Act-Up 25 Years Later

[+ Lucky]

"The gay ghetto was a tinderbox by March 1987. Ten thousand New Yorkers had already become sick with AIDS; half were dead. Along Christopher Street you could see the dazed look of the doomed, skeletons and their caregivers alike. There was not even a false-hope pill for doctors to prescribe." And then Larry Kramer spoke up: "“If my speech tonight doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in trouble,” he began. “I sometimes think we have a death wish. I think we must want to die. I have never been able to understand why we have sat back and let ourselves literally be knocked off man by man without fighting back. I have heard of denial, but this is more than denial—it is a death wish.” He concluded, “It’s your fault, boys and girls. It’s our fault.”

 

New York Magazine takes a look at Act Up in a photo essay which shows that Larry Kramer was not the only man to start the fight against AIDS, but certainly one of the first, and maybe the loudest. Lest we forget that we once had to fight, take a look: http://nymag.com/news/features/act-up-2012-4/