ACT UP Co-Founder and AIDS Activist Spencer Cox Passes Away at 44

via Windy City Times, by David France

Spencer Cox, the pivotal AIDS activist who co-founded two important and ongoing AIDS treatment initiatives and achieved great strides in focusing global attention on the disease and the need for drugs to control the epidemic, died this morning at Columbia Presbyterian of AIDS related causes. He was 44 (March 10, 1968).

As a very young man fresh from Bennington, where he studied Theater and English Literature, he arrived in NYC after finishing just 3 years. He was diagnosed with HIV soon thereafter. By 1989, at age 20, he had become spokesman for ACT UP during its zenith through the early 90s. A member of its renowned Treatment & Data committee, and later co-founder of TAG (the Treatment Action Group), he schooled himself in the basic science of AIDS and became something of an expert, a "citizen scientist" whose ideas were sought by working scientists. In the end, Spencer wrote the drug trial protocol which TAG proposed for testing the promising protease inhibitor drugs in 1995. Adopted by industry, it helped develop rapid and reliable answers about the power of those drugs, and led to their quick approval by the FDA.

Even before ACT UP, he began work for amfAR (known at the time as The American Foundation for AIDS Research), first as a college intern, eventually going on staff as assistant to Director of Public Affairs, responsible for communications and policy.

Cox left there to co-found the Community Research Initiative on AIDS (now the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, ACRIA) with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend and Marisa Cardinale . At ACRIA, he ran public affairs and edited all publications.

From 1994 to 1999, he was Director of the HIV Project for TAG, where he did his groundbreaking work in drug trials designs. He designed the drug trial adopted in part by Abbott as they were developing Norvir, the first Protease Inhibitor to head into human trials. It was had an "open standard-of-care arm," allowing people on the control arm to take any other anti-AIDS drugs their doctors prescribed, versus the arm taking any other anti-AIDS drugs plus Norvir. It was this study that showed a 50% drop in mortality in 6 months. Norvir was approved in late 1995. Though the results were positive, the proposal sharply divided the community, many of whom thought it was cruel to withhold Norvir on the control arm. Spencer defended himself in a controversial BARON'S cover story that made him, briefly, the most-hated AIDS activist in America. Ultimately he was vindicated.

"Spencer single-handedly sped up the development and marketing of the protease inhibitors, which currently are saving 8 million lives," says TAG executive director Mark Harrington . "He was absolutely brilliant, just off the charts brilliant,"

After the plague was transformed with the drug revolution, he was the first to see there would be a psychological burden to address in the gay community members who survived the worst of the epidemic. He founded the MEDIUS INSTITUTE FOR GAY MEN'S HEALTH, a think tank focusing on gay male emotional health. MEDIUS produced several important reports but failed to find the financial support it needed to continue his work.

Read the rest

In Occupy Movement, AIDS Activists Find Common Ground

Julie Davids, at center with sign, and other AIDS
activists joined Occupy Wall Street last week. (Photo courtesy of Kaytee Riek)

AIDS activism has a rich history of taking advocacy to the streets, into city halls and state houses, and into American consciousness.

Last week, veterans of ACT UP — the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power — joined the Occupy movement in New York to advocate for a small tax of Wall Street trades to benefit people living with HIV. Together, the 25-year-old ACT UP and the more fledgling Occupy movement made for a natural pairing, said Julie Davids, director of organizing and mobilization for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.

“ACT UP has always looked at the AIDS crisis through an economic justice lens and has always recognized that obstacles were rooted in greed and the profit motive," Davids told the Associated Press. (Here’s a link to the AP story on the protest.)

Davids, who is also the coordinator for the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, was front and center at the protest. She took a few moments to talk to answer Inside Story’s questions on what AIDS activists were trying to accomplish and why Occupy makes a lot of sense as a movement.

Read complete interview ... 

Who's That Queer [Larry Kramer]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Larry Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for Women in Love 1969, earning an Academy Award nomination for his efforts. Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his 1978 novel Faggots, which earned mixed reviews but emphatic denunciations from the gay community for his portrayal of shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.


Kramer witnessed the first spread of the disease that became known as AIDS among his friends in 1980, and he co-founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the largest private organization to assist people living with AIDS in the world. His political activism extended to the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987.

Source: Wikipedia

Who's that Queer?

brought to you by Pistol Pete

Former AIDS Activist is Taking Over Cable News

They've done it again. As part of their agenda of eventual world domination, the gays are taking over the media in the form of Air America Radio and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. The Rachel Maddow Show, airing weeknights at 9/8 central, is kicking the ass out of its competitors at CNN and Fox News. So who is this new queer superhero?.......Well, she actually kind of looks like Clark Kent.

The brilliant and affable Maddow grew up in the Bay Area; she came out just before college in 1990 and became an AIDS activist at the epicenter of the epidemic. She earned a degree in public policy from Stanford before beginning work with ACT UP and the AIDS Legal Referral Panel. In 1995, Maddow became the first openly gay person to win a Rhodes scholarship and used it to obtain a Ph.D. from Oxford University, writing her dissertation on the intersection of the AIDS epidemic and the prison reform movement. For more about her life and career, check out this great column in the Nation. , and check out the Rachel Maddow Show weekdays at 9/8 central and via podcast.

Why are we barebacking?

One of our favorite bloggers, Knucklecrack, explores the barebacking issue in this interesting post - A Great Divide.

I noticed the ACT UP booth right away by their iconic white background- black font posters. I've always loved ACT UP for their in your face, civil disobedient approach to activism but on Sunday I saw one thing on one of their signs that I couldn't help but feel uneasy about.

One of their signs at the bottom stated in big bold font: "Boycott Bareback" and I felt immediately something was amiss...


The message needs to change from "wear condoms" or "boycott bareback" to "WHY are we barebacking each other?!"

Read the whole thing.

Whatever happened to gay radicalism?

By Chris Bartlett




[these remarks were made at the Fenway-sponsored forum "Whatever Happened to Gay Radicalism" in Boston, May 31.]

Whatever happened to gay radicalism?This question is closely related to a discussion of what is happening to the word 'gay'---- how has almost 40 years of gay liberation led to a place where gay liberation issues are considered largely resolved by our left wing allies, even as our right wing enemies continue to organize against us.

The remarkable successes of our LGBT movement have in some ways removed the charge and excitement from queer politics—perhaps, as my friend Bill Dobbs says, "Gay rights killed the gay movement".

Gay Radicalism is also related to the meaning of the word radical, from the Latin radix, which refers to the root... So radical gay politics get at the root of the problem for gay men, as opposed to providing Band Aids, or short term solutions to symptoms of the root problem.I say this in a city (Boston) that has long been at the forefront of radical gay activism, from the FAG RAG of Charlie Shively (who, I once heard, burned his draft card, a dollar bill, and his Harvard diploma at a gay rally in the early 70s); to one of the first national gay periodicals-- Gay Community News (whose articles explored the connections between homophobia, sexism, racism and class- and, believe it or not, was widely read), to the early youth activism at BAGLY, and sex-positive activism and vision of Michael Bronski, Eric Rofes, Mitzel and other Bostonians who dared to celebrate a gay sexuality that is most creative precisely in the moment of its greatest perversity.

Boston has always been a hotbed. So I want to acknowledge that, though radical activism and thinking seem to be on the wane, there is a great tradition in this City on which to build.So what does it take to build upon the past successes of radical organizing? It's important, for a start, to remember the generational differences. The 1950s saw a preliminary type of gay activism that began to establish gay as an identity worthy of political organizing in America—the Mattachine Society and the Society for Individual Rights claimed a new space for homosexual men and women as citizens worthy of recognition by the law. This was extremely radical and world-changing for its day.

In the 1970s, non-gay movement organizing (including student organizing (SDS), Black activism (Black Panthers), and the movement to end the Vietnam War included gay and lesbian activists. These movements themselves were challenged to take on LGB activism as a serious concern. And post- Stonewall gay organizations like the Gay Liberation Front radically linked gay freedom to a host of other civil rights battles. 1970s and 80s radical activism was also focused on community building, and provided a place for LGB folks to meet, share stories, and organize to bring about change. Though we don't hear about "encounter groups" much anymore, these groups provided a radical forum for gay men to meet, talk, and organize.

AIDS and queer organizing (ACT UP and Queer Nation) became the predominant focus in the late eighties and the nineties, and fought powerfully to keep a right-wing backlash from erasing the gains of the 70s.. And now we find ourselves in the early 21st century with AIDS prevention and care seeming less pressing to many gay men (especially those with the resources to afford good health care and treatments)...

So we come to an interesting question for each of us to answer: What's radical gay activism look like for those of us in this room today? What does your personal history bring to the picture? Are you a seventies guy? An eighties guy? A nineties guy? Or a man of the new century?

Your placement generationally may have little to do with when you were born- it may in fact have more to do with your affiliations: who your friends are, what organizations and neighborhoods you enjoy, and what identities fit best with you.Your own experience and life in gay communities sets the stage for what will seem possible for you and your friends to change and impact.

As an example, though I was born in the sixties, I identify with seventies gay men, who were largely my inspirations. I danced, demonstrated, and flirted with a host of older men and women who had come of age in 70s gay lib radicalism, and they taught me how to think- big picture thinking that saw the gay struggle as part of a long history of struggles for human dignity. My radical activism was then deeply informed by these teachers, whether I was demonstrating for improved access to lifesaving HIV drugs in ACT UP , or defending an abortion clinic to protect a woman's right to make choices about her body, or fighting for immigrants' access to health care. These were all forms of radical gay activism for me because I was doing them alongside other radical gay people.

This leads to an important point. I believe radical gay activism needs to take place within a supportive community. ACT UP was a place of connection to other gay men for me: I learned about gay and radical history, I met some of the fathers and mothers of the queer political movement, I worked with so many hot guys (don't underestimate this as an incentive), and I could see that this community was making a huge difference.The lessons of ACT UP Philly were key to my understanding of radical politics.

It would be my wish for each of you in this room to find a similar community of intergenerational activists and friends: because I believe that it is ultimately a sense of strong community that drives successful organizing. So what were some key themes I learned in this organizing?

1. The importance of confronting internalized heterosexism: I learned to observe the blocks in me that kept me from fighting for the best worlds for LGBT people.

2. Access to quality health care: I learned that health care activism was at the heart of all activism, since a thriving community depends upon its health-- physical, mental, and spiritual.

3. The power of developing gay communities: I learned a view that community organizing itself was a key strategy for effective radical organizing, and that time spent providing a sense of community was fundamental to successful radical tactics.

4. Playfulness and seriousness about gender: In ACT UP, I learned to embrace the powerful fighting sissy within me. I also met people who demonstrated to me (as Suzanne Pharr has shown) that sexism was a weapon of homophobia. I saw that the most powerful organizers I met were feminists and allies to the trans movement.

Today, I apply those lessons to the work that is, for me, the current manifestation of an ongoing radical struggle for LGBTI power:

1. A gay men's and LGBTI health movement-- establishing a broad-based health vision that is focused on community assets and wellness, rejects the pathologization of LGBTI people, and broadens our health movement to look at the full range of health issues impacting our communities.

2. Supporting multiracial, crosscultural organizing to create and support spaces for non-white activists to pursue their agenda, sometimes in alliance with my work, and sometimes separate.

3. Trans organizing: Acting as an ally to the ever-growing trans political movement, which has powerful lessons for LGBT organizing as a whole. I believe that Trans political organizing is now at the heart of the radical next steps that are required for gay liberation.

4. A single-people's movement: as the LGBT marriage movement gathers steam, I want to fight for a movement for single people that insists that full citizens' benefits are available to all, regardless of relationship status.

5. Making sure the benefits of radical HIV activism are extended to everyone who need them: I want to keep in mind that the promises of the AIDS movement (including access to health care for all, and the promise of power to people living with HIV) is extended to all those, internationally, who have not received these benefits.

And here are my suggestions for how you can get involved:

1. Bring a queer voice to movements that currently have an exciting energy to them: immigration, anti-globalization, living wage,... Or to gay issues that grab you... I especially recommend getting involved in the bi and trans activist movements, where much of the cutting edge work around gender and relationships is being done. Seek to be a bridge to communities that could use gay male (and other) voices.

2. Imagine queer worlds that have yet to be created: a world where elders are duly respected, a world where love between gay men is an operating principle, a world where gay men of color are given resources to do powerful (and often separate organizing). Believe that you can create these yet-to-be-created worlds.
3. Organize your friends to discuss issues. Read books together and take ideas into radical combat. Create old-fashioned encounter groups.

4. Mentorship--- look for a radical advisor-- follow him or her around until it is clear that you don't intend to leave. Also, be a teacher to other gay men when you have things to teach. Fight the pervasive myth of gay male isolation, individuality, and selfishness.

5. Put energy into communities that excite you: Radical Faeries, leather communities, circuit parties, neighborhood civic groups, religious institutions, etc. Tear yourself away from a computer and dare to meet some non-virtual communities, but also organize the boys you meet on Manhunt. The secret is that no radical organizing, gay or otherwise, goes on without our people at the forefront. Show me a radical movement that isn't led and peopled by transpeople, dykes and fags... We are always there.

So the only question is how we, those of US in this room, can always be there, even at times, such as now, when a drab conservatism seems to have sucked the life out of the world. I am interested in those of you, radical or not, who are in it for the longterm, and who continue to imagine those imaginary worlds that must be made real.

Thank you.

Chris's bio
Chris Bartlett is a gay men's health community organizer from Philadelphia. After a thorough training in activism by ACT UP Philadelphia, he directed the SafeGuards Gay Men's Health Project for ten years, and is currently the lead consultant for the LGBT Community Assessment in Philadelphia, a project that gathers data about LGBT communities in order to make recommendations regarding community organizing, health, housing, and economic development. He co-facilitates the Gay Men's Health Leadership Academy, a national meeting of leaders in the field of gay men's health and wellness. He also acts as a consultant to the Information Services Unit of the Philadelphia Department of Health's AIDS Activities Coordinating Office. He is a regular participant in the Radical Faerie Circle of Philadelphia, and is a graduate of Brown University and New College, Oxford with degrees in Classics and Philosophy. In his spare time, he plays piano at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market, and is learning to two-step.

27 Arrested at ACT UP 20th Birthday Demo

500 March, Demand Single-Payer Health Care


Check out Rex Wockner's especially visual coverage of ACT Up's 20th birthday. Looked like a demo from the good ole days....

It's all about single payer, universal healthcare kiddies!

Jim

Is Larry Kramer relevant?

The April issue of POZ has a long interview with ACT-Up founder Larry Kramer by Tim Murphy. Kramer recently spoke in New York on the 20th anniversary of ACT-Up. Click here for his speech.

I am on a gay men's listserv that is currently in the midst a rather rancorous debate about him.

What do you think? Does Larry Kramer speak to you? Do you find what he has to say relevant to you today?

Please share.

Jim