Hear ACT-UP veteran organizer on the LGBTQ struggle

Friday, October 11
6:00 – 8:00 pm
Indianapolis Liberation Center

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For National Coming Out Day, we’re excited to host veteran ACT-UP organizer Darren Jurmé Allumiér, for a reflection and discussion on the legacy of ACT-UP in the LGBTQ+ struggle. Come learn from an activist who helped design mass mobilizations and direct action campaigns in the early years of ACT-UP.

In an interview with Laraine Sommella, organizer and gender studies scholar Maxine Wolfe recalls walking behind a concentration camp on wheels crafted, piloted, and animated by a then newly formed group of activists made up of individuals from the People With AIDS Coalition (PWA), a frustrated, politically-minded faction of Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), and members of the Lavender Hill Mob at New York City Pride in June 1987. Amidst a celebratory and largely apolitical crowd, the group of dedicated, grassroots organizers made themselves visible and known in the broader gay and queer rights activism landscape. Proudly and assertively marching alongside a barbed wire scene of forgotten patients and victims overseen by a cartoonish Ronald Reagan, ACT UP–the AIDS coalition to unleash power-had introduced itself to the world. In the months and years that followed, ACT UP would open local chapters in cities across the country and abroad, adopting a radical, direct-action approach to challenge stigma and fight for dignity and access to HIV/AIDS treatment.

Five years before the concentration camp float, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported what came to be known as the first instance of HIV/AIDS. That summer, The New York Times acknowledged the disease as a “rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals” in New York and California. At the time of publication, eight of the 41 people had already died, and by the end of 1981, 121 people had succumbed to the disease. Over the next 14 years, the sickness would kill at least 300,000 worldwide, disproportionately affecting Black and Brown, disabled, and LGBTQ+ people and those living at the intersections of these identities. To date, according to the World Health Organization, nearly 43 million people have died and over 40 million are currently infected worldwide.

Instead of recognizing and addressing an emerging global pandemic in the early 1980s, the U.S. ruling class pretended it wasn’t happening. The villainous culprits of this crisis are the usual suspects: the capitalist pharmaceutical manufacturers, CEOs, and corporate boards in the economic sphere and the homophobic, misogynistic, racist, and ableist conservative and liberal politicians in government. Gay men were deemed sexual deviants by right-wing demagogues and bigots, and immigrants and minorities were scapegoated–as happens during any capitalist crisis. As the fear spread like wildfire throughout the population, the government went along with the extreme homophobia and racism that filled the airways and newspapers, choosing silence over responding to the demands for more medical research, treatment, and dignity.

Among the mass movement of AIDS activists targeting central issues surrounding the crisis, ACT-UP mounted massive and militant actions to demand access to experimental treatments and drugs. In 1988, over 110 demonstrators were arrested while shutting down Wall Street. That October tens of thousands marched on Washington DC and shut down the Food and Drug Administration, demanding immediate action to manage prevention and spread of the disease. A year later, activists infiltrated the New York Stock Exchange and chained themselves to property, yet still the government failed and refused to fund programs for education, prevention, and treatment. Other tactics included occupations and disruptions at churches and storming the studio of CBS Evening News to chant “Fight AIDS, not Arab People!” as the network covered the early days of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Despite these early actions, instead of adopting a centralized plan based on science and reason, the ruling class stood by waiting for profitable opportunities as chaos ensued–a familiar response and one witnessed again at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What can we learn from the disciplined militancy of ACT-UP as we organize for universal healthcare and LGBTQ liberation today? What lessons can today’s organizers, movements, and coalitions take away from the decentralized organizational and operational structure of ACT-UP? How did their use of scientific research and theatre complement each other in a strategy that consisted of scientific and legal advocacy, art and advertising, and direct action? Come out to the Indy Liberation Center this National Coming Out Day we will collectively explore these questions and discuss how the opportunities and challenges experienced then can help us build the movement we need today.

About our featured speaker

Darren Jurmé Allumiér joined ACT-UP New York in May 1987 and served on both the Treatment & Data and Majority Action Committees. He was co-organizer of several civil disobedience actions in NYC, and was a national organizer of the “Seize the FDA” action in 1988. Upon joining ACT-UP, Darren changed his career trajectory from architectural preservation to direct medical care, working directly with those affected by the disease at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. Outside of NYC, he served as a co-founder of ACT-UP San Juan (Puerto Rico).

Darren later served as NY State Department of Health’s inaugural Program Manager for “ADAP Plus,” a revolutionary program providing free medical care and medications to anyone in NY with HIV making less than $55,000 per year. Darren was later appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo as Executive Director of the NY State Council on Graduate Medical Education. Subsequently, he was one of five Clinical Science Managers at Ares-Serrono Biotech (Switzerland) where he co-managed the research that led to the first-ever treatment for Wasting Syndrome in adults with AIDS, cancer, and organ transplants. Darren is now a student of comparative literature and literary translation at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.