Alan Klein

Background: Alan is a 25 year old, white, Jewish gay man. He grew up in Whitestone, Queens, and then Long Island. He went to Ithaca College, where he was involved in the Gay-Straight Alliance and met fellow student Karl Soehnlein. He and Karl became lovers, and moved to New York together (first to Astoria, then to the East Village). Alan was running the New York office of Compu-Prompt, a teleprompting service, while Karl had a job at the Collective for Living Cinema, a non-profit film exhibition and workshop facility. They went to a talk Larry Kramer gave at Columbia Student Health Conference, which made them want to get involved in AIDS activism. They went to a meeting about the March on Washington at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center one night in April 1987, stumbled into an ACT UP meeting and kept coming. 

Role in ACT UP:  Alan and Karl started working on the Outreach Committee, then Alan transitioned to the Logistics Committee, which became the Actions Committee. Alan became the chair of the Actions Committee, which is in charge of all of the logistical planning of large ACT UP actions. Alan is the head organizer of Target City Hall, the big action that will be happening on March 28, 1989.

Groups/friends at the meeting: Alan’s lover Karl Soehnlein, who has been a facilitator (though it will be announced at tonight’s meeting that Karl is stepping down for a little while as a facilitator while he recovers from being injured in a mugging). Alan is working closely on Target City Hall with the people he will be introducing to talk about the action (see specific tasks below). He also works closely with other people on the Actions Committee.

Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Alan is on the agenda to give a 30 second introduction about how the planning for Target City Hall is going, and then call these people in order up to the microphone to talk about specific aspects of Target City Hall planning:

1. Bob Rafsky, who will talk about the latest issues with mayor Ed Koch.

2. Ron Goldberg, who will teach some chants.

3. Amy Bauer, who will talk about Civil Disobedience training and lead a shortened civil disobedience training with the other civil disobedience trainers.

4. Brian Zabcik, who will discuss Marshal Training and the Target City Hall Fact Sheet.

5. Victor Mendolia and Joe Ferrari, who will talk about posters and wheat-pasting.

6. Ken Woodard, who will show the Target City Hall logo.

7. The Seeing Red affinity group, who needs to ask the Floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on the posters they created to carry at Target City Hall.

8. Gregg Bordowitz and Mike Frisch, who will discuss the timing of waves of civil disobedience by affinity groups at Target City Hall.

9. Tim Powers, who will talk about Support people. 

10. Michelangelo Signorile, who will talk about media.

11. David Barr, who will give a Legal Observer training.

For the rest of the meeting, Alan will be very busy coordinating with the Actions Committee and the affinity groups on logistics for Target City Hall.

Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/186-alan-klein