ACT UP launches national coalition & Cranky Queer does a bunch of events in October/November!
Plus the ACT UP Nation launches with a call to action!
Making this quick so I get it out to you. I’m presenting at a bunch of things in the coming weeks, and I want to let you know about the new national coalition of ACT UP chapters.
I’m including info on onsite and online events. I’m also presenting at 2 additional academic conferences in Philly and San Francisco, so if you want info on those, drop me a line…
If you can swing it, please give a lil contribution for this work here: Ko-fi.com/crankyqueer, or become a newsletter subscriber:
FIRST UP:
Storytelling TOMORROW (Friday 10/24) ONSITE in Brooklyn!
How to Build a Fire is a community storytelling series. Come hang out for excellent stories, conversation, and drinks.
Friday, October 24 · 7 - 9pm EDT
Open Source Gallery Inc.
306 17th Street Brooklyn, NY 11215
I will be sharing a real life ghost story of love and lust, near-death, HIV, transcendence, kink, queer heaven and becoming a sex god. Yes, that is all one story…
This month’s theme is: Steady on! Those Candles are Wanted!
From Edgar Allan Poe to Lovecraft from Stephen King to Brian Evanson and everything in between, even those childhood moments, maybe at summer camp around a fire when someone told the dumbest thing you’ve heard but it still made your skin crawl, we have always loved a good ghost story. This spooky month for How to Build a Fire we’re digging in to what has made the hair stand up on the back of our necks, goosebumps, phobias, nightmares, the first time you saw a horror movie, etc. Have you come across the supernatural? And when were you most afraid?
and in other news:
ACT UP Nation issues call to action on federal budget battles
WE WILL NOT GO BACK! ACT UP NATION COALITION CALLS FOR
FULL FUNDING OF HIV/AIDS TREATMENT AND PREVENTION PROGRAMS INCLUDING MEDICAID
As a proud member of the ACT UP Philadelphia diaspora, I am grateful that these chapters — some of which have re-emerged in our current time — have come together to once again unite in anger to end the HIV/AIDS crisis.
In alliance with the Save HIV Funding campaign, ACT UP Boston, ACT UP Cleveland, ACT UP Denver, ACT UP New York, ACT UP Philadelphia and ACT UP Pittsburgh are demanding:
● Stop staffing and funding cuts to key federal HIV infrastructure by the Trump Administration
● Fight against cuts to HIV programs in the FY2026 Congressional budget
● Combat all efforts to restrict access to Medicaid, the largest provider of healthcare coverage for people living with HIV in the US
● End the violence and targeting of populations most likely to be affected by HIV andhealthcare cuts including transgender people, immigrants, low income and poor people, and racialized minorities.
They ask that “Anyone who is living with or cares about PLHIV (People Living with HIV)… join activist efforts like the ACT UP chapters and/or the national US Caucus of People Living with HIV.”
COMING SOON:
October 30 ONSITE in Philadelphia:
Kiyoshi Day Symposium!
Please join me in Philly next Thursday to see a sneak preview of the work-in-progress documentary about my mentor Kiyoshi Kuromiya (for which I was interviewed last year), followed by individual speakers and strategy discussion. Come eat outside with me at lunch!
ONLINE WORLDWIDE: November 17: We Declare - Turning “The People’s Declaration” HIV Demands into Actions
Honored to be a part of this powerful webinar — register here.
The People’s Declaration—currently with over 500 signatories, charts out a number of community priorities and demands—as noted below. Please join The Choice Agenda, The Legacy Project, and a fabulous global panel to discuss moving those demands into actions and accountability.
To date, the discourse surrounding these actions has focused largely on the devastation to grants, dollars, and institutions. Here, we center people instead—the communities who stand to suffer the harshest consequences of these actions. Here, we remind the world that the first letter in HIV stands for human.
We demand substantive, meaningful inclusion of community in every aspect of HIV research, from protocol development to study implementation to the dissemination of clinical trial results.
We demand diversity, equity, and inclusion amongst the scientific teams conducting HIV research.
We demand diversity, equity, and inclusion across all community stakeholder engagement activities.
We demand diversity, equity, and inclusion in the recruitment of clinical trial participants who accurately reflect the epidemic.
Click to read the full declaration and sign on if you haven’t already!
Moderator
Brian Minalga, Office of HIV/AIDS Network Coordination (HANC)
Panelists
Adrian Williams, AW DEI Consulting Inc
Asia Russell, Health GAP
JD Davids, JD Strategies, Patient Led Research Collaborative
Luciana Kamel, HIV Community Advocate, Brazil
Moses Supercharger, Joint Adherent Brothers and Sisters Against AIDS, Uganda
Rebecca Denison, Advocate, USA
ONLINE WORLDWIDE: Tuesday, November 25:
Overlooked Archives Reveal Lesbian Leadership and Lost Complexities of Gender and Loss in the ACT UP People with Immune System Disorders (PISD) Caucus
I was selected to give one of the monthly talks at the Society for the History of Women in the Americas: Gender & History in the Americas seminars. I’m quite honored and a bit nervous.
I’ll be presenting my research on the co-founding of the PISD Caucus by lesbians living with “chronic fatigue syndrome,” sharing some absolute treasures from archives about early cross-disease solidarity in ACT UP, talking about the intersection of the queer Left in HIV activism, opining about why solidarity efforts across conditions fell away in the face of relentless loss, and more!
NOTE: The listed time is for the UK, where the institute hosting the webinar is based:
STAY TUNED:
Brooklyn, first week of December, probably:
ONSITE and maybe HYBRID Reading with Emily Bass and Jennifer Avril
I’ll be reading at a local bookstore called The Lofty Pigeon, with my co-author Jen Avril, from our chapter in the Radical Communicators Network anthology, Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements.
We will be joined by our friend Emily Bass, author of To End a Plague: America’s Fight to End AIDS in Africa, and we’ll all discuss what the hell can we do now… And in the meantime, you can subscribe to Emily’s excellent newsletter on this platform to understand what is going on with global HIV under sweeping autocracy and funding cuts.
I’ll see if I can get someone to livestream if the store doesn’t.
wow you made it to the end! If you can swing it, please give a lil contribution for this work here: Ko-fi.com/crankyqueer, or become a newsletter subscriber: