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NARR: More than two hundred people filled the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building yesterday for a march commemorating ACT UP's 20th anniversary.
ACT: Act up fight back fight AIDS
NARR: The point of the march was to demand a national health care plan for all U.S. residents.
ACT: 50 people die every day because they don't have health insurance. Shame shame…..
NARR: ACT UP organizers led the crowd through frequent chants like this one. And in their characteristic in-your-face form of protest, ACT UP brought out the...
AMB: Body bags…
NARR: Organizers handed 50 inflated black garbage bags to marchers, representing the number that they say die each day because they lack basic health insurance. Marchers dragged the makeshift bags through the financial district to illustrate the potential fate of the uninsured. But many protestors, like this housing activist, seemed more interested in using the body bags to highlight their own issues.
ACT: That's the body bag, that' show they take people out of their apartment in body bags, they're dying out there. (Some of us gotta get arrested )letting them know that we need money for housing and medications.
NARR: Others called for an end to the war or the creation of new HIV outreach programs. The diverse voices in this rally show how much has changed since ACT UP began 20 years ago. Back then, AIDS drugs were still in development and people died relatively quickly. Now people with the virus often live for decades.
ACT: That's both a blessing and a curse.
NARR: Matthew Lesiur is with the New York AIDS Coalition, a statewide advocacy group.
ACT The epidemic shifted from a death sentence to a chronic disease, some of the sense of urgency went away with that.
NARR. That lack of urgency means that militant groups like ACT UP have seen their membership dwindle. Some have gone on to more mainstream policy organizations. But a core group of loyal activists remains… still angry about the toll that AIDS has taken on their friends and family. Midway through the march, they called out the names of the dead.
ACTS (22 sec): I call out the names of Alden McCain and Robert Ray Gorem. Robert Ward. Robert Rowsky. My brother in law, Sean Hernandez, my brother-in-law Sean Hernandez, Juanda Rivera, my best friend, Evan Readerman, Tom Cunningham, Michael Hirsh.
NARR: Younger AIDS activists haven't experienced this kind of trauma. But ACT UP founder Larry Kramer hopes that Thursday's protest represents a new, revivified, full-of-life ACT UP," full of the same fire that drew hundreds to fight for a single cause two decades ago.
In that spirit, about 30 people lay down in the middle of Broadway to defiantly finish yesterday's otherwise permitted march. One protestor refused police orders to stand up. Officers dragged him, screaming, to a police van. The others stood without a fight and allowed police to handcuff and arrest them.
SOC Sitara Nieves, Columbia radio news