The finding aid I decided to discuss for this week is ACT UP \/ LA which is an organization dedicated to eliminating the stigma surrounding AIDs. ACT UP \/ LA was active from 1987-1995 where it worked to\u00a0defined itself as “a grass-roots, democratic, militant, direct action organization dedicated to creating positive changes around AIDS in federal and local government, the media, and medical industries through non-violent public protests.” This collection consists of\u00a0administrative records, documentation of actions, and resource materials, where the records specifically include minutes, financial records, photographs, press releases, membership materials, newsletters, clippings, fliers, and subject files. The organization focused on improving AIDs healthcare through activism. On December 4th, 1987 the formation of the organization was inspired by ACT UP \/ New York as well as the 1987 Washington march which led to its establishment. ACT UP \/ LA successfully operated a public office, published a newsletter, had a mailing list of approximately 2,200 names, and met weekly in the city of West Hollywood. ACT UP \/ LA followed a non violent way of protesting and promoting their organization and offered civil disobedience training and support teams were formed to track confrontations and arrests.<\/p>\n
Based on the materials provided in this collection, the narrative that is being told here is one of creating change through activism. There were several demonstrations that ACT UP \/ LA was successful in executing for example they conducted a week-long vigil, complete with tents and a soup kitchen, outside the Los Angeles County Hospital. As a result a sustained campaign was launched leading to the creation of a dedicated AIDS unit at the hospital where eventually in September 1989 a 20-bed unit was opened. By looking at this collection you are able to get a surface understanding of the what was done in order to fight for the rights of the LGBT community. The collection includes a long summary of the history of ACT UP \/ LA as well as photos from the demonstrations which gives a visual explanation of the narrative. While this collection is all about the activism that took place to better improve AIDs healthcare, there is a lack of first hand accounts. Having first hand accounts from members of the LGBT community at the time would provide a stronger narrative by giving insight into what the efforts meant to them and how it affected them. Perhaps exploring more National Gay and Lesbian archives would provide more insight into first hand experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The finding aid I decided to discuss for this week is ACT UP \/ LA which is an organization dedicated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1307","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\/1307","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\/162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}