Organizations or Movements? Both/and?

I have been reading Sarah Shulman’s book Let the Record Show about the history of ACT UP. My most formative life experience was my participation in the LGBTQ rights movement of the 1990s, and in particular in the movement to take direct action to end the AIDS crisis. I was furious about society’s marginalization of queer people and felt terror at the idea that my newly found cultural home—the LGBTQ community—was going to be destroyed by an indifferent government and a vitriolic populace that thought we were not worth saving. I worked part-time early-day and late-night jobs that freed me up during daylight hours to fill tiny bleach bottles for distribution at the Lower East Side needle exchange, to wheat-paste beautifully designed Gran Fury posters onto construction scaffolding all over Manhattan, to climb up alongside my mentors in Women’s Health Action Mobilization into the Statue of Liberty to cover her face with a banner that read “No Choice, No Liberty.” I never felt more alive.

I am reflecting now on what drove this—it was anger, certainly, fury at the injustice. But reading Sarah Shulman’s carefully crafted prose, transcription of interviews and thorough historicizing of the movement (tracing its leaders’ grounding in feminist, racial justice, and labor struggles) has given me greater insight into my experience. I realize that I loved being a part of a group of people not just reacting AGAINST something but acting FOR something. A vision of a world where people who used intravenous drugs got clean works and a warm smile and a referral to medical care. A world where it would be obvious that women should be included in clinical trials for lifesaving drugs. A world in which people would come up with an idea of something to do, and if others agreed it was worthwhile, we would divide up the work and do it. It was so hopeful. I associate it with my youth because I was so young at the time—but the folks I looked up to, I realize now, were something like 40 years old—and they had not lost the feeling that acting out of hope was the only thing to do to right the wrongs of the world. There really weren’t organizations to work for to do this work—so we were figuring out how to do it and doing it.