ACT UP
Human rights groupWikipedia
131
MENTIONS
34
EPISODES
31
PODCASTS
Search complete. 131 mentions across 34 episodes found for "ACT UP".
Oct 27, 2026
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
And just blaming gay people for it and everything.
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
Then Larry Kramer helped found ACT UP in 1987 and forced the system to move faster.
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
So the AIDS memorial quilt was made, and the losses that seemed impossible could no longer be ignored because you had this huge AIDS quilt.
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
I remember seeing this on TV.
9 MINS LATER
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
However, more than 60 still criminalize this.
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
They criminalize you in some of these countries if you are gay.
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
Not if you are trying to get married or you act upon it.
Zach Randles-FriedmanHOST
If they find out you're gay, you could be killed or imprisoned for life.
Jody AvirganHOST
But then he's got a campaign stop in Olympia, Washington.
Jody AvirganHOST
He's confronted by ACT UP, an activist group, obviously very critical of the government's response to the AIDS crisis.
Jody AvirganHOST
He has this very high profile moment where they protest him publicly.
Jody AvirganHOST
He gives an interview where he kind of reverses a position he'd taken on gays in the military.
Wendy MalletteGUEST
So I really think what got me on this project was reading a oral history, an interview with Maxine Wolfe.
Wendy MalletteGUEST
She was part of ACT UP in New York City.
Wendy MalletteGUEST
And she had this line about how difficult it was to organize in the 80s.
Wendy MalletteGUEST
She said, us lesbians that came to ACT UP.
Wendy MalletteGUEST
already had experience in the women's movement.
Wendy MalletteGUEST
And we had experience of people screaming at each other, and we knew that wasn't working.
Saida Agostini-BosticHOST
And, you know, I definitely appreciate, I want to be clear, I appreciate what that moment did.
Saida Agostini-BosticHOST
And at the same time, it invisibilizes this whole community of folks, queer and trans folks, lesbians who took care of folks with HIV AIDS, ACT UP, right? Who was literally acting up to make sure that folks did not die in silence and help build out All of the scientific discoveries we made.
Saida Agostini-BosticHOST
And that brings me so much grief and also a lot of rage that these stories that are literally our birthright aren't being taught, aren't being shared.
Saida Agostini-BosticHOST
Honestly, we could talk a lot about how civil rights movements are flattened.
Richard BurnsGUEST
GMHC-APLA did, and prevention work.
Richard BurnsGUEST
And then, you know, we were still so angry and so disposable.
Richard BurnsGUEST
And it was in 1987 that ACT UP was founded and at the New York LGBT Community Center, then called the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center.
Richard BurnsGUEST
The first cultural program of the center in New York was called Second Tuesdays.
speaker_0NARRATOR
to a gray morning on Wall Street and church bells drifting over the traffic, to a black poster pasted on a brick wall and a pink triangle glowing in a window on Broadway, to a lamp over a kitchen table in Queens where a soft-spoken chemist turns the pages of a medical journal late into the night.
speaker_0NARRATOR
This is the story of ACT UP, a room full of people who refused to stay silent, so that one day the rest of us could rest.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Imagine, if you will, a Thursday evening in March of 1987 on West 13th Street in Greenwich Village, New York.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The street is quiet and a little damp.
speaker_0NARRATOR
They settle on the short name first and then find the words to fit it.
speaker_0NARRATOR
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.
speaker_0NARRATOR
ACT UP.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Outside, that same spring, something new has been appearing on the walls of Manhattan.
Julie LewisGUEST
So, so grateful for Ellen.
Julie LewisGUEST
mostly gay men who stood up the whole act up.
Julie LewisGUEST
You know, the people who went against Ronald Reagan and fought for medications and fought to be taken care of.
Julie LewisGUEST
I mean, it was a fight, you know, for the whole gay world in the U.S. that had HIV or not to just not be stigmatized and also just not to be forgotten and for people to care.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
So the to give an example of the bad part of the bipartisan consensus, the the lives of gay people and people with AIDS were totally left out.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
It just like the first gay kiss on national television is an act up protest on the evening news.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
They stormed the set of I want to say it was Peter Jennings.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
I don't have my notes in front of me.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
the streets and the arts.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
And so people are going into those places.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
ACT UP is heavily involved in the arts protests.
Isaac ButlerGUEST
Artists make up a huge number of ACT UP members, you know.
Emma WallGUEST
And we'd have her number written on our arms.
Emma WallGUEST
And, you know, we would put ourselves through this because we knew that the alternative of not shining a light on this thing that is the most hopeful thing that we know through Gandhi, through ACT UP and the AIDS movement, through the suffragettes, all those things when you hear about them in the history books, sound so kind of appealing and popular.
Emma WallGUEST
And in fact, they were all very unpopular at the times that they existed.
Emma WallGUEST
And they made people uncomfortable and angry.
Tracy E. GilchristGUEST
We fought that.
Tracy E. GilchristGUEST
ACT UP fought that.
Tracy E. GilchristGUEST
I mean, incredible, incredible activists.
Tracy E. GilchristGUEST
But at some point, we just want to live.
Anna DeShawnHOST
And family, I want you to know there were only a handful of protesters, literally four or five of them, that decided that they could come together and have enough courage to raise all types of holy hell in that moment.
Anna DeShawnHOST
And when I saw them laying on that red carpet and being dragged away, it reminded me of the protesters from ACT UP during the AIDS crisis.
Anna DeShawnHOST
They remembered what needed to be done Laying your body on the line is one way.
Anna DeShawnHOST
Fighting inside the state house is another way.
24 more episodes mention ACT UP.
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