ACT UP/Los Angeles

Administrative History

Los Angeles activists, including member of the Lavender Left, inspired by ACT UP New York and energized by the 1987 March on Washington returned to form an ACT UP chapter. On December 04, 1987, ACT UP/Los Angeles (ACT UP/LA) met for the first time in West Hollywood. The organization focused on improving AIDS healthcare services and networking with a broad coalition of progressive groups. The chapter utilized non-violent direct action as a means to draw media attention and challenge the status quo. Members were offered civil disobedience training and support teams were formed to track confrontations and arrests. Official actions were approved by the membership; however, a number of affinity groups, such as Stop AIDS Now Or Else (SANOE), sponsored their own actions. Nationally ACT UP actions brought about the transformation of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) medication trial and approval processes, expanded AIDS healthcare services including those for women and prisoners, and challenged immigration and naturalization policies.

The following history was rewritten by David Lacaillade for the December 12, 1993, ACT UP/LA Conference from earlier published versions of the chapter's history. [Edited by Kyle Morgan]

And The End Is Not In Sight: A History of ACT UP/Los Angeles December 1987 - December 1993

ACT UP/Los Angeles was founded on December 04, 1987. Hundreds of demonstrations later, ACT UP/LA has had a major impact on AIDS care in Los Angeles County and Southern California. At its peak, ACT UP/LA operated a public office, published a newsletter, had a mailing list of approximately 2,200 names, and met weekly in the city of West Hollywood. At the first meeting of the chapter attended by 400 people, the membership adopted the AIDS Action Pledge. They also voted to hold a demonstration against the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) policies which restricted the movement of HIV-affected persons.

Following the INS demonstration, ACT UP/LA campaigned against Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block for the lack of condoms and AIDS education in County jails. In the summer and fall of 1988, ACT UP/LA fought two regressive propositions concerning AIDS: Proposition 102, inspired by Lyndon LaRouche; and Proposition 96, backed by Sheriff Block. When Proposition 96 passed, ACT UP/LA led a march down Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, the first time a predominately gay and lesbian crowd had ever illegally stopped traffic in Southern California.

In early 1989, ACT UP/LA conducted a week-long vigil, complete with tents and a soup kitchen, outside the Los Angeles County Hospital. This action launched a sustained campaign lasting all spring and included a disruption of a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting that resulted in fifteen arrests. Soon after, Los Angeles County acceded to the central demand for the creation of a dedicated AIDS unit at the hospital, and in September 1989 a 20-bed unit was opened.

In the spring and summer of 1990 ACT UP/LA demanded improvements to the County's outpatient AIDS clinic -- specifically, the end to four-month waiting periods for a first appointment. Meetings of the County Board of Supervisors were again disrupted: 27 ACT UP members were arrested in May, and at the end of July civil disobedience at a third demonstration resulted in 38 arrests, the largest to date at the Hall of Administration. In June 1991, ACT UP/LA participated in the dedication of a larger, more comprehensive AIDS Outpatient Clinic, and ACT UP/LA members received seats on the advisory committee that monitored the clinic's day-to-day operations.

Other Los Angeles area hospitals did not escape ACT UP/LA's scrutiny. In March 1989, ACT UP/LA demonstrated at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in support of a proposed AIDS ward, and in May 1989 the ward was approved. In February 1992 ACT UP/LA exposed the medical apartheid existing in Los Angeles by demonstrating at USC University Hospital, an institution serving only patients with private insurance. The action included civil disobedience at the Santa Monica, headquarters of National Medical Enterprises (NME), which operated the University Hospital. Seven arrests were made.

A month later ACT UP/LA took action against a Ventura; medical clinic for refusing to treat the wounds of an HIV-positive man. The demonstration (in a driving rainstorm) followed the first-ever filing of an AIDS discrimination lawsuit under the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act. In November 1993, the suit was settled, with the clinic agreeing to pay the HIV-positive man $85,000. The Ventura demonstration also helped found ACT UP/Ventura.

With demonstrations outside local Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offices and the Westwood Federal Building in 1988, ACT UP/LA consistently supported efforts to make drugs more quickly available to people with HIV/ AIDS. On one occasion ACT UP/LA planted melon seeds from which the alternative therapy Compound Q was derived. On many occasions ACT UP/LA conducted phone zaps of pharmaceutical companies which have delayed the study and release of potentially life-saving drugs, and once zapped an Abbott Laboratories-sponsored entertainment special at an Anaheim, California hotel to protest the company's delay in releasing HIVIG, which was believed to stop the in utero transmission of the HIV-virus.

In March 1993 at Amgen Pharmaceuticals in Thousand Oaks, ACT UP/LA protested the high cost of the company's medications. The demonstration and march through Amgen's campus was in memory of two recently deceased ACT UP/LA members.

ACT UP/LA supported the formation of the ACT UP/Network, and ACT UP/LA members attended the Network's first demonstration at FDA headquarters in Maryland in October 1988. During the following October, ACT UP/ LA participated in the Network's first National Day of AIDS Actions by shutting down the Westwood Federal Building. Eighty people, calling for the timely release of drugs, an emergency federal AIDS program, an end to HIV-related discrimination, and high-quality health care were arrested for civil disobedience. The action included many lesbian and gay community leaders.

In December 1990, during a Network sponsored action, approximately 40 ACT UP/LA members demonstrated outside the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to revise the definition of AIDS to include infections specific to women. In May 1991 in San Diego members of ACTUP/LA demanded immediate changes in the surveillance definition of AIDS by interrupting a speech by the CDC's Deputy Director for HIV. In September 1992 at the CDC's invitation, ACT UP/LA testified in Atlanta concerning woman-specific infections. The CDC revised the definition to include woman-specific infections in January 1993.

Committed to the fight for a cure for AIDS, ACT UP/LA participated in a march on, and civil disobedience at, the White House in Washington, D.C. to demand that then-President George Bush adopt a 35-point plan to combat the disease in September 1991. In October 1991, ACT UP chapters demonstrated on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to demand universal health care for all and more federal financing for AIDS treatment and research. More than half of those arrested in civil disobedience at that action were ACT UP/LA members.

ACT UP/LA members attended the Republican National Convention in Houston in August 1992, again participating in a series of actions called by the Network to protest the re-nomination of George Bush. Several ACT UP/LA members were arrested after disrupting one of Bush's speeches, and several more were arrested after interrupting a speech by fundamentalist Christian Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority.

With the defeat of George Bush, ACT UP/LA focused on the new administration's AIDS policies. In December 1993, the theme of ACT UP/LA'S World AIDS Day protests was the need for an AIDS cure, not merely the issuance of the "AIDS Awareness" stamp by the U.S. Postal Service. The demonstration demanded the immediate adoption of the ACT UP/NY founded McClintock Project to find a cure.

While people were in Washington, D.C. for the historic March On Washington in April 1993, ACT UP/LA participated in a series of demonstrations called by the ACT UP/Network. The protests included a march on the White House demanding a cure for AIDS; an action at the Department of Health and Human Services to publicize woman-to-woman transmission of the AIDS virus (and a contemporaneous meeting of ACT UP women with United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Donna Shalala); and a protest at the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association (PMA) to expose profiteering in the development of AIDS related drugs. On the Monday following the March, in the park across the street from the U.S. Capitol, ACT UP/LA took part in yet another demonstration emphasizing universal health care.

ACT UP/LA studied insurance industry policies, leading to campaigns against Prudential Insurance Company, the California Department of Insurance, and Great Republic Insurance Company after the companies purging of 14,000 policyholders. In April 1990, 60 ACT UP/LA members attended the Network's National AIDS Actions for Health Care in Chicago, which centered on insurance rip-offs and the demand for universal health care. Approximately 40 ACT UP/LA members were among the 129 arrested in civil disobedience during those actions.

In Southern California, ACT UP/LA demonstrated at Frontera Women's Prison in November 1990, demanding an infectious diseases doctor and access to proper medications for HIV-positive inmates. This was the first time any demonstration had ever taken place on prison property. Because those demands were not met, ACT UP/LA participated in the Sacramento action in May 1991 in support of prisoners with HIV/AIDS. The action involved civil disobedience. Shortly thereafter, an infectious-diseases doctor was assigned to Frontera. In June 1992 and October 1993, ACT UP/LA returned to Sacramento to demand improvements in the care of prisoners with HIV/AIDS. The October 1993 visit to the offices of the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento resulted in the arrest of one ACT UP/LA member.

ACT UP/LA members also defended women's clinics from the anti-abortion organization, Operation Rescue. The Christmas season of 1988-1989 and the summer of 1993 saw members demonstrating outside Roman Catholic churches against the church's policies on condoms, safe sex, and reproductive rights. When Archbishop Roger Mahony became a cardinal in 1991, ACT UP/LA held actions outside his masses and receptions. For World AIDS Day 1992, ACT UP/LA distributed condoms and safe sex information outside parochial high schools in Southern California. ACT UP/LA was also instrumental in securing the passage of HIV/AIDS plans (including the availability of condoms) in Pasadena and for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

ACT UP/LA members worked with Clean Needles Now (CNN), the Los Angeles-based needle-exchange program (an illegal program until 2004) organized to stop the spread of HIV among injection drug users. CNN, originally a committee of ACT UP/LA, separated from ACT UP in August 1993.

ACT UP/LA members have since 1989 attended international AIDS conferences in Montreal, San Francisco, Florence, Amsterdam and Berlin. On the opening day of the VI International Conference on AIDS in San Francisco in June 1990, ACT UP/LA organized a demonstration (with civil disobedience) demanding scholarships to the conference for People With AIDS. Two years later, for the Amsterdam conference, free scholarships were instituted.

ACT UP/LA has also demonstrated at KCET, the Los Angeles based public television station which refused to air "Stop The Church," a video about the December 1989 ACT UP/NY's and WHAM's action at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. At the Oscars [Academy Awards] in 1991 and 1992 ACT UP/LA spotlighted the AIDSphobia of the entertainment industry. Onemember was arrested for disrupting the 1991 show. When Governor Wilson vetoed AB101 in September 1991, members of ACT UP/LA participated in the month-long series of street protests sparked by that veto. During March 1992 the chapter protested the sale of homo and AIDSphobic t-shirts in Palm Springs.

In August and October 1991, ACT UP/LA targeted California U.S. Senator John Seymour and State Senator Ed Davis for their support of AIDSphobic legislation. The demonstrations in Anaheim and Woodland Hills involved civil disobedience. In July 1993, ACT UP/LA attended the festivities for newly-elected Mayor of Los Angeles Richard Riordan, reminding him that AIDS was still a crisis.

ACT UP/LA developed political funerals for its members. In Southern California and elsewhere the funerals often included marches, sometimes by torchlight, and processions that blocked traffic, tactics that led to confrontations with law enforcement officials.