Personas

Once you know your persona assignment, come back to this page and read your persona's biographical information below. Remember that even though there is more biographical information about some people than others, everyone is a full participant in the meeting and you should add in details to make your persona a fully-realized person.

A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P Q R S T V W Y Z

A

  • No information

  • Gary was born in Brooklyn, went to Samuel J. Tilden High School, and CUNY Brooklyn graduating in 1968. He is Jewish. Gary lives in the Willowbook section of Staten Island. He is on the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Actions Committee

  • Jamie lives in Manhattan. Jamie helped coordinate transportation to the FDA action in the fall of 1988.

  • Background: Macky is a 22 year old white gay man who grew up in Durham, North Carolina. Macky's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all progressive Presbyterian ministers in the South. Macky had boyfriends on the down low in high school and started a long-term relationship with a man in college. Macky graduated from Columbia in 1987 to pursue art history. Macky's contemporary art professor took Macky another student to their first ACT UP meeting in May of 1987. Macky is currently considering going to seminary to combat the anti-gay mindset of the church. 

    Role in ACT UP: Macky comes to most meetings and actions, and has participated in civil disobedience, but tends to not take leadership roles. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Macky is in the affinity group The Box Tops

    Additional information: https://www.aidshistories.org/interviews/macky-alston

    https://podbay.fm/p/everyday-changemakers-696948/e/1531189555

  • Steve does administrative support for ACT UP ↗

  • No information

  • Background: Michael is a 26 year old gay white man who grew up in a Catholic family in Brooklyn. He has worked at The Break and The Saint, the spectacular gay members-only nightclub that closed in 1988. Michael has a 1968 Camaro, and he and boyfriend Matt Ebert (who he met at ACT UP) ride around in it to local gay bars gathering booze to sell at ACT UP fundraisers. Michael is HIV positive.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Matt Ebert (boyfriend); Fundraising Committee

  • Walter was born in Philadelphia and went to Westtown Friends, a Quaker boarding school outside of Philadelphia. He then went to Haverford College. He lives in Brooklyn, and comes to (and has been arrested at) many ACT UP actions. He is involved with the Lesbian and Gay Activist History Project, a group of ACT UP members with an interest in queer past. Walter lives at 29 Clinton Street in Manhattan.

    Additional information: Photo of Walter (on the left)

  • Background: Lee is a 41 year old white, gay man. He lives on Long Island with his lover.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Affinity group: Candelabras;  Powertools; Has dinner before ACT UP meetings with Hal Bramson (interview with Hal with a section about Lee: https://www.halbramson.com/interview.html). Friends with Peter Staley. 

  • Background: Mark is a 27 year old white gay man who grew up in New Jersey. He started coming out in his early teens. He went to college in Boston, worked as a bartender in Provincetown for three years, and then moved to West 46th Street in Hell’s Kitchen in 1986. He bartended at a restaurant on West 43rd Street and worked at a Longshoreman’s Union office. He heard that Larry Kramer would be speaking at the Center and dragged his then-boyfriend, Doug Montgomery. Mark has been deeply involved with ACT UP since. Mark’s relationship with Doug ended, and Mark has been in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer Stephen Gendin since the summer of 1987. Mark started working for Gay Men’s Health Crisis in April of 1988, first as a receptionist and then as the assistant coordinator of intake.

    Role in ACT UP: Mark was the original head of the Communications Committee when ACT UP started in 1987, and has previously been an at-large member of the Coordinating Committee. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Stephen Gendin (boyfriend); Tom Keane, Candelabras

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/169-mark-aurigemma

B

  • Raffi is a 26 year old man. He graduated from Columbia University in 1984. He previously lived in Minneapolis, where he worked with Lobby 83, the Minnesota state lesbian/gay lobby organization, to pass a statewide gay rights bill. He is on the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Actions Committee

  • Background: Bill is a 37 year old white gay man who grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Starting at age 15,  Bill wrote a music column called “The World of Rock” for some neighborhood newspapers in Brooklyn and Staten Island. He started having sexual encounters with men as a teenager, and came into his own as a gay man after high school when he moved to the Upper West Side. He got very involved in Gay Activists Alliance in the early 1970s, with which he did speaking engagements, zaps, and other activism. GAA also had dances, which Bill helped organize. In the early 1980s, Bill started DJing at punk/new wave clubs, like Club Hurrah and the Anvil. Through Vito Russo, who he knew from GAA, Bill got involved with GLAAD, and met Marty Robinson, who was the chair of GLAAD’s Swift and Terrible Retribution Committee. That committee split off from GLAAD and formed the Lavender Hill Mob in 1986, which was a small group doing direct action activism on AIDS. When ACT UP formed, most of the members of the Lavender Hill Mob joined. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Lavender Hill Mob; Herb Spiers

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Bill is on the agenda to discuss that his friend and fellow ACT UPer Steve Zabel was found murdered in his own apartment on March 1. Bill was one of the people who discovered Steve’s body. Steve was 40 and was an amateur photographer who had documented many gay events and ACT UP actions. As far as anyone knows, the police have made no progress in finding the murderer. Bill will ask for suggestions from the Floor about how to put pressure on the police. 

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/112-bill-bahlman

  • Background: Dan is a writer and editor with a B.A. in History from the University of Texas, 1968. He also attended Dartmouth College and has an M.A. in Pacific Studies from the University of Hawaii and completed graduate studies in French Canadian literature and history at the Unversite de Moncton in 1982. He was Director of Publications for the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris from 1977 to 1982, was an editor with University of Hawaii Press, and was an account manager with Byrd Press in Springfield, VA and New York from 1984 to 1988. He is a founding member and was president of Gay Liberation Hawaii and an organizer of the first Gay Pride Parade in Hawaii in 1975. Dan is divorced and has a daughter.

    Role in ACT UP: Dan has been the treasurer of ACT UP since November 1988 and is on the Coordinating Committee. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Coordinating Committee, Andy Velez, Powertools

  • Background: Marion is a 35 year old white lesbian who grew up in Winter Park, Florida. Her parents were divorced and then her mother died when she was a baby, and Marion was raised by her maternal grandmother until Marion was 12 and her grandmother died. She went to live with her father and stepmother in Sarasota for high school, then went to the University of Florida in Gainsville, paying for part of college with typing work. A boyfriend got her pregnant, and she raised money to travel to New York for an abortion as part of a group of friends organizing to make abortion legal in Florida. She switched to Florida State University in Tallahassee and started working at the Feminist Women’s Health Center and came out as a lesbian. She then got into solidarity work, moved to Washington D.C., got involved in the D.C. Area Feminist Alliance, and started doing typesetting for and working with activist leftist groups. Marion continued this work when she moved to New York in 1983, while also typesetting at a corporate job. Her activist work led her to ACT UP in the summer of 1987 (she saw ACT UP meeting when she went to other meetings at the Center, and told herself she would join when there were at least 10 other women in the room). She is roommates with Risa Denenberg, who she knows from the Feminist Women’s Health Center.

    Role in ACT UP: Marion comes to most meetings and actions. Marion is on the Women’s Caucus. She also does typesetting of leaflets, stickers, posters, etc. for ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women’s Caucus; Risa Denenberg (roommate)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/070-marion-banzhaf

  • Charles is a 31 year old man who lives in Brooklyn. Charles has been involved with ACT UP since 1987 and has served as a facilitator and an at-large member on the Coordinating Committee. He is a poet. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and fought off a bout of pneumocystis carinii, a lung infection that is one of the leading causes of death from AIDS. He is on the committee helping to plan the City Hall action.

  • Background: David is a 33 year old white, gay, Jewish man. He has lived in an apartment at 2nd Ave. and 12th Street since 1979. He grew up in Brighton Beach. He grew up going to liberal activist demonstrations with his parents. He was initially involved in the experimental theater scene and went to theater school at NYU. Then he worked as a cook. Then he went to CUNY law school and got involved in gay and lesbian rights work. In 1987 he started working on the AIDS program at Lambda Legal, working on discrimination, immigration, and confidentiality issues. He started going to ACT UP in 1987, and eventually incorporated legal support for ACT UP’s civil disobedience into his role at Lambda. David joined the Issues committee, which became the Treatment and Data Committee. David recently tested HIV positive. David was in a long-term relationship with Paul, who was not involved in ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: By 1989 David had been extensively involved in ACT UP, and been heavily involved in AIDS activism through his job at Lamba. He had gone to meetings with the FDA, gone to AIDS conferences, and been to just about all of the ACT UP demonstrations.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Legal observers; really David knows just about everyone who was a regular at ACT UP meetings

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: David is on the agenda to give a 5 minute Legal Observer training session to the entire Floor in preparation for Target City Hall. David will encourage people to come talk to him if they are interested in being a legal observer. These are the major points in the Legal Observer training:

    • Simple training can enable anyone (not just lawyers) to be a legal observer.

    • It is important to maintain an impartial role. Watch and record (in detail!) what the protesters and police are doing, but do not get involved yourself.

    • A legal observer can be a liaison person with the police.

    Here is a link to a sheet with more information, though this is more information than David will convey at the meeting. 

    Additional information: David gives an extremely detailed interview for the ACT UP Oral History Project. You are welcome to watch/read it all, but I highly recommend watching/reading at least the first half where David concentrates on his work and life through 1989:

    https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/073-david-z-barr

    https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/target-city-hall at about the 45 minute mark of the ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings video

  • No information

  • Micky lives at 155 East 23rd Street in Manhattan.

  • Note: In later years they would identify as trans and use the name Jamie Bauer, but on March 13, 1989 they were known as Amy Bauer and used she/her pronouns.

    Background: Amy is a 30 year old white, Jewish lesbian. She grew up in Stuyvesant Town on the east side of Manhattan, went to P.S. 40, Hunter High School, then MIT where she studied Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Planning. She never felt comfortable with pressure from her family and society to be conventionally feminine, and started coming out between high school and college. In Boston, she started getting involved in activist organizations, particularly Women’s Pentagon Action, which made connections between war, the patriarchy, women’s oppression, and the military industrial complex, and saw the Pentagon as the root of all evil in the U.S. She learned a great deal about effective civil disobedience techniques with Women’s Pentagon Action. She moved to New York to take a job with New York City Transit. She started getting involved in gay causes, which led to her getting involved in AIDS causes, which led her to ACT UP. She initially came to an ACT UP meeting in 1987 to convince ACT UP to participate in civil disobedience at the 1987 March on Washington to protest the Bowers decision. Amy has been with her girlfriend Donna for about 6 years.

    Role in ACT UP: With her prior background with groups that engaged in civil disobedience protests, Amy is the main ACT UP civil disobedience trainer and coordinator of civil disobedience at ACT UP actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: The other civil disobedience trainers; affinity group Bored of Ed

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Amy Bauer is on the agenda to give a 10-15 minute introduction to civil disobedience training, with the assistance of the other civil disobedience trainers. The civil disobedience trainers should gather at the beginning of the meeting and talk through the specifics of the training. 

    This training will:

    a) convince people that if they are going to engage in civil disobedience that they should come to one of the longer civil disobedience trainings that will take place before Target City Hall, and 

    b) give anyone who does not come to one of those longer trainings a basic understanding of what they need to know about civil disobedience. 

    This will consist of actually getting the people at the meeting to form small groups and practice sitting down in the street in protest, and making their bodies go limp if they are being dragged by police. Minute 4:10 to 18:28 of the video entitled ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings on this page shows this training in action. This document outlines the training.

    Amy will also try to get a sense of who is planning to get arrested at Target City Hall. She’ll do this both when she is talking to the Floor and by going around to the various affinity groups to ask.

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/048-jamie-bauer

  • Vincent lives at 560 West 43rd Street in Manhattan and is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Enis lives in New Jersey.

  • Jack went with ACT UP to protest at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 1988. He recently led a contingent of ACT UPers to the AIDS Unit on Riker’s Island. He is also involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. Jack lives in Manhattan at 60 Warren Street in a loft with other ACT UPers included Catherine Saalfield and Robert Garcia.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Garance Franke-Ruta, Vincent Gagliostro, Kate Horsfield, Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

  • Kevin volunteers to provide administrative support.

  • Tom lives in Manhattan. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Background: Jay is a 29 year old white, Jewish gay man. Jay’s page on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Blotcher) gives a good summary of his early life and career.

    Role in ACT UP: Jay joined the Media Committee a few months ago, and was active in helping with the Media Committee's work on Seize Control of the FDA. He has been somewhat less active recently as he has been grieving the death of his mother in October 1988.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Vito Russo (Jay’s mentor), Media Committee, Powertools

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/054-jay-blotcher

  • Bill is involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. In the summer of 1988 he traveled with fellow ACT UPers to the Republican National Convention to protest the Reagan/Bush inaction on AIDS. Bill does outreach work to homeless gay youth on behalf of the Hetrick-Martin Institute for the Protection of Gay and Lesbian Youth.

  • John has AIDS and was in the original phase 2 study of AZT. He’d been on a placebo and knew it. He’d been taken off PCP prophylaxis (preventative treatment). He was consistently threatened that the methadone that he was taking for pain might result in his being dropped from the trial. Although he’d been promised he’d receive AZT once the trial was over, the promise was broken. John has been in ACT UP since 1987, and was an active member of the Issues Committee and works with the Treatment and Data Committee. If the Floor approves, John will attend the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Health Conference from April 5th to 7th.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee

  • Steve is a social worker who has been coming to ACT UP since it started. He is the person who suggested the name ACT UP for the organization. In 1987 Steve created the Prison Issues Subcommittee. Steve lives in New Jersey. He is in the affinity group La Cocina.

    Additional information: Steve discussing ACT UP on page 2 in the center column

  • Peter is in the affinity group The Candelabras, with whom he went to the FDA action in October 1988. Peter is a graphic artist, and does some graphic art work for ACT UP.

  • Background: Gregg is a 24 year old white, Jewish man. In 1989 he is identifying as gay for activist/political reasons, but he has sex and relationships with men and women. He grew up on Long Island and went to various art schools in New York (School of Visual Arts, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, NYU). In the early to mid-1980s he was a video artist in the East Village activist/artistic scene. He helped form Testing the Limits, an AIDS activism video collective. Since 1988, he has worked at Gay Men’s Health Crisis with Jean Carlomusto producing video education materials. He and Jean have a weekly cable show called Living With AIDS. He tested HIV-positive in 1988, which he announced to the ACT UP Floor the day he was diagnosed. He is currently in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer Michelangelo Signorile.

    Role in ACT UP: Since coming to ACT UP in 1987, Gregg has taken on many leadership roles. He was one of the main conceivers and organizers of Seize Control of the FDA, coordinating with ACT UP groups around the country through ACT-NOW. He recently co-founded DIVA (Damned Interfering Video Activists), a video collective dedicated to documenting ACT UP actions. He is also one of the civil disobedience trainers.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Gregg is one of the people who probably knows and/or has slept with just about everyone. But at this meeting he is mostly focused on coordinating the civil disobedience for Target City Hall, so he’d be spending most of his time with Mike Frisch, Amy Bauer, the other civil disobedience trainers, and the other Target City Hall principals. He is currently in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer Michelangelo Signorile.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: From minute 4:10 to 18:28 of the video entitled ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings on this page, Mike Frisch and Gregg Bordowitz are leading a civil disobedience training (Mike is the leader with a mustache and glasses). Together with Amy Bauer and the rest of the civil disobedience trainers, Mike and Gregg will lead a similar exercise during the March 13, 1989 meeting.

    Gregg is also on the agenda later in the meeting with Mike Frisch to explain the Wave structure of civil disobedience:

    - Announce that a pre-action meeting will take place on Thursday at 7:30pm

    - All affinity groups planning to engage in civil disobedience should attend, or at least send a representative

    - At Target City Hall, the Wave structure will work as follows: At 7:30am, the demonstration starts with pickets forming. Affinity group members should find their support person. At 8am, the first affinity group will do their action, then the second affinity group will go at 8:15am, then the third affinity group will go (adjusting as necessary based on how the previous actions have gone).

    - Mike and Gregg should explain that they don’t need to know (and don’t even want to know) what each group's specific action will be. But, Mike and Gregg need to know approximately where the action will take place so Mike and Gregg can coordinate press and video, and so everything doesn’t happen (and everyone doesn’t get arrested) all at once.

    - Distribute a Direct Action Guideline Sheet

    After Mike and Gregg finish explaining the Wave structure, Alan Klein, Gregg, and Mike should ask people in affinity groups and on committees to get together (right now) with their groups to hash out their actions/civil disobedience plans for Target City Hall. At the same time as the groups are meeting, David Barr will give a 5 minute Legal Observer training to the rest of the people at the meeting.

    The groups should then choose a representative to tell Alan, Gregg, or Mike the basic details so that Alan, Gregg, and Mike can coordinate timing, media coverage, etc. Alan, Gregg, and Mike can then meet among themselves to synthesize the information and figure out when each group's action should happen at Target City Hall. 

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/004-gregg-bordowitz

  • Groups/friends at the meeting:  Tom Kalin

  • Hal is a 57 year old gay white man. He is a lifelong New Yorker. He served two years in the Army. He was at the initial meeting of ACT UP in 1987 and has been coming ever since. Hal has been a volunteer at the Gay Switchboard going back to the early 1980s when AIDS was emerging, and fought to provide callers with more urgent health information than the switchboard was providing. Hal has dinner before ACT UP meetings with Lee Arsenault.


    Additional information: https://www.halbramson.com/interview.html

  • Background: Gedalia is a 29 year old white, Jewish, gay man who grew up in America in an Israeli family. He went to Georgetown, then moved to the Upper West Side and went into business with his brother. In 1982 he started doing outreach work with the people who would form the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. He volunteered with Gay Men’s Health Crisis for about a year, and then met his lover, Roy. Roy was diagnosed with karposi sarcoma a year after they met, and Gedalia spent a lot of time in the hospital caring for him over the next seven months until Roy died in December 1985. He spent the next few years recovering from the experience, then saw ACT UP at Gay Pride and decided to get involved. 

    Role in ACT UP: Gedalia is involved in housing issues (Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now), trying to get New York City to provide funding and buildings to house people with AIDS. He is in the affinity group CD 9/18. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now; CD 9/18

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/019-gedalia-braverman

  • Darren lives at 337 East 10th Street in Manhattan. He is 25 and HIV positive.

  • Background: Neil is a 30 year old white, Jewish gay man who grew up in Forest Hills. He was out in high school, and bullied for it. He continued to face homophobia when he went to a school in Florida that was part of Florida State and at New York City Tech where he went for hotel and restaurant management. He volunteered at the New York City Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project for years. He enjoyed clubbing at Danceteria, Ninth Circle Hurrah, and Club 57. He saw a notice about Larry Kramer speaking at the Community Center and got involved in ACT UP for the beginning. He tested positive for HIV in 1987.

    Role in ACT UP: Neil has attended most meetings and actions, including the four-person “Freedom Ride” through the south in 1988 with Gerri Wells, Frank Smithson, and Heidi Dorrow. He is also part of the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Gerri Wells, Frank Smithson, Michael Petrelis, Heidi Dorrow, Jay Blotcher, Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/055-neil-broome

  • Leonard is a member of the Columbia local. He previously worked with Gran Fury.

  • John lives in Woodside, Queens.

  • Willie is a 39 year old gay man. He was involved in the Stonewall riots, and has been involved in antiwar protesting. For five years, he squatted with 24 families at an abandoned building at 319 East 8th Street in Manhattan. In March 1989, they were displaced by a fire that Willie suspected was set by a developer. He is now living with a friend in Little Italy. Willie tested HIV positive in 1988.

C

  • Background: Ander is a 26 year old Latino gay man who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in the Bronx and Queens. He graduated from Bronx Science in 1977, came out, and moved in with his boyfriend Cliff. When he was 16 he called the Gay Switchboard and found out about a youth group for gay teenagers that met under MCC Church and then moved to the Center. Aner ran that group for five years. He also got involved with the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights and Gay Activist Alliance, and was secretary of the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee. He worked at Bank of Tokyo at 5 World Trade Center and later worked at Conde Nast at 45th and Madison for eight years as a Vogue cost analyst. He left that to work as a go-go dancer at gay clubs.

    Role in ACT UP: Aner comes to most meetings and actions, though he does not speak up at meetings and is not on any committees.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Swim Team

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/179-aner-candelario

  • Tony lives at 549 West 52nd Street in Manhattan.

  • Joe lives at 170 East 2nd Street in Manhattan.

  • Background: Jean is a 30 year old, white lesbian in Queens. She got a BFA in Fine Arts at Long Island University and a masters degree in interactive telecommunications at NYU. As part of a course she was teaching at NYU, Joey Lianti from Gay Men’s Health Crisis spoke to her class, which led her to volunteer at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She soon took a job coordinating audio-visual for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and started a cable access show “Living with AIDS” on which she worked with Gregg Bordowitz among others. She took her video camera to the first ACT UP demonstration on Wall Street in 1987. Jean devoted most of her time over the next two years on her work at GMHC and her video activism work documenting ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Jean is one of the main people producing videos of ACT UP actions, through Testing the Limits and through the just-now-forming DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Gregg Bordowitz; DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists); Women’s Caucus

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/005-jean-carlomusto

  • Background: Cesar is a 34 year old Latino gay man who grew up in Chile. He was 18 when the fascists came to power, which was around the time he came out to his family. Though Pinochet’s rule was highly oppressive, Cesar felt it was not particularly restrictive toward gay men, and Cesar would go to gay bars in Santiago. When he was 27, he was finishing college and in a relationship with an older Argentinian chemistry professor. This man had family in the United States, so Cesar pursued and finally got a student visa to study English as a second language at a university in St. Louis. After that relationship ended, Cesar moved to San Francisco and then New York in the early 1980s. In 1984 he was living in Brooklyn and became a buddy with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which he did until 1988. He had been working in commercial art and advertising. Then in 1988, after testing HIV-positive, he wanted to get involved in more direct action, so he came to ACT UP. He has also transitioned to working at the Lower East Side Family Union, an organization providing services to families of children at risk.

    Role in ACT UP: Cesar comes to most meetings and actions, but does not have a social group within ACT UP. But he has recently started getting involved with the Media Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/166-cesar-carrasco

  • Background: Mark is a 35 year old white man who grew up in Pittsburgh. He got a BA from Geneva College and an MFA from the University of Denver. After having a small role in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Mark moved to New York to pursue acting, which he did off-Broadway while also working as an editor at Time, Us, and 7 Days. 

    Role in ACT UP: Mark is in the affinity group Seeing Red.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Seeing Red; Brian Zabcik (Mark works in the same building as Brian at Park Avenue between 32nd and 33rd St., and encouraged Brian to come to ACT UP)

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall.

    Additional information: Photo of Mark

  • James has been arrested for civil disobedience with ACT UP before, including at an action on Wall Street in March of 1988. He read a scathing statement about government inaction at a court hearing related to that arrest. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Joe is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Peter is a 33 year old white man who was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He graduated with an MFA from Pratt Institute with an MFA in Painting. He is an artist and he has volunteered for Gay Men’s Health Crisis. He joined ACT UP in 1988.

  • Background: Lei is a 22 year old gay Asian man who was born in Taiwan and went to high school in Ohio. He came to New York in 1984 to go to Cooper Union for art. He came out to his family when he went to college. After Douglas Crimp came to Cooper Union to do a presentation on the posters, artwork, and video from ACT UP’s FDA action, Lei joined ACT UP toward the end of 1988. He lives at 508 Pavonia Avenue in Jersey City.

    Role in ACT UP: Lei is involved in the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. Target City Hall will be his first big action.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now; Rod Sorge 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/025-lei-chou

  • Background: Cynthia is a 27 year old white lesbian who grew up in Richmond, a small town in Indiana. Her father was the police chief. Cynthia got into art in high school, and went to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979. She came out and got involved in the Chicago lesbian scene. She ran the visiting artists program at the Art Institute. There she met future ACT UPer Tom Kalin. Cynthia moved to New York in 1987 and became the personal assistant to Lyn Blumenthal, working on publicity for a feminist video art series, and then at Printed Matter, a nonprofit artists’ bookstore. She is in a relationship and lives with Bea Hanson. Her friend Tom encouraged her to come to ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Cynthia comes to meetings and actions, but stayed somewhat on the periphery until recently when she got involved in the Women’s Caucus. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Tom Kalin, Women’s Caucus

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/159-cynthia-chris

  • Background: Kim is a 34 year old white bisexual woman who grew up in rural southern Ohio in the evangelical wing of Lutheranism. By high school she was involved in anti-racist, antiwar, and feminist activism. She went to Earlham College, a Quaker school in Indiana, on a scholarship. After college she did a bunch of odd jobs to pay off her debt, and eventually got accepted to UMass Amherst in 1977 with a TAship that covered her tuition. She started exploring relationships with women there. She has a rare connective tissue disease, which was misdiagnosed until her 20s, which is sometimes debilitating. She continued to be involved in an array of leftist activism. Kim moved to New York in 1985. She knew ACT UPer Mike Spiegel, who encouraged Kim to get involved in ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: La Cocina, Ray Navarro, Women’s Caucus, Mike Spiegel

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/122-kim-christenson

  • Background: Steven is a 25 year old gay Latino man who grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He joined the speech and drama team in high school, and started coming out to his friends at 15 (he came out to his family after college). He went to college at UT Austin and moved to New York in 1986 to get a masters degree in American Studies at NYU. To pay for this he worked at NYU’s Center for War, Peace and the News Media. He eventually dropped out of the masters degree program but continued working at the center.

    Role in ACT UP: Steve attends most meetings and actions, and is on the Actions Committee. He is also a civil disobedience trainer. He is in the affinity group MHA/Surrender Dorothy.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Actions Committee; Civil disobedience trainers; MHA; Surrender Dorothy; SPREE (Timmy Vance); Bill Monaghan

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/125-steven-cordova

  • No information

  • Michael has been involved in the Treatment and Data Committee, but he is transitioning out of ACT UP to the AIDS Treatment Registry.

  • Background: Spencer is a 21 year old white gay man from Atlanta. His father left when he was 5, so Spencer grew up with his mother, an accountant, and his younger brother Nick. He was involved in local theater and came out in high school. He studied theater and literature at Bennington College for three years, then moved to New York recently to become an actor. 

    Role in ACT UP: Spencer is new to ACT UP, but has already joined the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Actions Committee

  • David is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Background: Douglas is a 44 year old white gay man who grew up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His Wikipedia page gives a good summary of his background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crimp).

    Role in ACT UP: Douglas goes to most meetings, but is not on any committees.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Gregg Bordowitz, Adam Rolston

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/074-douglas-crimp

  • Robin is on the Newsletter info subcommittee of the Outreach Committee. He lives in Manhattan.

  • Tom grew up in Merrick, Long Island and received a degree in Speech from Northwestern University. Tom’s journalism, letters, fiction, and poetry have appeared in The New York Native, The Village Voice, The James White Review, and Newsweek. Tom has also done sign language interpreting for theater, lectures, and political events. Tom tested HIV positive a number of years ago.

D

  • Background: Anne is 31 year old lesbian. She grew up mostly in central Florida, but spent summers and vacations in her father's native Haiti. French was the primary language in her household growing up. She played tennis as a teenager, and considered becoming a professional but instead moved to New York, graduated from Barnard College in 1979,  and received a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia in 1982. She started having relationships with women, but was not out to her family. She got involved with the Peace Movement and women’s/reproductive rights movements. She started doing work for progressive newspapers and magazines, like In These Times, the Village Voice, The Nation, and the San Francisco Examiner. She reported a lot on Haiti, particularly the AIDS crisis as it emerged there, including for the New York Native. She came to ACT UP as part of that work, and balances being involved in ACT UP as an activist and reporting on ACT UP/AIDS.

    Groups/friends at the meeting:: Aldyn McKean

  • No information

  • Background: Brian (original name Brian Allen) is an East Village artist. He was involved with Shox Lumania, a high concept, big costume, total performance band in the East Village. He is also working on a comic strip about the HIV virus, vampires, and secrets of the pyramids. Brian has AIDS, and is not in close contact with his family.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Wave 3

    Additional information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNVI4TrK4g0

  • Background: Alexis is a 28 year old white lesbian who grew up in New York City. She went to Music and Art High School, then City College, the School of Visual Arts, and somewhere in there lived in Anchorage and Paris for a while. She came out when she was 21, and eventually found that she wanted to leave straight academia. Alexis’s father came out as gay when Alexis was 13 and died of AIDS in February of 1988. This led her to come to ACT UP in March of 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Alexis is involved with civil disobedience and marshal training.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Bored of Ed; Civil disobedience trainers; Brent Nicholson Earle (who dated Alexis' father before he died)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/117-alexis-danzig

  • Background: John is a 27 year old white gay man. He was an Ohio boy, raised Catholic, and moved to NYC in 1983 to do graduate work in art history at Columbia. His is currently working on his dissertation and teaching part time at Princeton. He lives at 541 W. 113th St. His best friend in ACT UP is Jeff Engel, with whom he typically sits. John and Jeff went to their first meeting together, and both got arrested for the first time at Wall St. 2. Their affinity group for Wall St. 2 was Wave 2 (they were the first group to get arrested—there was no Wave 1, and they joked that that would really confuse the police). Amy Bauer and Mike Frisch trained them for Civil Disobedience.

    Many of the people in Wave 2 later went on to form the Candelabras as they were gearing up for the FDA action.  Candelabras were kind of a media hit at FDA.  They had come up with the concept of cut-out, posterboard tombstones (John's was “Dead from lack of AL-721”), and they could move rapidly around the protest site and suddenly lay down on the ground and form a cemetery. Mike Signorile kept sending press photographers to cover them. They made those tombstones in Zoe Leonard’s apartment on the corner of Stanton and Ludlow.

    Jeff and John had a friend, Bill Flanagan, who actually brought them to their first meeting. Bill was a tall Canadian who was teaching at the law school at Columbia and getting a second graduate degree there in law of some kind.  He and Rolf Sjogren were an item.

    John was pretty much an ACT UP foot soldier, not a leader. He worked a bit on Treatment and Data, and then on the Media Committee, which was a better fit for him. He wrote fact sheets, etc.

    At the time of City Hall, Jason Heffner and John were flirting mercilessly.  They were clearly attracted to one another, and once after a Candelabras meeting at James Cascaito’s apartment, they almost went home together, but were strangely shy about it. John had had some ACT UP relationships (the longest was with Michael Morrisey, who had co-chaired the 9 days of Rage, but by the time of City Hall his health prevented him from continuing with ACT UP).  At the time, Jason had no fewer than 3 casual boyfriends, including Tom Keane. Blane Mosley was also pursuing Jason (very openly, John remembers, at another Candelabras meeting at Ann Northrop’s apartment).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Candelabras, Media Committee, Jeff Engel, Jason Heffner

  • Tony lives in Manhattan and is on the Actions Committee. Tony is in the affinity group Dada.

  • No information

  • Background: Richard is a 36 year old white gay man who grew up as an Army brat; he went to a different school every year or so, including in Germany. He went to college in Norfolk, Virginia getting a Fine Art degree and working in a darkroom there. He was out in Norfolk. He moved to New York to go to Pratt in 1980. He does printmaking and screen printing. Richard started going to ACT UP in early 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Richard goes to most meetings and actions, and is in the affinity group Wave 3. Richard creates posters and graphics for ACT UP, and has been involved with Gran Fury, but prefers to work on his own artworks rather than with a collective he feels might be too concentrated on their careers as artists.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Wave 3; Hunter Reynolds

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/028-richard-deagle

  • David is a white man who was born in Montreal, Canada. He writes about art for publications like the Village Voice and Artforum. He is involved with the Lesbian and Gay Activist History Project, a group of ACT UP members with an interest in queer past. He lives in Manhattan.

  • Background: Risa is a 39 year old white Jewish lesbian who grew up in Lamont in Northeast Washington D.C. Her family moved to the D.C. suburbs when Risa started high school. She had trouble at that school, dropped out, and had a complicated illegal abortion with pressure from her boyfriend Roger. She then had a baby (Misha) when she was 19 with David, a guy she was living with. They had traveled to Denmark, and overland to Nepal, and ended up in Miami. Risa went to junior college (with baby on hip), took a break from school, then left David (who was violent and alcoholic), moved to Tallahassee, and went to Florida State University, majoring in dance. She then started working at the Feminist Women’s Health Center, got her bachelors in nursing, and her license as an R.N. She started having relationships with women. She stayed at the Feminist Women’s Health Center for 14 years. She moved to New York in 1988 for a nurse practitioner program at Columbia. She is roommates with Marion Banzhaf, who she knows from the Feminist Women’s Health Center. Marion brought her to ACT UP. Risa also walked into Community Health Project at the Center and started seeing women, which CHP had not been doing. She is also working as a nurse in the Beth Israel ER.

    Role in ACT UP: Risa comes to most meetings and actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Marion Banzhaf (roommate), close to women on the Women’s Caucus

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/093-risa-denenberg 

  • No information

  • Background: Bill is a white gay man in his mid-30s. He grew up in suburban Detroit, went to a liberal boarding school in the Berkshires for high school, and then went to college and law school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There he came out and got involved in gay activism on campus and in town with the Gay Liberation Front. He moved to New York, passed the New York bar exam, and had a series of jobs, some law-related and some not. Pre-AIDS, he would go to NY bars and bathhouses.

    Role in ACT UP: Bill comes to ACT UP regularly, and occasionally does legal work (like arraignments) for ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Legal observers

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/065-bill-dobbs

  • David lives and works in Manhattan, is on ACT UP’s Gay and Lesbian Teach-In Committee and Lesbian and Gay Activist History Project, and is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Background: Heidi is a 24 year old white lesbian who was born in Lansing, Michigan, and grew up in Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota. Her father died when she was very young and both sets of grandparents had a big role in raising her. She went to Webster University’s theater conservatory in St. Louis for two years, was kicked out (not necessarily because she was sleeping with a teacher, who became Heidi’s first lover even though she wasn’t out yet), and moved to Chicago for four years, joining a theater company with some friends. Then she went to Hampshire College in Massachusetts, where she more fully came out, went with a group to the March on Washington, took part in and got arrested at a civil disobedience action at the Supreme Court. At Hampshire, Heidi met Maxine Wolfe’s daughter Karen, who told Heidi about Maxine’s activism work. Heidi proposed a summer internship with ACT UP in spring and summer of 1988. She is currently in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer Maria Maggenti.

    Role in ACT UP: Since coming to ACT UP, Heidi has been to most meetings/actions, including the four-person “Freedom Ride” through the south in 1988 with Gerri Wells, Frank Smithson, and Neil Broome.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Maria Maggenti (Heidi’s lover); Delta Queens; Women's Caucus

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/069-heidi-dorow

  • Background: Chip is a 26 year old white gay man who grew up in Dalton, Georgia about 90 miles north of Atlanta. Chip refused to go to church at a young age, and even in high school would stop by the Atlanta Gay Center. He went to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida (with a semester in London). He came to New York in 1985 after he graduated and got very involved in the nightlife scene. He currently works as a nightclub promoter.

    Role in ACT UP: Chip was heavily involved with the strategy of the Media Committee for the FDA action in fall of 1988. He still assists with the Media Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/182-chip-duckett

  • Bru is a poet who lives in Brooklyn, is involved with the Radical Faeries, and is on ACT UP’s Gay and Lesbian Teach-In Committee.

E

  • Jerry is a photographer. He lives in Manhattan.

  • Pam is a 40 year old white woman. She is an associate research editor at Conde Nast. Her brother died of AIDS, and she started coming to ACT UP two weeks after he died. She is in the affinity group Wave 3. Pam is planning to get arrested at an action for the first time at Target City Hall. 

    Additional information: Photo of Pam

  • Background: Brent is a 38 year old white gay man who grew up in Lockport, New York near Niagra Falls. His last year of high school was at Interlochen Arts Academy, then went to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York, left and studied with Uta Hagen for six years. He started having relationships with men in his late teens. Brent has worked as an actor, writer, and in various other theater roles. After a break-up and with the death of many friends and acquaintances, Brent felt compelled to get more politically engaged in gay/AIDS activism. In 1986, he created the American Run for the End of AIDS (AREA), an organization to raise AIDS awareness by Brent running 9,000 miles around the perimeter of the United States. The run took 20 months. After Brent returned to New York he got involved with ACT UP. He has lived at 2350 Broadway near 86th Street since 1974. 

    Role in ACT UP: Brent attends most meetings and actions. At the FDA demonstration in October 1988 he was in the affinity group Wave 3 (with Alexis Danzig, whose father Brent dated before his death from AIDS). For Target City Hall Brent (and Alexis) will be part of the affinity group Bored of Ed. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Bored of Ed

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/150-brent-nicholson-earle-nathaniel-siegel

  • Background: Matt is a 24 year old white, gay man who grew up on a farm in Cornwall, New York, the youngest of 12 children. After a Catholic education through high school, he studied film at SUNY Purchase. He moved to New York hoping to get involved with making gay arthouse films, and ended up living with a bunch of porn stars in Chelsea. He worked at the Saint, the spectacular gay members-only nightclub that closed in 1988, and Uncle Charlie’s Uptown, a gay bar. He met Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon at SUNY Purchase, which led him to ACT UP. Matt is not out to his family.

    Role in ACT UP: Matt is involved in planning zaps, goes to most meetings and actions, and is starting to get involved with DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists). He is also on the Swim Team.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Swim Team; Michael Aquilone (boyfriend, on the fundraising committee); DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/081-matt-ebert

  • Garron grew up in Springfield, Vermont. Garron studied Special Ed. and English at Castleton University. In 1979, Garron helped found the first order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Mickey Wheatley, Gabriel Quirk

    Additional information: https://www.tllittphotography.com/image/I0000gQZB0H30_WM 

  • David is in the affinity group Dada.

  • Background: Jim is a 37 year old white, gay man. Jim spent his childhood in the Bronx and his high school years in a suburb of Philadelphia. He got a partial scholarship to study playwriting at the California Institute of the Arts, then went to graduate school for playwriting at University of California, Davis. He then became the playwright writing for a theater collective associated with the University of Maryland in Baltimore for two years. He then moved to New York. He was often involved in activist groups (anti-Vietnam, New Mobilization for Survival, Amnesty International). In the early 1980s he started writing fiction. Jim came out in his late 20s/early 30s. Most of his sexual experiences were at gay movie houses. When Jim first came to ACT UP, he heard Vito Russo express to the Floor that Iris Long had extremely important information to share about virology and the drug development process. This made Jim go to a Treatment and Data Committee meeting, where he quickly develop a working relationship with Iris Long.

    Role in ACT UP: Jim is on the Treatment and Data Committee. Though Jim has no medical background, he has developed a specialty for understanding drug approval in the United States, and complements Iris Long (a knowledgeable virologist, but not a great public speaker) as the main writer and speaker on behalf of the Treatment and Data Committee. Jim is also in the affinity group Wave 3. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting:  Treatment and Data Committee, Wave 3

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Jim is on the agenda to make the Treatment and Data report:

    • The National Committee to Review Current Procedures for Approval of New Drugs for Cancer and AIDS (the Lasagna Committee, so named because it is a committee headed by Dr. Louis Lasagna) is advising that Medicare and Medicaid make no payments for investigational drugs. 

    • This discriminates against poorer PWAs (people with AIDS), since people with more money can afford to pay for the drugs out of pocket.

    • This also undermines the battle against AIDS. Since there are so few approved drugs to combat AIDS, experimental treatments are the only avenue, and the data that can be obtained can be highly valuable, even if the data is not as pristine as in trials that the FDA would run (but is not running).

    • Treatment and Data is preparing a document with demands and questions for the Lasagna Committee.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/047-jim-eigo

  • Gilbert is a doctoral student at the City University of New York and an ACT UP member who is writing his thesis about the group.

  • Sandra is a 32 year old white straight woman who grew up outside of Ottawa, Canada. She studied art and art history at Trent University and then the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She then began the Whitney program where she met her Testing the Limits collaborators David Meieran and Gregg Bordowitz. They, together with Robyn Hutt (who Sandra met at art school in Canada and with whom she went to the Whitney program as collaborators), Hilary Kipnis, and Jean Carlomusto, formed Testing the Limits, a video collective that pre-dates ACT UP with the specific aim of documenting AIDS activism. Testing the Limits’s first major footage is from ACT UP’s first demonstration in 1987 at Wall Street. All decisions within Testing the Limits, including the editing, are done by consensus. Testing the Limits released a video in 1988 focusing mainly on ACT UP that played at festivals and is distributed among educators. There has been a split in Testing the Limits of late with Robyn, David, and Sandra wanting to focus more on feature length documentary than short videos. That is what they are working on now as they prepare to shoot footage at Target City Hall. Robyn is married to a man who is currently in architecture school.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Testing the Limits

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/095-sandra-elgear

  • Background: Richard is a 35 year old, white, Jewish gay (mostly … it’s complicated. He married a woman in 1978, and most of his long relationships pre-1989 were with women) man. He grew up in Kew Gardens, then Douglaston, then Little Neck, Queens. At 14, he moved in with a family running a small hotel near the Catskills. Richard went to art school and moved into Manhattan. The “Early life” and “Writing, curating, and performance” sections on his Wikipedia page give a good summary of his pre-ACT UP life (the "HIV activism and organizing” section is good too, though it focuses mostly on Richard’s post-1989 activity): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Elovich

    Richard got into drugs: alcohol, hallucinogens, then opiates/heroin, then got sober in 1982.

    Role in ACT UP:  Richard is involved with Gran Fury, a small collective of people creating much of the graphic design for ACT UP. He has also been involved in Treatment issues. Richard is starting to get involved with advocating for needle exchange: making clean syringes available to intravenous drug users to reduce their HIV risk from sharing syringes. He will want to make sure that any Target City Hall demands or other relevant actions include a push for the city to implement needle exchange, even though it is not currently legal.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Gran Fury, Treatment and Data Committee, Debra Levine 

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: With Debra Levine, he is on the agenda to propose an ACT UP trip to Albany tomorrow (March 14) to protest healthcare budget cuts. Governor Mario Cuomo has proposed a massive $350 million cut in Medicaid spending that will affect all New Yorkers, including people with AIDS and especially poorer people with AIDS. The protest tomorrow is being jointly organized by the New York state private hospitals and the union for healthcare workers. He and Debra should acknowledge that many people in the room have had terrible experiences with hospitals and healthcare workers when attempting to get quality, compassionate care for themselves and their loved ones with AIDS. In light of this, and in light of the risk that budget cuts could have for people with AIDS, Richard and Debra should ask the Floor to debate whether ACT UP should participate in the protest, and then vote on it. If the Floor votes to endorse ACT UP's participation, Richard and Debra should find out how many people will go so they can know how many buses are needed. They should make sure to give the people who are going the information on where/when the buses will leave/return, tell people that round-trip tickets on the bus will be $10, and ask Rollerena to sell seats on the buses around the floor (right now, not at the end of the meeting).  

    Link to New York Times article about the Albany issues

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/072-richard-elovich 

  • Jon lives in Manhattan. Jon helped plan the FDA action in the fall of 1988 and is starting to get involved with the Treatment and Data Committee.

  • Jeff is a 29 year old man. Formerly an investment banker on Wall Street, Jeff is currently in a one-year pre-medical program at Columbia, planning to pursue a career in community health. He lives on the Upper West Side. He has been arrested at ACT UP actions for civil disobedience. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras. His best friend in ACT UP is John Davis, with whom he typically sits. John and Jeff went to their first meeting together, and both got arrested for the first time at Wall St. 2. Their affinity group for Wall St. 2 was Wave 2 (they were the first group to get arrested—there was no Wave 1, and they joked that that would really confuse the police). Amy Bauer and Mike Frisch trained them for Civil Disobedience. Jeff is also good friends with David Leavitt.

  • Charles lives in Manhattan.

F

  • Background:  Gene is a 46 year old white gay man. He spent much of his time in the artistic community in Provincetown. He now works as a graphic art designer. He started a group with Jim Fouratt called Wipe Out AIDS that became HEAL, which focuses on alternative diets, holistic practices, massage, Reiki, etc.  Gene lives in a loft on 17th Street in Chelsea with his partner, John.

    Role in ACT UP:  Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee (Bob Lederer, Jim Fouratt, Eugene Fedorko)Role in ACT UP:  Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee (Bob Lederer, Jim Fouratt, Eugene Fedorko)

  • Andrei is involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

  • David is 29, is from Newburgh, New York, and lives in New York City. He is HIV positive.

  • Background: Joe is a 29 year old, white, Italian/Irish gay man from Wantagh, Long Island. Joe lived in Connecticut for a while, then moved into the city. As a young adult he started going out to clubs in the city (like The Saint, Paradise Garage, Pyramid Club, and Danceteria), and slowly came out. He came to ACT UP in 1987 after one of his good friends learned he was HIV-positive. He lives with his partner Lee Schy (who is also in ACT UP) in an apartment at 51 West 19th Street.

    Role in ACT UP: Joe got involved in the Actions Committee quickly after starting to come to ACT UP. Joe is also a civil disobedience trainer.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: The other people on the Actions Committee; Civil disobedience trainers; Lee Schy (partner); Victor Mendolia; Ken Woodard

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Joe, Victor Mendolia, and Ken Woodard will speak to the Floor as part of the City Hall Report to ask the Floor for final approval on a series of posters to encourage people to come to Target City Hall: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/reason-1-to-act-up. The administrator will be bringing the posters, so they should get them from the administrator before the meeting starts.  Victor and Joe will try to get people to help with wheat-pasting. They will ask people to meet them at the side of the room (right now, not at the end of the meeting) to arrange the logistics (dates/times/neighborhoods/who will go out together/watch out for police). Meanwhile, Ken will talk about Operation Batman.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/126-joe-ferrari

  • Background: Jose is a 22 year old Filipino gay man who was born in Toronto but grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. He went to Catholic school, came out in high school, then went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut (where he was in the gay group), dropped out after two years, and moved to the West Village in 1986. He works in retail. He has a penchant for older, skinny men; many of the men he has dated have had AIDS and some have died. Fellow ACT UPer Howard Pope at his job encouraged him to come to ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Jose goes to most meetings and actions and is on the Majority Action Committee. He is usually a marshal at actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Majority Action Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/057-jose-fidelino

  • Background: Avram is a 37 year old white, Jewish gay man who grew up in Jericho, Long Island. He was a self-described “hippie fag artist” in high school (though he didn’t come out until college), and got involved in leftist politics at an early age. He went to the Museum School and trained as a graphic artist. He began working as an artist and, to make money, got into hairdressing and then became art director for Vidal Sassoon. Avram’s partner Don died of AIDS in 1984. Avram was one of the original people who formed the Silence=Death Project, which created the famous poster that was adopted by ACT UP. That collective merged into ACT UP. Avram’s boyfriend Steven Webb, a fellow ACT UPer, died by suicide in 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Avram has been part of ACT UP from the beginning in 1987, and first got involved on the Logistics Committee. He is now a member of Gran Fury, which is the main activist artist collective of ACT UP members. Gran Fury started as an open group, but became a closed, invitation-only group when having so many members proved unwieldy.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Avram is a prominent ACT UP member and knows most people. He is in the affinity group Delta Queens, is one of the core group of Gran Fury, and is close friends with Vincent Gagliostro.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/108-avram-finkelstein

  • Mark is a 35 year old white gay man who lives in Manhattan. He is an architect in private practice.

  • Julie is a white woman who lives in Manhattan. She received her B.A. from Columbia University. She works with the Treatment and Data Committee, and is helping to start the AIDS Treatment Registry.

  • Bill lives in Manhattan.

  • Background: Lola is a 30 year old black lesbian who grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. Lola’s Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Flash) gives a good summary of her early life and education.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/091-lola-flash

  • Peter is a member of the affinity group the Candelabras and is involved with the Lesbian and Gay Activist History Project, a group of ACT UP members with an interest in queer past.

  • Felix lives at 262 East 2nd Street in Manhattan.

  • Mark is a 32 year old white gay man who grew up in Wilmette, Illinois on the North Shore outside of Chicago. He went to New Trier East High School and then became a Broadway performer, appearing in A Chorus Line, Cats, Rags, West Side Story, Harrigan n Hart, The Loves of Antanol and a tour of Sophisticated Ladies. He played Aggie in the film version of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He is living with AIDS, has been involved with ACT UP since 1987, and is well-known for carrying a sign at ACT UP actions saying “"LIVING WITH AIDS – [3 YEARS 11 MONTHS] AND COUNTING! NO THANKS TO YOU MR REAGAN”. His mother, Anne Beckmann, has attended actions with him when she has visited from Chicago. Mark lives in Manhattan.

    Additional information: Photo of Mark with his sign at the top of an article

  • Background: Jim is a 48 year old white gay man who grew up in Rhode Island. He went to private Catholic school and then went to a seminary but was kicked out for coming out as gay. He moved to New York and got involved in the burgeoning experimental theater scene (Living Theater, Caffe Cino, Joseph Chaikin). In the mid-1960s he became a hippie and got involved in the anti-war movement. After the Stonewall uprising, Jim was involved in helping to organize the protesters, and through the 1970s he was involved with gay political groups, co-founding Gay Liberation Front and then as a member of Gay Activists Alliance. He worked as an assistant to the pop music producer Clive Davis, became the manager of Club Hurrah and then opened Danceteria. Jim is in the minority of people at ACT UP who do not believe that HIV is the cause of AIDS.  He started a group with Eugene Fedorko called Wipe Out AIDS that became HEAL, with focuses on alternative diets, holistic practices, massage, Reiki, etc.

    Role in ACT UP:  Media Committee; Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee; Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee (Bob Lederer, Jim Fouratt, Eugene Fedorko)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/066-jim-fouratt

  • Background: Charlie is a 31 year old white gay man who grew up in West Nyack, New York. He went to Catholic school. After graduating from chiropractic school, we started volunteering in New York in 1981 at the Gay and Lesbian Task Force (stuffing envelopes and such). An appearance on the local television news show Midday Live with Bill Boggs, where Charlie denounced Jerry Falwell’s stance on gay people, outed Charlie to his family. He started volunteering at St. Mark’s Clinic, where he saw early cases of AIDS. He then started seeing patients in his own practice with AIDS symptoms. He was a buddy with Gay Men’s Health Crisis. As more people he knew were dying, he came to ACT UP as a place to process his anger. He lives in the West Village and his chiropractic office is at 5th Avenue and 10th Street. Charlie took an HIV test despite having no symptoms (even though most people at the time were not getting tested if they had no symptoms), and tested negative.

    Role in ACT UP: Charlie chaired the Outreach Committee in 1988. He attends most meetings and actions. Charlie is starting to attend Treatment and Data Committee meetings.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee; Mark Harrington

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/105-charlie-franchino

  • Background: Garance is a 17-year-old white, Jewish woman. She grew up in the West Village, went to P.S. 41, went to high school in New Mexico, dropped out, lived on her own at 16 in New Mexico, got her GED, then moved back to New York with her parents. She has been going to meetings for teenagers at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, and ACT UPer Neil Broome came to their group to recruit people for the FDA demonstration in the fall of 1988. After going to that demonstration, Garance has continued to come to ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Garance is on the Actions Committee.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/080-garance-franke-ruta 

  • Ira is involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. In the summer of 1988 he traveled with fellow ACT UPers to the Democratic National Convention to protest the government inaction on AIDS. Ira lives at 83 Horatio Street in Manhattan.

  • Background: In Mike's own words:  I was born in Summit NJ - my parents divorced when I was 2 and 1/2. My Dad was a Chemistry Professor at SUNY Albany and his immediate family just barely got out of Austria and Europe during World War II (My great grandmother died in the Holocaust). He was a non-practicing Jew and while I was brought up Quaker - I knew that I was half Jewish. I visited him usually once every two weeks. My mom came from an old NY Quaker family -- Murrays of Murray Hill. Growing up in a single-parent household during the late sixties and seventies was part of my identity. I'm the youngest, and have a brother 2.5 years older.  My mom became more involved in Quakerism after the divorce. We would go to anti Vietnam war vigils and my mom refused to pay her telephone tax which went to support the Vietnam war. 

    In 1972, my mom built a pre-fab cabin on land that my grandmother owned in East Chatham NY. It was kind of a back-to-the-land effort that also worked to simplify my Mom's life. She was working for the Quaker conference center Powell House. I went to the local public schools and was the overweight  Quaker gay kid (although not out) who got bullied in Junior High (6-9th). I doubled up on classes and graduated from New Lebanon Central School a year early and went to a Quaker College: Earlham in Richmond, Indiana. While I majored in Economics at Earlham - I also did a lot of activism, and read a lot of non-violence theory - especially the books by Gene Sharp. 

    I slowly started coming out to myself in 1983 - about the same time that I learned about AIDS. I slowed down my coming out because it did not seem wise given this disease, and it was not until I had a friend in Lansing MI that gave me more courage to come out in 1985-1986. In the summer of 1986, I got a job at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, which was Barry Commoner's research institute at Queens College. My office was located at 163-03 Horace Harding Expressway in Flushing and I had windows that gave me a full view of the Manhattan skyline. Moving to NY meant that I was going to be fully out. 

    A part of my job with Barry Commoner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Commoner) was to assist local environmental groups fighting polluting facilities such as trash incinerators. We were working on developing alternatives to trash incineration and eventually found that we could recycle 84% of household garbage. I was also working on an evaluation of the weatherization program in the State of New York. At the time, I lived in a 4-person non-cooperative share on the last block of State Street in Brooklyn right by Atlantic Terminal. It was a long commute to work - 1 hour and 15 minutes on an average day.

    John Bohne (Quaker and graduate of theological seminary) and David Alan Harris (a dancer, and Earlham grad) brought me to Act UP in May 1987. John and his husband Bill were married in Morningside Friends Meeting in 1985/1986. When I came to NY, I went to Friends for Gay and Lesbian Concerns (Gay and Lesbian Quakers) group both nationally and locally in NY. David was representing AFSC in the organizing of the 1987 March on Washington. Our affinity group (MHA) began meeting for the civil disobedience at the Supreme Court in the summer of 1987. Our early affinity group meetings (we often met at Charles Stimson's loft on 13th street) and discussions with Gregg Bordowitz were really important to me at this time. I was on the Actions Committee  and since I had been trained as a non-violence trainer before - I quickly became one of the non-violent direct action trainers along with Jamie Bauer. I occasionally did logistics - going to a site and figuring out how a protest could work. I often marshalled at demonstrations. I was committed to my environmental activist job so I usually did support type jobs for Act Up demos. My handful of arrests came when the police would pick a few marshalls off. 

    By 1989, I was becoming fully comfortable with myself. I was in talk therapy. I had figured out safer sex and what risks I was comfortable taking. On weekends, I would hang out with Act Up folks at The Bar (First Avenue and 4th Street) but I found that as a non-twink, I did better at the bars in Chelsea such as The Spike and The Eagle. I had a leather jacket and wore timberlands sometimes. It wasn't until the early/mid 1990s that I figured out that I was a "bear" - gay, hairy, and a little overweight guy. I was 26 years old in March 1989. Act Up was a big part of my becoming comfortable with my gay identity and this timing coincides with Target City Hall. 

    I hung out with non-violence trainers - Alexis, Jamie, Jean Elizabeth, and the other MHA members before and after Act UP meetings - Rich Jackman, Ortez, Bill M, Steven Cordova, Charles Stimson, Ira Manhoff, Gregg Bordowitz, etc as well as the Actions Committee crowd - Alan, Ron, etc. Through John Bohne I got to know folks on the Issues Committee, David Barr for example, especially David Kirschenbaum (I was part of his gay bridge group for more than a decade starting in 1990).  I thought the "swim team" guys were hot, but unattainable for me. I loved the feminist edge that the women's caucus brought to meetings and I had been reading the feminist sex debates. I was very comfortable being a cog of support for this movement. 

    I think this gives a sense of who I was in 1989. We heard a lot of latin-freestyle music in NY in the late 1980s. It was blasting out of every bodega. For an example, listen to TKA or Noel's "Silent Morning". I loved the house music I would hear in dance clubs late at night (I would go to Act Up benefits and parties). I listened to New Order, the Cure, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure. When I listen to Erasure's "Ship of Fools" and "A Little Respect." I think of this time in Act Up.

    Role in ACT UP: Mike is one of the civil disobedience trainers.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: The civil disobedience trainers

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: From minute 4:10 to 18:28 of the video entitled ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings on this page, Mike Frisch and Gregg Bordowitz are leading a civil disobedience training (Mike is the leader with a mustache and glasses). Together with Amy Bauer and the rest of the civil disobedience trainers, Mike and Gregg will lead a similar exercise during the March 13, 1989 meeting.

    Mike is also on the agenda later in the meeting with Gregg Bordowitz to explain the Wave structure of civil disobedience:

    • Announce that a pre-action meeting will take place on Thursday at 7:30pm

    • All affinity groups planning to engage in civil disobedience should attend, or at least send a representative

    • At Target City Hall, the Wave structure will work as follows: At 7:30am, the demonstration starts with pickets forming. Affinity group members should find their support person. At 8am, the first affinity group will do their action, then the second affinity group will go at 8:15am, then the third affinity group will go (adjusting as necessary based on how the previous actions have gone).

    • Mike and Gregg should explain that they don’t need to know (and don’t even want to know) what each group's specific action will be. But, Mike and Gregg need to know approximately where the action will take place so Mike and Gregg can coordinate press and video, and so everything doesn’t happen (and everyone doesn’t get arrested) all at once.

    • Distribute a Direct Action Guideline Sheet

    After Mike and Gregg finish explaining the Wave structure, Alan Klein, Gregg, and Mike should ask people in affinity groups and on committees to get together (right now) with their groups to hash out their actions/civil disobedience plans for Target City Hall. At the same time as the groups are meeting, David Barr will give a 5 minute Legal Observer training to the rest of the people at the meeting.

    The groups should then choose a representative to tell Alan, Gregg, or Mike the basic details so that Alan, Gregg, and Mike can coordinate timing, media coverage, etc. Alan, Gregg, and Mike can then meet among themselves to synthesize the information and figure out when each group's action should happen at Target City Hall.

  • Eric went to Hunter College. He lives in New Jersey.

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  • No information

  • Background: Vincent is a 34 year old white gay man who grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey. He went to Catholic school and then Hackensack High School, where he was out and relatively popular. He went to art school and became a graphic designer. He was involved with Gay Activist Alliance in the 1970s. He has been in a relationship with his partner Richard since the late 1970s.

    Role in ACT UP: Vincent is on the Outreach Committee and helps design much of the graphics and posters for ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Outreach Committee; Avram Finkelstein; Victor Mendolia

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/064-vincent-gagliostro

  • Selwyn has attended Majority Action Committee meetings and lives at 344 East 9th Street in Manhattan.

  • No information

  • NOTE: Robert 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: Robert is a 27 year old half-Navajo/half-Mexican gay man. He grew up in Whittier, California, and went to college at USC. He moved to New York in 1985 or 1986 with a lover (Tony). They broke up quickly, and Robert stayed in New York. Robert is currently a temporary secretary at an insurance-related company, looking for work (like the work he has done before) as a computer analyst. He started coming to ACT UP in late 1988 after the second March on Washington. He had no activism experience before that. He has not been tested for HIV. 

    Role in ACT UP: Robert is currently one of the four facilitators of ACT UP meetings, and is also involved with the Speakers Bureau. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Some friends Robert met through working at A Different Light (a gay bookstore), like David Robinson and Liz Tracey, encouraged Robert to come to ACT UP. Robert has become fast friends with Karen Ramspacher, who started coming to ACT UP shortly after he did. Robert lives in a big commercial loft space at 60 Warren Street, 5th Floor with Catherine Saalfield among others. This loft is a frequent meeting place for small ACT UP sub-groups, particularly the newly-forming DIVA TV.  Robert is also involved with Majority Action.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Robert is one of the facilitators.

    Additional information: This interview with Robert was filmed just two months before March 13, 1989. I highly encourage you to watch/listen to it, at least the first half hour and the last 6 minutes (where Robert talks about being a facilitator): 

    https://actuporalhistory.org/lc-archive/interview-of-robert-garcia

  • Jeff is 34 and a nurse-epidemiologist who works on AIDS research and education with intravenous drug users in the South Bronx.

    Additional information: 1990 interview with Jeff: https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/storm-the-nih

  • Background: Deborah is a 32 year old white lesbian. She grew up in Denver, Colorado in a poor, working-class family. She moved to New York City in 1981, waited tables, and assistant stage managed at Playwrights Horizons. She came out a few years later. She first came to ACT UP with her friend Michael.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Wave 3; Powertools

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/096-debbie-gavito 

  • David is in the affinity group Seeing Red.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the Floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall.

  • Background: Stephen is a 23 year old white gay man who grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He was valedictorian of his high school, where he was out and sexually active, and then went to Brown University, where he got into AIDS activism. Stephen was active in ACT UP New York even while attending Brown in Providence. After graduating, he worked in the fundraising department of the Catholic archdiocese of New York, but Sean Strub (who Stephen knew from ACT UP's Fundraising Committee) quickly hired Stephen to work for his direct mail marketing company. He is currently working on advertising cards called cardpacks that are mailed directly to gay and lesbian households.

    Steven tested HIV-positive in 1985. Steven has been in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer Mark Aurigemma since the summer of 1987.

    Role in ACT UP: Stephen attends almost all meetings and actions, and has been arrested with ACT UP many times. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras and is on the Fundraising Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Mark Aurigemma (boyfriend), Tom Keane, Fundraising Committee, Candelabras

    Additional information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBxfDbDmhzE

  • Background: David is a 26 year old white gay man who grew up in Buffalo, New York. He went to Catholic high school then moved to New York City in 1981 to go to Fordham. He came out when he got to New York City. He switched to cinema studies at NYU and worked at World of Video at West 10th Street and 7th Avenue. He dated some HIV-positive men, then moved back to Buffalo to finish his bachelor’s degree in 1986. He moved back to New York City and currently works in advertising.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/158-david-gerstner

  • Robert is a 28 year old white gay man who lives at East 12th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan. Robert has worked in drag clubs and hustler bars. He now documents AIDS activism through still and motion picture photography. Robert is HIV positive and is a client at Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

  • Background: Mark is a 25 year old white gay man from South Africa of Lithuanian Jewish heritage. He graduated from Yale in 1987 with a degree in comparative literature. He is currently a political reporter at the Village Voice. He has not been coming to ACT UP very long, but he has encouraged his friend Esther Kaplan (who he knows from Yale and who is an intern at the Village Voice) to come to ACT UP as well. They are excited to be trained in civil disobedience for their first action, Target City Hall. They have also brought Ira Sachs, Mark’s roommate and best friend who they know from Yale.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Esther Kaplan, Ira Sachs

  • Background: Joan is a 36 year old black lesbian who grew up in rural Swan Quarter, North Carolina, where segregation and Klan activity were the norm. Her mother was a teacher who was fired for her outspokenness and moved to New York, with Joan and her sister staying in the South until Joan was fourteen. When she was in 4th grade her cousin was lynched. After moving to New York, Joan went to Bronx Science, where was was involved in the anti-war movement, Young Socialist Alliance, and the Black Students Group. She went to City College, dropped out, went to hippie Franconia College in New Hampshire for two years, came back to New York, went to Marlboro College studying theater, then graduated from Empire State College. She came out in 1971. She lived in Providence for a year then came back to New York in the mid-1970s, got politically active again, this time from a queer perspective starting Azalea (a magazine for women of color) and DARE (a lesbian group opposing racism). She went to law school at Rutgers in the early 1980s and started doing social justice law with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights where she works now. David Barr invited her to get involved with legal work for ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Joan comes to many ACT UP meetings and acts as a legal observer at actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Legal observers

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/138-joan-gibbs

  • John is from Jerome, Arkansas, lives and works in Manhattan, and is on ACT UP’s Gay and Lesbian Teach-In Committee.

  • John Gilbert is an actor who is also a high-profile doorman at gay dance clubs.

  • Betsy is a 44 year old woman who uses a wheelchair. Betsy has been an activist with Disabled in Action and WWP Disability Rights for over a decade.

    Additional information: https://abc7ny.com/aids-protest-act-up-in-the-80s-new-york/6233266/

  • David is a 26 year old white man.

    Additional information: Photo of David

  • Jean is a lesbian around 20 years old. She co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Student Union at Queens College, was involved with the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights as a teenager, and was a member of the Lavender Hill Mob. She is on the Actions Committee, and is co-chair of the Target City Hall action. She is also a civil disobedience trainer. She is in the affinity group Delta Queens.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Target City Hall principals; Delta Queens, Civil disobedience trainers

  • Gary is a writer with homes in Manhattan and East Hampton. His first novel, Years from Now, about generations of a Jewish family, came out in 1987. Gary is in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer David Leavitt.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: The Candelabras; David Leavitt

    Additional information: Article about Gary and David

  • Kay is a nurse. She has been a buddy with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and has volunteered in their Ombudsman’s office, putting together a city-wide survey on funeral homes that discriminate against and price gouge people with AIDS. She is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • My lives in Manhattan.

  • Background: Ron is a 30 year old white, gay, Jewish man who grew up in Great Neck, Long Island. He moved to New York after college in 1980 to pursue an acting career. Ron had an active gay New York life -- bars, Fire Island, Gay Pride, volunteering for the March on Washington. Ron started coming to ACT UP in June 1987. Having segued out of acting to devote more time to his activism work, Ron is working temp office jobs while devoting most of his time to ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Ron recently stepped down as the chair of the Actions Committee, where he was in charge of all of the logistical details of dozens of ACT UP actions, and he is still heavily involved in actions. For Target City Hall, he is spearheading the development, teaching, and leading of the chants that people and groups can use at the action.

    Groups/friends at the meeting:  Ron knows just about everyone, but at this meeting he will be working closest with the principals planning Target City Hall.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Ron is on the agenda, as part of the Target City Hall report, to teach 3 new chants for Target City Hall (Here is a link to chants Ron will choose from to teach.). Ron will teach the chants and have the Floor repeat them. Ron also will tell the floor that there was a Housing Teach-In on Wednesday, March 8 at the Center about the lack of city housing for PWAs, and that anyone looking to get involved with this issue should talk to anyone on the Caucus to House Homeless PWAs Now. He'll ask anyone on the caucus to raise their hands so people will know who to talk to.

    Additional information: ACT UP chants

    https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/target-city-hall at about the 48 minute mark of the ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings video

    https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/032-ron-goldberg

  • Mark is a photographer. He received a BFA in photography from SUNY Purchase in 1984.

  • Cliff is a black man. He is on the Majority Action Committee and wrote an article on City Prisoners and AIDS for the Target City Hall handbook. Cliff is also involved with HEAL (Health Education AIDS Liaison), which spreads information on alternative and holistic therapies. Cliff is HIV positive. He lives at 54 Featherbed Lane in the Bronx.

  • John is a white man. He is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

    Additional information: Photo of John

  • Background: Emily is a 53 year old straight white woman who grew up poor in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan. When her mother was hospitalized when she was 15, Emily moved in with a liberal Jewish family in Ann Arbor and cared for their kids. They found her a job at the University of Michigan Hospital and encouraged Emily to go to college, which she did at the University of Michigan. She left college in her senior year, married her second lover Jerry, and moved to El Paso.She hated El Paso and convinced Jerry to move to Los Angeles, where she graduated from UCLA. Jerry got more right-wing as Emily got more left-wing and they got divorced. She went to graduate school at University of Michigan in 1964 and got very involved in the civil rights movement. She moved around the country, getting involved in various leftist movements, and ended up in New York in the 1980s working at Covenant House as a social worker. She lives in Harlem at 723 St. Nicholas Avenue, where she moved with her friend Michael as he was dying of AIDS. She met Griffin Gold, who got her to ACT UP. 

    Role in ACT UP: Emily goes to most meetings and is on the Majority Action Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Majority Action Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/127-emily-gordon

  • Steve has been involved with ACT NOW, which works to coordinate various ACT UP chapters in different cities. Steve also is involved with ACT UP NJ. He lives on Hurlburt Street in Westwood, NJ.

  • Paul lives in Manhattan.

  • Jim grew up in Lagrange, Illinois. He was a sensitive, insular child. After a year at the University of Illinois, he transferred to SUNY Purchase and started to become a painter. After graduating in 1984, Jim moved to the East Village and tried to break into the art world while waitering at the Moondance diner. He frequents bars and dance clubs. After testing HIV positive, Jim joined ACT UP. Jim recently got interested in needlepoint art.

  • Michael has attended Majority Action Committee meetings and lives at 156 First Avenue in Manhattan.

  • Background: Brian Greenbaum is friends and collaborators with the filmmakers Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes. They are all working on a new film, Poison, with fellow ACT UPer and friend Jim Lyons. 

    Role in ACT UP: Brian comes to some meetings and actions. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Christine Vachon, Jim Lyons, Todd Haynes

  • Background: Jeff is a 38 year old white man who grew up in a rural town called Perryopolis near Pittsburgh. He went to college at Pitt, then Carnegie Mellon, then went to Yale to study oboe. He moved to New York, and got into performing in musical theater. Jeff holds an administrative job at American Ballet Theatre, and he uses the space and resources there for ACT UP meetings and events. He is in a long-term relationship with Lee Raines, also a musical theater performer and also an ACT UPer. Lee and Jeff met on a plane trip from NYC to St Louis where they'd been cast as Jets in a production of West Side Story. An intra-Jet showmance turned into a romance and they became inseparable, except when one or the other was out of town working. They live at 13th Street and First Avenue. They joined ACT UP about six months or so after it started. Jeff and Lee worked together managing the offices and rehearsal space for American Ballet Theater, and were very active in ACT UP, so they spent pretty much all of their time together.  Their affinity group, Seeing Red, sometimes uses the ABT conference room to meet. Lee and Jeff do not know their HIV statuses (though they suspect they are negative since they have been together for eight years and neither has had any health issues), but plan to get tested together this week. Lee is planning to do civil disobedience and get arrested for the first time at Target City Hall, while Jeff is planning to do support.

    Role in ACT UP: Jeff is on the Outreach Committee, and he and Lee do a lot of wheat-pasting. He is in the affinity group Seeing Red.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Lee Raines (long-time partner), Outreach Committee, Patrick Moore, Seeing Red

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall.

    Jeff is also on the agenda later to announce a zap of Governor Mario Cuomo’s office in the World Trade Center on Thursday where Cuomo will be announcing the opening of a 66 bed AIDS facility in the Bronx. The zap will stress that this is woefully inadequate. Jeff will ask anyone interested in participating to meet with him right now at the side of the room to coordinate.

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/140-jeffrey-griglak

H

  • Kelly is the Phone Tree Manager and he sometimes records the Monday night meeting minutes.

  • Background: Mark is a 29 year old white gay man. His early life is well-summarized in the Personal life section of his Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Harrington_(HIV/AIDS_activist))

    Role in ACT UP: Mark came to ACT UP in 1988 and joined the Actions Committee, but he quickly transitioned to the Treatment and Data Committee. He is a member of the affinity group Wave 3. He comes to most actions and meetings.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee, Wave 3

    https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/012-mark-harrington

  • David is a program assistant at the AFSC, Haitian Women’s Program at 15 Rutherford Place in Manhattan.

  • Background: Jill is a 31 year old white lesbian who grew up in Eugene, Oregon. Her parents divorced when she was young and she lived with her mother and step-father. Her mother was into women’s lib and took Jill to hear Gloria Steinem speak when Jill was in high school. Jill came out in her freshman year at Harvard. She took a year off and worked at a bookstore in Eugene, then finished a psychology major at Harvard (where she was active in the Boston/Cambridge lesbian scene, worked as a bartender, and got involved in some women/gay rights causes). She came to New York in 1982 to go to NYU law school, then started working as a criminal defense attorney with Legal Aid. She got arrested in 1986 at a big civil disobedience demonstration in Washington protesting the Bowers v. Hardwick Supreme court decision that upheld state sodomy laws. Her friend David Barr encouraged her to get involved with ACT UP providing legal support, which she first started doing for the FDA action in October of 1988. Jill is starting a relationship with Catherine Saalfield, though she is also in a relationship with another woman who is not involved in ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Jill comes to most meetings and actions. Though she has been arrested at some actions, she mostly acts as a legal observer. Jill was recently recruited into the affinity group Wave 3 for Target City Hall.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Legal observers, Wave 3; Catherine Saalfield (dating)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/087-jill-harris

  • Vicki lives in New Jersey.

  • Roger lives at 206 9th Avenue in Manhattan. Roger is interested in housing issues.

  • Background: Todd is a 28 year old white gay man who grew up in Encino, California. He studied art and semiotics at Brown University, where he met friend and collaborator Christine Vachon. He moved to New York for an MFA at Bard College. Together with Christine, Todd created a non-profit film production company called Apparatus Productions in 1987, and through that made Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story which Todd directed. They are now working on a new film, Poison, with friends and fellow ACT UPers Jim Lyons and Brian Greenbaum. 

    Role in ACT UP: Todd comes to some meetings and actions. Christine and Todd also let Gran Fury use Apparatus’ office for meeting/working space.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Jim Lyons, Christine Vachon, Brian Greenbaum

  • Tim has been arrested for civil disobedience with ACT UP before, including at an action on Wall Street in March of 1988. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Billy is 29 and lives in New York City. He graduated from St. Nicholas of Tolentine High School in the Bronx in 1977. He is a model, poet, and actor.

  • Stephen is a 25 year old man who grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in a working class Southeast Louisiana Catholic family. He remembers how good it felt to wear his cousin's ballet costume, and when he stole porn mags from his dad's closet, he found himself drawn to the men in the pics -- and became extremely aroused by a story about sado-masochism.  Once he had a crush on a football player during middle school, and knew that something was terribly "wrong." He went to LSU - Baton Rouge - in Pre-Med Psychology (pre-med for the interest in a caring profession, psychology because he wanted to figure a way out of the sexual dilemma of same-sex attraction, and he was captivated by his best friend's Mom's journey with alcoholism and recovery). When he tested HIV positive in November of 1985, his bucket list was 1. Get out of Baton Rouge; 2. Fall in love; 3. See the world. He left for NYC on Labor Day 1986, met his current partner around Christmas of 1986, and went on a four month jaunt to Europe for the summer of 1988. When he returned from Europe, he went back to carpentry, which he had taken up as a way to make extra cash for the trip to Europe. Stephen lives in Brooklyn on Nevins, between Wyckoff and Warren (now called  Gowanus) in an apartment building owned by a friend, who he works as a carpenter with.  Stephen also acts as super of the building.

    Stephen's partner was good friends with Mark Fotopoulous and had introduced them during the 1986 Pride march (Mark was in the ACT UP contingent). Stephen's partner encouraged him to go to ACT UP -- his bucket list was done and he was still alive.  His first meeting was the Monday before Election day, 1988.

  • Background: Jason is a 31 year white gay man who grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He was raised in the United Church of Christ, and went to a pre-ministerial program at a southern college. When he had his first sexual encounter with a man and started to come out there, he was forced out of college and moved to Philadelphia to pursue a career in dance by going to the School of the Pennsylvania Ballet. He then transferred to Temple University to study modern dance, get a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in Education. He also ran a business training executives how to use their then-new personal computers. He sold off his piece of that business and moved to New York, becoming the executive director of the Erick Hawkins Dance Foundation. He also helped run an international youth hostel in Harlem. Particularly being in the dance world, he saw people dying of AIDS early, and he started volunteering at GMHC, doing outreach education work at bathhouses, churches, and other community locations. As he got more involved in AIDS activism, he gave up his dance work. He went to ACT UP in 1987, but left New York because he had a contract to do some touring and some evaluation of some arts programs around the country. When he returned in 1988, he got heavily involved in ACT UP. Jason lives in Queens and has a contract doing training at a large midtown business (where he surreptitiously uses their resources to send out ACT UP correspondence and make copies).

    Role in ACT UP: Jason is the current ACT UP administrator. The administrator is not the head of ACT UP, but is elected by the Floor to a six-month term to make the administrative tasks run smoothly. After attending the Coordinating Committee meeting, he sets the agenda for the Monday night meeting and reviews it with the facilitators before the meeting. He arranges for the recording and transcription of the meeting minutes, manages the phone tree, responds to correspondence, and deals with administrative issues that arise.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Facilitators, Coordinating Committee, Candelabras

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Jason will arrive at the meeting in time to meet with the facilitators 30 minutes before the meeting starts. (Other people can also come if they have items they would like to propose for the agenda). Once the agenda is finalized, he will post it around the room. He will also remind the facilitators that, if all four of them are there, that they agreed tonight that they would each lead half of the meeting in pairs so that Karl would not be facilitating during the election for his replacement. They will all work out what portions of the meeting each facilitator will facilitate.

    Jason will also arrange for someone to take minutes. He will also handle any administrative tasks that need to be handled at the meeting and, together with the facilitators, he will deal with anyone who is misbehaving at the meeting.

    Jason is also on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting to talk to the Floor about the on-going work on the phone tree. The phone tree is the way ACT UP gets word out about last-minute zaps. One person calls six people, and they all in turn call another six people, etc. Jason will ask for volunteers to help 1) manage the phone tree, and 2) be high up on the phone tree (i.e., commit to making phone calls when needed). He will also stress that it is important that people let him know if their phone number changes. Jason will also hold up a "camera" (i.e. cell phone) and remind people that the Floor has decided that there will be no filming at tonight's meeting to protect the privacy of people who don't want to be filmed. Next week there will be a side of the room for people who consent to be filmed. He will say, "Please do not take out a camera while you are in this room for any reason, and if you see someone taking out a camera please ask them to put it away." 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/103-jason-heffner

  • Background: Aldo is a 32 year old Cuban gay man who was born in Cuba and grew up in Corona, a small town in California. In 1981, he was in the queer synth band called Strong Silent Types. After college, he had various jobs in San Francisco, Long Beach, and worked on a cruise ship for a year. When he came to New York from California in 1985 he started working for Harry Fox, the music publishing house. Aldo has worked in development for MoMA, and is currently the Development Director for Creative Time. His boyfriend of many years died of AIDS in late 1988, which led Aldo to ACT UP.  Aldo lives at 299 East 8th Street, where various friends like ACT UPers Ray Navarro and Hunter Reynolds have occasionally lived with him. Aldo occasionally DJs at parties. He lives at 299 East 8th Street in Manhattan.

    Role in ACT UP: Aldo has been coming to most meetings and actions since his friend Ray Navarro got him more committed to ACT UP. He is in the affinity group La Cocina.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Affinity Group La Cocina, Hunter Reynolds, Majority Action Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/013-aldo-hernandez

  • Scott is a dancer, clown and stilt walker, and is in the affinity group the Candelabras. Scott has been arrested for civil disobedience with ACT UP before, including at an action on Wall Street in March of 1988.

  • Background: Robert is a 29 year old white gay man who grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey. He went to Regis High School, a Catholic school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and then Princeton, graduating in 1982. His lover Tom died of AIDS in 1985. Robert has worked as a production assistant for the filmmaker Robert Altman, and is beginning to make documentaries about ACT UP. Robert has been in a relationship with Peter Staley. Robert lives in the East Village.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Powertools

  • Lewis is a 29 year old gay man. In 1985, he complained to the Civilian Complaint Review Board about press statements by uniformed officers who said that lesbians and gays should not be part of society, much less on the police force. No action was taken. Lewis has been an ACT UP member for over a year. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Background: Charles is a 35 year old white gay man who grew up on a farm in Minnesota. He went to college in Minneapolis then moved to New York. While at his Lutheran college, he went to a gay bar and met a man with whom he had a two year relationship. That man was in art school, and that got Charles interested in art. When Charles came to New York, he started working at the Guggenheim Museum bookstore and started going to gay rallies and events. Photos that he took for a friend for personal ads caught the attention of an editor at a porn magazine company, which led to Charles’s career as a photographer for male porn magazines. Charles delivers meals to people with AIDS for God’s Love We Deliver, which led him to ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Charles goes to most meetings and actions, and is on the Fundraising Committee. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Fundraising Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/135-charles-hovland

  • Background: Jim is 38 and from Brooklyn. He is an experimental filmmaker who co-founded the New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival with Sarah Schulman in 1987. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Sarah Schulman

  • Background: Bob is a 36 year old white gay man who grew up in and around San Diego. He was into music and was in a heavy metal band in high school. Later in New York he got into country/folk/bluegrass music and was in a band called Crash. He came out in high school, then went to UCLA for a few years, dropped out, started building guitars, and eventually moved to the East Village in New York. He would go dancing at places like the Anvil, Pyramid, and 8 BC and would hang out at The Bar and International Stud. In 1982 at a temp job he stumbled into writing computer programs, which became lucrative and allowed him to buy video equipment and get into video editing. He went to some political demonstrations before ACT UP, including the protest at the Supreme Court about the decision upholding state sodomy laws. Seeing the Silence=Death poster motivated Bob to start going to ACT UP meetings in the summer of 1987.

    Role in ACT UP: Bob first started going to Housing Committee meetings, but has transitioned to the Treatment and Data Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/079-bob-huff

  • Barbara was born in Camden, New Jersey and graduated from West Chester State College in Pennsylvania in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in music, training as a concert pianist. She works in the restaurant business, and has volunteered at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Seeing so many friends and colleagues becoming ill and dying from AIDS, Barbara started coming to ACT UP in 1988. Barbara lives in Manhattan and is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Bert is a black gay poet who lives in Manhattan.

  • Robyn is a 26 year old white straight woman who grew up outside of Toronto. She went to art school in Canada for a few years then transferred to Cooper Union in New York. She originally thought she wanted to be an illustrator but was drawn to film at school. She then began the Whitney program where she met her Testing the Limits collaborators David Meieran and Gregg Bordowitz. They, together with Sandra Elgear (who Robyn met at art school in Canada and with whom she went to the Whitney program as collaborators), Hilary Kipnis, and Jean Carlomusto, formed Testing the Limits, a video collective that pre-dates ACT UP with the specific aim of documenting AIDS activism. Testing the Limits’s first major footage is from ACT UP’s first demonstration in 1987 at Wall Street. All decisions within Testing the Limits, including the editing, are done by consensus. Robyn tends to run sound when shooting. Testing the Limits released a video in 1988 focusing mainly on ACT UP that played at festivals and is distributed among educators. There has been a split in Testing the Limits of late with Robyn, David, and Sandra wanting to focus more on feature length documentary than short videos. That is what they are working on now as they prepare to shoot footage at Target City Hall. Robyn is married to a man who is currently in architecture school. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Testing the Limits

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/086-robyn-hutt

J

  • Background: Richard is a 31 year old white gay man who grew up in a small town in southwestern Pennsylvania. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, he moved to Columbus, Ohio with his girlfriend for a few years and worked his first architecture jobs. After they broke up in 1984, he started going out to gay bars in Columbus as he explored his homosexuality. He moved to South Jersey in 1985, then to New York in 1987, working for a small firm doing high-end interior renovations. Working there and seeing the homeless population in New York led him to quit and start working for Pratt Architectural Collective on nonprofit affordable housing. He joined a small group in the Community Center, then started coming to ACT UP in August of 1987.

    Role in ACT UP: Richard comes to most actions and meetings, and is involved in the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. He was (previously) in the affinity group Metropolitan Health Association (MHA).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now; Metropolitan Health Association (MHA)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/172-richard-jackman

  • Michael is new to ACT UP. He lives in Manhattan and is a graduate student

  • Eliza is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Coleman is a 38 year old gay white man who grew up in Largo, Florida. He went to the University of South Florida, then lived in Washington, D.C., Houston, and San Francisco before settling in New York City in 1983. He worked as a print model for Bloomingdale’s, and then began appearing in erotic films under the name Keith Adent. In the January 1989 issue of Manshots, he described himself as “a very sexually curious person” into “advanced sexuality.” “Making porn is definitely a political act. If you’re making porn in this time, you’re definitely a rebel.” He has volunteered with PWA Coalition, PWA Health Group, GMSMA, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, PONY, and Community Research Initiative.

    Additional information: https://laudiel.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/advocate-men-1987-mayo/003-keith-ardent-01/

  • Background: Alex is a 25 year old white straight woman. She went to Amherst College, majoring in American Studies and English. She was involved in some feminist activism at college. She came to New York in 1987 for the Whitney Independent Study Program. On a lunch break from her job in 1987 making a video for the Department of Juvenile Justice, she saw an ACT UP rally, which drew her to come to meetings. She also volunteers with Jean Carlomusto at Gay Men’s Health Crisis making videos about women and AIDS.

    Role in ACT UP: Alex has been coming to ACT UP meetings and actions sporadically for the past two years.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women’s Caucus

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/008-alexandra-juhasz

  • Background: Frank is a 29 year old white, gay man who grew up in Howard Beach, Queens. He went to John Adams High School in Ozone Park, and then Queens College. He came out to his mother when he was 11, had a relationship with his 28 year old camp counselor when he was 14, and took over the gay organization at Queens College. He got involved with Gay Activist Alliance starting at 16, then the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights. His mother became a PLAG mom, and together they went to the march in Washington in 1979. He found out he is HIV positive in 1986 (he had been part of a study, so unlike most people at the time he found out he was positive before experiencing symptoms). He met Eric Sawyer when he was working the coatroom at the nightclub Shout in the mid-1980s. They moved in together and started going to ACT UP for the beginning in March of 1987. Frank is a songwriter and musician.

    Role in ACT UP: Frank was on the Zap Committee at the start of ACT UP, and writes activist songs and raps. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Eric Sawyer (current boyfriend); Maria Maggenti; Timmy Spree

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/033-frank-jump

K

  • Background: Tom is a 27 year old white gay man. He grew up on the near South Side of Chicago in a suburb called Homewood the youngest of 11 children of liberal parents. He went to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and got involved in some left-leaning causes and the University Gay and Lesbian Caucus. In high school he dressed like a hippie, then by the late 1970s he was dressing somewhat punk. He went to graduate school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and transitioned from being a painter to being a photographer and video artist. He made his first AIDS video “News From Home” in 1985 at graduate school. He got into the independent study program of the Whitney Museum, which brought him to New York in 1985. He started going to ACT UP in the fall of 1987, and quickly got involved in Gran Fury.

    Role in ACT UP: Tom is a member of Gran Fury

    Groups/friends at the meeting: the core group of Gran Fury; Cynthia Chris; Peter Bowen

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Tom is on the agenda to make an announcement that Gran Fury is looking for models for a Kissing Project.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/042-tom-kalin

  • No information

  • Saul has been involved with The All People’s Congress and has been the Treasurer of the Workers World Party, a socialist political party. Saul lives in New Jersey. Saul is on the Actions Committee.

  • Background: Esther is a 24 year old bisexual woman who was born in Claremont, California. Her parents were back-to-the-landers who moved their family to a collective subsistence farming community in Oregon until Esther started high school. In high school in Claremont, Esther got into the punk rock scene and local leftist activism. She went to Yale University, where she came out as queer and wrote for a feminist journal called Aurora. She also got involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and took part in a workers’ strike at Yale. Esther is living in a collective household in Fort Greene. Kevin, one of her housemates, is living with AIDS, and she is helping coordinate his care. Esther is currently an intern at the Village Voice and is waitressing. She has not been coming to ACT UP very long. Her friend Mark Gevisser (who she knows from Yale and who is a reporter at the Village Voice) encouraged her to come to ACT UP. They are excited to be trained in civil disobedience for their first action, Target City Hall. They have also brought Ira Sachs, Mark’s roommate and best friend who they know from Yale.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Mark Gevisser, Ira Sachs

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/146-esther-kaplan

  • Background: Sandy is a 27 year old white, gay Jewish  man who grew up on the Upper West Side. He went to Hunter Elementary School and was one of the first boys to go to the formerly all-girls Hunter High School in Manhattan. He then went to Brown University and came out at 20 or 21. He was a high school teacher in Chicago for a year, then moved back to New York and became the executive director of Westpride, a community organization opposing the construction of Trump City on the Upper West Sider. He was always interested in electoral politics. He didn’t really know people with AIDS. But he started getting involved and attending meetings in 1987 when he saw ACT UP demonstrating at Sloan-Kettering, where his mother was being treated for cancer.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Candelabras

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/058-sandy-katz

  • Wayne is in the affinity group Seeing Red. He is an administrator at a gay and lesbian school.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the Floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall.

  • Background: Tom is a 21 year old white gay man who grew up in Mineola on Long Island. He grew up going to Catholic church every Sunday. He did a little liberal politics work in high school. He came out as gay when he went to Yale, where he got involved in some of the gay groups. When he was in New York for Spring Break in 1987, a friend from Yale invited him to go to the first ACT UP meeting, having heard that Larry Kramer’s speech the week prior raised a ruckus. 

    Role in ACT UP: Tom is in his senior year at Yale, but still comes to most actions and many meetings. He had been in Wave 3 for the 2nd Wall Street action in March of 1988, but is in Bored of Ed for Target City Hall.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Affinity group Bored of Ed; Stephen Gendin (who he knows from the Northeastern Lesbian and Gay Student Union), Mark Aurigemma

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/176-tom-keane

  • Buzz is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • John lives in Manhattan and is on the Outreach Committee, and the Public Artworks subcommittee of the Outreach Committee. He is also a civil disobedience trainer.

    Additional information: https://www.tllittphotography.com/image?&_bqG=2&_bqH=eJwribAMcws3LiuKKDUscXQ0y3VNSgoJyfGICCi3MrMyNDAAYSDpGe8S7GzrlZ.Rp.2dmpNTqQYWiHf0c7EtAbJDg12D4j1dbENBip2dXMPjs4OrAozT1eIdnUNsi1MTi5IzAOVqINE-&GI_ID=

  • Background: Charles is a 34 year old white, gay man who grew up on a farm in Texas in an extremely fundamentalist evangelical family. His father is a minister who considers Jerry Falwell a liberal. Charles also went into the ministry, running a program that brought Black and Latino kids to First Baptist Church. He engaged in street ministry and ran a relief center for abused and neglected children at Texas Baptist Children’s Home in Austin. He realized he was gay when he started divinity school at Yale, but decided to be celibate to continue his ministry work. He moved from independent fundamentalist Baptist (extreme right) to Southern Baptist (mid-right). He did a community organizing project that brought him to the attention of the pastor of Emanuel Baptist Church in New Haven, who enlisted him as his assistant minister (even though Charles is white and the congregation was black). Watching as closeted congregants died of AIDS, Charles came out to the congregation, a decision that meant he had to leave his post. He then drove buses for a year until he started law school, first at Cardozo and then at Yale. He spent the summer of 1988 in New York and got involved with ACT UP, specifically housing issues. He has continued his involvement with ACT UP while he finishes law school. 

    Role in ACT UP: Charles is on the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now while he finishes his final year of law school at Yale.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now; Ginny Shubert

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/107-charles-king

  • Background: David is a 29 year old white, Jewish, gay man who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He came out at age 20 while at Case Western Reserve (studying biomedical engineering). He got involved with Cleveland's Gay and Lesbian Community Center and the Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club, and started a gay bridge group. In 1981 he transferred to Pratt to study architecture. He learned about ACT UP at one of Columbia University’s popular gay dances. He currently works as an architect.

    Role in ACT UP: In 1987, David started working on the Issues Committee, which morphed into the Treatment and Data Committee, where David focuses his ACT UP work. He is also in the affinity group Wave 3.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee; Wave 3; Margaret McCarthy (roommate) 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/031-david-z-kirschenbaum

  • 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 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. Alan's lover Karl will not be at the meeting because he is recovering from injuries in a recent mugging. People will likely ask Alan how Karl is doing.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Even though Alan is not technically one of the facilitators of the meeting, as Target City Hall chair he will basically be facilitating a big section of the meeting. Therefore, Alan should be familiar with how to be a facilitator. 

    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, Joe Ferrari, and Ken Woodard, who will talk about posters, wheat-pasting, and Operation Batman.

    6. 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.

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

    8. Michelangelo Signorile, who will talk about media.

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

    After Mike and Gregg finish explaining the wave structure, Alan Klein, Gregg, and Mike should ask people in affinity groups and on committees to get together (right now) with their groups to hash out their actions/civil disobedience plans for Target City Hall. At the same time as the groups are meeting, Alan should call up David Barr to give a 5 minute Legal Observer training to the rest of the people at the meeting.

    The groups should then choose a representative to tell Alan, Gregg, or Mike the basic details so that Alan, Gregg, and Mike can coordinate timing, media coverage, etc. Alan, Gregg, and Mike can then meet among themselves to synthesize the information and figure out when each group's action should happen at Target City Hall. 

    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

  • Background: Garry is a 38 year old white, gay man who grew up in Passaic, New Jersey. In high school Garry was sort of a hippie, smoked a lot of pot, was gay without being sexual active, and barely graduated. Garry stutters, though that’s gotten better over the years. He attended the School of Visual Arts and worked factory jobs before his friend Judy convinced him to go to hairdressing school. He has been a hairdresser since 1974. Four years later, Garry started going to bathhouses, the Saint nightclub and bars in Cherry Grove on Fire Island. He first heard about ACT UP while at the 1987 March of Washington with his friend John, and started going to meetings when he returned to New York.

    Role in ACT UP: Garry works with the Treatment and Data Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/165-garry-kleinman

  • George lives in Manhattan and is on the Actions Committee.

  • Background: Larry is a 54 year old white gay Jewish man. His Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kramer) gives a good summary of his background. Larry is well known for being fiery and excoriating, though one-on-one he can be far more mild.

    Role in ACT UP: Larry’s speech at the Community Center in March 1987 spurred the formation of ACT UP, so he is looked to as a spiritual leader of ACT UP even if he does not hold any specific role. He is often asked by the press to speak on behalf of ACT UP. Larry does not hesitate to speak up during meetings, especially when he thinks that the discussion is getting into the weeds or isn't going to result in effectively addressing the immediate crisis: that there is a plague, that the government doesn't care, and that if the people in this room don't do something about it then more than half of us are going to die.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Larry knows just about all of the regulars, and certainly just about everyone knows him. But while Larry’s speech was the impetus for starting ACT UP, Larry is not the leader of ACT UP (even if the prerogative he sometimes attempts to exercise might suggest otherwise). At tonight’s meeting he is likely mostly involved with planning for Target City Hall with his affinity group, the Candelabras. 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/035-larry-kramer

  • Mike is 47, was born in New York, and splits time between New York and San Francisco. He is an underground filmmaker (with his twin brother George) and does homoerotic comics and illustrations (Meatmen; Gay Heart Throbs; First Hand Magazine; Manscape Magazine).

  • Rob is helping to form DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists).

  • Background: Kayeton is a 42 year old gay man. He is a clinical social worker. He runs burnout groups for fatigued ACT UP members. 

    Role in ACT UP: Kayeton is the lead organizer of Wave 3, one of the more prominent affinity groups in ACT UP. He is also on the Actions Committee. Kayeton played the anchorman in Rockville is Burning.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Wave 3, Actions Committee

L

  • Bob lives in Port Washington on Long Island. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Silvio lives in Manhattan.

  • Tom is a 25 year old student.

  • Annie is a 25 year old lesbian who is a writer and performer. Her Wikipedia page gives a good summary of her background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Lanzillotto)

  • Barry is 34 and lives in Brooklyn. He is involved in Treatment activism and is on the Treatment and Data Committee and the Actions Committee. He recently wrote a section on AIDS Education in NYC for ACT UP’s Target City Hall activist’s guide.

  • James is a graduate of the Professional Theatre training program at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. A production stage manager, James previously worked at Shakespeare Theatre in DC, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, The Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Arena Stage, and ABC TV. He is currently working on the book of a new musical and is involved with 3 Dollar Bill Theater, a new professional Off Broadway gay and lesbian theater company. He lives at 412 West 25th Street in Manhattan.

  • Chuck lives in Manhattan.

  • David is a 27 year old gay man who grew up in Palo Alto, California. He went to Henry M. Gunn Senior High School, where he edited the literary magazine. He graduated from Yale with a B.A. in English in 1983. He writes short stories and has had two novels published: The Lost Language of Cranes (1986) and Equal Affections (1988). He has worked at Books & co. and in publishing at Viking-Penguin. David is in the affinity group the Candelabras. He lives in Manhattan and East Hampton. He is in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer Gary Glickman.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Candelabras; Gary Glickman; Jeff Engel

    Additional information: https://www.google.com/search?q=gary+glickman+david+leavitt&oq=gary+glickman+david+leavitt&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i30i546i625j0i546l4j69i61.5578j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=XcwdvopUUfSa0M

  • Background: Bob is a white Jewish bisexual man in his mid-30s who grew up near Washington DC. Bob is a life-long leftist activist and came to ACT UP in 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Bob is the chair of the Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee (Bob Lederer, Jim Fouratt, Eugene Fedorko)

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Bob is on the agenda to give the report from the Alternative Treatments and Holistics Subcommittee: The committee is working on an April teach-in describing the medical model for AIDS and the medical establishment’s inability to deal with chronic diseases.

    Additional information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LKLtqPjk6U

  • Patrick is a 28 year old white man who lives in Manhattan. He is from Cincinnati. He is in the affinity group CD 9/18.

  • Background: Zoe is a 27 year old white bisexual woman who grew up in New York City. She went to P.S. 122, then went to private school for a couple of years before dropping out. She started doing art with a group of friends she met at City High School, including Jean-Michel Basquiat with whom she lived for a while. They went to art openings and to clubs like the Mudd Club, and worked on art projects. Her friend David Wojnarowicz, who had just tested HIV positive, invited her to go to an ACT UP meeting with him in late 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Zoe is relatively new to ACT UP, but she is active in her affinity group called the Candelabras that formed around the action Seize Control of the FDA in fall of 1988.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Affinity group the Candelabras; Women's Caucus

    Additional information:https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/106-zoe-leonard

  • No information

  • Background: Debra is a 28 year old white Jewish woman who identifies as straight. She grew up in Peabody, Massachusetts, very involved in the Jewish community. She went to the University of Pennsylvania, then moved to New York and worked at off-Broadway theaters. She then got an MFA in theater directing at Columbia, finishing in 1988. Then she started working with Creative Time on a theater piece about AIDS. She went to her first ACT UP meeting as research for that theater piece. Realizing her conception of her theater piece was off-base, she stopped working on that but continued going to ACT UP meetings every week. She started out working with the Outreach Committee, and then transitioned to the Women’s Caucus.

    Role in ACT UP: Debra is on the Women’s Caucus, with whom she was instrumental in organizing an action at Shea Stadium. She is also in the affinity group La Cocina. Debra is starting to get involved with advocating for needle exchange: making clean syringes available to intravenous drug users to reduce their HIV risk from sharing syringes. She will want to make sure that any Target City Hall demands or other relevant actions include a push for the city to implement needle exchange, even though it is not currently legal.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women’s Caucus, La Cocina, Richard Elovich, Ray Navarro, Charlie Franchino

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: With Richard Elovich, she is on the agenda to propose an ACT UP trip to Albany tomorrow (March 14) to protest healthcare budget cuts. Governor Mario Cuomo has proposed a massive $350 million cut in Medicaid spending that will affect all New Yorkers, including people with AIDS and especially poorer people with AIDS. The protest tomorrow is being jointly organized by the New York state private hospitals and the union for healthcare workers. She and Richard should acknowledge that many people in the room have had terrible experiences with hospitals and healthcare workers when attempting to get quality, compassionate care for themselves and their loved ones with AIDS. In light of this, and in light of the risk that budget cuts could have for people with AIDS, Richard and Debra should ask the Floor to debate whether ACT UP should participate in the protest, and then vote on it. If the Floor votes to endorse ACT UP's participation, Richard and Debra should find out how many people will go so they can know how many buses are needed. They should make sure to give the people who are going the information on where/when the buses will leave/return, tell people that round-trip tickets on the bus will be $10, and ask Rollerena to sell seats on the buses around the floor (right now, not at the end of the meeting). 

    Link to New York Times article about the Albany issues

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/128-debra-levine

  • No information

  • Michael is a 31 year old gay, white man who grew up in Camillus, New York. He is an art director at W and will be covering the World Conference on AIDS for Self with John Voelcker.

    Groups/friends at the meeting:  Adam Smith

  • Background: David is a 38 year old gay man with AIDS who lives in Manhattan. David was a theatrical agent with Don Buckwald and Associates until his diagnosis. He has been on the board of GLAAD and was co-chair of GLAAD’s media committee. Since his diagnosis he has lived with his brother Vince. He is finishing a contribution to ACT UP’s AIDS Activist’s Guide to New York City in 1989, writing an article on Bias and Discrimination with Margaret McCarthy.

    Role in ACT UP: David is on the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Margaret McCarthy, Actions Committee

  • Tracey is a 24 year old white woman who lives in Florham, New Jersey. She photographs many ACT UP actions. She is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

  • Constance has attended Majority Action Committee meetings and lives at 305 East 24th Street in Manhattan.

  • Background: Iris is a 55 year old white, married, straight woman who grew up in New York City, went to Washington Irving High School in Manhattan, then majored in chemistry at Hunter College. She then went to graduate school at night at Hunter to get her master’s degree in chemistry. She worked as an organic chemist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, then Sloan-Kettering doing research on cancer drugs. Some of the drugs she researched in the 1960s -- nucleosides -- are now the most promising drugs for treatment of HIV (like AZT). She got her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Pharmacy in the early 1970s, again working on nucleosides. She had some science jobs after that, but had stopped working by the time she began hearing about AIDS treatment research in the 1980s. Drug companies and hospitals did not work with volunteers on treatment research, so when Iris wanted to get involved she approached AIDS organizations, which led her to ACT UP. She lives in Queens.

    Role in ACT UP: As the only person in ACT UP who was a scientist with experience studying drugs and understanding how drug companies work, Iris is a highly-valued member of the Treatment and Data Committee. It is difficult to overemphasize just what an anomaly Iris was in ACT UP (an older, straight, married, soft-spoken chemist who didn’t know any gay people before she came to ACT UP).  

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Iris is on the agenda to give part of the Treatment and Data Committee report discussing aerosolized pentamidine. Aerosolized pentamidine is cheap, and doctors have known since 1986 that aerosolized pentamidine is the best treatment to prevent PCP (pneumocystis carinii pneumonia), which is the leading cause of death by far for people with AIDS. But the FDA did not devote resources to study the drug for years, and by the time they did it was impossible to conduct placebo-controlled trials because everyone knew it was the best treatment so it would have been unethical to put anyone on the placebo. Since it is not FDA approved, it is not covered by many insurances. But New York Medicaid will now cover this treatment. This is not being publicized, so people should talk to their doctors about whether this treatment could be helpful for them, and tell other people they know to do the same. Here is a link to a recent news article.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/026-iris-long

  • David is 26, lives on Staten Island, and works in Manhattan at Worth Publishers.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Marc Rubin

  • Tim’s partner is John Wagenhauser

    Friend: Vito Russo

  • Paul lives in Nassau County, Long Island.

  • Greg went to Crestmoor High School in San Bruno, California. Greg lives in Manhattan. He is on ACT UP’s Gay and Lesbian Teach-In Committee and is involved with ACT UP’s Lesbian and Gay Activist History Project. Greg volunteers for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, writing for their newsletter. Greg and friend/fellow ACT UPer Jon Nalley frequent the popular nightclub Tunnel. He is in the affinity group CD 9/18.

  • Background: Timothy is a 32 year old white gay man who was born in Atlanta and raised in south Georgia. Tim had leukemia when he was 14. He went to Stanford for one semester, but didn’t like California and wasn’t yet ready for the explicit homosexuality he encountered there, so he went to the University of Georgia. He dated a woman for four years during college, but called off the engagement. He worked for a company in north Georgia for a year, was transferred to New York in 1980 for a year, then transferred to Albany, came out as gay there, then transferred to Rochester until 1986. His work brought him to New York occasionally, and he got involved with Gay Men’s Health Crisis. He helped found Dining for Dollars in Rochester with a local AIDS group. After he moved to New York, he got involved in ACT UP in 1987. He and his current lover help care for a friend and former lover of Timothy’s, who is very sick with AIDS. Timothy’s hearing is not good, so he tries to sit in the front of the room.

    Role in ACT UP: After getting arrested at a number of demonstrations and feeling uncomfortable with it, Timothy is transitioning to doing Support at actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Timothy is just starting to get interested in the Treatment and Data Committee.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/115-timothy-lunceford

  • Note: In later years Samuel Lurie would identify as a trans man and go by the name Samuel, but on March 13, 1989 he was known as Rachel and identified as a lesbian.

    Background: Rachel is a 26 year old white Jewish lesbian who grew up in Washington Heights in Manhattan. She went to PS 187, Junior High School 143 (Eleanor Roosevelt), then went to West Milford High School in New Jersey after her family moved there when her mother got breast cancer. Her mother, Ellen Lurie, had been very involved in community activism before she died in Rachel’s sophomore year in high school. Rachel went to Rutgers and got involved in the women’s peace movement, transferred to UC Santa Cruz, got involved in journalism, and had her first serious relationship with a woman. She came back to New York in 1987 and lived with her sister. She was going to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings at the Center for help dealing with her father’s alcoholism, and stumbled upon ACT UP meetings. She started going to meetings with ACT UPer Marion Banzhaf, who was her sister’s partner at the time.

    Role in ACT UP: Rachel is in the affinity group La Cocina and is involved with the Women’s Caucus.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Affinity group La Cocina; Women’s Caucus

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/184-samuel-lurie

  • Background: Jim is a 28 year old white gay man who grew up on Long Island in a very Catholic family. He got a scholarship to go to NYU, got into the punk scene, and then the gay scene. He graduated with majors in psychology, filmmaking, and American literature. Jim is acting in and editing a film, Poison, with friends and fellow ACT UPers Todd Haynes, Christine Vachon, and Brian Greenbaum. Jim learned he is HIV positive in 1988. He lives at 406 East 9th Street in Manhattan.

    Role in ACT UP: Jim comes to some meetings and actions, though he is shy and does not really speak at meetings. He also attends Treatment and Data Committee meetings, but again mostly as an observer.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Todd Haynes, Christine Vachon, Brian Greenbaum

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/063-jim-lyons

M

  • Donn is on the Actions Committee.

  • Background: Maria is a 26 year old, white lesbian. She spent some of her teenage years living in Lagos, Nigeria, then went to Smith College, studying philosophy and classical culture. When she moved to New York after college, she went to the Community Center looking for lesbian/feminist causes to get involved with, but was drawn to the energy of ACT UP. She has worked a variety of temp jobs -- many found through people at ACT UP -- which gives her a lot of time to participate in many committees, actions, and zaps.

    Role in ACT UP: Maria is a magnetic personality in ACT UP -- by her own description loud and passionate. She has been on the Zaps Committee, the Coordinating Committee, the Outreach Committee, the Actions Committee, the Women’s Caucus, and has been a Monday night meeting facilitator in the past (facilitators served limited terms of a few months).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Maria knows practically everyone. But at this meeting she is probably most focused on working with her affinity group, the Delta Queens, on their action for Target City Hall. Her current lover is ACT UPer Heidi Dorow. 

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting:  Maria is planning to run for the facilitator position that is opening up because Karl Soehnlein is stepping down temporarily. She will need to deliver a short speech to the Floor. Since Karl was scheduled to facilitate tonight's meeting, it's also possible (though unlikely) that Maria will be asked at the last minute to step in as a facilitator of tonight's meeting, since she's been a facilitator in the past. For these reasons, Maria should be familiar with what being a facilitator entails.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/010-maria-maggenti

  • Bonita grew up in Lowville, New York on a small dairy farm. She is studying Art at Cooper Union.

  • Background: Ira is a 32 year old white gay Jewish man who grew up in Westbury, New York on Long Island. In high school, he was involved in the movement to help Russian Jews. Ira has worked as a freelance film editor on many big films. He had a difficult situation of being outed on the job while working on the movie Ishtar around 1986. He has been in a relationship with his partner (Patrick) for many years and they live at 109th and Amsterdam. Ira has been coming to ACT UP since shortly after it started in 1987. 

    Role in ACT UP: Though he has worked with the affinity group Metropolitan Health Association (MHA) in the past, Ira does not have a dedicated group that he works with. Rather, he tends to come up with ideas for zaps (small, quickly planned protests) and come to ACT UP meetings to rally people to participate. His best friends at ACT UP are Charles Stimson and Neil Broome.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Metropolitan Health Association (MHA), Charles Stimson, Neil Broome

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/152-ira-manhoff

  • Joel lives in Manhattan. Joel is in ACT UP’s Speakers Bureau. In November 1988, Joel spoke at the University of Pennsylvania with fellow ACT UPer Ann Otto about government inaction on developing treatments for AIDS. Joel is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Kiki (born Curtis) is a 28 year old gay man who grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Hunter College. He has written for the New York Native (including about ACT UP actions). He is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

  • Background: Loring is a 29 year old white gay man. He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where his father was a liberal Presbyterian minister. His family moved to the Detroit area for a few years, then back to Princeton. His last few years of high school were at a boarding school in New Hampshire. He went to Princeton University for a few years, left for two years to go to art school at the San Francisco Art Institute (and come out as gay), then returned to Princeton. After graduating, he moved to New York in 1984. Loring had volunteered at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis hotline, and then started coming to ACT UP meetings in September of 1987. 

    Role in ACT UP: Loring helped take down Let the Record Show, artwork that the New Museum commissioned from Gran Fury. He then became a core member of Gran Fury.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Gran Fury 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/098-loring-mcalpin

  • Background: Margaret is a 23 year old white lesbian who grew up in a Catholic family in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. She went to Catholic school, then Columbia starting in 1983 where she got involved in the anti-apartheid movement. For her summer job after her first year of law school, Margaret worked at the New York City Commission on Human Rights in the AIDS Discrimination Unit, which led her to ACT UP in the summer of 1987. She got involved with the Lavender Hill Mob, which at that time were focusing on treatment issues. She is currently in law school at Columbia.

    Role in ACT UP: Margaret is not technically on the Treatment and Data Committee, but she is heavily involved in working on treatment issues so she works closely with them. With other people in Wave 3 (particularly Mark Harrington and Richard Elovich), she is drafting a list of demands for Target City Hall. She is also finishing a contribution to ACT UP’s AIDS Activist’s Guide to New York City in 1989, writing an article on Bias and Discrimination with David Liebhart

    Groups/friends at the meeting: David Liebhart, Treatment and Data Committee, David Z. Kirschenbaum (roommate); Wave 3; Lavender Hill Mob

    Additional information: https://www.actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/175-margaret-mccarthy

  • Dan lives in Manhattan. He has been on the Issues Committee, and is currently involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

    Groups/friends at the meeting:  Henry Yeager; Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

  • Shaun is in the affinity group CD 9/18.

  • Background: James is a 32 year old gay man and a bar owner in Providence, Rhode Island. He joined the Air Force out of high school and started having relationships with men in the military. He then went to Rhode Island College, studying theater. He worked at a local children’s theater and as a DJ at clubs. He also sang in a band and played saxophone. He bought the bar at which he was playing music and started a successful gay night there. His anger at the price of AZT got him interested in ACT UP, and he travels from Providence for the Monday night meetings. He is involved in ACT UP/RI and ACT UP NY. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Peter Staley, Blane Mosley, Lee Arsenault, Powertools, Candelabras

  • Background: Aldyn is a 40 year old gay man who grew up in Lewiston, Idaho. He went to Harvard, where he joined the Students for a Democratic Society. Then he served a tour of duty in Vietnam. He had gay relations in his youth, but started coming out as gay in Vietnam. He went to NYU/Tisch, graduated in 1975, and became a singer and actor, performing on Broadway and on tour in The Robber Bridegroom. Two close friends died of AIDS recently, which motivated Aldyn to join ACT UP. He is HIV positive. 

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Anne-christine d'Adesky

  • Thomas is a native New Yorker who lives in Manhattan. He is recording the minutes at tonight’s meeting.

  • Tom is a photographer whose photographs of ACT UP actions have run in Newsday and other publications.

    Additional information: https://amherststudent.com/article/a-life-unscripted-on-and-off-the-stage-alumni-profile-tom-mckitterick-70/

  • Jonathon is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • Background: Victor is a 28 year old, white, (formerly) Catholic gay man. He grew up in Selden in Suffolk County, Long Island in a liberal family. He moved to Manhattan when he was 19. He got into the East Village scene and started planning events at Lucky Strike, Pyramid, and Danceteria with his friend Jeanette. He came to his first ACT UP meeting a bit before the FDA action in the fall of 1988.

    Role in ACT UP:  Victor is the Outreach Committee’s representative on the Coordinating Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Outreach Committee; Coordinating Committee; Joe Ferrari, Ken Woodard

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: In preparation for Target City Hall, the Outreach Committee has created a subway poster with an image of Mayor Ed Koch that says "10,000 New York City AIDS Deaths -- How'm I doin'?" is Koch's catchphrase). Victor is on the agenda to show the poster to the meeting and ask people to approve distributing the poster. If the Floor approves, Victor will ask people to take some and put them up in the subways as they go about their lives. The administrator will be bringing the posters, so Victor should get them from the administrator before the meeting starts. 

    Victor, Joe Ferrari, and Ken Woodard will also speak to the Floor again later in the meeting as part of the City Hall Report to ask the Floor for final approval on a series of posters to encourage people to come to Target City Hall: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/reason-1-to-act-up. The administrator will be bringing mock-ups of the posters, so they should get them from the administrator before the meeting starts. Victor and Joe will try to get people to help with wheat-pasting. They will ask people to meet them at the side of the room (right now, not at the end of the meeting) to arrange the logistics (dates/times/neighborhoods/who will go out together/watch out for police). Ken will talk about Operation Batman.

    Additional information: An image of the poster:"10,000 New York City AIDS Deaths -- How'm I doin'?"

    https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/097-victor-mendolia

    (Note: Victor would go on to be involved in planning some major ACT UP actions over the next few years, but that is after March 1989.)

  • Background: Mark is a 33 year old white gay man who grew up in Wisconsin. He was a very devout Catholic when he was young, more devout than his family. He was a Catholic Charismatic, meaning he prayed in tongues. He realized he was gay when he was 11 and put himself through many years of praying, psychiatrists, and aversion-shock therapy to make himself straight. At 24, he decided to try taking a year off from religion, and never went back. He went to the University of Iowa, then lived in Chicago where he had sex and relationships with men. Mark has had an autoimmune disorder, sarcoidosis, that put him in the hospital in 1982 and 1985. During that second hospital stay he learned he is HIV positive. After he left the hospital, he decided to move to New York to work in film production. He worked as a production assistant and then got into film editing. He is a member of the Healing Circle, a hands-on healing group. In 1987 he started going to Body Positive, a support group for HIV positive people, at the Community Center. There he happened into an ACT UP meeting, and was initially turned off by it. But in 1988 he realized that he wanted to get involved with treatment and clinical trial issues, and people in ACT UP were at the forefront of that.

    Mark attends meetings, though he tends not to speak at them. He is much more vocal with the Treatment and Data Committee. He is currently working with some people from the Treatment and Data Committee (Michael Cowing, Iris Long) to put together a registry of AIDS clinical trials.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/077-mark-milano

  • No information

  • Background: Andrew is a 24 year old white Jewish gay man who grew up in Nassau County, Long Island. He grew up very involved in his synagogue and studied viola at the Manhattan School of Music. He did not continue with the viola and instead went to Columbia University (starting at age 16). He came out while there, got involved in the gay organization on campus, and first started hearing about AIDS. He volunteered at the Gay Switchboard in the Village around 1984. He was living at 85th Street between West End and Riverside and working as a typesetter when he heard about ACT UP at the March on Washington, and went to the next meeting in late 1987.

    Role in ACT UP: Andrew goes to most meetings and actions. He has done Support at actions. He is a former chair of the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Actions Committee; Duncan Osborne, Steve Quester (who Andrew knew from Columbia and brought to ACT UP), Deb Levine

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/056-andrew-miller

  • Daryl lives in New Jersey and works in Manhattan.

  • Stacey lives in New Jersey and works in Manhattan at the New York Landmarks Conservancy. She is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

    Additional information: Photo of Stacey

  • Donna is 25. She grew up in New York City and graduated from Hunter College High School in 1981. Donna covers gay and lesbian politics and culture for the Village Voice. She is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

  • Darryl is a gay man who lives in Manhattan and works at the Image Bank.

  • Bill is 38, grew up and now lives in New York, and went to the University of Pennsylvania. He has been involved with ACT UP since 1987 and has served as an at-large member of the Coordinating Committee. Bill is on the Outreach Committee and is in the affinity group MHA/Surrender Dorothy.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: MHA; Surrender Dorothy; SPREE (Timmy Vance); Steven Cordova

    Additional information: Photo of Bill

  • Doug is involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. His ex-boyfriend is ACT UPer Mark Aurigemma. Doug lives in Manhattan.

  • Skip (Fraser) lives in Manhattan and works on the Grant Writing Subcommittee of the Fundraising Committee.

  • Background: Patrick is a 26 year old white gay man from Cherokee, Iowa, though part of his teenage years was spent in remote Perrault Falls, Canada. He went to college at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh to their undergraduate theater directing program, then moved to New York with his lover Dino in 1985. Patrick was the PR director of The Kitchen, a multidisciplinary experimental arts organization. Patrick met Maria Maggenti while working at The Kitchen, and she brought him to ACT UP. Patrick enlisted Gran Fury, a group within ACT UP responsible for much of ACT UP’s graphic design and art campaigns, to design a poster/calendar for The Kitchen that said, “With 42,000 dead, art is no longer enough. Take direct collective action to end the AIDS crisis.” This caused tension at The Kitchen, as some of their artists (who were likely supportive of the sentiment) did not feel consulted on a statement with which they were associated. This ultimately led to Patrick recently leaving The Kitchen. Patrick and Dino do not know their HIV statuses, and though they are purportedly in a monogamous relationship they are both having sex outside the relationship. Dino is not involved in ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Seeing Red, Maria Maggenti (who he knows from The Kitchen)

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall. 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/006-patrick-moore

    https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-patrick-moore-17457

    Photo of Patrick

  • Background: Blane is a 26 year old, gay black man. He lived in East New York Brooklyn until he was 10, when his family moved to the suburbs of Charleston, South Carolina. He was raised in a very insular Jehovah’s Witness community, and when he rebelled against that upbringing (partially due to his sexuality), he moved back to the street where he grew up in East New York, in the house of the woman who babysat him as a child. Through his cousin he started working in the mailroom and then as a proofreader at Lehman Brothers. He started getting involved in the New York nightlife scene. He came to ACT UP in 1989 and met Peter Staley, who suggested that he become the Chalk Queen.

    Role in ACT UP:  Blane writes (with excellent handwriting) on the chalkboard any information that comes up at the meeting that is useful for the room to see written. He invariably looks fabulous. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Peter Staley, Gregg Bordowitz, Jean Carlomusto, Larry Kramer, Candelabras

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: In addition to being the Chalk Queen, Blane is on the agenda to announce the Majority Action committee will start having weekly meetings, and will ask anyone interested in attending/participating to come to the side of the room (right now) to discuss when works best for everyone. 

    Blane is also planning to run for the facilitator position that is opening up because Karl Soehnlein is stepping down. Blane will need to deliver a short speech to the Floor.

    Blane will also give the Majority Action report:

    In the next few week, members of the Majority Action committee will be attending an AIDS Research Forum concerning AIDS in the Black community and the upcoming Brooklyn AIDS Task Force meeting. Also, members of Majority Action will be meeting with the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS for the first time.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/161-blane-charles

    (Note: Though he would later go by the name Blane Charles, Blane went by the name Blane Mosley in 1989.)

  • Bob lives in Manhattan.

N

  • Jon is a 30 year old gay man who lives in Brooklyn. He grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan and graduated from Michigan State University in 1982 with majors in psychology and English. While there he was involved in the East Lansing gay political community. Jon writes about AIDS/AIDS activism for various publications such as Gay Community News and The Guardian, an independent radical newsweekly. Jon has been arrested for civil disobedience at previous ACT UP actions. Jon and friend/fellow ACT UPer Greg Lugliani frequent the Tunnel. He is in the affinity group CD 9/18. 

  • No information

  • Background: Ray is a 24 year old Mexican-American Chicano gay man who grew up in Simi Valley, California, went to Otis Art Institute, then graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. Ray moved to New York in the summer of 1988 for the Whitney Museum independent study program as a video artist and immediately wanted to get involved with ACT UP. Ray is in a long-term relationship with Anthony Ledesma. Ray lives at 1138 Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn.

    Role in ACT UP: Ray comes to most meetings and actions. He is in the affinity group La Cocina and is helping to start the video activist group DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Affinity Group La Cocina, Majority Action Committee; DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists); Aldo Hernandez, Hunter Reynolds

  • Bill lives and works in Manhattan at an architecture firm. He is in the affinity group The Box Tops and is on ACT UP’s City Issues Task Force.

  • Background: Michael is a 37 year old white gay man who grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. After high school he lived in Austin then moved to New York to get involved in theater. He eventually helped to run the Limbo Lounge, a nightclub in the East Village, and drove a taxicab. When his friend Joe Hollis became sick with AIDS, Joe moved in with Michael who managed his care until he died. This motivated Michael to get involved with ACT UP, and to go to nursing school at Borough of Manhattan Community College in order to help people with AIDS. Michael lives in the East Village.

    Role in ACT UP: Michael was the original head of the Fundraising Committee when ACT UP first started, was on the Coordinating Committee, and was a Monday night meeting facilitator. Now he is most involved with Gran Fury, which is the main activist artist collective of ACT UP members.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Michael has been in prominent roles in ACT UP since it started, so he knows a lot of people, but he is currently most involved in working with Gran Fury

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/014-michael-nesline

  • Steve lives in Manhattan. He is in the affinity group Seeing Red. He attends many ACT UP actions both in and out of New York City.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the Floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall.

    Additional information: Photo of Steve

  • Background: Ann is a 41 year old white lesbian. Ann’s page on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Northrop) gives a good summary of her early life and career. Ann currently lives on the Upper West Side with her partner Lynda, raising Lynda’s two children from a previous marriage.

    Role in ACT UP: Since joining ACT UP in 1988, Ann has been one of the main people involved in crafting ACT UP’s messaging. Ann is not on the Media Committee, but she works closely with them to craft media strategies and to teach ACT UP members how to talk to the media. She is in the affinity group Candelabras.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee, Candelabras, Bob Rafsky

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/027-ann-northrop

    https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/target-city-hall at about the 37 minute mark of the ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings video 

  • No information

O

  • Background: Paul is a 26 year old white gay man who grew up in Kilkenny, Ireland. He went to university in Galway (his generation was the first in his family to go to university) where he started to come out (even though he hadn’t met any other gay people) and got involved in debate. He started a Lesbian and Gay Society on campus. He then went to law school in Galway. He spent some time in London, then came to New York in 1987. He is currently in the process of taking the New York bar exam.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Legal observers

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/174-paul-odwyer

  • Patrick is a gay man from Santa Monica, California, went to Santa Monica High School and Santa Monica College. He has studied at the School of Visual Arts and lives in Manhattan.

  • John is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

    Additional information: https://www.tllittphotography.com/image?&_bqG=9&_bqH=eJwz9fJzs8zx8NGtMjNyTvc3K3Pyz4jICfNIKU23MjQAIjAGkp7xLsHOtk75Rakp2vlp2q4pamCReEc_F9sSIDs02DUo3tPFNhSk2tnJNTw.O7gqwDhdLd7ROcS2ODWxKDkDANCJIG4-&GI_ID=

  • Scott is a graphic designer. He is on the Actions Committee.

  • No information

  • Background: Bobby is a 28 year old white gay man who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska with six brothers and two sisters. He is not particularly close to his family. He moved to Miami and was a waiter and manager of a disco, and came out to his family. He moved to New York four years ago . He waits tables at China Grill, works out five days a week at Chelsea Gym, summers in Provincetown, and throws a fabulous annual Halloween party. He lives in a Chelsea loft with Frank Smithson, among others, where Frank gives memorable parties. Bobby composes music, and has written two raps about how to prevent AIDS (“Fight Back Rap” and “Wrap It Up”).

    Role in ACT UP: Bobby comes to most meetings and attends a lot of actions. In summer 1988 he traveled with fellow ACT UPers to the Republican National Convention to protest the Reagan/Bush inaction on AIDS.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Frank Smithson (roommate)

    Additional information: https://www.tllittphotography.com/image?&_bqG=4&_bqH=eJyrCjHODUjzNvGKCq9ITg9NSY90d4yKyAwqj_e0MrUyNDAAYSDpGe8S7GzrlJ.UVKntr2pk7puYk5NaqQYWjnf0c7EtAbJDg12D4j1dbENBWpydXMPjs4OrAozT1eIdnUNsi1MTi5IzALpYIq4-&GI_ID=

  • Background: Duncan is a 31 year old white gay man who grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. He got a bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado, then moved to New York to become an actor in 1984. He stopped drugs and alcohol in 1984 and is in a twelve-step group. He had HIV positive friends and lovers. He became interested in ACT UP seeing them at the 1987 March on Washington.

    Role in ACT UP: Duncan is on the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Actions Committee, Andrew Miller, Steve Quester, Ron Goldberg, Alan Klein

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/185-duncan-osborne

  • Ann is a 22 year old woman. She is on the Treatment and Data Committee. In November 1988, Ann spoke at the University of Pennsylvania with fellow ACT UPer Joel Marks about government inaction on developing treatments for AIDS. Ann had a small part in Rockville is Burning. Ann is on the Montreal AIDS Conference Ad-Hoc Committee.

P

  • Marvin is a black man from Elk City, Oklahoma. He graduated from Elk City High School in 1986. He lived in San Francisco and then moved to Manhattan in 1988. He is on the Majority Action Committee.

  • Costa is 26 and lives in Manhattan. Costa brought George Wittman to his first ACT UP meeting in December 1987 when they were trying to get Mayor Koch to release the B-list of funds in the city budget. Costa is getting involved with newly-forming DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists).

  • Kevin has been an at-large member of the Coordinating Committee. He is in a relationship with Brian Fisher, a dancer.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Tim Powers, Jean Elizabeth Glass

  • Background: Monica is a 24 year old white, Jewish lesbian who grew up in suburban New Jersey. She went to two years of public high school, then two years of boarding school, then Connecticut College then transferred to Smith College in Massachusetts, where she took part in the South Africa divestment movement. She was out in college. She spent one year in New Haven, then moved to New York in 1987. Monica lives on West 13th Street.

    Role in ACT UP: Monica comes to most meetings, and has been involved in editing a handbook about women and AIDS with the Women’s Caucus. She is also involved with the Media Committee. Monica is starting to get involved with advocating for needle exchange: making clean syringes available to intravenous drug users to reduce their HIV risk from sharing syringes. She will want to make sure that any Target City Hall demands or other relevant actions include a push for the city to implement needle exchange, even though it is not currently legal.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women’s Caucus; Media Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/129-monica-pearl

  • Role in ACT UP: Michael is a 30 year old white gay man who grew up in suburban Caldwell, New Jersey. He came out in high school and would go into Manhattan to gay nightspots like the Ninth Circle and Julius’s. After high school, he hitchhiked across the country and landed in San Francisco, supporting himself on restaurant jobs. He moved back to New York and went to a dermatologist, who diagnosed him with Karposi sarcoma and AIDS. He began to advocate for city housing for people with AIDS, and when the first such housing (Bailey House) opened in New York City, Michael received a slot. Through continued activism he got involved with the Lavender Hill Mob. Prior to his speech that would lay the groundwork for ACT UP, Larry Kramer consulted with Michael on involving the Bailey House residents. His Karposi sarcoma is currently in remission.

    Role in ACT UP: Michael is very outspoken, and his abrasiveness can be off-putting, to the extent that even his friends sometimes don’t want him in their affinity groups. He feels more of a connection with the other working class members of ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Neil Broome, Gerri Wells, Larry Kramer, Lavender Hill Mob

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/020-michael-petrelis

  • Background: George is a 38 year white gay man who grew up in Boerum Hill and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. He went to Fort Hamilton High School. He came out to his mother around age 18 and went to Gay Youth meetings at the Firehouse. He moved to Chelsea in 1976 and got involved in some gay activism. He worked part-time cleaning up at sex clubs like the Mineshaft. He later worked as a salesperson at May’s Department Store. As friends were getting sick with AIDS, he got involved with the AIDS Resource Center. George started coming to ACT UP in January of 1988. He is working as a superintendent of a building on 10th Street.

    Role in ACT UP: George comes to most actions and meetings, and is involved in the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/124-george-plagianos

  • Background: Howie is a musician and bartender. He worked at the Saint.

    Howard Pope is a muscular, butch gay blond man from Toronto, Canada. He is the younger brother of famous Canadian singer Carole Pope. He was in punk bands in his youth and he knew the lesbian Canadian artist G.B. Jones and the singer/actress Caroline Azar from Fifth Column.

    Role in ACT UP: Howard is on the Swim Team.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Swim Team

  • Background: Sydney is a 23 year old white lesbian. She graduated from Vassar College in 1988 with a degree in history. Sydney is in the Women's Caucus.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women's Caucus; Liz Tracey

  • Background: Tim is a 24 year old white gay man. He grew up in East Millinocket, a small town in Maine. He went to Opal Myrick Elementary School and Schenck High School, where he was into music and theater. He went to NYU to pursue the arts and writing. Tim was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, and joined ACT UP. He is a founding member of ACT UP's PISD Caucus (People with Immune System Disorders).

    ‍Role in ACT UP: Tim is on the Actions Committee and is coordinating Support for Target City Hall.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: The principals planning Target City Hall

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Tim is on the agenda as part of the Target City Hall update to distribute Support sheets (which he should pick up from the Administrator before the meeting) to each affinity group and ask them to return the completed Support sheets to him. The Support Sheets are how the Actions Committee will know what kind of logistical support each affinity groups need for their actions, where/when that will be needed, etc.

    • Tim will stress to the Floor that every affinity group should have at least one and probably more than one Support person.

    • Support people do not take part in civil disobedience, but keep track of the people who are taking part in civil disobedience.

    • Everyone who will be taking part in an action, especially anyone who is considering getting arrested, should check in with their affinity group’s Support person. That way the Support person can keep track of you and make sure you receive legal support and don’t get lost in the system.

    • Tim will also ask for volunteers to be runners at Target City Hall (basically go-betweens who can communicate with the Target City Hall organizers and the affinity groups) and will announce a Support Teach-In on Friday, March 17 at the Center from 6pm to 8pm to train people for providing support at actions, specifically Target City Hall.

    The facilitators will also make an announcement at the end of the meeting about a PISD Caucus Meeting (People with Immune System Disorders) on Wednesday at 8pm at the Center. Tim is the contact person, so he may get questions about that.

    Additional information: Photo of Tim

    https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/act-up-meetings (32:44 minute mark of the ACT UP Meeting after San Francisco AIDS conference.)

  • Background: Rebecca is a 27 year old white, straight woman who grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her mother was involved in feminist activism, and her father was an activist as well. Rebecca went to a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, then the University of Michigan, and then became a dancer in the early 1980s. She met many gay people while dancing, and had close friends with AIDS. She decided to move to New York to pursue medicine. She started a premed program at Columbia and began volunteering on the AIDS ward at St. Luke’s hospital in 1986. She then started working at the Community Research Initiative.

    Role in ACT UP: Rebecca works at the Community Research Initiative, an AIDS medical organization. While perhaps not technically on the ACT UP Treatment and Data Committee, she works closely with its members.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Treatment and Data Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/170-rebecca-smith

  • Background: Russell is a 37 year old white gay man who grew up in Tisdale, Saskatchewan, Canada. He went to school in Calgary then moved to New York in 1979. He came out when he was 21. He majored in journalism, focusing on advertising and public relations, and works in art direction, fashion casting, prop styling, and food styling. He spent time on Fire Island in the Pines as many of his friends got sick. He got interested in ACT UP when David Robinson came to do outreach on Fire Island. Russell is HIV positive, and has tried many different treatment fads (egg lipids, Chinese herbs) but avoided AZT after seeing how toxic it was to people he knew.

    Role in ACT UP: Russell came to ACT UP in late 1988 and quickly started attending most meetings and actions. He is currently on the Actions Committee. He is also in the affinity group Wave 3 and has been involved with Surrender Dorothy.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Wave 3; Actions Committee; Surrender Dorothy

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/021-russell-pritchard

  • Jim is a 27 year old white gay man. His Wikipedia page gives a good summary of his background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Provenzano). He lives in New Jersey, and joined ACT UP in 1988. He has organized several Jersey City AIDS actions. He writes for gay publications and has directed theatrical productions about AIDS. He is starting to get involved with grantwriting for ACT UP.

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  • Background: Steve is a 25 year old white, gay, Jewish man who grew up in New Jersey (and in Houston for a couple of years). He came out in his freshman year at Columbia, and got involved in the gay organizations there. He spent two years in Israel, and when he returned to New York in 1987 his friend from Columbia Andrew Miller (who was chair of the Actions Committee at the time) brought Steve to ACT UP. Steve is a first grade teacher at P.S. 144 in Forest Hills, Queens.

    Role in ACT UP: Steve has been on the Actions Committee, and has recently been doing a lot of actions and zaps with Surrender Dorothy focused on New York City Health Commissioner Stephen Joseph. He is also close to people in the Delta Queens, with whom he traveled to the presidential conventions in 1988.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Andrew Miller, Duncan Osborne; Surrender Dorothy, Delta Queens

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Steve is on the agenda to ask the Floor to endorse a phone zap on Wednesday from 2pm to 4pm of the Department of Health having to do with safe sex subway posters. The Department of Health will be receiving a grant from the Center for Disease Control to create the posters, and the zap will demand that the posters include information that is specific and clear about how people can protect themselves, and that they target the communities that are most at risk (gays, IV drug users, minorities). Steve will ask anyone who is interested to come meet him at the side of the room right now to develop talking points for the phone zap.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/040-steve-quester

  • Gabriel is from Fulton, New York.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Mickey Wheatley, Garron Edmund

    Additional information: https://www.tllittphotography.com/image/I0000gQZB0H30_WM

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  • Background: Bob is a 44 year old white man. He grew up in Philadelphia, went to Harvard, was expelled then readmitted, and became the managing editor of The Harvard Crimson. He moved to New York and started working in public relations. He is currently a senior vice president of Howard J. Rubenstein & Associates, a public relations firm. He was married to Babette Krolik and they have a daughter, Sara. He came out as gay in 1985 and he and Babette divorced (though they share custody amicably). In 1987, he and his lover at the time discovered they were HIV-positive and his lover dragged Bob to an ACT UP meeting.

    Role in ACT UP: Bob was a former chair of the Media Committee, and is still heavily involved in developing media strategy.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Bob is on the agenda to lead off the report about Target City Hall by reading an excerpt from a recently-published book called His Eminence and Hizzoner by mayor Ed Koch and Cardinal O’Connor in which they pat themselves on the back for handling the AIDS crisis well. Bob will get the Floor to share his anger as he reads the excerpt in which Koch talks about being scared to even touch people with AIDS even though all scientific evidence shows that there is no risk. The Administrator (Jason Heffner) is bringing the book, and Bob should get it from him before the meeting so Bob can read the excerpt.

    Additional information: Bob is one of the more inspiring orators at ACT UP, which you can see in this video: https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/target-city-hall at about the 9:42 minute mark of the ACT UP Meeting Prior to Target City Hall

  • Background: Lee is a 34 year old white, gay man. He grew up in suburban Maryland outside of Washington D.C. He grew up in the American Baptist Church. He went to college at the University of Maryland and Montgomery College, then moved to New York in 1977 and began a career as a chorus boy in Broadway musicals. He was out in his social life but not to his family, even as he had a lover, Ricky Veretta, dying of AIDS. He eventually came out to his family and they slowly accepted him and his current lover, fellow ACT UPer Jeff Griglak. Lee and Jeff met on a plane trip from NYC to St Louis where they'd been cast as Jets in a production of West Side Story. An intra-Jet showmance turned into a romance and they became inseparable, except when one or the other was out of town working. They live at 13th Street and First Avenue. They joined ACT UP about six months or so after it started. Jeff and Lee worked together managing the offices and rehearsal space for American Ballet Theater, and were very active in ACT UP, so they spent pretty much all of their time together. Their affinity group, Seeing Red, sometimes uses the ABT conference room to meet. Lee and Jeff do not know their HIV statuses (though they suspect they are negative since they have been together for eight years and neither has had any health issues), but plan to get tested together this week. Lee is planning to do civil disobedience and get arrested for the first time at Target City Hall, while Jeff is planning to do support.

    Role in ACT UP: Lee is in the affinity group Seeing Red. He also does a lot of wheat pasting.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: In a relationship with Jeff Griglak; affinity group Seeing Red

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the Floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/137-lee-raines

  • Background: Karen is a 24 year old straight white woman. She spent her childhood in Havertown, outside Philadelphia, and then spent her teenage years in Rye, New York in Westchester County. She was raised in the Catholic church and went to a Catholic all-girls’ school, then went to Cornell for one year and transferred to Wellesley, a women’s college in the suburbs of Boston, graduating with a degree in art history. She enjoyed going clubbing at places like the Peppermint Lounge, CBGB’s, and Danceteria. Her parents were extremely accepting of her gay uncle Eddie’s relationship with his partner Frank. She works as a curatorial assistant at Dia Art Foundation. With many friends in the art world dying of AIDS, Karen started going to ACT UP in 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Karen comes to most meetings, and has been involved in editing a handbook about women and AIDS with the Women’s Caucus, and recently helped lead a teach-in about women and AIDS.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Robert Garcia, Women’s Caucus

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/094-karen-ramspacher

  • No information

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  • Amanda is a 25-year-old woman.

  • James is a 36 year old white gay man who writes a society column called “Social Studies” for Newsday. He graduated from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and received a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He was previously arts and weekend editor of The Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, became managing editor of The Bridgehampton Sun on Long Island, and then started at Newsday in 1984 as an architecture and design writer. He is well known for a high profile war with rival columnist Suzy after he revealed that she was writing incorrectly about events she didn’t attend. He is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

  • Background: Hunter is a 30 year old white gay man who was born in Rochester, Minnesota and grew up in southern Florida, moving often. He was severely learning-disabled, visually impaired, and non-verbal as a child. Art was how he expressed himself. He started having sex and realizing he was gay as a pre-teen. He was raped by a policeman at a young age. He was out in high school. His parents had divorced, and his father, who was a professional football player, was better about Hunter being gay than his mother was. After his stepfather kicked him out, he briefly lived with his grandmother, then briefly with his father in California, then became an independent adult at 16. He lived on the streets a bit, hustling in Hollywood. He eventually got his GED at Hollywood High School, then started fashion school but transitioned to fine art at Otis Art Institute. He met his first lover, an English lit major, dancer and theater person who helped Hunter improve his verbal quirks that still lingered from his learning disabilities. In the L.A. gay art scene he met future ACT UPer Ray Navarro. Hunter moved to New York in 1985, had a lot of random sex, lived with future ACT UPer Aldo Hernandez, who he had known from L.A., and had a friend group of L.A. artists (like Ray) who moved to New York. Hunter started working at Paula Cooper Gallery. Hunter does not know whether he is HIV positive.

    Role in ACT UP: Hunter goes to most meetings and actions, and helps Richard Deagle with posters/artwork for actions. He also arranged to let ACT UP use the Paula Cooper Gallery for smaller meetings.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Ray Navarro, Aldo Hernandez, Gregg Bordowitz, Zoe Leonard, Richard Deagle

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/133-hunter-reynolds

  • Jody went to Austin College in Texas, graduating in 1987. He moved to New York and now makes art and works in Soho galleries, including Crown Point Press.

  • Terry is an architect. He happened across an ACT UP demonstration in 1987 and started coming to meetings and got involved with Gran Fury. He helped design ACT UP’s installation at the New Museum.

  • Background: Scott is a 34 year old white gay man who grew up in a 3,000 person town in Wisconsin. He was raised Lutheran, but his family encouraged him to explore his own spiritual path. He became interested in radicalism at an early age. He came out as bisexual in college at the University of Wisconsin, and then as gay when he got to New York in 1978. He was involved in renovating the Orpheum Theater and got involved with producing the work of budding playwrights, chiefly Harvey Fierstein. He was in a relationship with a partner (Peter) from 1978 to 1984. He then got into a relationship with another partner (Jim), who was worried that AIDS activist work would negatively affect Scott’s current work producing television commercials and corporate/industrial films.

    Role in ACT UP: Scott is involved with the Media Committee. He is currently working on what is un-officially called Operation Batman with Ken Woodard, which involves projections promoting Target City Hall from Scott’s Jeep onto abandoned billboards.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Ken Woodard (Operation Batman), Media Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/156-scott-robbe

  • Kenneth lives at 66 Crosby Street in Manhattan.

  • Allan is a 36 year old gay black man whose father is Jamaican and whose mother is American. He was born in Harlem and raised in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. This interview with Allan from 1989 gives a detailed summary of his background. Allan has been involved with Surrender Dorothy and is the Majority Action Committee's representative on the Coordinating Committee and lives at 15 Durham Place in Brooklyn.

  • Background: David is a 24 year old, white, Jewish gay man. He grew up in suburban Livingston, New Jersey and started experimenting with sex with boys at 9 or 10 at summer camp. He went to Princeton, and his parents sent him to a psychiatrist who worked with him on directing his romantic attention to women. He had a girlfriend, but it didn’t stick. He moved to Hoboken in 1986, started taking classes to be a dancer, and got into a company (Senta Driver). He saw a flyer in the subway for the ACT UP Wall Street demonstration in March 1987, went to the demonstration, went to his first meeting, and kept going after that while he was in graduate school for dance.

    Role in ACT UP: In March of 1989, David is one of the 4 facilitators, who switch off leading the Monday night meetings in pairs. David oftentimes dresses in drag when he is facilitating (though usually not full drag). He gives a good explanation of it at the beginning of this interview (https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/082-david-robinson). David 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, and certainly anyone facilitating as David, listen to at least this section.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Outreach Committee; Facilitators; Maria Maggenti, David Gips, Maxine Wolfe, Avram Finkelstein, Lee Schy, Joe Ferrari, Karl Soehnlein, Alan Klein, Ray Navarro, Gerry Wells, Debra Levine

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Though he is not scheduled to facilitate tonight's meeting, David is one of ACT UP's current facilitators and should be on standby to facilitate in case one of the other facilitators can't make it at the last minute.

    He is also on the agenda to announce the death of Griffin Gold. Griffin Gold died on March 7 at the age of 33. He was a founding member and past president of the People with AIDS Coalition, often came to ACT UP meetings, and was a good friend of David’s. This excerpt from Peter Staley's book gives a description of what Griffin was like. David will remind people that when an ACT UP member dies, we chant three times, “Act up, fight back, fight AIDS” and then have a moment of silence. Then he will lead the group in that chant.

  • Joseph lives in Manhattan.

  • Note: Rollerena dressed very flamboyantly and distinctively. If you’re coming to the meeting as Rollerena, you’d best dress the part.

    Background: Rollerena is a 42 year old who identifies as a man, but is well known in ACT UP and the greater community for inimitable style: outrageous hats, glasses, gowns, and, of course, roller skates. Rollerena grew up in Kentucky, was drafted and went to Vietnam, and moved to New York after getting out of the army. Rollerena got involved in the 1970s hippie movement, and started roller skating in conjunction with that. Soon Rollerena combined that persona with appearances at all of the big gay events. Rollerena lives and works a government job in traditional men’s clothing, but always attends ACT UP meetings in full regalia. Rollerena has lived on the Upper East Side near Park Avenue for 20 years.

    Role in ACT UP: Rollerena is the Ticket Queen. If there is an event (bus fare to an action, entrance fees, etc.), Rollerena circulates around the floor and sells the tickets. If people don't have the bus fare money, Rollerena can just write down their name and tell them they can pay at the bus.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Rollerena is in the Delta Queens.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Immediately after the trip to Albany to support protesting healthcare workers is announced, Rollerena will circulate around the room and sell tickets for seats on the the buses to that action.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/173-rollerena

    (Rollerena talks in fascinating detail about life in the Army for the first 90 minutes, and talks about the gay community and ACT UP after that).

    Photo of Rollerena

  • Background: Adam is a 26 year old white Jewish gay man who grew up in the Los Angeles area. He went to public school until he was 15, then went to boarding school on the East Coast. He had his first sexual experience and came out his third year in college. He majored in architecture at college (since that is what his parents would support, even though he might have preferred art school). Both of Adam’s older brothers were gay, and in 1985 he moved to New York (where his brothers were). His brother was the first person he knew with AIDS. Adam works as an architect. He came to ACT UP after seeing the Silence Equals Death poster in 1987.

    Role in ACT UP: Adam goes to most meetings and actions, and is on the Actions Committee. He helps produce artwork and graphics for actions. He is in the affinity group CD 9/18.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Douglas Crimp, Actions Committee; CD 9/18

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/101-adam-rolston

  • Background: Illith is a 43 year old white, Jewish woman who was born in Palestine and grew up in Israel. After serving in the Israeli army, she went to Grenoble, France, then Geneva where she studied French and started a relationship with a Swedish man who was a communist. This got her involved in leftist politics, and when she came to New York in 1978 she worked on environmental issues. While in New York she got involved in the feminist movement and met Maxine Wolfe, who would later bring her into ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women’s Caucus

    Additional information: https://www.actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/141-illith-rosenblum

  • Stephen is part of a group that is currently forming called the Powertools, led by Peter Staley, to do more audacious actions with a smaller group of people than those in ACT UP’s large actions. He has also attended Majority Action Committee meetings. He lives at 210 West 16th Street in Brooklyn.

    He originally lived in Brooklyn, back when he lived at his family home with his parents, on Avenue P, across the street from James Monroe High School. He frequently visits them there. He'd been an advertising executive in his younger years. He joined ACT UP when his lover was ill with AIDS, and stayed with the group after his lover died.

  • Background: Gabriel is a 26 year old gay man. From his Wikipedia page: Gabriel Rotello was born and raised in Danbury, Connecticut, and attended Knox College and Carlton College. He was in the first group of American exchange students to live and study in Kathmandu, Nepal. After graduating Rotello became a New York City keyboard player, arranger and music director. In 1979 he co-founded the underground band Brenda and the Realtones, whose story was recounted in the off-Broadway show Endangered Species in 1997.

    In the 1980s, as music director of The Realtones he backed artists such as Ronnie Spector, Darlene Love, Solomon Burke, Rufus Thomas and many others. In the mid-1980s he produced a series of music revues at The Limelight, The Palladium and The Saint under the general name Downtown Dukes and Divas. Among his collaborators were the Uptown Horns, David Johansen, Cherry Vanilla, Johnny Thunders, the Lady Bunny, Holly Woodlawn, Joey Arias, David Peaston, Taylor Mead, Sylvain Sylvain, Jackie Curtis, Dean Johnson, Michael Musto, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of the Fabulous Pop Tarts and many others. Rotello's life and productions during this period were frequently filmed by videographer Nelson Sullivan, and are now part of Sullivan's archive of downtown life in the 1980s.

    Gabriel’s partner Hap Haddon got sick from AIDS in 1986 and died in June of 1988. Gabriel was his caregiver through difficult times, and went to a support group at Gay Men’s Health Crisis for caregivers. When he saw ACT UP in the June 1987 Pride Parade, he tried to convince the others in his support group to go to ACT UP meetings, but Gabriel was the only one to go. Gabriel stopped going to that support group after Hap died, and became more involved with ACT UP.

    Gabriel is in the beginning phases of starting a gay news-magazine, and is starting to ask people in ACT UP to work on it as writers.

    Role in ACT UP: Gabriel is currently working on the Fundraising Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Fundraising Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/180-gabriel-rotello

  • Marc is a 57 year old gay man. His Wikipedia page gives a good summary of his background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rubin)

    He is in the affinity group CD 9/18.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: David Lopez; CD 9/18

  • Background: Vito is a 42 year old white gay man. His Wikipedia page gives a good summary of his background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vito_Russo). Vito’s longtime partner Jeffrey Sevcik died from AIDS in 1986.

    Role in ACT UP: Vito has been involved in ACT UP since it began in 1987, and is well known and respected as a major voice in the group. Here is a link to a great speech he gave in 1988 at an ACT UP event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Q8p0HCQEs. Vito works most closely with the Media Committee.

  • Marina lives at 140 Riverside Drive and works at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

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  • Background: Catherine is a 24 year old white woman who identifies as a lesbian. She grew up in Cleveland, then Connecticut and Massachusetts. She went to Concord Academy, a prep school, and then Brown University. After that, she moved to New York City to do the Whitney Independent Study Program (which a number of other ACT UP members did) and to join ACT UP. She had heard about ACT UP from her mother, Agnes Gund, a philanthropist and arts patron and who was somewhat involved in ACT UP as she knew many people affected by AIDS. Catherine lives in a big commercial loft space at 60 Warren Street, 5th Floor with fellow ACT UPer Robert Garcia among others. This loft is a frequent meeting place for small ACT UP sub-groups, particularly the newly-forming DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists).

    Role in ACT UP: Catherine is helping to form DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists) (Damned Interfering Video Activists) to create in-house video documentation of ACT UP actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists); La Cocina; currently dating Jill Harris

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/071-catherine-gund

    Note: Catherine was known as Catherine Saalfield in 1989, but later went by Catherine Gund.

  • Background: Ira is a 23 year old white, gay, Jewish man who grew up in Memphis. He started having sex with men when he was 13 and came out at 16. He was president of his synagogue youth group. He went to Yale, where he got involved in gay politics and performance. After graduating, he moved to New York in January 1988 to work in film. He will be working for the director of Longtime Companion, a movie about AIDS, when it starts shooting in May. He lives on Smith Street in Brooklyn with his best friend Mark Gevisser, who brought him to ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Mark Gevisser, Esther Kaplan

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/143-ira-sachs

  • Dudley is a 26 year old white gay man. He went to college at Northwestern University. He came to New York and worked on Gary Hart's presidential campaign in 1984. Dudley writes fiction and started doing performance art in 1987. He works in the evening doing word processing at law firms. When Dudley first started coming to ACT UP meetings, before he tested positive, he would volunteer to do menial tasks, like photocopying. Dudley and his lover Chris both tested HIV positive at the end of 1987. Dudley is not taking any HIV medications. Chris and Dudley have been on-again/off-again. Dudley doesn't really have close relationship at ACT UP.

    Additional information: https://www.actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/009-dudley-saunders

  • Michael is the personal assistant to Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine. He has been involved with ACT UP since it formed in 1987, and is one of the first people to work on fundraising for ACT UP. He has been on the Logistics Committee, now the Actions Committee. Michael lives in Manhattan.

  • Background: Eric is a 35 year old white, gay man who grew up in Quinneville (near Binghamton), New York, the middle of five children. His father was a truck driver and his mother was a housewife who took in laundry and welfare children to make ends meet. As a kid, some of the neighborhood kids would bribe Eric with candy bars to get him to perform sexual favors. He was Student Council president and in National Honor Society in high school. He went to a community college, then transferred to SUNY Oneonta, and then went to graduate school in Boulder, Colorado. He started to come out at college, particularly in Colorado where he joined the gay student organization and got involved in gay politics. He moved to New York in 1980, with a plan to buy and renovate buildings and live off the rental income while he went into gay politics. He and his boyfriend Scott (a Wall Street lawyer) both tested positive for HIV in the mid-1980s, and Scott died in 1986. He is friends with Larry Kramer, who invited him to the speech he gave at the Community Center in March 1987 that sparked the formation of ACT UP. He lives in Harlem with his current boyfriend, fellow ACT UPer Frank Jump.

    Role in ACT UP: Eric is on the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. He started talking about housing issues for people with AIDS with Larry Kramer even before the formation of ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Frank Jump (current boyfriend); Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/049-eric-sawyer

  • Background: Sarah is a 30 year old white, Jewish lesbian. Her Wikipedia page gives a good summary of her background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Schulman). Sarah is involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Jim Hubbard; Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

    Additional information: Sarah interviewed Maxine Wolfe in 1989. Though it is mostly focused on Maxine, Sarah is on camera and you get a good sense of her and her history from this video: https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/women-aids (the video titled "Speak for Yourself: Sarah Schulman and Maxine Wolfe" toward the bottom).

  • Background: Lee is a 30 year old white, HIV-positive gay man. He is a photographer and artist who frequently uses images of himself and his fellow activists in his photos/art. Lee lives at 51 West 19th Street with his partner Joe Ferrari, who he met through ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Lee had been on the Logistics Committee, which was part of the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: In a relationship/lives with Joe Ferrari; Gregg Bordowitz; Brian Zabcik; Maria Maggenti

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Lee is on the agenda to announce that a new affinity group will be meeting on Tuesday (tomorrow), and will ask people to come meet him at the side of the room right now if they are looking for an affinity group for Target City Hall.

    Additional information: Page about Lee

  • Jim is 45 and a clinical psychologist. He is the president of the gay Catholic group Dignity New York. He lives at 107 West 82nd Street in Manhattan.

  • Background: David is a 28 year old white, gay man. His brother put together an extremely detailed website and documentary about David’s life:

    http://davidserko.com

    https://vimeo.com/203771933

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Swim Team

  • https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Chris-Sharp--series-of-6-photographs-/D9AE51FD6D5F6E77

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Swim Team

  • Jamie is 25 and lives in Manhattan.

  • Alan is in the affinity group the Candelabras and is involved in the planning for the Montreal conference (Montreal AIDS Conference Ad-Hoc Committee). In November 1988, Alan attended the U.S. Health Summit on HIV on behalf of ACT UP with Bill Bahlman, Garry Kleinman, Barry Lapidus, Carey Stegall, and Henry Yeager.

  • June lives in Manhattan.

  • Earl has attended Majority Action Committee meetings and lives at 57 West 16th Street in Manhattan.

  • Background: Ginny is a 34 year old white straight woman. She graduated from Harvard Law School. She was a partner at a Wall Street law firm, then left to do pro bono legal work with death row inmates in Florida. She recently returned to New York and founded the AIDS Project of the Coalition for the Homeless.

    Role in ACT UP: Ginny is not an ACT UP regular. She is at tonight’s meeting to talk to the Floor about a lawsuit demanding safe housing for people with AIDS and ARC.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Eric Sawyer, Charles King, Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Ginny is on the agenda to discuss a case that she recently filed: Mixon v. Grinker. Her major points will be:

    1. There is a city/state memo differentiating the services available to People with AIDS (PWAs) and People with AIDS Related Complex (PWARCs). The city requires that PWARCS live in shelters until they develop AIDS, at which point they become eligible for housing.

    2. The case that she is bringing, Mixon v. Grinker, will demand safe housing for PWARCs. There is currently a lack of access, a lack of guidelines, and a lack of notification services.

    3. Everyone -- PWAs and PWARCs -- must demand housing, and when that is denied they should contact her, as that could serve as evidence that the city is not really attempting to house PWAs/PWARCs within 24 hours as they are required to do.

  • Background: Marvin is a 56 year old gay man. Marvin joined ACT UP in early 1988. Known for his campy humor, in the 1970s Marvin financed the landmark gay porn movies Boys in the Sand and Bijou. Marvin is a Broadway producer and business manager/agent for showbiz people like Tommy Tune and, before he died, Michael Bennett.

    Role in ACT UP: Marvin hosts Wave 3 meetings at his apartment on the Upper East Side, and hosted a Wave 3 retreat in the summer of 1988 at the Fire Island home of Tommy Tune, one of his clients. Marvin is also on the Fundraising Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Wave 3; Fundraising Committee

    Carl Sigmon

    Background: Carl is 63 and lives in Plainfield, New Jersey. He was born in Granite Falls, North Carolina and lived in New York City for many years until 1986. He is a trained classical pianist and retired from the music business in 1986. He is now active in ACT UP New Jersey and ACT UP New York. His companion of 24 years, Basilio Rivera, died of AIDS in 1986.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Jim Eigo, Richard Deagle, Wave 3

  • Background: Michelangelo (Mike, as he is called at ACT UP) is a 28 year old white gay man who was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Staten Island. He majored in journalism at Syracuse University, and moved to New York in the mid-1980s. He worked at an entertainment public relations firm that got their clients into gossip columns. He was active in NY nightlife, partly as a way to learn gossip that he could provide to gossip columnists. As he started to grow skeptical of New York nightlife and celebrity culture’s response to the AIDS crisis, he came to ACT UP in 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Michelangelo is the chair of the Media Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee. He is in a relationship with fellow ACT UPer Gregg Bordowitz.

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: As part of the update on Target City Hall, he is on the agenda to discuss the status of the media strategy:

    1. Media response has been extremely favorable

    2. There has already been an announcement on ABC radio

    3. CBS is doing a six-part series on AIDS in New York City, and ACT UP and Target City Hall will be part of that.

    4. On March 22, there will be a big ad for Target City Hall in the Village Voice. On that day, will ACT UP members please call City Hall (212-788-3000) to demand an explanation of what Mayor Koch is (and isn’t) doing?

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/029-michelangelo-signorile

    https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/target-city-hall at about the 35 minute mark of the ACT UP Pre-Action Meetings video

  • Mark is 37 and lives and works in Manhattan as the managing director of a design firm. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

  • No information.

  • Background: Jason is a 28 year old white man. His Early Life and Early career and education are summarized on his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Simon_(artist)

    He met ACT UPer Gregg Bordowitz through the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, and has recently started getting involved with DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/157-jason-simon

  • Background: Mark is a gay white man who grew up in Texas in a Southern Baptist family. His parents' relationship was unstable. His mother had mental health issues. His father was a minister, and the family moved often along the Gulf Coast before settling in Dallas when Mark was a teenager. Mark is estranged from his parents and some of his siblings. Mark dropped out of architecture school at the University of Texas but stayed in Austin for 5 years. Mark came to New York in the mid-1970s and worked at Spring Street Natural in SoHo. Mark is a painter, and has shown his artwork at Civilian Warfare, a gallery in the East Village. He works construction jobs to pay the bills. Mark considers himself to be an alcoholic. Mark has not tested, but assumes he is HIV positive. Mark was best friends with Joe Hollis, the partner of fellow Gran Fury member Michael Nesline. He is also friends (going back to when they all lived in Austin) with Michael. Their relationship has grown stronger since Joe's death in 1985, and as they've worked together in ACT UP and Gran Fury, which they helped establish. Mark has put both his artistic and construction skills to use for ACT UP and Gran Fury. Mark lives in desolate Bushwick with Tom Kalin.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Gran Fury, especially Michael Nesline and Tom Kalin

  • Background: Rolf is 27. He was born in a small college town in Oregon. He studied 20th century history and studio art (photography and printmaking) at Oberlin College and now works in photo editing in New York and lives in Manhattan.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Bored of Ed

  • Barry lives at 317 East 90th Street in Manhattan.

  • Scott is a 34 year old white Jewish man who grew up in the Chicago area. He is a rock musician who is working on a novel.

  • Shawn is a 38 year old man who lives at 66 West 9th Street in Manhattan. He is an architect and is in the affinity group CD 9/18.

  • Background: Adam is an art assistant at GQ. He does some graphic art work for ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Adam is on the Swim Team.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Swim Team

  • Emily has attended Majority Action Committee meetings and lives at 652 East 4th Street in Brooklyn.

  • Tim is a 30 year old white gay HIV positive man who grew up in Midland, Michigan. He studied German at Indiana University (Bloomington) and political management (with a corp. public affairs concentration) at George Washington University. He lives and works in Manhattan. He has worked at The Manhattan Group, a Wall Street consulting firm, and now works in art gallery administration. Tim has been involved with Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Tim has accounting expertise, and has done bookkeeping/accounting work for ACT UP. Tim also maintains ACT UP contact sheets.

  • Role in ACT UP: Frank dissolved his trucking business to volunteer for ACT UP full time. Frank frequently mans the merchandise table at events, selling ACT UP t-shirts and other merchandise. He was one of the members on the “Freedom Ride” through the south in 1988 with Gerri Wells, Neil Broome, and Heidi Dorrow. He also gives memorable parties in his Chelsea loft.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Fundraising Committee; Bobby O’Malley (roommate), Peter Staley, Gerri Wells, Neil Broome, Heidi Dorrow

    Additional information: https://www.tllittphotography.com/image?&_bqG=0&_bqH=eJwzCzKODHV29y4OMDXPLLbIiPcsLvT1NC0zLcq3MrQyNDAAYSDpGe8S7GxbnJtZklGcn6cG5sY7.rnYlgDZocGuQfGeLrahIKXOTq7h8dnBVQHG6Wrxjs4htsWpiUXJGQCOmCAk&GI_ID=

  • No information

  • Rand is a white man. Rand has previously been arrested at ACT UP demonstrations for civil disobedience.

  • OTE: 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

  • Background: Rod is 20 years old and lives in Manhattan. He was born in Texas and grew up in Chicago. He dropped out of Vassar College to move to New York to join ACT UP. Rod teaches AIDS education in a literacy program for young adults.

    Role in ACT UP: Rod is involved in creating the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now, Lei Chou

  • Background: Mike is a 42 year old white man. He took a leave of absence from Harvard to be the national secretary of Students for a Democratic Society. He eventually became a lawyer.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Legal observers

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Mike is on the agenda to ask people to come speak with him at the side of the room (right now, not at the end of the meeting) if they (or someone they know) have health insurance that is refusing to pay for AZT, Bactrim, or any other AIDS medications, or if they get prescription cards for discounts on this medication. He is gathering information for a potential lawsuit against insurance companies that are not covering AIDS medications.

    He is also on the agenda later to announce a meeting to organize gay and lesbian workers for partner rights.

    Additional information: Photo of Mike

  • Background: Herb is a 43 year old gay white man who grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He received an M.A. in philosophy from Ohio State University, taught political science at Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus, then moved to Toronto to get a Ph.D in philosophy at the University of Toronto. He helped found Toronto Gay Action, a gay liberation group, in the early 1970s, and wrote for The Body Politic, a gay liberation periodical that he helped establish. He moved to New York in the early 1980s, and eventually started working at S.I. International (a talent agency) representing artists who paint book covers. His partner in New York, Ray Gray, died of AIDS in 1984. Herb volunteered at Gay Men’s Health Crisis as a buddy.

    Role in ACT UP: Herb is the former chair of the Issues committee. As Issues became more focused on highly-scientific treatment and data, Herb became less involved. He is currently working on developing a document outlining issues for the International Conference on AIDS in Montreal in June. He is in the affinity group the Candelabras.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Montreal AIDS Conference Ad-Hoc Committee; Treatment and Data Committee; Candelabras; Bill Bahlman

    Additional information: https://www.actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/090-herb-spiers

  • Background: Stephen is a 32 year old white gay man who grew up in Glendale, Arizona. He graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in drama, then got an acting MFA from NYU in 1982. He worked on David Rothenberg’s campaign for City Council in 1984, then joined a gay study group at Columbia with someone he knew from the campaign. He met David Winters, who worked at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, through that group, and started working on a project researching alternative medicines. After seeing ACT UP at the 1987 Pride Parade, Stephen came to ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: Stephen started working on the Issues Committee. Stephen also worked with Mark Harrington and Jim Eigo on creating a handbook about the FDA for the FDA action in the fall of 1988. Stephen is currently on the Actions Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Mark Harrington, Jim Eigo, Actions Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/139-stephen-spinella

  • Background: Ellen was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She pursued fine art photography in college and worked as a photojournalist. She has recently started creating video art, and is starting DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists).

  • Note: SPREE prefers to go by the chosen name SPREE, but many in ACT UP refer to SPREE as Timmy.

    Background: SPREE is 31 years old and grew up in Houston until the age of 10. SPREE then moved southern Georgia, where SPREE was bullied in school though found a place doing theater. SPREE finished high school early, went to the University of Georgia, and studied journalism and film. SPREE then moved to Los Angeles to go to acting school at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and a community college. SPREE then had small roles in films, including Stephen Spielberg's 1942. SPREE started going to rap groups at the Gay Community Services Center in Los Angeles. In 1983, SPREE went to a Radical Faerie gathering, and being a Radical Faerie moved to the center of SPREE's life. SPREE's family rejected SPREE upon coming out. SPREE followed a boyfriend to New York, and though that relationship ended quickly SPREE stayed in New York and started temping, eventually working as a telephone operator at NBC. As SPREE saw friend's being affected by AIDS, SPREE started volunteering and then got involved in AIDS activism. SPREE met ACT UPers at the Second March on Washington and then started coming to ACT UP. Through ACT UPer Rebecca Cole, SPREE started working at the National AIDS Hotline. SPREE is a vegetarian. As far as SPREE knows, SPREE is HIV negative. SPREE comes to most actions in (non-passing) drag, but comes to most ACT UP meetings in men's clothing.

    Role in ACT UP: SPREE was involved in MHA which became Surrender Dorothy

    Groups/friends at the meeting: MHA; Surrender Dorothy; Bill Monahan; Steven Cordova

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/060-spree

  • Background: Peter is a 28 year old white gay man who grew up from the age of eight in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. His Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Staley) gives a summary of his early life (though note that most of the Activism section discusses things he did post-3/13/1989).

    Role in ACT UP: Peter is one of the more prominent people in ACT UP. His flair for the theatrical at ACT UP actions (for example, climbing up onto the awning at the FDA and hanging ACT UP banners) has made him something of a poster boy for ACT UP. Peter is the chair of the Fundraising Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Frank Smithson, Blane Mosley, Lee Arsenault, Fundraising Committee, Powertools

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Peter is on the agenda to give the Fundraising Committee report:

    - A benefit performance of “Soul Survivor” (a play about AIDS) netted $300

    - There will be a party in honor of Steve Cohen (the prominent gay nightlife promoter) at the Palladium on April 9. Peter will ask the Floor to vote to endorse a proposal that ACT UP be one of the four beneficiaries of the party.

    - Peter will propose ACT UP’s 2nd Annual Talent Show for March 30 at Trax, which will be a party not a fundraiser.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/067-peter-staley

  • Background: Mary Anne is a 34 year old woman who was born in Cleveland. She is a representative for the Reproductive Rights coalition, which is associated with Women’s Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM!).

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Mary Anne has come to this meeting to request that ACT UP send a contingent to Washington DC for the Abortion Rights Rally on Sunday, April 9. She plans to ask how many people plan to attend, estimate how many buses will be needed, and ask the Floor to approve ACT UP placing a deposit of $300 per bus (Mary Anne should ask the facilitators to conduct this vote).

  • Tom is on the Actions Committee. He went to high school in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. He lives at 2 Stuyvesant Oval, Apt. 3D in Manhattan. Tom does graphics design (including for ACT UP), and has been a staff member of the Stonewall Repertory Theater, a theater company devoted to the work of gay and lesbian playwrights.

  • Background: Cary is a 26 year old white gay man who grew up in Forth Worth, Texas. His family went to church a bit, but it was never a big part of his life. He was an academic overachiever, and was heavily involved in music in high school (piano, orchestra, choir). He came out in high school, and his family begrudgingly accepted it. He went to Texas A&M on a scholarship thinking he wanted to be an engineering student, but quickly switched to anthropology. He had a small group of friends (the weird crowd on a conservative campus), and he helped start a gay and lesbian organization on campus. Cary wanted to get into the music business (and leave Texas), so he went to get his MBA at Indiana University, one of the highest-rated public business schools. He then moved to New York in 1987 and started working at Columbia House as an assistant. By 1989, he was working at CBS Records as associate director of sales analysis. Cary lives at 690 Leonard Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Cary read about ACT UP in the Village Voice and came to a meeting by himself in 1987 or 1988. He got more and more involved, starting with the Issues Committee at first. At the FDA action, he illicitly sold dextran sulfate imported from Japan (which has showed promise as an AIDS treatment, and which is sold over the counter in Japan, but the FDA had not devoted resources to studying).

    Role in ACT UP: Cary is one of the At-Large Representatives on the Coordinating Committee. He is also on the Montreal Ad Hoc Committee (the committee preparing ACT UP/New York’s actions at the upcoming major 1989 International Conference on AIDS in June)

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Coordinating Committee; Montreal Ad Hoc Committee

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Cary is on the agenda to ask the Floor for funds for three people (himself, John Bohne, and Blane Mosley) to attend the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Health Conference from April 5th to 7th. ACT UP/San Francisco will house them. The Coordinating Committee has recommended approval, with an agreed expenditure of $864 for three people. Cary will also ask if there is a woman who would attend, which would raise the cost to $1,397. Cary will give some background on the importance of sending representatives to the conference (the conference is in its 11th year and will feature a lot about AIDS and lesbian/gay health issues; it will be a good opportunity to dispense literature and t-shirts, and to meet with doctors, social workers, and government officials). Cary will acknowledge that some people have questioned whether this is a good use of ACT UP's money, and will ask the Floor to discuss this. Then the Floor will vote on the proposal.

    Cary will also, on behalf of the Montreal Ad Hoc Committee, propose a fundraiser at the Tunnel later in the meeting. There will also be a vote on this.

  • Background: Charles is a 29 year old white gay man. He lived until he was 9 in Rockville Centre, Long Island, then moved to Northern Virginia for 5 years (where he went to the Watergate hearings), and then Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He studied political science and history at NYU, where he came out as gay. He dropped out and moved to France, then London, then back to New York where he bought a place so his lover Joey could open a hair salon, where he helped out. When he got the HIV test once it became available in 1986 or 1987, he tested positive, and that made him want to go to ACT UP.

    Role in ACT UP: His affinity group Metropolitan Health Association (MHA) formed as a pretend health organization to meet with city health commissioner Stephen Joseph.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Affinity group Metropolitan Health Association (MHA)

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/160-charles-stimson

    Interview with Charles Stimson at Target City Hall at 10:47 minute mark in Phil Zwickler video here: https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/target-city-hall

  • Background: Sean is a 30 year old white gay man who grew up in Iowa City, Iowa. Sean grew up Catholic, went to Jesuit school (where he experienced sexual abuse), and went to Georgetown University and then Columbia University. He got involved in political campaigns. Then, after the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on October 14, 1979 he started getting involved in gay activist causes such as the Human Rights Campaign Fund. As AIDS emerged, Sean became involved with AIDS activism (People With AIDS Coalition/New York). Sean tested positive for HIV in 1985. His partner Michael died from AIDS in December of 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Peter Staley reached out to Sean to run a direct mail fundraiser for ACT UP in 1988. That campaign was successful, and Sean has been a member of the Fundraising Committee since then. Sean comes to most meetings and actions, and knows a lot of people through his extensive activism work, but he has not been too involved in ACT UP leadership/politics.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Fundraising Committee, Peter Staley, Vito Russo, Stephen Gendin

    Additional information: https://www.actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/171-sean-strub

  • Gary is a white man who lives in New Jersey. He is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

T

  • Paul is a 25 year old white gay man who lives in Brooklyn.

  • Background: Polly is a 28 year old white lesbian who grew up in Decatur, Illinois. She went to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, then got a master’s degree at library school at U of I’s Melvil Dewey School. She dated a woman her freshman year of college, then dated another women who was on the Chicago Women’s Rugby team, which exposed Polly to the Chicago lesbian scene. She took a library job at Yale University around 1984, then NYU in 1986. She started volunteering at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, where she met Maxine Wolfe, who would eventually encourage Polly to join ACT UP, which she started doing around October of 1988. She was in charge of the American Library Association Feminist Task Force and the Gay Book Award. She also in a country cover band at WOW Café, a collectively run performance space for women in the East Village. Polly lives in Manhattan.

    Polly is in the Women’s Caucus. Polly doesn’t come to all meetings and actions, but has been active at ACT UP recently with the Women and AIDS teach-in last week. Polly is in the affinity group Bored of Ed for Target City Hall.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women’s Caucus, Bored of Ed

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/154-polly-thistlethwaite

  • Background: Kendall is a 32 year old black gay man. He was raised in a very fundamentalist Christian family. Kendall received a B.F.A. from Yale in 1978 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1983. He lived in Sacramento for a time after law school, then moved to New York. Kendall is an associate professor at the Columbia University School of Law.

    Role in ACT UP: Kendall has done some legal work for ACT UP, and he is involved in the Majority Action Committee.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Majority Action Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/024-kendall-thomas

  • Conyers lives at 8 East 48th Street. Conyers was one of the organizers of an action in 1988 to disrupt an event with vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle at the Statue of Liberty to protest the Republican administration’s neglect of AIDS. Conyers is in the affinity group the Candelabras. He is also involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. He is also on the City Hall Issues Committee.

  • NOTE: Liz 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: Liz is a white lesbian.

    Role in ACT UP: Liz had been the chair of the Outreach Committee and is now one of the Monday night meeting facilitators. She is also part of the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Sydney Pokorny

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Facilitator

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/target-city-hall at about the 4:34 minute mark of the ACT UP Meeting Prior to Target City Hall

    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

  • Background: Sharon is a 26 year old white woman who has identified as bisexual. She grew up in the Ironbound section of Newark, New Jersey in a working class family. She went to one year of Essex County College, dropped out, and has worked in day care since then. A friend of hers who had AIDS came to live with Sharon, and her experience trying to get him services made her want to get involved with ACT UP. Sharon came to ACT UP with her girlfriend Lynn in late 1988, but Lynn did not stay with ACT UP. Sharon lives in Jersey City.

    Role in ACT UP: Sharon is in the affinity group the Candelabras. Sharon was the support person for the Candelabras at the FDA action in late 1988 (tracked people who got arrested, found out where they were being taken, coordinated with their family/emergency person, made sure they got medicines they needed).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Candelabras; Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/092-sharon-tramutola

V

  • Background: Christine is a 26 year old white lesbian who grew up in Manhattan. She went to LaGuardia High School and then went to Brown University, where she met friend and collaborator Todd Haynes. She moved to New York and, together with Todd, Christine created a non-profit film production company called Apparatus Productions in 1987, and through that produced Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story which Todd directed. They are now working on a new film, Poison, with friends and fellow ACT UPers Jim Lyons and Brian Greenbaum. Christine has worked as a proofreader to make ends meet.

    Role in ACT UP: Christine comes to some meetings and actions. Christine and Todd also let Gran Fury use Apparatus’ office for meeting/working space.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Jim Lyons, Todd Haynes, Brian Greenbaum

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/177-christine-vachon

  • Michelle lives at 27 7th Avenue South, Apartment 5B in Manhattan.

  • Background: Robert is a 33 year old gay Puerto Rican man who grew up in the South Bronx. He went to Catholic school and then SUNY Oswego (which he left in his second year when he was wrongfully accused of stealing). He moved to Miami for a few years with an ex-boyfriend, then moved back in with his mother in the Bronx in 1976. He ended up working for Chase Manhattan Bank and working at the Gay Switchboard. Throughout all this time Robert’s main interest was art. His boyfriend Jeff, who Robert had moved in with, was diagnosed with AIDS in 1981 and died in 1986. Robert later ran a gay discussion group, Gay Circles, that met at the Community Center. Robert came to ACT UP with his friend David E. Kirschenbaum, who eventually became ACT UP’s treasurer. Robert initially took over writing on the chalkboard at the front of the room at ACT UP meetings, since he had experience with architectural lettering because he worked as a lighting designer.

    Role in ACT UP: Robert recently left the Coordinating Committee as At-Large Representative. He has been involved in the Majority Action Committee, and oftentimes is a marshal at actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Marshals, Majority Action Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/002-robert-vazquez-pacheco

    https://www.aaa.si.edu/download_pdf_transcript/ajax?record_id=edanmdm-AAADCD_oh_391841

  • Background: Andy is a 50 year old man. His father came from Puerto Rico and his mother was a Jew born in Warsaw. Andy was raised in the Bronx, went to Taft High School, and then City College for a bachelor’s and eventually a master’s degree in Modern Psychoanalysis. He also studied at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. He works as an analyst, and has also had a career in book publishing. Andy had relations with men and women since he was 15 or 16, was monogamous while married to his wife of 14 years (now divorced), and has two sons who stay with him on some weekends. Around when his divorce was finalized, he saw a poster for the first ACT UP demonstration in 1987 and went. He also became a leader of Gay Circles, a consciousness raising group for gay men that met at the Community Center. He lives in the Village.

    Role in ACT UP: Andy comes to most meetings and actions. He first got involved in the Media Committee. He is now on the Actions Committee. He is in the affinity group CD 9/18.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Actions Committee, CD 9/18, Jay Blotcher, Dan Baker

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/045-andrew-velez

  • Ronnie is 24. He works in the library at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

  • Background: John is a 29 year old white gay man who grew up in Rochester, New York. He went to a liberal private high school in Rochester (though his parents, and father especially, were right-wing Republicans). He studied engineering as a college student in California, then moved to New York in 1981 where he started working for a consulting firm. He was not sexually active until a few years after he moved to New York. He had heard about ACT UP going back to coverage of the 1987 Pride Parade, and started coming to ACT UP meetings in spring 1988 after being inspired to take action after seeing the AIDS Quilt at an event. He lives on the Upper East Side.

    Role in ACT UP: John comes to most meetings and actions. He is on the Media Committee. He helped develop a guide for the media about language to use when talking about AIDS issues.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/130-john-voelcker

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  • Oliver lives in Manhattan and is on ACT UP’s Gay and Lesbian Teach-In Committee.

  • John is 32. His partner is Tim Luddy. John is HIV positive.

    Friend: Vito Russo

  • Background: James is a 48 year old white gay man who grew up outside of Detroit. He went to a Jesuit college, and then graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin, Europe, and then at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island. He dropped out of graduate school and started working at an insurance company in Providence. He lived in Newport and Providence with a man (he had his first sexual experience when he was 24). When he moved to New York in 1985, he was somewhat involved in caring for a friend of a friend who had AIDS. He saw the news of ACT UP’s first action in March of 1987, and a year later joined a march and started coming to meetings. James works for an insurance company, and is not out at work. He enjoys opera. James does not know his HIV status.

    James comes to meetings and actions, but does not have a friend or affinity group.

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/046-james-wagner

  • Michael lives in Manhattan.

  • Background: Scott is a 30 year old white, gay Jewish man who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He went to college then moved into the city of Chicago, where he worked for Marriott and had his first serious boyfriend. He had two gay older first cousins who showed him the gay ropes; they both died of AIDS before Scott joined ACT UP, as did Scott’s first roommate in New York. Scott moved to New York in 1985 and lives in the East Village. Scott came to ACT UP toward the end of 1987/beginning of 1988. Scott has never been tested for HIV, but assumes he is positive.

    Role in ACT UP: Scott goes to most meetings, zaps, and actions.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Wave 3

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/132-scott-wald

  • Judith helped assemble ACT UP’s Women’s Caucus’s Women and AIDS Handbook, which was completed this month. For the recent Women & AIDS Teach In, she helped present a section on the History of Women & Medicine with Brigitte Weil and John Nalley. She has also attended Majority Action Committee meetings. She lives in Manhattan.

  • Barry is a gay man and a journalist for the Village Voice among other outlets. One of his closest friends is Bill Sherwood, the director of Parting Glances. He lives at 240 East 4th Street in Manhattan.

  • Doug works at the Bowery Resident Committee, which focuses on Housing issues. He is on the ACT UP Actions Committee and the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now.

  • No information

  • Bill lives in Manhattan.

  • Wendy is on ACT UP’s Gay and Lesbian Teach-In Committee.

  • Background: Gerri is a 34 year old white, Catholic lesbian who grew up in Inwood. Her father was a policeman and her mother was a medical secretary. Gerri went to the police academy and and worked with the police department for a few year with the child abuse unit in Harlem. She is now a contractor and lives at 80 East 3rd Street in Manhattan. Gerri came to ACT UP after seeing the terrible treatment her gay brother Easton received at Cabrini Hospital as he was dying of AIDS. A friend put her in touch with Larry Kramer, who encouraged her to come to the new group he was trying to get off the ground.

    Role in ACT UP: Gerri is one of the civil disobedience trainers, and often takes the role of talking to the police at actions, using her experience of having worked for the police department. Gerri attends almost all meetings and actions, and has been arrested many times.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Neil Broome, Frank Smithson, Women’s Caucus; Civil disobedience trainers

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/075-gerri-wells

  • Joe is 32 and a writer. He was diagnosed HIV positive in 1986. Joe is an office volunteer at Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

  • Charles is involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. He lives in Manhattan.

  • Heidi is involved with the Caucus to House Homeless PWA’s Now. She lives in Manhattan.

  • Background: Mickey is an attorney from Placentia, California. He formerly practiced in Los Angeles. He is now coordinating Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund’s AIDS-related litigation. Mickey lives in Manhattan. Mickey is in the affinity group Bored of Ed.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Garron Edmund, Gabriel Quirk, ACT UP lawyers (David Barr, Mickey Wheatley, Joan Gibbs, Jill Harris, Mike Spiegel, Bill Dobbs)

  • Tim is a white man who is in the affinity group The Box Tops.

  • Michael is a 22 year old gay black man who was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He attended George Washington University. He works at a community-based organization that conducts studies of promising therapies and treatments for AIDS/HIV. He joined ACT UP in 1988 and is on the Outreach Committee and is involved with the Majority Action Committee. He lives in Manhattan.

  • Ken is an at-large member of the Coordinating Committee. He received a B.A. in Communications and Literature at Brown University (where he was the President of the Brown University Gay Liberation Front), then studied Nutrition and Health Sciences at Northeastern. He worked for two years as a counselor of treatment addiction services in Deerfield Beach, Florida and worked as a chef in Boston and New York. Ken lives in Manhattan at 239 East 14th Street.

  • Tina lives at 359 7th Avenue, Brooklyn.

  • Background: Dan is a 32 year old black gay man who grew up in Buford, South Carolina (home to Parris Island, a Marine Corps training base). He grew up in a religious Southern Baptist family, but questioned it as a child. He started experimenting with sex (with boys and girls) around age 12. At 17 he took a Greyhound bus to Charleston to go to a gay bar 65 miles away. He went to all-boys, almost-all-white Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but hated its elitism. He left after a year, took a job in New Orleans, switched to the University of New Orleans, dropped out of there but stayed in New Orleans with his first real boyfriend. After that three-year relationship turned violent, he joined the Navy in 1979. He was in Italy on a ship that he estimates had about 300 gay guys, and the National Investigative Service started an investigation over their alleged presence. Dan was accused of ratting people out and got beaten up, so he went AWOL, called his congresswoman for help, and turned himself in to the US Embassy. He stayed in Italy while he was court-marshaled and honorably discharged. He lived in Rome for the next five years with a boyfriend, and got into graphic design and socialist/Communist politics. After he broke up with that boyfriend (who later died of AIDS), he came to New York to go to Parsons and started coming to ACT UP in 1987. Dan lives in Manhattan.

    Role in ACT UP: Dan goes to most meetings and actions and is on the Majority Action Committee. Dan was heavily influenced at ACT UP by Ortez Alderson, one of the leaders of the Majority Action Committee who is leaving ACT UP this month to move to Chicago. Dan is starting to get involved with advocating for needle exchange: making clean syringes available to intravenous drug users to reduce their HIV risk from sharing syringes. Dan will want to make sure that any Target City Hall demands or other relevant actions include a push for the city to implement needle exchange, even though it is not currently legal.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Majority Action Committee

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/053-dan-keith-williams

  • Kathy is in the affinity group La Cocina.

  • No information

  • No information

  • George is an illustrator. He occasionally has written for the New York Native. Costa Pappas brought George to his first ACT UP meeting in December 1987 when they were trying to get Mayor Koch to release the B-list of funds in the city budget. In summer 1988 he traveled with fellow ACT UPers to the Republican National Convention to protest the Reagan/Bush inaction on AIDS. His nickname is Buck.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Swim Team

  • Background: Daniel is a 28 year old white gay man. He grew up in a Rancho Linda Vista, a hippie commune in Oracle, Arizona. For his high school years, he lived with his mother in the Hamptons on Long Island. There he met Dale, who would become a close friend and with whom he would start to explore gay life. He majored in Middle East studies at Princeton, learned Arabic, and moved to Egypt. He ended up as a ghostwriter for Anwar Sadat’s widow and then for Benazir Bhutto, who was then prime minister of Pakistan. He moved back to New York and worked as assistant and speechwriter for Richard Murphy, the assistant secretary of state for the Near East. He is currently working at the Council on Foreign Relations. After Dale got sick and died of AIDS between 1985 and 1987 (during which time Daniel was trying to identify treatments), Daniel was in a Monday night drawing class organized by Steve Barker with fellow students Loring McAlpin and Mark Harrington.When he noticed people were no longer coming, he asked them why and they told him about ACT UP. So Daniel started coming to ACT UP in the fall of 1988.

    Role in ACT UP: Daniel worked with the Media Committee for the FDA demonstration in October 1988. He is helping to form an affinity group for Target City Hall.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Media Committee, Loring McAlpin, Gregg Bordowitz, Douglas Crimp

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/111-daniel-wolfe

  • Background: Maxine is a 47 year old white Jewish lesbian who grew up in Brooklyn. She went to New Utrecht High School, then to Brooklyn College as the first person in her family to go to college. She eventually earned a Ph.D in psychology. She got married at 19, had two children, but eventually left the marriage. After some relationships with men, she came out as a lesbian in the mid-1970s. Starting when she was in college, Maxine was involved over the next few decades with various feminist, reproductive rights, and gay/lesbian rights groups (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxine_Wolfe) . After seeing ACT UP at Gay Pride in the summer of 1987, Maxine started coming to meetings.

    Role in ACT UP: Partially due to her history with activism, which most people in ACT UP did not have, Maxine is one of the most prominent members of ACT UP. She is most involved with the Women’s Caucus. She is also in the affinity group the Delta Queens.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Women’s Caucus; Delta Queens

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/043-maxine-wolfe

    https://actuporalhistory.org/actions/women-aids (An interview of Maxine from 1989 is in the video titled "Speak for Yourself: Sarah Schulman and Maxine Wolfe" toward the bottom).

  • Jeff is 25 and an artist.

    Affinity group: Dada

    Friends: Richard Jackman

  • Background: Ken is an art director for the advertising agency DDB Needham Worldwide. He lives in Manhattan.

    Role in ACT UP: Ken designs posters and does graphic design for ACT UP.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Scott Robbe (with whom he is working on the Target City Hall projections), Wave 3, Joe Ferrari, Victor Mendolia

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Ken, Joe Ferrari, and Victor Mendolia will speak to the Floor as part of the City Hall Report to ask the Floor for final approval on a series of posters to encourage people to come to Target City Hall: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/reason-1-to-act-up. The administrator will be bringing the posters, so they should get them from the administrator before the meeting starts. Victor and Joe will try to get people to help with wheat-pasting. They will ask people to meet them at the side of the room (right now, not at the end of the meeting) to arrange the logistics (dates/times/neighborhoods/who will go out together/watch out for police). Meanwhile, Ken will talk about Operation Batman, where he will drive around New York in his Jeep projecting images (a la the bat signal from the Tim Burton Batman movie that will be coming out in a few months) to encourage people to come to Target City Hall. He should ask the Floor for suggestions about what images to project.

  • Suzanne is 20 and is from New London, Connecticut. She is currently attending Cooper Union, studying sculpture and film.

Y

  • Henry is one of the founders of the Lavender Hill Mob. He has been involved with ACT UP since it started in 1987, and has been on the Actions Committee, the Issues Committee, and the Coordinating Committee. He is helping to plan ACT UP’s action at the Montreal Conference (Montreal AIDS Conference Ad-Hoc Committee).

    Groups/friends at the meeting: Lavender Hill Mob; Montreal AIDS Conference Ad-Hoc Committee; Actions Committee.

    Additional information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOoRthLrVg4 (1:10 minute mark)

Z

  • Background: Brian is a 25 year old white gay man. Brian grew up in Texas as a farm boy. He had sex with a boy when he was 12, but was closeted through most of college, having sex mostly at adult book stores. He went to University of Texas in Austin, where he worked on the student newspaper, and then moved to New York in 1987 and came to his first ACT UP meeting in February 1988. He is a cub reporter at a small publication called Manhattan Lawyer. He lives in Williamsburg. 

    Role in ACT UP: Brian is on the Target City Hall planning committee, handling city issues. Brian had joined and previously co-chaired the Actions Committee with Andrew Miller. Brian has been uncomfortable with the idea of getting arrested, so he has concentrated on marshalling, which he learned from Amy Bauer and Jean Elizabeth Glass in advance of the FDA action.

    Groups/friends at the meeting: The principals planning Target City Hall; Mark Carson (who works in the same building as Brian at Park Avenue between 32nd and 33rd St. and is the person who encouraged Brian to come to ACT UP)

    Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Brian is on the agenda to discuss Marshal Training and announce a marshal training session that will take place at the Center this coming Thursday. He will let the Floor know what a marshal does, and summarize the training (click here for the training sheet).

    Brian should also distribute a draft of the City Hall Fact Sheet and ask the Floor to discuss whether anything should be added or changed. He should ask for feedback about any of it, but should read the "The City Can" section at the end out loud to the Floor and specfically ask if anything should be added or changed. The administrator will bring the copies of the fact sheet, so Brian should get those from the administrator.

    Brian also will announce a teach-in about City Issues on Friday at 8pm at the Center. 

    Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/102-brian-zabcik

    https://www.nrdc.org/stories/protesting-your-life-depended-it