ACTUP Capsule History 1993
January 5, 1993: DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists)
inaugurates AIDS Community Television, a weekly television series
& media network for AIDS activism.
January 16, 1993: Fifteen members of ACT UP/NY and Treatment
Action Group disrupt Hoffmann-LaRoche's Community Advisory Board
meeting at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in Time Square to protest
the pharmaceutical company's refusal to heed the conerns of the
AIDS community. Two activists are arrested and charged with more
that $7,000-worth of damages to the conference room.
February, 1993: ACT
UP protests at the New York State AIDS Institute against the proposed
lab based name reporting of persons with HIV. We demand the use
of unique identifiers to protect confidentiality.
February 9, 1993: One-hundred and fifty ACT UP members
along with TAG, target Hoffman IaRoche in Nutley, NJ. The demonstrators
chain themselves to gates and trucks to block access ot the office
complex, resulting in 23 arrests.
March 1993: The Barbra McClintock Project to find a cure
for AIDS is unveiled by the McClintock Working Group. 100,000
copies fo the proposal to restructure the national AIDS research
efforts are disseminated.
March 1993: ACT UP New York joins hemophiliacs to protest
an awards dinner held by the National Hemophilia Foundation.
April 1, 1993: YELL demonstrates against Irene Impellizzeri
at the Columbus Club in New York.
April 4 & 8, 1993: ACT UP members bring the first Haitian
Refugees with a T-cell count of less than 200 to New York from
the Guantanamo detention center. In the first week alone we house
22 Haitian PWA's.
April 23, 1993: The Lesbian Caucus forces Donna Shalala,
the new Secretary of Health and Human Services to meet with 15
Lesbians with AIDS. Several hundred protesters gather outside
getting coverage in Newsweek
April 24 & 25, 1993: ACT UP joins a million lesbians and gay men at the
March on Washington. ACT UP/NY stages a demonstration with more
than 1,000 activists from across the country at the headquarters
of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturer's Association, accusing the
pharmaceutical industry of adhering to profit-driven research,
price gouging, corporate secrecy and inaction while allowing people
with AIDS to die. During the demonstration, activists scaled the
building and hung bodies representing people with AIDS killed
by drug company policies. ACT UP organizes the Hands Around the
Capitol event to draw attention to AIDS, and march with other
AIDS groups to the Mall, stopping for a die-in at the White House.
April 30, 1995: ACT UP members go to Guantanamo, Cuba,
to continue working to win the release of Haitian refugees. After
activists are threatened with jail by U.S. military personnel,
White House aide Bob Hattoy and General Colin Powell force the
military to allow them to stay for an extra ten days.
May 1993: After three and a half years of pressure by ACT
UP, the Social Services Administration changes the disability
regulations for people with HIV, including the addition of a wide
range of women-specific opportunistic infections.
June 1993: Judge Johnson closes Guantanomo Bay Detention
Camp. ACT UP members bring 78 Haitian refugees to New York and
find temporary housing for them during the summer. By September,
all the refugees are housed in permanent, medically appropriate
housing.
June 1993: Members of the McClintock Working Group attend
the New Directions in AIDS Research Summit in Madison, Wisconsin.
The proposal is presented to the collected researchers and activists
and featured prominently in press coverage of the event.
July 1, 1993: The Marys affinity group carries out the
second political funeral for an activist who has died of AIDS.
Two hundred demonstrators travel to Washinton, DC, to fulfill
35-year-old ACT UP and Marys affinity group member Tim Baily's
final wishes for a plitical funeral in front of the White House.
After an emotional three hour standoff, plans are thwarted when
police attempt to wrestle the casket containing Bailey's embalmed
body away from activists in front of the Captiol Building. Two
are arrested including Bailey's brother from Ohio.
July 16, 1993: In the third political funeral for a member
of ACT UP New York affinity group The Marys, the coffin of Jon
Greenburg, 37, co founder of ACT UP's Alternative and Holistic
Treatment Committee and director of TAP (Treatment Alternatives
Project) was carried through the streets of the East village to
Tompkins Square Park in New York City, where personal eulogies
were heard by more than 200 activists, friends and family members.
" I don't want an angry political funeral," wrote Greenberg.
"I just want you to burn me in the street and eat my flesh
September 12, 1993: The PWA Housing Committee organizes
a demonstration to make AIDS housing an issue in New York City
Council elections. One-hundred and fifty people march from Sheridan
Square to City Council member Antonio Pagan's election headquarters,
highlighting his opposition to AIDS housing projects. Though Pagan
wins re-election, a new coalition of AIDS activists, squatters
and community activistss is formed.
September, 1993: Members of the McClintock Working Group
hit the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Conference in New
York, hanging a banner reading "What About A Cure? Demand
McClintock" during a speech by Dan Rather. The following
day activists pose as journalists to meet with new AIDS Czar Kristine
Gebbie who says she has read the McClintock project and is considering
its proposals.
September 30, 1993: Chanting "MicroGeneSys, AIDS Extortionists!",
fourteen AIDS activists are arrested after they shackle themselves
to the front door and gate at MicroGeneSys, Inc., in Meriden,
CT, to protest a $20 million government appropriation to study
the company's controversial AIDS vaccine.
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