ABSTRACT
When the AIDS-activist organization ACT UP first began, we believed that hard work, education, diligent activism, and creativity would produce solutions to the AIDS crisis. We did not anticipate the extent to which the government would obstruct our every initiative. Carla Harryman has pointed out, the definition of who constitutes the public is rapidly changing. Now homeless people–that is, people with no private space, people who must live in public space–are being told that their homelessness is their private problem. That they are no longer part of the "general population." There's a small park across the street from the UN where people are allowed to demonstrate. But the police would not let us walk on the sidewalk to get to that spot. They began to arrest ACT UP members simply for standing. At the Lambda Literary Awards, Allen Barnett, author of The Body and Its Dangers, arrived in a wheelchair from Co-Op Care to receive his award.
