The politicization of AIDS

Photosource: Stonewall25: March up Fifth Avenue

The following quotation, attributed to Dennis Altman, is an interesting way of conceptualizing the politicization of AIDS activism. (I have been unable to locate the source, if you know it, I would love to be able to attribute it.)

"Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases"

Have you come a long way, Cosmo girl?

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Outrageous and Outraged: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Back in 1976, when a couple of nuns loaned habits to a couple of nice gentlemen in Iowa who were performing in the musical The Sound of Music, it is unlikely they considered the act to be the birth of what would become an international culture-jamming queer protest movement. Three years later, those same men dressed in their nun garb and wandered around some of San Francisco’s nude beaches, turning heads with the unlikely combination of nuns smoking cigars and carrying machine guns. After capturing the attention of the media and the public during a few more appearances at sporting events, the Sisterhood of Perpetual Indulgence was formed and immediately started recruiting new members. Their first fundraiser was held in 1980, raising money for gay Cuban refugees. By 1982, their activism had started focusing on the troubling and worrisome ‘gay cancer’ that would become known as AIDS; the Sisterhood distributed information to the gay community and started fundraising to raise funds to fight the disease. Thirty years later, the Sisterhood’s brand of carnivalesque resistance continues to inspire performance art protest, art installations and community activism internationally. With more than twenty “convents” established throughout the USA, Scotland, Colombia, Uraguay, Australia, Germany, the UK and Switzerland, the movement has become a formidable force for AIDS fundraising and awareness. They offer grants to other organizations doing activist work, and continue to charm and enlighten crowds with their irreverence and wit.

You can pray your soul silly by visiting the Sisters here

The storied activist: The ACT UP Oral History Project

The ACT UP Oral History Project is a compelling and provocative means of documenting the experiences of the surviving activists who took part in creating awareness and social change regarding HIV/AIDS issues from the mid-eighties onward. This blurb, taken from Oral History site describes the project's intent and why documenting this social movement is crucial in understanding the place of AIDS activism in today's context.

The purpose of this project is to present comprehensive, complex, human, collective, and individual pictures of the people who have made up ACT UP/New York. These men and women of all races and classes have transformed entrenched cultural ideas about homosexuality, sexuality, illness, health care, civil rights, art, media, and the rights of patients. They have achieved concrete changes in medical and scientific research, insurance, law, health care delivery, graphic design, and introduced new and effective methods for political organizing. These interviews reveal what has motivated them to action and how they have organized complex endeavors. We hope that this information will de-mystify the process of making social change, remind us that change can be made, and help us understand how to do it. (ACT UP continues to fight to end the AIDS epidemic.)

This is an amazing resource for anyone interested in early AIDS activism, and organizations/individuals working toward social change. More than 60 people were interviewed for the project; Five minute video clips of the interviews and free full-text PDF files of every interview in its entirety are available for immediate download. Check out this phenomenal site