ACT UP The Impossible Movement
There are periods of time where people are pushed to the limit due to conditions placed upon them and hence must “ACT UP” to face those issues head on. This statement holds true during the height of the AIDs crisis in the late 1980s when a group titled “AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power” (aka ACT UP) made their presence known. ACT UP is the definition of a grassroots social movement for nearly all of the members of the group joined organically due to the prevalence of AIDS. ACT UP’s goals were to bring legislation, medical treatment, policy, and research for people living with AIDS and ultimately to find a cure. These goals lead to direct confrontation with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), big business, and the incumbent parties in power. ACT UP arguably was able to achieve those goals against said obstacles, a task would require the solving huge collective action problems that many social movements would fail to overcome. This brings up questions on how did ACT UP become a powerful movement and why social movements of today are not as successful. In this paper, I will illustrate how ACT UP became one of the most successful social movements in the 21st century due to the universality of the AIDS epidemic, the structure of ACT UP, and the polarization of mass media in favor of ACT UP. I will further support my argument linking ACT UP with contemporary social movements to highlight the differences of what makes a social movement successful.
The AIDS virus has been around long before 1980s but once the virus was able to weave its way into urban cities the infection would finally draw attention about the lethality and severity that was AIDS. Early in the epidemic, the AIDS virus was viewed to only affect individuals who were homosexual or engaged in homosexual intercourse, and as such, was written off as just a gay related disease and not taken seriously until the disease continued to spread across the United States like a wildfire indiscriminate when it comes to who gets infected. During this period, the United States government lacked the willingness or consciousness to deal with the AIDS crisis, which led Larry Kramer to found ACT UP in New York, the first of many branches to spawn between 1980s-1990s and rallied People with AIDS (PWAs) to fight inactivity against the AIDS crisis. ACT UP directed their attention to the companies, government, and industries that had a stake in AIDS policy, drugs, or products by modeling for direct group actions against said institutions. In the article “Act Up in Anger,” by Handelman states, “Whether it's 1500 people besieging the FDA campus in Maryland with smoke bombs or 11 people handcuffing themselves to the New York office of a Japanese pharmaceutical firm, ACT UP gets results” (6). The ACT UP Social movement was a vessel to change the politics of the time from inactivity to positive change. These results come from a multitude of factors but it boils down to the individual impact that AIDS held over the members of ACT UP. Nearly every participant in ACT UP was either a PWA or knew a PWA and this fact alone drove the members of ACT UP to put everything into the movement, for many it was the only way to cope with the possibility of death or losing a loved one to AIDS.
The severity of AIDS was perfectly channeled through ACT UP due to the way the movement was developed and directed. ACT UP as a political organization resembles participatory democracy where members of ACT UP have the autonomy to voice their opinions and support others if they are willing to do so (Roth 2-3; ch. 1). Essentially participation is the only requirement to become a member of ACT UP, and participation was not an issue that various ACT UP organizations faced. The vast number of members attending general assemblies made it difficult for ACT UP to perform well, so in order hear everyone’s voice so the introduction of separate committees or affinity groups was utilized to mitigate the issue of majority/group think biases (Hubbard 24:00-26:00). These affinity groups laid the groundwork for great activism because these close-knit groups turned anyone into an active activist willing stand up to authority and fight for what they believe in. This was done by having more experienced and knowledgeable members to help educate younger yet more vigorous members of ACT UP the ins and outs of direct action activism. The spread of knowledge and experience before a major protest really turned to benefit ACT UP’s mission against government inaction, and kept members longer for the affinity groups keep each other in check. In the documentary, “United in Anger” by Jim Hubbard there is a decent amount of focus on affinity groups and how they allowed ACT UP members to protest and enjoy the process of activism (46:46-47:25). The more positive the social movement is for the members the more willing the members of that movement are going to give up in order to see the mission through.
ACT UP as a social movement had no collective opposition or counter movement against it due to the reality that AIDS as a disease that does not discriminate who gets infected or affected. Even though some may argue that homophobia and heteronormativity are general resistances against ACT UP they are not (for the sake of this paper) not considered a collective force opposing ACT UP, that is not to say that their presence did not impact the movement. AIDS thus presents a unique situation that only the lucky and powerful could get and that is an uncontested playing field that allows ACT UP to perform their protest unhindered by direct opposition. Usually social movements have a counter or opposition that another major group of people favors over the original movement such as the contemporary example of the Black Lives Matter movement that had/still faces direct opposition, All Lives Matter (or even more splintering Blue Lives Matter), yet ACT UP was immune to such a response. This lack of opposition from other majority groups lead to outstanding public support of ACT UP which is especially highlighted from mass media portrayals of ACT UP members at major protests. In a sense, ACT UP is similar to community watch programs for it was built by people for the people such that ACT UP was built by PWA advocating for PWA. ACT UP is on “the side of good” at which no sane person would support the other side that is AIDS. This polarization of good and bad with ACT UP and AIDS does stem again from the impact that AIDS held over many lives in the 1980s-1990s.
The success of ACT UP came naturally as members became more trusting of each other and found more direction in placing well-articulated protests that brought about swift changes. ACT UP’s protest of the New York Stock Exchange against the absurd price of AZT (the only drug available at the time to treat AID victims) and slow process of FDA drug approval on March 24th 1987 lead to a 2-year reduction of drug approval process from the FDA the very next day (Levy 3-4). Each successful protest brought more members to participate in ACT UP which eventually snowballed to further protest with better results leading to even more participants. Successful protests alone did not propel ACT UP to be an international organization for it was the cultivation of mass media and how ACT UP was able to gravitate favorably in the spotlight. In Solomon’s article, “AIDS Crusaders Act Up A Storm,” Solomon states, “To get drugs released, treatment programs funded and consciousness awakened, ACT UP gleefully beats the media in their own game. You could say… that they present their cause as a consumer item and make it at least as appealing as a cold Coors or a cruising Camaro” (48). Utilizing theatrics to always be the top story allowed ACT UP to be seen and that’s all they needed. During the 1980s-1990s TV was the main medium to be heard and the news was ACT UP’s vector in spreading the message of needed government change against the AIDS epidemic.
Playing to the news outlets today may not be needed to lead a successful movement now due to mass media consisting of different social media platforms, and a contemporary example of a movement that utilized social media to get attention was the #Metoo movement in the later months of 2017. The #Metoo movement is a movement about coming out against the abuse from individuals who held power over the victim and gained traction from one story that spread like wildfire through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The success of #Metoo came from that cultivation of media attention where no one could avoid the problem same as what ACT UP did the only difference is the medium at which that was portrayed. Being seen was the game and ACT UP played their part to become the news of the hour every hour from March 1987 to the early 1990s.
Some may argue that the demobilization ACT UP during the mid-1990s came too early before ACT UP was able to reach their peak in terms political activism and power, but this perspective cannot be farther from the truth. Many members of ACT UP were a part of it due to the prevalence of AIDS in the 1980s-early 1990s and the issues that were unsolved and the desire to fix them. Roth’s book titled, The Life and Death of ACT UP/LA, dedicated an entire chapter about the demobilization of ACT UP and traced a few theories on how and why it happened. Roth considered the idea that “success kills” social movement theme as a general premise on the demobilization but also noted that many of the members were in fact PWA and due to their shortened lifespan due to the disease were unable to complete their duties as well as the fact that their death having an emotional toll to general members of ACT UP (LA in Roth’s book). The conclusion that the death of important leaders, coupled with the general national success brought by ACT UP during the peak, made ACT UP, “a less attractive venue for battling AIDS” (pp 135-150; ch. 5). Various ACT UP goals were achieved after demobilization in partly because government policies need time due to the way policy change on a national level is done (i.e. it takes time for motions to pass) and ACT UP’s early work driven with consistency by passionate members drastically shortened that timescale for said policy changes. All in all, ACT UP reached a point of natural demobilization due to success burnout in the early 1990s and had sufficient mobilization to keep the proverbial ball rolling in favor of PWA.
The legacy of ACT UP stems from the fact that as a grassroots movement ACT UP was able to effectively lobby for medical policy change and resource reallocation, better than other movements and formal political organizations built to lobby for such changes. In the journal article, “The Legacy of Act Up's Policies and Actions from 1987-1994," by Nathan H. Madson, Madson states,
“While ACT UP’s methods were not perfect, its methodology can be and has been imitated by other marginalized or patients’ advocacy groups seeking change outside the traditional legislative process. ACT UP laid the framework for not only making the public more aware of a disease or injustice by using loud, eye-catching protest[s] and political theater, but it also has pushed groups to work hard[er] to protect their rights”
ACT UP has proven that grassroots movements is a viable method for political direct action once more. The organization rose during the darkest time for the LGBT community and was able to rally from that darkness to achieve the unthinkable. Building a community of PWA, a community of that had been decimated by AIDS, to fight successfully against government inactivity, and homophobic policies seemed impossible, but all it took was a fiery speech by Larry Kramer, and a group to channel emotion to create the legacy of ACT UP (Levy 1-2).
ACT UP stands out from most social movements due to the issues that they were fighting for, and rallying anger against AIDS made the movement unstoppable from counter movements (because who would rally for AIDS). The ability to maintain constant media presence and cultivate it in such a way to only shed the positive light of ACT UP further establishes the difference between ACT UP and other movements. All in all, very few social movements that started from the ground up could achieve the success that ACT UP was able to curate during the AIDS crisis. ACT UP’s massive success lead to a natural demobilization of ACT UP and a decline from the media spotlight after the mid 1990s but their impact in the United States has already been made. FDA’s Drug approval process, patient advocacy, and heightened political power to PWA and queer community is only a short list of contributions that ACT UP made in the US. The legacy of ACT UP highlights the power that ordinary citizens have when they are united and focused on an issue as a collective, and thus serves as a reminder to those in positions of power to not get too comfortable.