{"id":1078,"date":"2017-10-15T19:22:29","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T02:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2017-10-15T19:22:29","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T02:22:29","slug":"act-uplos-angeles-records-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/2017\/10\/15\/act-uplos-angeles-records-2\/","title":{"rendered":"ACT UP\/Los Angeles Records"},"content":{"rendered":"

The archival collection I chose to explore for this blog post is titled ‘ACT UP\/ Los Angeles records’<\/a>. ACT UP stands for AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, and this collection documents both the actions and physical recordings of the coalition in Los Angeles from 1987 to 1995. Inspired by a branch of ACT UP in New York, the Los Angeles division of ACT UP met for the first time in West Hollywood in 1987; from there, they began to focus on awareness for AIDS and advocated for an improvement of AIDS healthcare services by means of media attention and non-violent action.\u00a0 Some of the records of this archive, which documents this activist group, includes photos, press releases, published articles, and call-to-action fliers.<\/p>\n

There are two historical narratives that are easiest to gauge from the raw data provided by this archive. The first is the historical narrative that takes ACT UP\/LA’s mission and existence at face value. ACT UP self-describes as “a grass-roots, democratic, militant, direct action organization dedicated to creating positive changes around AIDS in the federal and local government, the media, and medical industries through non-violent public protests”. The archive documents incidences of protest; for example, in 1989 ACT UP\/LA pushed the LA County Hospital to open a 20-bed unit for AIDS patients in the hospital by initiating a week-long vigil right outside its doors. The vigil inspired a extended campaign for the cause and ACT UP\/LA even disrupted an LA County Board of Supervisors meeting. This along with other occurrences of peaceful demonstrations against medical facilities often led to ACT UP\/LA members’ arrests, but the group slowly and surely racked up successes. This historical narrative says about the group exactly what their mission statement says about them, which is that they were a non-violent activist group working to improve medical treatment of AIDS in LA.<\/p>\n

The second historical narrative that is most apparent to me, is that this was a group championed by the LGBTQ community. ACT UP\/LA’s demonstrations attracted predominantly LGBTQ crowds, allowing people from the community to find a safe space within the greater Los Angeles area where a sickness affecting their friends, families, and sometimes even themselves, was being fought for. This historical narrative is also seen in the contributing institution that collected and published this archive, which is the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives of USC.<\/p>\n

A historical narrative which is not included would be the opposition to the movement of ACT UP\/LA. While treatment for people suffering from AIDS is commonplace and widely accepted today, this was not the case at the time ACT UP was created. It would be very difficult to find sources to tell the narrative of ACT UP\/LA’s opposition although a good place to begin might be the records of medical facilities in the periods of time between the beginning of ACT UP\/LA’s demonstrations and the beginning of AIDS treatment; these facilities were the target the organization hoped to change. Another resource might be to further dig into police records of the arrests of ACT UP\/LA demonstrations to look for any prejudices which could have contributed to the many arrests that took place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The archival collection I chose to explore for this blog post is titled ‘ACT UP\/ Los Angeles records’. ACT UP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}