During the 80s, a time when neoliberalism and new politics came about, the AIDS crisis emerged.  Everyone – the government, media, medical institutions, and the general public were totally unprepared for what this entailed.  The deaths of thousands of people, most of them gay men, were largely ignored by these institutions (obviously because of homophobia).  As a result, society needed to be pushed to recognize that the AIDS crisis was a real problem, and that the voices of victims and their allies could no longer be ignored.  ACT UP was one of the organizations that arose from this.  Its members realized that they needed to be assertive in how they gained attention.  One of the ways it did this was to insert themselves in ‘sacred space’.

ACT UP used sacred space as a stage.  As shown in the video, when they flooded a church during services, they made a big show of it, engaging in a die-in and shouting phrases such as ‘stop killing us’.  They engaged in nonviolent direct action, risking themselves in order to make a point.  While members of the church prayed, activists would make as much of a noise as possible and were arrested.  In that way, they sent off a message saying that no space was too private or ‘special’ for them to invade and make the public aware of what was happening.  Additionally, the Church was just one of the many powerful institutions that ignored the AIDS crisis; ACT UP was basically telling the Church that they were not innocent, and were in fact complicit in the deaths of so many people.

These public actions were so powerful because they evoked intense feelings within those on the outside.  Perhaps the people in the church didn’t care about the cause the activists were trying to bring to light, but many people who would watch videos of it on the news would likely sympathize with the activists, and direct their anger towards institutions like the Church for doing nothing.  ACT UP’s actions were so strong because the organization understood the importance of cultural politics in that day and age.  Their entire purpose was to make a spectacle to make people angry.

I would say activism surrounding my topic already uses the same methods as ACT UP.  My topic is Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, and in the past we have seen many people, professional activists or not, utilize methods similar to ACT UP’s to take a stand and draw attention, whether it’s protesting against the Muslim ban or against violence against those communities.  I would say in general ACT UP has had an influence on all sorts of activists, because they all want the same thing: to be noticed.

-A.H.

In the early morning on June 28, 1969, the police conducted a raid on a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn.  Police raids on gay bars at the time were very common, and despite the outward reasoning that selling alcohol without a liquor license was illegal, the patrons knew that the real reason the police were there was because Stonewall was so prominent.  However, this day was different; the gay patrons of the bar fought back, tussling with police and throwing coins, bottles, and bricks.  The confrontation would eventually grow into a riot.  Four nights later, another crowd gathered outside the club and clashed with police.

The riots at Stonewall would be a turning point for LGBT communities in New York, America, and the world as a whole, igniting a level of self-empowerment and anger that had never been seen before in the gay rights movement.  LGBT people at the time faced violence, discrimination, loss of employment, and more, forced to stay in the closet for their own well-being.  But now, they were encouraged to own their gay identity and to display it freely.  Organizations like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis were formed and signified the beginning of a stable gay rights movement, and, according to Jaffe, were influenced by the African-American civil rights movement.  Greenwich Village had opened the nation’s first gay bookstore, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, on Mercer Street in 1967.  That same year, the NY Appellate Division ruled that the State Liquor Authority couldn’t prevent bars from serving gay customers without evidence of “indecent behavior”.

Disagreements between older and younger activists in the Mattachine Society over whether gay people should want acceptance or respect led to the formation of the Gay Liberation Front, a militant group that denied the respectability politics that so dominated the MSNY.  The new organization would also face divisions of its own, and the Gay Activists Alliance was formed in rejection to the GLF’s stance that required activists to join a coalition to fight for the rights of POC, straight women, and workers.  Lesbians launched their own movements after facing sexism in the Gay Liberation movement (dominated by men) and homophobia from the Women’s Liberation movement (dominated by straight women); they were convinced that gay women were the only true feminists, and new organizations such as the Radicalesbians formed.  Even despite the creation of all these new splinter groups, gay New Yorkers who felt excluded – such as black people, Latinas, and transvestites formed their own groups.

Despite the strides these groups made, they would have to mobilize new activists due to the rise of the AIDS crisis.  The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power – or ACT UP – was one of the most successful social movements of the 80s and 90s.  During this time the AIDS crisis was in full swing, and the government response to it was shameful; Ronald Reagan pandered to the religious right and never even mentioned the crisis.  As a whole, American media and society was mostly indifferent to the deaths of thousands of gay men.  ACT UP was unique in that it utilized culture as a form of resistance.  Lampert states “numerous art and video collectives were formed within ACT UP, including the Silence = Death Project…Gran Fury, Little Elvis, GANG, ACT UP Outreach Committee, DIVA TV, Testing the Limits, and House of Color.”  The art created – graphics, posters, billboards, among others – was meant to be personal and evoke deep-seated feelings of anger in those who viewed it.  ACT UP was also organized into a series of caucauses; a majority caucus was formed in 1987 because African-Americans and Latinos were the demographics that represented the highest percentage of AIDS in NYC.  Of course, being an organization dominated by mostly white middle-class gay men had its problems, and sometimes this presented a problem for its nonwhite, female, or poorer members.  However, ACT UP also made an effort to be anti-racist in its activism as well.

While groups and organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and ACT UP may no longer exist or are very small in rank, it is important to remember the steps they took in advancing the gay rights movement and the fight against AIDS.  Even to this day, young LGBT people are encouraged to learn the history of the community, to know what their predecessors fought for so that they themselves will be motivated to fight for a better future.  The history of the LGBT community, not just in New York City, but in America and the world as a whole is a rich one and is full of anger, resistance, and love for each other.  Their legacy is not forgotten and continues to be a source of inspiration for current-day gay rights activists.

-A.H.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to state that racial minority groups are often handed the short end of the stick when it comes to being served by the very government that is meant to help them.  To these groups, there came a time when they looked at themselves and their communities and realized that they simply could not wait any longer for change to come.  Party politics and the electoral process wasn’t satisfactory; they had to take control of their own livelihoods for a change, and make progress on their own terms.  This is the strategy that many Puerto Ricans and Asian-Americans living in New York decided to undertake.

In the year 1969, the Young Lords Organization was formed by Puerto Rican New Yorkers, many of them students, activists, or members of other neighborhood organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Urban Planning Studio.  In their first act to draw major attention, frustrated with normal political avenues and skeptical of then Mayor Lindsay’s promises, the Young Lords launched their “garbage offensive” that year, sweeping garbage into the streets and disrupting daily life in order to prove to the residents that “bold action that disrupted business as usual was needed to force the city to act on just demands” (Muzio 25).

Young Latinos in the mid-to-late 60s were frustrated with President LBJ’s War on Poverty, which failed to change the terrible economic and social conditions that severely affected the nation’s inner cities dominated by blacks and Latinos.  Not only that, but with the evolution of the civil rights movement into a movement focused on black empowerment rather than integration led to another movement in the city led by black, Puerto Rican, and Asian-American parents to control their local public school, pitting activists against the city’s majority-white teachers’ union.

The Young Lords were motivated mainly by the vision of socialist revolution.  They sought to eliminate poverty and racism.  They were disillusioned by the failure of ‘Nueva York’ to provide jobs and economic security for their families.  In response, they desired control of their own communities, creating the 13 Point Program and Platform to outline their goals.  Additionally, they also sought out the self-determination of all Puerto Ricans, both on the island and off of it.  While some more moderate Puerto Ricans on the island and in New York wanted it to achieve statehood, many – including the Young Lords – preferred that it would become completely independent.

Despite the leaps and bounds that the Young Lords made in the lives of Puerto Ricans, even the most far left of groups can be faced with internal issues that form as a result of their own biases.  For example, male chauvinism was a pressing issue in the organization that many of the female members felt needed to be addressed.  “Machismo”,  a Latino cultural concept that expected women to be basically subservient to men, still influenced the way of thinking for many of the male members of the group.  A Women’s Caucus in the group was eventually formed to overcome the sexism they faced there, with many of the members achieving positions of power alongside the men; eventually the 13 Point Program and Platform was edited to state “DOWN WITH MACHISMO AND MALE CHAUVINISM” (Jaffe 236).  Furthermore, the group’s straight male members worked through letting go of their existent homophobia that stemmed from machismo.  The YLO would welcome new members like transgender activist Sylvia Rivera in 1970 during this time.

Asian-Americans, despite often being viewed as the perfect ‘model minority’, engaged in activism of their own during the 60s and 70s as they experienced injustice and inequality themselves.  Community groups mobilized protests against the beating of a young Chinese American engineer by police in the 70s.  Asian-Americans were distressed by intensifying poverty, illness, and overcrowding as Chinatown’s populations surged; younger Asians also were angered by “racist stereotypes and political powerlessness” (Jaffe 243).  This is the time when Yellow Power came about on the West Coast, and New York Asians who participated in the anti-war movement began to fight for Asian-American issues as well.  I Wor Kuen, a Maoist group, opened a health clinic in Chinatown to combat tuberculosis in 1969; Concerned Asian Students succeeded in getting an AA studies program at City College in 1971.  The legacy of many of these Asian-American activist groups can still be felt in the city now, with groups to this day fighting against a multitude of issues.

The idealistic aspirations of the Puerto Rican and Asian activists did a lot to change the status quo at the time, where instead of simply waiting for change, people went out and made change themselves.  It is important to remember that groups like the Young Lords, while facing internal dissent and slowing radical momentum, were also actively being infiltrated by the NYPD and the FBI through COINTELPRO.  In that way, the government succeeded in suppressing those they saw as a threat, as they have done many times before and continue to do.  Despite this, their legacy still lives on in the work they did and the lives they changed.

-A.H.