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18 Women Who Made an Impact on AIDS

As we spend another December 1st remembering those who have fought for their lives and for others’ during the AIDS crisis that continues to be a part of our world, it’s important to know just how many gay women were involved in the pivotal force that was ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and affiliated organizations. HIV and AIDS is too often seen as being about gay white men, and while they were certainly a huge part of the community that was both diagnosed and part of the demand for access to AZT and other drugs, affordable healthcare and other humane treatment, among other wins, they received countless amount of support from others, including lesbian and bisexual women.

Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard were members of ACT UP in New York City and have collected artifacts, interviews and pieces of history from 1987 up through the reverberation it has had through today. Their ACT UP Oral History Project culminated in a 2012 documentary called United in Anger, which featured the men and women who were involved in the group’s efforts to invoke change and educate the world at large about the horrible truths (and lies) about HIV and AIDS.

Today, on World AIDS Day, we celebrate 18 of these women who have gone on do even more incredible things for the LGBT community and mainstream society after a successful time spent dedicating their lives to such an important cause. For more information on each woman, click the link on their names for their ACT UP oral history interviews, which are all very much worth reading.

A journalist who has worked at Ms., ABC News and CBS, Ann was a part of the feminist movement in the ’70s and began covering the AIDS crisis in the newsroom. She became an AIDS educator for the Hetrick-Martin Institute in 1987, which led to her getting involved in ACT UP. With her journalistic background, she was able to give the group an idea of how the mainstream media worked, and led an action that gained nationwide attention after she helped ACT UP infiltrate a live broadcast of Evening News with Dan Rather. Ann is a co-host of Gay USA, a weekly news program about LGBT issues that has been around since 1996.

Heavily involved in the art world, Ann had many gay male friends who were diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s. She began fundraising with AmFar and attending ACT UP meetings, also eventually joining WAC (Women’s Action Coalition). Ann is now the director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and she is the inspiration for the character of Bette Porter in The L Word.

An award-winning novelist, playwright, artist, activist and professor, Sarah Schulman interviewed every single person whose oral history is available on the ACT UP website. Along with her co-director Jim Hubbard, she is the founder of the Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, MIX NYC. She continues to work to tell the stories of our community in many different forums and has a new novel coming out in 2015.

A journalist and activist, Anne-Christine has written about AIDS for places such as The New York Times and The Advocate. She was a producer on the 2003 documentary Pills, Profits, Protest: Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement and co-founded a WE-ACTx, a global initiative to help “Rwandan women affected by HIV/AIDS who are survivors of genocidal rape, and orphans.” She was also an early member of the Lesbian Avengers.

Marlene was part of the artist and activist collective Gran Fury, which was ACT UP’s art sector. She created several successful mock ad campaigns, including bus ads with same-sex and interracial couples making out with the text, “Kissing doesn’t kill: Greed and indifference do.” Today Marlene’s work is part of major museum collections and her partner is Christine Vachon, the producer behind Killer Films.

Maxine was involved with the early beginnings of GLAAD and worked at the Lesbian Herstory Archives before attending her first ACT UP meeting in June of 1987. One of the foremost lesbians involved with the movement, she was part of the Women’s Committee. “Even though the Lesbians were a small group, we were the people who had done politics,” she said in an interview. “We were the people who did the civil disobedience training. We have always been the marshals.”

Filmmaker Catherine Gund was inspired by her mom’s donations to ACT UP before she joined herself while attending Brown University. She shot several short films about ACT UP’s work and actions, several of which aired on DIVA TV, the AIDS activist video collective associated with the organization. Catherine has made several films and recently directed the documentary Born to Fly about out choreographer Elizabeth Streb.

Dr. Alexandra Juhasz is the author of AIDS TV: Identity, Community and Alternative Video and is an educator on both feminist and AIDS-related issues. She was also a producer on lesbian-themed films The Watermelon Woman and The Owls and works to combine activism with visual media. Alexandra identified as straight at the time that she first joined ACT UP, eventually becoming part of the women’s caucus for actions such as one against Cosmopolitan magazine’s article on women being immune to AIDS.

Introduced to ACT UP by friend, writer Laurie Weeks, Anna was part of an affinity group called the Marys. One of the actions she was involved in was Day of Desperation in 1991, where she infiltrated PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer Report and chained herself inside with handcuffs. Anna is now a professor at NYC’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

The filmmaker documented much of the ACT UP actions and work in several different film and TV documentaries like Living With AIDS, Sex is an Epidemic and Larry Kramer in Love and Anger. MSNBC has a great piece on her work today in which she gives the following advice to women: “Believe in yourself. Trust your instincts. Get involved. The future of the planet depends on it.”

Maria went to her first ACT UP meeting at NYU and became involved in the coordinating committee. Maria went on to become a screenwriter and filmmaker, notably behind the lesbian films The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love and Puccini For Beginners. She also wrote for the TV show Without a Trace and is currently on the staff at MTV’s Finding Carter.

Polly heard of ACT UP through Maxine Wolfe, and attended a demonstration at Shea Stadium where organizers unfurled large banners with their messaging and took up entire sections during the nationally televised game. She went on to become part of the Women’s Caucus that put on a teach-in about the issues of women in HIV. Polly is now the Chief Librarian at the CUNY Graduate Center.

An activist early on, Amy came to ACT UP after several years as part of a group called Women’s Pentagon Action. She trained group members in the ways of civil disobedience and how to protest without using violence. She also participated in actions such as Stop the Church, which included a mass die-in at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

An out lesbian, feminist activist, Keri Duran passed away at the age of 31 from AIDS. She joined ACT UP Boston after receiving her diagnosis in 1987 and became a powerful voice and face for women with AIDS. Keri gave a passionate speech at the Center of Disease Control in Atlanta in 1990 where ACT UP demanded the CDC change their definition of AIDS to include women’s symptoms.

In her early twenties during the time of ACT UP, Heidi heard about the organization through Maxine Wolfe’s daughter, Karen, and moved to New York to work at the organization in 1988. She went on to work at the Urban Justice Center Organizing Project in New York City and participated in a panel about women’s involvement in ACT UP last spring.

A community organizer, lawyer and activist, Urvashi was a part of ACT UP’s 1988 Republican Convention demonstration and thought it was important that the organization was about healthcare as a human right. Today she is Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School and is one of the founders of LPAC, the lesbian political action committee. Her longtime partner is out comic Kate Clinton.

Renowned artist Zoe Leonard said she was not “politicized” until finding ACT UP, which eventually came to influence her art in huge ways. She became part of an affinity group called the Candelabras and created display pieces such as tombstones reading “I Died of AIDS Because the Government Didn’t Care.” She also created a famous image of a vagina close-up with the message, “Read My Lips Before They’re Sealed.” She was one of the founders of Fierce Pussy, a lesbian art collective. Today Zoe’s photography and sculpture work can be seen at places like the Whitney.

Alexis’s father was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987 and she joined ACT UP after he passed away. Her mother also joined the organization. Alexis bought a video camcorder to help document actions, although sometimes it was confiscated or got her arrested. She estimates she was arrested about 26 times during demonstrations and ACT UP actions. She was never convicted. Alexis still lives in NYC and works as a grant writer and “creates innovative programs to help at-risk New Yorkers.”

There are so many women who were involved in AIDS activism, and even these brief summaries cannot give enough details on their great amount of work and dedication that ultimately led to a lot of changes in the way Americans (both the public and those in power) treat the diagnosed. Today we celebrate them and say thank you for everything you have done for our community and the world. I highly recommend checking out the ACT UP Oral History Project for full interview transcripts and video clips from the archive.

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