ACT UP protests Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jan 15 1987

Location: 

New York, San Francisco, Washington DC

In 1987 with AIDS deaths in the thousands and government policy still criminally indifferent, activists formed ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) with the purpose of turning grief and fear into rage and action. 


Over the next decade, rage would drive thousands of gay men and their supporters to form one of the most influential patient advocacy groups in history. They called themselves AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power — or ACT UP. And they ultimately forced Anthony Fauci (!!), the scientific community, and pharmaceutical companies to fundamentally change the way medical research is conducted — paving the way for the discovery of a treatment that today keeps alive an estimated half-million HIV-positive Americans and millions more worldwide.


External sources: 

https://actupny.org
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/09/689924838/how-to-demand-a-m…
https://actupny.org/indexfolder/gould_s02.pdf
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/ashes-lawn
Posted by crux on Oct 24 2019

Staff rating: 

10

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Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.
OtherHelps bring about change in a way not accounted for in the options above. Please describe how it does this in the text box below.
Provides (a useful service)Provides a useful social service.
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.
Strengthens (community)Strengthens, builds and celebrates community through ritual and/or symbol.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear short-term goal. Short-term goals tend to be things like: create or repeal a law; get a President impeached; make the city administration repair a sidewalk. A campaign with a short-term goal needs a clear theory of change, complete with targets that can be cajoled or pressured into effecting the goal.
Release studies, fund drug research, etc. etc. etc.
This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.
Cure AIDS

Notes

Forced gov't and industry to find a treatment for AIDS