists the application as “pending.” The FDA is prohibited from commenting until the application is either approved or rejected. Naturally, the drug company is not going to issue a press release saying that they haven’t finished their studies or haven’t filed their paperwork. The FDA looks like the source of the delays, when the drug companies are responsible.
Did ACT UP bother to find this out? No! It was far more dramatic to stage a protest at the FDA to get on television, and only angered the people working there who already knew the agency wasn’t the source of the delays.
Another example of ACT UP’s poor aim came during the 1993 National March on Washington. ACT UP decided to stage a one and a half hour “die-in” in front of the White House. They stopped the march for almost two hours. People who had not yet marched were basically stranded in place for hours in the hot sun.
Why were our “official” numbers on the Mall so low? Perhaps because so many trying to march couldn’t get to the Mall because of ACT-UP’s stupidity. In order to gratify their egos, they sacrificed everyone else in the Gay community, and ultimately themselves.
It was reported that Larry Kramer and his cohorts threatened to storm the stage at the March unless they were allowed to rant and rave on television. Who the hell is Larry Kramer anyway? Who appointed him sole representative of the Gay and AIDS community? If Kramer’s main qualifications are that he is infected with HIV and shrill, I think better representatives can be found, and in fact were.
All this could be excused if these tactics produced results. But what has ACT UP accomplished? They forced early approval of drugs whose true effectiveness has still not been proven. One activist admitted at a public meeting recently that the pressure to allow early approval of ddC may have been a mistake.
Basically, all ACT UP has accomplished with its direct action media events is to make the public think that all Gay people, especially Gay people with AIDS, are rageaholics with huge egos and a flair for the dramatic.
The reality of ACT UP was revealed in the letter in the May 28 issue of the Blade from Gary Brunelle, where he talks about “My anger turned to rage...” and “Certainly there are people out there reading this now with anger in their throats, rage in their souls, and sadness in their hearts.” He also states, “It is very important for the people, especially young people, to put forth their anger and time into a group like this.”
ACT UP was a group of rageaholics acting out their anger. They made little attempt to focus their anger constructively. Their sole aim was to hurt their targets as much as possible, without regard to consequences. No wonder Brunelle encourages “especially young people” to engage in this type of behavior. Only the unbelievably immature can blind themselves to the damage they create by this type of senseless, unfocused rage. ACT UP also has had a knee-jerk reaction to any degree of criticism of their actions. They seem incapable of acknowledging the hundreds or thousands of people working quietly to effect change.
While the gay community as a whole has had an uneasy coexistence with ACT UP, perhaps we have only ourselves to blame. How many of us consider ourselves “activists?”
ACT UP is dead, thank goodness, and the best way to keep such a small group of egomaniacs from appointing themselves representatives of the Gay community is to become an activist yourself. You need no one to be an activist for you.
Have you called the White House? Have you called your elected representatives? Have you sent letters? The effort is surprisingly little. You don’t need anyone to do your activism for you. Properly focused demonstrations have their place, but people rarely listen to someone who appears to be crazy screaming in their face. Reach out as a rational human being, and the people you can touch and affect a positive change in may surprise you.
The author is an AIDS and Gay rights activist who works as a computer systems engineer. He lives in Springfield, Va.
Originally published in The Washington Blade on June 25, 1993.
This column was originally titled by me, “Shed no tears for ACT-UP.” My editor, Colleen Marzec, said that was too inflammatory, and changed it.
The story originally started out with the following opening paragraph:
For years, I expected to see a story that started like this:
“The ‘direct action’ groups ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) and OUT! (Oppression Under Target) have decided to merge into a new group called ACT OUT! (Activists Childish Tantrums and Outrageous Ultimatums and Threats). This new group would be dedicated to ‘hurting the friends of the gay and AIDS communities, ignoring those who truly do the damage, threatening all who question their actions, and getting its members’ faces on television’ by unusually childish and inappropriate ‘direct action’ media events, according to their press release.”
This story was meticulously researched, both by the Blade and by me. I conducted interviews with people who had been present at all three demonstrations mentioned, the Blade checked their news morgue and photo archives, and we made sure every ‘i’ was dotted and every ‘t’ was crossed, because we knew ACT UP would challenge the story.
Colleen got a call from someone in ACT UP, saying “We wondered when the ‘ding-dong, the witch is dead’ column would appear.” They just wondered why it had taken so long. Colleen also got a call from someone saying the column was “wildly inaccurate,” but when pressed for specifics, could come up with only two minor points that Colleen said were really more matters of interpretation than errors of fact. She refused to run a correction or retraction.
The following response was printed in the Letters to the Editor on July 9, 1993:
Speak up to be heard
As someone involved in direct action for a number of years (OUT!, ACT UP/D.C., and Queer Nation), I’d like to respond to Andrew Coile’s criticism of ACT UP and direct action (June 25, Blade).
Yes, ACT UP/D.C. is dead, but ACT UP still lives in this area. There are a number of AIDS activists who are still willing to get into the streets and make noise. ACT UP Washington is now forming, so Mr. Coile might have to turn the other way and cover his ears.
Direct action tactics have served a powerful purpose in the past. Twenty-five years ago, the modern Gay rights movement started because activists got into the street and protested the closing of Stonewall. Over the years, direct action groups such as OUT! and ACT UP have staged demonstrations to protest violence against our people, prejudice in the workplace and government, and of course, unresponsiveness to AIDS issues. Direct action has made people accountable publicly for their actions.
It is dramatic to stage protests, and yes, we have gotten a lot of press coverage when we made statements, but the media is one of our most valuable forms of getting the message across. How many people had heard of Allen Schindler’s murder before Michael Petrelis got his name in the press and on 20/20? Many people agree with our protest issues, but aren’t willing to be as vocal about them.
It can be tough and intimidating to scream or lie down in the streets when hostile people are swarming about you, and it is no picnic being roughed up by police, but many of us feel you have to speak up to be heard.
We do need more young people to become activists. They have the energy, drive, and commitment that we can use. Many of us old-timers have burned out repeatedly, but are too stubborn to call it quits. My lover Steven died in 1987 of AIDS; I still don’t see a cure.
The “Die-In” at the March on Washington brought the issue of AIDS to many people who might have overlooked it while in town. Although it was a logistical nightmare, many people throughout the parade were silent during the period of remembrance. If people couldn’t stop for time to remember all those who have died of AIDS, then whose rights were they supposedly marching for?
I encourage people to become activists in their own way. Write, call, and get involved in the community if you can. There is still plenty of inequity against us out there. And if you do see a protest, don’t automatically sniff and turn away, we might be demonstrating for your rights.
Michael Singerman
Silver Spring, Md.
Interesting to note that this letter makes no attempt to defend their incredibly bad aim or inappropriate actions. Nor did he pick up that nowhere did I say that all direct action was bad; I just thought ACT UP was inept and caused more harm than good.
I may have lost a few friends in the activist community as a result of this column, but I also had a great many people come up to me in person or call me to say, “I feel the same way, but I didn’t feel comfortable expressing it.”
How sad that the Gay community has become trapped in its own version of Political Correctness.
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