ACT-UP

Question #1:  For your blog, in addition to reading the two of these, review at least two videos from theACT-UP Oral History Project.  Then write about the question of direct action.  Can it be justified?  Under what circumstances?  What tactics do you feel are legitimate?  Are these rules different for different causes?  ACT-UP was operating in an environment where the people they were advocating for were literally dying around them.  Does that change your impression of the tactics?


I watched several interviews until I felt that I saw two that I could correlate to each other and write about- those two are:



   Interview #006
   January 14, 2003
   Violence 


and



   Interview #008
   January 16, 2003
   Power and Privilege 


First, I watched Alexandra Juhasz's interview and she had several good points- some of which are: how the closet functioned during this time- allowing "those" men to be in the closet, and still have power (because of being in the closet) and then they got AIDS, were outed, and pushed away from their power. The way that power and privilege align themselves within the AIDS movement is very interesting and as Juhasz says, "You don't!" to the question of "how do you win if you don't have power?" She also brings up how this "counter culture" won. not in the sense that a lot of people lost their lives, but that it brought attention to the need for change within this cause. That is direct action- people started to move, to talk, to converse, to question and then to act upon their positions or beliefs.  Direct Action in this case, is being able to align oneself with privilege and power and thus having the necessary tools to be seen and be heard- and that is what ACT-UP did. ACT-UP changed the face of AIDS in the US. 


Next, I watched Patrick Moore's interview.  His piece was different from Juhasz's in the way that he spoke about change coming from violence.  One of the best points that he made was in saying that "it takes violence for America to take notice of something. anything."  This was seen with the fringe violent movement during the Civil Rights in the US, and also when things began to become violent with the AIDS movement during this time, people started to notice.  This is direct action, as well.  Obviously there is no one right or wrong way to go about direct action, but i think what matters is the intentions, the planning of such and the implementation- the outcome is a bonus.  Being heard, having a voice is a HUGELY different experience than many Americans know, so for that component to be there- no matter the legislative outcome, that can't be taken away. ACT-UP proved that there was support and a community while it seemed and very much felt like the rest of the world was turning a cold shoulder- further dehumanizing the LG communities (I exclude BTQ for good reason, as these are the identifiers that are pushed aside, because of their more "controversial beings")


Overall, direct action is a good tactic- the rules change for each movement, for each cause, as need be. all is relative and all is relative in "success" as well.  Listening to these two interviews amongst the others has not changed my opinion of the tactic of direct action at all.