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Walker Bristol

Notes from the Underclass: CARE

by Walker Bristol on December 13, 2012

Continuing Walker Bristol’s column on social activism at Tufts, throughout Greater Boston, and beyond.

And a quick preface—although I’m indeed involved in CARE, I’m in no way whatsoever writing this on their behalf. Any opinionated slant here is, as always in this column, my own and mine alone.

A new policy has been brought forth to reform religious life on campus—paraded as upholding religious freedom, but rather disenfranchising those in the spiritual community already marginalized. It seeks to build a campus safer for diversity, yet inhibits that goal. And it is not without resistance.

The backstory: an immensely public (released via e-mail to the entire Tufts population) ruling by the Committee on Student Life (CSL) came Wednesday which in part, as outlined in the announcement, prescribed a new policy by which Chaplaincy-affiliated student organizations might enjoy a “religious exemption” from the Tufts Community Union (TCU) non-discrimination clause (emphasis mine):

From this point forward, all [Student Religious Groups (SRGs)] must justify on doctrinal grounds any departures from Tufts’ nondiscrimination policy in that their leadership positions require. The University Chaplain will evaluate the justification, and if satisfied that the described criteria for leadership are required by a given religion, will allow the SRG to apply to the TCU [Judiciary] for recognition.

On its face, and as its been largely reported by the media beyond Tufts’ campus: a victory for religious freedom, a reconciling of that freedom with (allegedly) different forms of freedom of expression. But is this not religious discrimination of another sort? Students whose personal spirituality dictates a departure from the common interpretation by whatever tradition they identify with will now, if that tradition’s on-campus community chooses to take advantage of this exemption, be restricted from leading that community. The existing leaders of the religious institutions on the Tufts campus, in conjunction with the University Chaplain, are now given the power to determine what exactly the proper interpretations of their related doctrine is. As for the future members of the communities those institutions claim to represent Hope you’re in line with the way they are now. Even if your organization’s leadership is chosen by ballot, it will continue to cycle through those who identify with a particular brand of their affiliated faith. To tell the student, “sorry, your spirituality is invalid” is oppressive. It is counter to religious freedom.

The opposition to this verdict was spearheaded by the Coalition Against Religious Exclusion (CARE), a network of student leaders and activists who, for months beforehand, had been drawing attention to the transgressions on the TCU non-discrimination policy by the on-campus InterVarsity Tufts Christian Fellowship. TCF had a longstanding requirement that leaders take a “Basis of Faith” prior to appointment (unlike most other SRGs, as well as a vast majority of TCU student groups, their leadership is not determined by free and open democratic elections). This noncompliance was addressed by the TCU Judiciary via derecognizing TCF, who eventually appealed their case to the CSL. The CSL upheld the derecognition in their most recent verdict, but instigated this new policy in an effort to resolve their process of selective appointment with TCU’s non-discrimination policy.

And yet, the notion that the two could ever or should ever be reconciled is suspect. Intolerance of difference is antithetical to diversity. Having elites, those already with power, dictate the viability of the underclass to come to power themselves is, it would seem blatantly, oppression. CARE has taken to promoting a petition to overturn the decision, to social media, and indeed to the streets, to illuminate this. There are members of CARE who would be the very SRG leaders that would allegedly find use of this policy, as there are members of CARE who are Evangelical Christians. In both of these on-campus demographics, there is active resistance.

As there is resistance in the TCU Senate. A group of senators drafted a resolution shortly after the CSL ruling that would at its core implore TCU to lobby the administration to overturn the policy—as would it, in protest, defund any TCU-affiliated organizations that sought to use it.

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Photo by Kumar Ramanathan

The Senate’s weekly public meeting on Sunday was intended as that resolution’s battleground. A mass demonstration by the Tufts community spilled out into Sophia-Gordon’s hallways from the Multipurpose Room where the hearing was held—CARE making a substantial presence. Prior to the meeting’s commencement, they held a rally outside the dorm, with signs advocating love, upholding diversity, decrying intolerance. Senators entering the meeting got the chance to be inspired by their support or swayed by their dedication. An invocation of compassion, and how it is threatened by the latest ruling.

Early in the hearing, the resolution, which directly and openly, opposes the verdict, was declared unconstitutional by the TCUJ on the grounds that the new CSL ruling is automatically a part of the TCU Constitution, and thereby the resolution would violate its spirit (I wonder if the pun was intended). To vote on the resolution, via anything but abstention, would threaten a senator’s seat. Some sympathetic senators sought to reconcile the Constitutional violation with the resolution’s intention, via proposing an amendment striking the its clause relating to funding. Thus began a debate for hours, between those willing to risk impeachment to force Senate to take a hard-line stance against this legislation and those seeking to take that stance within the bounds of the Constitution. The amendment was ultimately rejected.

Citing a notion that pushing an unconstitutional resolution would be counter to the Senate’s purpose, TCU President Wyatt Cadley chose to halt the Senate’s official discussion of the matter for the semester, with an unofficial promise to return to it in January. His decision was challenged, the discussion continued for some time, but ultimately it was upheld. The representation of the student body will not voice official opposition to the CSL policy until 2013. In the wake of silence, CARE has led a response for students to don purple, either armbands or clothes, in solidarity.

The community outside Tufts has a tainted view of what is happening on this campus. The “Tufts” voice that has been given the megaphone is one of a select part of the administration, whose decision in no way seems to be representative of the needs of the student body. With the Senate’s standstill, that body was not given the same courtesy. Prospective students applying as well as those already admitted now see a glimmer of religious life on campus as one that depends upon the institutionalization of discrimination in order to best function. Subverted are the many voices of those on-campus religious leaders who would shout, “No, we are welcoming, in our membership and in our leadership.” Subverted, for the month until the students are through with finals and back from the break, until the senate reconvenes, until administrative channels reopen, are the voices of dissent.

This conversation must continue. And the responsibility therein has fallen upon the individual activists, the personal voices, in the Tufts community. Five weeks: the seemingly voiceless must not go unheard.

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Notes from the Underclass: Eric Schlosser

by Walker Bristol on November 27, 2012

Continuing Walker Bristol’s column on social activism at Tufts, throughout Greater Boston, and beyond.

“Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color between master and slave.” – Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

It isn’t merely the congruent indictments of the injustices and repugnancies of our food production monoliths that lead reviewers to, time and time again, deem Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser as Sinclair’s heir, but perhaps something more subtle. A theme central to Sinclair’s writing (intended or otherwise) that too often goes unmentioned, at least colloquially: the recognition of the seemingly calm but inevitably unequal society under capitalism.

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Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

Schlosser, an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and The Nation, illuminates an industry not only wrought with processing practices marred by a quantity-and-revenue-over-quality-and-sanitation mantra, but one wherein that mantra further results in a disregard for and exploitation of the proletariat that comprises the fast food workforce.

In a particularly telling passage of Fast Food Nation, Schlosser outlines the root of the owner-worker gap:

“In recent years conflicts between franchises and franchisors have become more common. As the American market for fast food grows more saturated, restaurants belonging to the same chain are frequently being put closer to one another. Franchisees call the practice ‘encroachment’ and angrily oppose it. Their sales go down when another outlet of the same chain opens nearby, drawing away customers. Most franchisors, on the other hand, earn the bulk of their profits from royalties based on total sales – and more restaurants generally means more sales… [and] the contracts offered by fast food chains often require a franchisee to waive his or her legal rights to file complaints [to this end] under state law.”

With relevance to this column, as I’ve discussed before, the emergent inequality of this century seems to be most divided along the lines of income and influence. The elite class, in the form of “franchisors” in the above passage, exploit for profit those below them—the “franchisees”, the employees, even the consumers. Not to say their corruption is always drawn so clearly, or even is in this example, but rather that Schlosser names this disparity—the distance between the franchisors that allows them to comfortably exploit the well-being of the underclass—as a necessary function of the capitalistic environment. A disparity that naturally incites tension, and in that tension is borne protest and resistance.

Eric Schlosser will be speaking on food justice in Cohen Auditorium at 8pm on November 27th (tomorrow) as a part of the Tufts Hillel Moral Voices lecture series. Tickets are free and can be retrieved with a valid Tufts ID at the Aidekman Box Office.

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Notes from the Underclass: “Twilight of the Elites”

by Walker Bristol on November 13, 2012

Continuing Walker Bristol’s weekly column on social activism at Tufts, in Greater Boston, and beyond.

“We are cursed with an overclass convinced they’re scrappy underdogs.”

In America, the emperor is without clothes (sometimes it seems like he spends a lot of time that way—must be getting cold) but across the political spectrum, no one is quick to say so. There’s a reason spell-check didn’t recognize the word “overclass” in the above quote: discussing how our meritocratic elites are distant from, and in their distance have failed the rest of American society, is outright non-mainstream.

Chris Hayes’s Twilight of the Elites identifies this as a more pointed problem than mere class inequality. It plagues each of our society’s many institutions based in meritocracy—described by it’s coiner, Labour Party thinker Michael Young, in his dystopian Rise of the Meritocracy, as equating merit and success with “intelligence-plus-effort”. Young actually mocks the idea itself, presenting a future wherein people are literally selected based on scientifically identifiable “intelligence”. In Twilight, Hayes—currently the host of MSNBC’s Up with Chris—argues not that we’re in danger of meeting such a 1984esque fate, but rather that these institutions cannot function in a free and open democracy like America’s, and are bound to collapse if the tension-inducing distance between the elite and the proletariat of the American meritocracy is upheld.

Courtesy of Salon.com

Courtesy of Salon.com

But as I mentioned earlier: the failure of these elites, and thereby the failure of the meritocracy in producing them, is a systemic problem that manifests as water to us fish. Both major parties agree that our meritocracy is stable, hence why, for example, education reform seems to find support from either side. Hayes makes the argument that the “myth of equal opportunity”, in a system that “cedes inequality”, naturally produces corruption and incompetence at the top. Not that our overclass is without ambition and intelligence—rather that when our institutions reward those virtues at the expense and slander of those equally perseverant who occupy the underclass, the elites inflate their false sense of self and can easily ignore the plight of those they stand upon. Bring on the manipulation of Libor (we deserve the power to influence the derivatives markets because we made it to these seats by our own bootstraps). Bring on the denial of manmade global climate change (we’re secure in our privileged positions and don’t see the subtle effects of global warming, so it must be a ruse). Bring on the Kerrys and Romneys.

Central to Hayes’s thesis, and a prescription for change, is that salvation could manifest if the tremendous distance between the overclass and the rest was removed. If, for instance, “Ben Bernanke or Alan Greenspan were in a neighborhood where…they were walking down their street every morning and seeing foreclosure signs,” perhaps these executives of the Federal Reserve, the elites of our central bank, would have nailed the subprime crisis earlier and harder.

Even in non-meritocratic institutions, this distance destroys accountability and compassion, inspiring dishonesty and corruption. Hayes writes:

“The dysfunction revealed by the crisis decade extends even past the government and the Fortune 500. The Catholic Church was exposed for its systematic policy of protecting serial child rapists and enabling them to victimize children. Penn State University was forced to fire its beloved football coach—and the university president—after it was revealed that much of the school’s sports and administrative hierarchy had looked the other way while former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky allegedly raped and abused young boys on its own property…“I’m 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, acquaintance of Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation,” wrote Thomas Day, days after the Penn State scandal broke. “And I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parent’s generation.””

Twilight threads together the shortcomings of our divided institutions with the divisions in American society proper, and in doing so prescribes a paradigm shift brought on by social activist movements in the underclass, as they have done so in the past. Both the New Deal reforms and the civil rights evolution of the mid-20th century came, Hayes notes, as a result of tremendous inequality (be it wealth, race, gender, sexual orientation) and the insurrection of the oppressed against their failed leaders. The wedding of these achievements, an era where the somewhat equal distribution of wealth of the early 1900’s, and the equal distribution of social rights that is now coming to a fore of the political discourse, may coexist, is on Hayes’s horizon. The path in that direction demands a megaphone on the voices of those at the bottom, to bridge the distance that keeps those above feeling secure in their vices.

Chris Hayes will be speaking alongside The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates Tuesday, November 13th, at 7pm in MIT’s Simmons Hall Multipurpose Room. Details can be found on The Atlantic website.

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Notes from the Underclass: Against Austerity this Election Day

by Walker Bristol on November 5, 2012

Continuing Walker Bristol’s column on social activism at Tufts, around Boston, and beyond.

We saw the heartbreaking images captured amid Sandy. Many of us struggle to breathe fiscally, underwater (or soon to be) in student loan debt or lying awake worrying that the next stage in our lives will be merely scraping by, unable to live out our passions and values. Lies from megacorps and lenders and banks took money out of our infrastructure and working class and into the hands of a class of elites who, in seeking political gain, casually toss it along to a Pentagon that even itself admits to being overbudgeted. There is an unsettling distance between where the country’s funding lies and where it is desperately needed.

I’ve mentioned it before, but Question 4 in Medford, and 5 in Somerville, seeks to begin bridging this incongruency. The Budget for All, promoted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, invests in job creation through direct hire programs for students, in clean energy through tax incentives, in surface transportation and an “infrastructure bank”. Achieving deficit reduction through abolishing tax cuts for top earners and capital gains benefits, it further seeks to remove private funding from politics to work towards a fairer electoral system. The question is indeed nonbinding, and simply instructs the state rep or senator to consider the budget, but puts a megaphone to the progressive voice in the political structure and begins stepping towards a reformation of a broken system.

Last point: Budget for All is not alone in beginning the process to counter austerity. On Somerville ballots, Question 4 “would generate funds to support parks and open space, affordable housing, and historic preservation in Somerville.” Distinct from Budget for All, this question is binding: it would add Somerville to the Community Preservation Act (already adopted by hundreds of cities across the state), using funding from a 1.5% surcharge on property taxes (the first $100,000 dollars of assessed value being exempt). It would use these funds to revive the Somerville community, building a safer space for families and long-time residents, as well as bridging the gaps between them and short-term residents like students.

Ballot questions and local elections are the epitome of the “why your vote matters” motif. Make damn sure you don’t enter the polls Tuesday and have to make an electoral decision on something you don’t recognize.

Below a video explaining the referendum along with several pictures captured from a Budget for All Coalition at the Somerville Theater, featuring representatives from Massachusetts Peace Action and the American Friends Service Committee.

Cambridge City Councilor Marjorie Decker endorsed the Budget for All.

Cambridge City Councilor Marjorie Decker endorsed the Budget for All.

Massachusetts State Senator for Somerville and Cambridge Pat Jehlen also spoke for Mass Peace Action

Massachusetts State Senator for Somerville and Cambridge Pat Jehlen also spoke for Mass Peace Action

Friends Service Committees Paul Shannon and Mass Peace Actions Cole Harrison explained the referendum to the large crowd.

Friends Service Committee's Paul Shannon and Mass Peace Action's Cole Harrison explained the referendum to the large crowd.

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Notes from the Underclass: Towards a Culture of Consent

by Walker Bristol on October 26, 2012

Continuing Walker Bristol’s column on social activism at Tufts, throughout Greater Boston, and beyond.

Potential trigger warning.

Before hundreds of faces, beneath newfound sunlight, atop the stairs of the gates to Granary Burying Ground, across Tremont Street from the Daybreak Pregnancy Resource center, a voice: “being a feminist is about choice—not dictation.”

Protestors gather on Tremont Street

Protestors gather on Tremont Street

Nicki Morris was illuminating the injustices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, such as Daybreak, pro-life non-profits that dot the country and impart onto pregnant women already facing an incredibly difficult decision some incredible misinformation—including myths about abortions heightening the risk of breast cancer and leading to sterility, taking advantage of and shaming someone in an unfortunate—indeed terrifying—situation.

It’s a narrative that’s been told elsewhere. Of all the truth in Morris’s zinger, it was only a single jigsaw piece in the larger theme of the day.

October 13th’s March Against Rape Culture and Gender Inequality told personal narratives of rape survivors from the bandstand of the Boston Common. These narratives demanded equal pay outside the Massachusetts State House, and  condemned slut-shaming and fat-shaming at Macy’s Downtown Crossing. The crowd was a variety of identities, illustrating the interconnectedness of oppression as transgender, LGBTQ, and people of color spoke about their own unique plights, and how this culture of rape had uniquely subverted them.

This notion of “rape culture” is particularly unsettling, yet not well understood beyond circles advocating women’s rights. In short, it refers to a society in which rape is egregiously and incorrectly categorized (wherein some forms of non-consensual sex, like drunk sex, aren’t considered rape), fictionalized (wherein “rape” evokes dark figures in dark alleys rather than the vastly more common incidence of perpetrators who knew the victims personally beforehand), and mishandled (wherein rapists are told by law enforcement they’ll get away with it).

Slutwalk, the forerunner to the Oct. 13th march, began and continues worldwide as an educational protest against rape culture. Women might dress in the clothes they were raped in, or write, on their clothes, bodies, or signs, phrases their assailant said to them during the attack. The goal is to draw attention to the absurd misconceptions that surround the issue—that women dressed like “sluts” are the ones often targeted (and somehow thereby invite sexual assault) or that we ought to be teaching our daughters how not to get raped rather than our sons not to rape. Slutwalks are intimately personal—and counter-protested (last year in Boston by a “Pimpwalk” mocking the survivors).

Marching through the Common

This march was renamed from Slutwalk for a number of reasons, among them some people uncomfortable with reclaiming the term, others because of potentially inherently racial connotations the term evokes. This particular protest was distinct in more than just the name—it was highly politicized. Not unexpected—we’re on the verge of elections—nor is it necessarily bad. Politics are an utterly imperative element in building a safer culture. But the presence of groups like Occupy and the International Socialists, obviously well-meaning, seemed to imbue in the march a more general response to oppression than might be effective in fighting rape culture itself.

It can be boiled down to a mode of strategy: in fighting oppression, you ought to always juggle your personal narrative with how that narrative intertwines with that of others. This march was absolutely necessary, but led myself and some others present to wonder if a Consent Walk would follow sometime in the future, to illuminate precisely those subjugated by rape culture and inspire solidarity. Both marches are distinct, but both are necessary.

At Tufts, on October 25th, the Panhellenic Council sponsored Take Back the Night, a somber rally on the Tisch Library roof, against sexual violence and assault. College campuses feel the greatest weight of Rape Culture–with one in four women expected to experience sexual assault by their senior year, upwards of 84% of whom knew their assaulter. This is imminent. This demands our attention. Our voices in the air, our bodies in the streets: towards a consent culture, a culture safe for women, should be where we all direct our gaze.

“Rape Culture” as elucidated by an anonymous speaker in the march’s opening speeches: Listen here.

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Notes from the Underclass: Coming Out Day

by Walker Bristol on October 16, 2012

Continuing Walker Bristol’s column on social activism at Tufts, throughout Greater Boston, and beyond.

VIDEO COLUMN | NFTU, COMING OUT DAY.

Quick point for clarity: the Maine initiative may be best described as potentially the first “ballot victory” for same-sex marriage. Note that grassroots organizing and mobilization certainly played a (the) pivotal role in many of the past referenda, but while, for instance, California experienced a supreme court ruling (later overturned by a ballot measure, Prop 8), the upcoming vote in Maine–and Washington–could mark the first state(s) to legalize same-sex marriage through democratic election. A proposed amendment to emphasize existing legislation against same-sex marriage will be on ballots in Minnesota.

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Notes from the Underclass: Harmony’s March

by Walker Bristol on October 8, 2012

Continuing Walker Bristol’s column on social activism at Tufts, throughout Greater Boston, and beyond.

A particularly unsettling sound chimed Saturday afternoon, on the Tremont Street edge of Boston Common. As dozens of people armed with placards and cameras and megaphones—some even masked—began to congregate in the park, a faint jingling of a change jar could be heard—far louder than normal, it seemed. It belonged to a young woman of color, sitting on a suitcase not far from the crowd. Asking for help. This faint ring was unsettling precisely because it was a simple reminder: as protesters gathered to demand justice for those our society has wronged overseas, the suffering of those our society has failed at home—our neighbors—is ever-present.

This weekend marks eleven years—and upwards of $573 billion—of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Veterans from Afghanistan, and Iraq, face unprecedented mental health trauma, and U.S. soldier suicides reached levels never before seen in 2011. Pakistani and Yemeni civilians—children—live in fear of publicly congregating in groups of more than a few, at risk of drawing another unmanned drone attack to their front lawn.

The American plutocracy is to be held accountable by those she claims to represent. Amid a musky October afternoon, in consumer-packed downtown Boston, hundreds of civilians, among them veterans, journalists, and musicians, gathered and marched through Downtown Crossing under a mantra of peace. An awfully general mantra indeed: an array of issues were illuminated—on signs, in chants, among protesters (occasionally inciting respectful disagreement)—with the brightest spotlight on the war in Afghanistan, as well as the plight of the Palestinian nation, NATO attacks on Syria and Iran, unmanned drone warfare in impoverished countries like Pakistan and Yemen, and—perhaps most importantly—the interrelationships between all of these conflicts.

The march began down Tremont Street, capturing the attention of tour groups and moviegoers, police cooperating with the protesters as they directed traffic to compensate. “Money for health and education! Not for wars and occupations!”—nor, for “corporations”, or “deportations”, as the chants evolved. A large, foam plane labeled “Drone” was carried in the midsection, surrounded by masked figures, emphasizing the no-prejudice tactic that characterizes UAV attacks. The march curved into the Financial District, stopping a couple SL5 buses, filled with curious bystanders who watched as a “No War on Iran” banner passed their windows. Nonviolent protest—onlookers had little choice but to confront the tough questions.

A suited Hyatt manager—presumably alerted beforehand—was waiting outside his hotel when the march arrived and paused at his doorstep. A shout: “Boycott Hyatt!”, echoing the recent call made by UNITE HERE, a union representing hotel workers. A speaker emerged, and denounced the chain for “union-busting”, for sanctioning the abuse and sexual harassment of its workers. Subcontracting, he later explained, particularly exploits already subjugated immigrant workers, many of whom have fled countries in the wake of U.S.-sanctioned invasions and attacks. Interconnectedness. Even as the march moved onwards, the manager’s stance and expression remained constant (eerily so, reminiscent of Gus from Breaking Bad).

Veterans for Peace marching on Tremont Street

Veterans for Peace marching on Tremont Street

Among the many organizations present and supporting the rally were the United National Antiwar Coalition, Code Pink, United for Justice with Peace, and Occupy Boston—unencamped, nevertheless fully breathing and operating. But the breadth of foci, although making for a tidal wave of content, never drew the protest too far away from it’s central theme of anti-imperialism. Bill Bateman, a construction worker and a part of the Rhode Island People’s Assembly, saw labor concerns—like those of Hyatt workers—as inspiration to his support for peace. “I know what it takes—the blood, sweat, and tears, and all the money—to build buildings and construct a society,” he remarked. “That’s why it’s so sad to see Syria and other places turned to rubble by NATO forces.”

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Column: On All Sides is Sorrow

by Walker Bristol on September 29, 2012

The first piece in Walker Bristol’s Activism Column

It was unheard of that tens of thousands of Americans died in 1987 from complications due to HIV/AIDS, yet the number would inevitably skyrocket in the years following. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the only U.S. institution with the power to approve drugs for mainstream distribution, was lugging forward at a velocity at upwards of ten years per approval. In other countries, it took roughly nine months to okay AIDS-counteracting drugs such as dextran sulfate – which was, at the time, available for two decades over the counter in Japan. Ten years of bureaucracy, of neglect, of deaths in Greenwich Village streets. “Every report was written in longhand,” said playwright-activist Larry Kramer noted, speaking on the FDA trails in an interview with PBS. “People want to know why it took so long? That’s why. Stupid things like that.”

In a nutshell: amid an outbreak, those responsible dragged their feet, and people died. Enter the response.

A new documentary from David France, “How to Survive a Plague”, recounts the journey of ACT UP—the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—in their fight to streamline drug approval and production, as well as stimulate a national conversation on the disease which was suffered by the AIDS community.

The past three decades have seen ACT UP stage extraordinary direct action to incite this change—drawing the public gaze to the oppressed, and the gaze of those in power toward how they were complicit in that oppression. With a model that served as the forerunner to the likes of Occupy Wall Street (and eventually led to an alliance between the two), ACT UP let the voice of those subjugated by hatred and disease emerge, and eventually relieved many of them of that burden.

Photo courtesy of

Photo courtesy of actupny.org

ACT UP emerged in the spring of 1987, with their first demonstration outside Wall Street’s Trinity Church. They demanded the FDA release, at affordable prices, a set of particular drugs identified as potential treatment, as well as the “immediate establishment of a coordinated, comprehensive, and compassionate national policy on AIDS.” The film depicts mass arrests by the NYPD—and protesters shouting memorably from the cop cars: “We are angry! We want action!” On that day, March 24th, seventeen people were arrested. But not without consolation: the FDA shortened its drug approval process by two years shortly thereafter.

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