ACTUP/NY 1993

January 5, 1993: DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists) inaugurates AIDS Community Television, a weekly television series & media network for AIDS activism.

January 16, 1993: Fifteen members of ACT UP/NY and Treatment Action Group disrupt Hoffmann-LaRoche's Community Advisory Board meeting at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in Time Square to protest the pharmaceutical company's refusal to heed the conerns of the AIDS community. Two activists are arrested and charged with more that $7,000-worth of damages to the conference room.

February, 1993: ACT UP protests at the New York State AIDS Institute against the proposed lab based name reporting of persons with HIV. We demand the use of unique identifiers to protect confidentiality.

February 9, 1993: One-hundred and fifty ACT UP members along with TAG, target Hoffman IaRoche in Nutley, NJ. The demonstrators chain themselves to gates and trucks to block access ot the office complex, resulting in 23 arrests.

March 1993: The Barbra McClintock Project to find a cure for AIDS is unveiled by the McClintock Working Group. 100,000 copies fo the proposal to restructure the national AIDS research efforts are disseminated.

March 1993: ACT UP New York joins hemophiliacs to protest an awards dinner held by the National Hemophilia Foundation.

April 1, 1993: YELL demonstrates against Irene Impellizzeri at the Columbus Club in New York.

April 4 & 8, 1993: ACT UP members bring the first Haitian Refugees with a T-cell count of less than 200 to New York from the Guantanamo detention center. In the first week alone we house 22 Haitian PWA's.

April 23, 1993: The Lesbian Caucus forces Donna Shalala, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services to meet with 15 Lesbians with AIDS. Several hundred protesters gather outside getting coverage in Newsweek

April 24 & 25, 1993: ACT UP joins a million lesbians and gay men at the March on Washington. ACT UP/NY stages a demonstration with more than 1,000 activists from across the country at the headquarters of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturer's Association, accusing the pharmaceutical industry of adhering to profit-driven research, price gouging, corporate secrecy and inaction while allowing people with AIDS to die. During the demonstration, activists scaled the building and hung bodies representing people with AIDS killed by drug company policies. ACT UP organizes the Hands Around the Capitol event to draw attention to AIDS, and march with other AIDS groups to the Mall, stopping for a die-in at the White House.

April 30, 1995: ACT UP members go to Guantanamo, Cuba, to continue working to win the release of Haitian refugees. After activists are threatened with jail by U.S. military personnel, White House aide Bob Hattoy and General Colin Powell force the military to allow them to stay for an extra ten days.

May 1993: After three and a half years of pressure by ACT UP, the Social Services Administration changes the disability regulations for people with HIV, including the addition of a wide range of women-specific opportunistic infections.

June 1993: Judge Johnson closes Guantanomo Bay Detention Camp. ACT UP members bring 78 Haitian refugees to New York and find temporary housing for them during the summer. By September, all the refugees are housed in permanent, medically appropriate housing.

June 1993: Members of the McClintock Working Group attend the New Directions in AIDS Research Summit in Madison, Wisconsin. The proposal is presented to the collected researchers and activists and featured prominently in press coverage of the event.

July 1, 1993: The Marys affinity group carries out the second political funeral for an activist who has died of AIDS. Two hundred demonstrators travel to Washinton, DC, to fulfill 35-year-old ACT UP and Marys affinity group member Tim Baily's final wishes for a plitical funeral in front of the White House. After an emotional three hour standoff, plans are thwarted when police attempt to wrestle the casket containing Bailey's embalmed body away from activists in front of the Captiol Building. Two are arrested including Bailey's brother from Ohio.

July 16, 1993: In the third political funeral for a member of ACT UP New York affinity group The Marys, the coffin of Jon Greenburg, 37, co founder of ACT UP's Alternative and Holistic Treatment Committee and director of TAP (Treatment Alternatives Project) was carried through the streets of the East village to Tompkins Square Park in New York City, where personal eulogies were heard by more than 200 activists, friends and family members. " I don't want an angry political funeral," wrote Greenberg. "I just want you to burn me in the street and eat my flesh

September 12, 1993: The PWA Housing Committee organizes a demonstration to make AIDS housing an issue in New York City Council elections. One-hundred and fifty people march from Sheridan Square to City Council member Antonio Pagan's election headquarters, highlighting his opposition to AIDS housing projects. Though Pagan wins re-election, a new coalition of AIDS activists, squatters and community activistss is formed.

September, 1993: Members of the McClintock Working Group hit the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Conference in New York, hanging a banner reading "What About A Cure? Demand McClintock" during a speech by Dan Rather. The following day activists pose as journalists to meet with new AIDS Czar Kristine Gebbie who says she has read the McClintock project and is considering its proposals.

September 30, 1993: Chanting "MicroGeneSys, AIDS Extortionists!", fourteen AIDS activists are arrested after they shackle themselves to the front door and gate at MicroGeneSys, Inc., in Meriden, CT, to protest a $20 million government appropriation to study the company's controversial AIDS vaccine.

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