Let the record show : a political history of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 / Sarah Schulman.

Political history of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

xxvii, 702 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty works of fiction (including The Cosmopolitans, Rat Bohemia, and Maggie Terry), nonfiction (including Stagestruck, Conflict is Not Abuse, and The Gentrification of the Mind), and theater (Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and more), and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films (The Owls, Mommy Is Coming, and United in Anger, among others). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and many other outlets. She is an Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Northwestern, a Fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities, the recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was presented in 2018 with Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award. She is also the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, and the co-director of the groundbreaking ACT UP Oral History Project. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

First edition.

Includes index.

Political foundations. Change and power. Introduction : how change is made -- Mechanisms of power : Puerto Ricans in ACT UP -- The first treatment activists -- The dynamics of effective action. Choosing the right target : seize control of the FDA -- Collective leadership : stop the church -- Paths of leadership. Inspiration and influence : Larry Kramer, Maxine Wolfe, Mark Harrington -- Treatment and data #2 : citizen scientists -- Changing the definition : women don't get AIDS, we just die from it -- Radical resistance and acceptance. Mother and son : the death of Ray Navarro, the vision of Patricia Navarro -- Harm reduction as a value, an ideal, a way of life and death : ACT UP's campaign for needle exchange -- Art in the service of change. Art making as creation and expression of community. The artistic life of resistance -- Strategic images : photography, video, and film -- Creating the world you need to survive. Activism coheres values and creates counterculture. Getting and creating media -- Community Research Initiative, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, and the Battle over AZT -- ACT UP and the Haitian Underground Railroad -- Lawyers for the people -- The culture and subculture of civil disobedience -- Money, poverty, and the material reality of AIDS. Insurance equals access, and without access there is no treatment -- How the ACT UP housing committee became housing works, housing for homeless people with AIDS -- YELL : the evolution of queer youth politics -- Funding ACT UP's campaigns -- Desperation. Division. Storm the NIH action at the National Institutes of Health, Washington, D.C., May 21, 1990 -- The dinner : December 1, 1990 -- Day of desperation : January 23, 1991 -- Are women "vectors of infection," or people with AIDS? : Clinical Trial 076, April 1991 -- AIDS hysteria : the case of Derek Link -- The split : January 1992 -- Living and dying the mass death experience. Treatment and data #3 -- Ashes action : October 5, 1992 -- Political funerals -- Conclusion : the myth of resilience and the enduring relationship of AIDS -- A personal conclusion -- Appendix 1. ACT UP and the FBI -- Appendix 2. Tell it to ACT UP -- ACT UP New York time line -- ACT UP oral history interviews.

The Lambda Literary Award: LGBTQ Nonfiction, 2022

Stonewall Book Award, Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award Honor Book, 2022