Sep. 10, 2008 - Issue #673: Sex in the City 2008
United in Anger: A History of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
Pioneering activist and author Sarah Schulman
Looking at the thick raspberry-hued building standing erect against the
popsicle pink sky, one gets the sense that you are looking at it from
across the street through teary, blurred eyes while waiting for a friend
who is never going to arrive. Or maybe you’re seeing it drunk while
riding your bike just before you turn a corner. The human figures at the
base of the building are just smudges of color, shadows. The lights burning
in the windows look like personal heavens floating above desks and beds, or
the beginnings of small fires. You are afraid to look away from the image,
afraid that when you look back it will be gone. And you are right. It will
be gone. It is gone.
The image—taken by photographer Nan Goldin—is the cover of
author, intellectual and activist Sarah Schulman’s novel Rat Bohemia,
which was named by the Publishing Triangle as one of the 100 best gay and
lesbian novels of all time. Both the photo and the novel are portraits of
New York City’s Lower East Side during a time that no longer exists,
and of a place that can never be recreated. The photo and the book are
documents of loss, about AIDS and ultimately about the failures of the 20th
century that continue to plague us today.
They are about the beginning of AIDS, of how America and later the world
first reacted, and how the world has changed since then. They are,
especially Schulman’s novel, creative works that allow readers to
understand the real links that exist between AIDS and gentrification,
globalization, sexism, racism, classism and, as Schulman describes during a
phone interview, “the hierarchy of how people are treated.” For
Schulman, the photograph, which she describes as “gorgeous,” is
of a culture obliterated by AIDS and a reminder that, along with people
like Goldin, she outlived the time to tell the story.
It’s a story Schulman will be sharing with Edmontonians when she visits the U of A next week as part of the Institute of Sexual Minority Studies and Services’ InsideOUT Speakers’ Series to deliver a free public lecture on the early days of AIDS and the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).
Schulman has been involved from the beginning.
“When I was in my early 20s,” recalls Schulman, “I was
the city hall reporter in New York just when the AIDS crisis was starting,
when they were closing down the bathhouses, before people knew what was
going on.”
It was women like Schulman who, in the early days of AIDS, were part of a
movement that saw friends taking care of and advocating for dying and sick
friends because those whose job it was were to afraid to deal with
AIDS.
At the same time, Schulman also helped herself, other survivors and those
who came after by documenting the time. Her first-hand experience provided
her with the human connection and knowledge to become the most eloquent and
effective voice of the crisis. Her novel People in Trouble not only
provided the uncredited backbone of the Broadway musical Rent, but was also
the first piece of American literature to include a character living with
HIV.
Though her work with ACT UP, her role as a founding member of both the
Lesbian Avengers and MIX NYC—the New York Queer Experimental
Festival—and through her dozen published works, Schulman has made a
career out of working towards liberty and justice for all, notions she
recognizes as classic American ideals in a country that has yet to fully
recognize her contributions.
In addition to her speech, Schulman will be showing clips from a film she
is making with MIX NYC co-founder and long-time collaborator Jim Hubbard.
The film, largely based on her and Hubbard’s ACT UP Oral History
Project—which has been in the works since 2001—is an extensive
collection of interviews with those involved from the beginning with ACT
UP, which in the face of government inaction and a media that was too
afraid to report the facts, harnessed the power of the media and introduced
design, art and commerce as vital aspects of political interventions.
Watching the clips online (actuporalhistory.org), one is hard pressed not
to see ACT UP as the mother of modern activism. Interviews with such
movement luminaries as Jean Carlomusto, Douglas Crimp and the hilarious
Maria Maggenti document how ACT UP brought activism into the post-modern
world.
By deconstructing notions of spectators and active participants through
activist spectacles that were at once emotionally intense, clever,
media-grabbing and shaming, ACT UP was able to indirectly (though I am
inclined to say directly) save millions of lives and improve the quality of
life of millions more through their advocacy for faster drug trial times,
price reduction on medication and the inclusion of women in the definition
of those living with AIDS.
In the history of the AIDS struggle, says Schulman, she hopes today’s activists can find inspiration to help them create new and more effective movements. She suggests that the departure point is seeing what the community needs, and from there “enjoying the beauty of simultaneity, allowing for critical mass, setting winnable goals, ensuring communication, having reasonable proposals, producing direct actions and allowing environments where people can act freely.”
In addition to her lecture, Schulman will also be doing a public reading
of her new novel, The Child, which explores teen sexuality, age of consent
and human complexity. V
Mon, Sep 15 (7
pm)
The Child Book
Launch
Tue, Sep 16 (7
pm)
United in Anger:
A History of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
Both events:
Room 150, Telus Centre for Professional development, U of A (111 St
& 87 Ave), Free
www.ismss.ualberta.ca
More stories in front »
New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.
