Karl Soehnlein

NOTE: Karl is one of the facilitators. Being a facilitator is a big, difficult job that requires attempting to control a potentially loud and unruly group of a lot of people. More preparation is needed than for almost all the other people attending the meeting. Please only express interest in being a facilitator if you are willing to put in the preparation work and feel you would be good at it.

Background: Karl is a 23 year old, white gay man who grew up in suburban New Jersey. He went to Ithaca College, where he was involved in the Gay-Straight Alliance and met fellow student Alan Klein. He and Alan 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 the 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. Karl is currently a facilitator, though he was recently injured in a mugging and it is on the agenda for tonight’s meeting that Karl is stepping aside as facilitator for a few weeks while he recovers. There will be elections tonight on a temporary replacement.

Groups/friends at the meeting: Karl’s lover Alan Klein (who is the head organizer of Target City Hall, the big action that will be happening on March 28, 1989); Hal Branson; Gregg Bordowitz; the other facilitators (David Robinson, Robert Garcia, Liz Tracey)

Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Karl may be facilitating tonight’s meeting, though it is also on the agenda that Karl is stepping aside as facilitator for a few weeks, and there will be elections tonight on a replacement.

Additional information:  https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/018-karl-soehnlein

Also, David Robinson goes into great detail about being a facilitator starting at the 41:20 minute mark of this interview … I highly recommend that anyone who is facilitating listen to at least this section: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/082-david-robinson