“ACT UP! Fight back! Fight AIDS!” These words were first uttered in March of 1987, by the organization ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which was founded that year by the legendary queer activist Larry Kramer. The basis for ACT UP, however, was established in 1983 when Kramer wrote the l

There was an emergency happening that would not wait for things to be done the nice way. Gay men, bisexual men and transgender women, such as Angie Xtravaganza and Consuela Cosmetica. were dying.

Members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community and allies came together at New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center (then called the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center). Kramer asked the crowd if they wanted to start a group dedicated to political activism surrounding HIV and AIDS, and he got a resounding “Yes!” This group was the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.

There was already an organization that would eventually join ACT UP, the SILENCE=DEATH Collective, responsible for the famous “Silence = Death” poster with the pink triangle. Gay men and trans women were made to wear the pink triangle in [the Third Reich’s] concentration camps.

ACT UP was remarkable in the massive impact it had under the circumstances. Most people in the LGBTQIA2S+ community still wanted to remain in the closet around their sexual or gender identity or HIV+ status, or they wanted to focus on work such as one-on-one peer support for people with AIDS.

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HIV and AIDS were the worst modern tragedies that queer people faced. We must study the radical revolutionaries in order to avoid repeating that devastating epidemic again. ACT UP and its subsidiary Queer Nation serve as examples to LGBTQIA2S+ people of how to respond to unbearable loss and oppression — Fight back!