By Han Powell

Inspired by Sarah Schulman’s recent workshop, “Let The Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, NY 1987-1993, Building a World from Oral History,” Han Powell explores the importance of joy and pleasure as tools for resistance, and asks what we can learn from AIDS activism about sustaining and fueling movements for change.

“If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.” - Emma Goldman, paraphrased from her 1931 autobiography, Living My Life 

“There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy.” - adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

ACT UP—the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—is one of the longest standing HIV/AIDS activist coalitions in the United States, formed in response to social neglect, government negligence, and the complacency of the medical establishment during the 1980s. In Sarah Schulman’s recent workshop, “Let The Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, NY 1987-1993, Building a World from Oral History,” she shared her insights from interviewing nearly 200 surviving members of ACT UP over the course of decades. In reflecting on the legacy of that work and ACT UP’s embrace of pleasure and eroticism in sustaining movements for change, consider these words an invitation - an invitation to the hottest party, and an invitation to reflect on the spaces that bring you joy. How are those spaces transformative? What aspects of those spaces do you want to bring to the rest of the world, to carry with you into the future?

As Schulman noted in her workshop, the initial community response to the AIDS crisis in the early ‘80s was to organize social services and practical support for those with the virus. The turning point toward political action came with Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. Not only was the government allowing the mass death of LGBTQ+ people to continue through inaction, the landmark decision made it clear that gay sex would continue to be criminalized. In outrage, people took to the streets en masse—born out of this collective surge, ACT UP was founded in 1987. 

In the face of the Hardwick ruling, public expressions of queer sexuality were an act of political defiance, and ACT UP wielded sexual freedom as both a tool and a driving force within the movement. In the oral history project’s accompanying documentary by Jim Hubbard, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, coalition member Maxine Wolfe describes ACT UP as the “combination of serious politics and joyful living.” One of the many strategies deployed by members was to destigmatize queer sex and pleasure by forcing it into the public sphere. Mass makeouts at town halls were one way that ACT UP drew media coverage, which the coalition then used as a platform to list their demands for structural change.

As Jim Eigo recalls in his oral history interview, “ACT UP was an erotic place. In some ways, [the Monday meetings were] the first place that you could celebrate sexuality again after AIDS hit.” The coalition’s commitment to sexual liberation was a draw for young people to get involved—protests were frequently followed by dance parties, and because the coalition centered on sexual health, ACT UP was one of the safest places to meet partners and potential hookups. There was no stigma around using protection, and as Jim phrases it in his interview, “safe sex was a given.” Pleasure was at once a means for LGBTQ+ people to reclaim agency over their sexual health, a political tool to be strategically deployed through coordinated action, and a sustaining force that provided necessary balance to the daily grief and frustration.

The queer experience, like the experience of so many people forced to the fringes of society, has often been one of seeking out love and joy within a system that only gives cause for grief, anger, and fear—making space for those emotions in your body, in your relationships, and in your community. How do our movements hold space for that multiplicity? How can we learn from the joyous, dancing, fucking queers that came before us?

Allow me to turn the story Southward, and situate it in my home state of Florida. I completed my undergraduate studies in Orlando, a city rich with queer nightlife and history. In the wake of the Pulse Nightclub shooting—a mass murder at a gay nightclub on June 12, 2016 that took the lives of 49 people and robbed Orlando’s LGBTQ+ community of their sense of safety—I interviewed multiple generations of LGBTQ+ people about the role that nightclubs played as safe spaces for activist efforts and community building throughout the city’s history. As someone who found acceptance and came into my queer identity in the Orlando club scene, I know firsthand how acutely we felt the loss of those spaces. The interviews reflected a collective need to return to gay clubs despite the fear and grief, a willingness to endure the metal detectors and police presence and breathe through the panic attacks, the shared habit we developed of locating the nearest exit in every vibrant, strobing room, just in case we needed to run. In spite of everything, we returned to begin healing.

Talking to older members of the LGBTQ+ community in Orlando, they traced their deep connection to Orlando nightlife back to the ‘80s. During the AIDS crisis, some of the only communal spaces available to the queer community were gay clubs and bars. Parliament House Motor Inn, a gay resort, nightclub, and popular cruising spot, was a common site for AIDS fundraisers in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Community members threw drag shows and balls to raise awareness about HIV, distribute condoms, and help cover medical costs of PWAs (People with AIDS). They hosted AIDS memorials in those same clubs, and read the names of the growing list of the dead using the same mics into which they belted Whitney on disco nights. Clubs were still for dancing, cruising, and performing, but they were also sites of communal grieving, a space to share outrage, share resources, and spark action.

I ask you to breathe deep and place yourself there: feel the music pulsing beneath your skin, your friends and lovers dancing and dying side by side. Imagine buying a drink for the cute butch at the bar, knowing every 50 cent vodka soda will go toward potentially life-saving medication for a friend, or toward affording someone a degree of comfort in their final days. Hold both of these realities within yourself, all while facing the knowledge that you could be the next beneficiary of the fundraisers, the next desperately ill person in need of community care. Feel that enormous precarity, then open yourself up to the release of dancing, of making out with a stranger, of feeling good in defiance of that fear. 

This article is an invitation for you to reimagine your personal activism, to recognize the importance of balance in the longevity of movements for social change and structural upheaval. When the needle is tipped so far toward violence, erasure, and loss in our collective histories, it is our task to shove it in the other direction with passion and force. 

Feminist theorist adrienne maree brown writes in Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good that “our imaginations—particularly the parts of our imaginations that hold what we most desire, what brings us pleasure, what makes us scream yes—are where we must seed the future, turn toward justice and liberation, and reprogram ourselves to desire sexually and erotically empowered lives.” Pleasure helps us envision the future we want to create and live within. It expands our capacity for imagination and gives us permission to dream. What would it look like to center joy in activist movements? To view joy as one of many valid, actionable forms of resistance to oppression? 

ACT UP recognized that joy and pleasure had as much value to the movement as protests, picket lines, and pamphlets. Their pleasure was an integral part of their resistance—they used it to raise hell and, in turn, hold government officials and public institutions accountable and enact tangible change. In reflecting on the legacy of ACT UP, we have to recognize joy and pleasure as being as fundamental to our survival as sharing and distributing resources. Joy is a resource, a right, an antidote, and a tool for our collective liberation.

ACT UP New York holds weekly meetings every Monday at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan. To get involved, you can find more information on their website. 

Hannah (Han) Powell (they/she) is an artist and filmmaker joining OHMA from unceded Tocobaga land in St. Petersburg, Florida. Their work is grounded in the tradition of queer Southern organizing and movement building—they are currently working on an oral history project documenting the stories of queer and trans Floridians doing activist and creative work in their communities, which you can find at queerflorida.life.