The legacy of ACT UP and its fight to end AIDS

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

Sam revisits his 2021 conversation with Sarah Schulman about ACT UP. The organization united a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. In Schulman's book, Let The Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, she draws from nearly 200 interviews with ACT UP members to document the movement's history and explore how the group's activism transformed the way the media, the government, corporations and medical professionals talked about AIDS and provided treatment. Schulman and Sam discuss this transformation and its relevance to social movements today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, y'all, you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.
0:03.0	I'm Sam Sanders, you know, almost two years into coronavirus,
0:06.8	we are still dealing with coronavirus.
0:11.1	And it seems like it's everywhere.
0:13.2	You could say coverage of this pandemic has been pretty public and widespread.
0:18.2	But a few decades ago, there was another pandemic sweeping the nation.
0:22.0	And it seemed like that one for a long time could not get any attention.
0:26.7	Let's go back to the year 1987.
0:29.9	That year, there was a new activist group forming in New York City.
0:33.9	It was called Act Up.
0:35.7	This group held weekly meetings on Monday evenings at the center.
0:39.8	This LG T community nonprofit in the West Village.
0:43.3	At the time, it was a crumbling old school.
0:47.4	paint was peeling off the walls and it had never been rehabbed.
0:51.1	That is Sarah Schulman.
0:52.3	She's a writer and activist and she joined Act Up in 1987.
0:57.6	And you know, even though that building was raggedy, those meetings, they were really something else.
1:02.3	I was hanging around the center on the Monday and there was a lot of noise coming from room 101.
1:10.2	Because I saw so many people there, I knew, you know, something really big was going on.
1:15.5	The feeling of Act Up in its heyday, when the room is packed and the weather's nice,
1:19.4	the meeting spills out to the courtyard and there's all kinds of cruising going on and eye catching and chattiness.
1:29.1	I think any political movement for it to be successful has to be a place that makes the participants lives better.
	...

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