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BY ANDREW SNIDERMAN

In print | Published October 30, 2003

On Sept. 14, 1989, five members of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, chained themselves to the VIP balcony in the New York Stock Exchange. Trading halted immediately.

One thousand activists converged on Wall Street that day to protest exorbitant prices for AIDS drugs set by profiteering pharmaceutical companies. Soon, prices for AZT, then the only effective drug to fight AIDS, fell precipitously.

Fourteen years later, ACT UP’s fight against AIDS continues, and Swarthmore has joined the campaign.

On Oct. 19, Jean Schneider ’06 participated in the annual 12-kilometer AIDS Walk in Philadelphia. The walk blends exercise with fund raising. Schneider raised more than $100 for “more than 40 organizations providing AIDS education, prevention and direct service care to people living with HIV in the nine-county Philadelphia region,” according the AIDS Walk Philly Web site.

“People were coming from a lot of different perspectives,” Schneider said. “I was pleasantly surprised by the number of high school students.”

Schneider spoke to a mother of an AIDS victim as well as numerous exercise buffs content to walk or run for a good cause.

Schneider is a leading member of a chapter of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, which emerged at Swarthmore this fall. The SGAC is the biggest student grassroots AIDS group in the United States. Its priorities include ensuring access to life-saving drugs for AIDS patients around the world, dropping illegitimate foreign debt and pressuring the United States into increasing AIDS-related foreign aid.

“We’re planning a number of events for this semester,” SGAC member Abena Mainoo ’06 said. “These will include two more postcard-writing campaigns focusing on debt relief and access to essential medicines, one all-campus teach-in on the week of Nov. 10 and a World AIDS day fundraiser on Dec. 1.”

The organization ACT UP combines letter-writing, lobbying, direct action, strategic press work and grassroots organizing in its effort to garner attention and support for people infected with AIDS.

In 1987, a group of predominantly white, gay men who were HIV-positive founded ACT UP. Not a single founding member is alive today.

Kate Krass, a member of the group since 1989, calls ACT UP the “best, fastest way to win against AIDS. It’s the best group in Philly and the best group in the country, and it has been for 10 years,” she said.

Allison Dinsmore, from Maryland, joined ACT UP Philly three years ago. She spends 10 to 20 hours a week working for ACT UP, in addition to her job as a massage therapist.

“ACT UP was founded by people with AIDS who looked at long-term strategy but who also had a strong sense of urgency,” Dinsmore said.

Today, about 40 people attend meetings every Monday, though many more participate in various campaigns, and thousands attend ACT UP rallies. Members include medical students, undergraduate students, the homeless and other volunteers like Dinsmore and Krass. Many members have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

“It’s easy to figure out your priorities when you’re constantly working with people with AIDS,” Dinsmore said.

ACT UP is currently organizing a demonstration on Nov. 24 protesting the Bush administration’s deadly policies for people with AIDS, both at home and abroad. It will revolve around “the undermining of the Global Fund for TB and malaria and [Bush’s] own global AIDS plan; the attacks on good prevention programs that reach out to queers, drug users and promotion of ‘abstinence-only’ programs; and the underfunding of the AIDS Drug Assistance Program — how most people in the U.S. get their AIDS drugs,” according to Dinsmore.

Last spring, during the state of the union address, President George W. Bush promised $10 billion in new international AIDS funding.

But Krass views the current administration’s AIDS initiative more as a public relations campaign than as a firm commitment to fight global AIDS.

Since the announcement, the United States has failed to fully fund the AIDS bill it authorized or to prod its allies to mobilize against AIDS.

There are currently 300,000 people outside the United States receiving drugs to combat AIDS, Krass said. “There is a capacity for 480,000 more people to receive treatment,” she added.

The Bush administration justified its billion-dollar cut in AIDS funding this year based on a lack of absorptive capacity of countries receiving foreign aid.

“It’s a lie that there is no absorptive capacity. The gap is money, not infrastructure,” Krass said.

The current administration’s plan calls for setting up new infrastructure by American non-governmental organizations to deliver aid. According to Krass, six million people will die from AIDS before the new Bush plan goes into effect.

Swarthmore activists should pay close heed to Krass’s accumulated wisdom from 14 years with ACT UP.

“Activist victories are completely different from victories for people with AIDS,” Krass said.

“The question is not, ‘What can we do?’ but ‘What will work?’ … You have to pick the most effective tool for the job,” Krass said.

Krass explained that not all forms of activism which generate press and make activists feel good are always very effective at changing policies.

“Is the boat full of drugs going to the afflicted country? Are their lives improving?” asked Krass. “This is what really matters.”

SGAC will be tabling today in Sharples, advocating relief of illegitimate debt for countries severely affected by the AIDS pandemic.

ACT UP meets every week at 13 Pine Street in the basement of St. Luke of Epiphany. They are organizing a demonstration on Nov. 24 in DC. Free buses leave Philadelphia at 8 a.m.

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