For this week’s blog post, I have decided to look into the ACT UP/Los Angeles Records collection. The acronym, ACT UP, stands for “AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power”. This activist group aims to improve the condition of AIDS healthcare. The Online Archive of California contains a collection of related documents that contains details of ACT UP historical accounts. The collection is organized into three main categories: administrative records, document of activities, and resource materials. This online collection orders these documents chronologically and provides an appropriate date per item. Each item is listed with a “Box” and “Folder” for further categorization purposes.
Based on the materials in this collection, I was able to find out who and what ACT UP is interacting with, such as, what organizations and events. These documents would be able to tell me what ACT UP truly spends their time on. As an activist group, ACT UP does participate in general politics, and they have worked towards beliefs such as anti-abortion and the improvement of women welfare. The collection also documented what fundraising events they held and participated to show their earned finances and participation in the community. In addition, the collection will tell me how ACT UP gains publicity and support from the community and newsletters and how the organization keeps accounts on what they are doing in order to reach their goal. Furthermore, there are photographic documentation.
If I based my narrative completely on records in this collection, I would be missing details on what took place during their meetings. Which would include what was discussed as well as what some concerns the community would have about AIDS healthcare. It would be interesting to know who their most important contributors were because it would say a lot about the foundation and support of the organization itself. Besides journalism, I would like to understand what the public thought about the ACT UP organization as they seem to be an activist group.
In order to address the gaps in the records, I would need to documentation or notes from their meetings. These notes would help me know what they like to discuss, what decisions were not made, and how they came about on agreeing on what actions to take. Having personal accounts and interviews about the group would help me understand more about the general public reaction to this activist group as well as personal relations.