Knowing Anthony Fauci Better [2020 ed.]

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Knowing “Anthony Fauci” better.

About the Historic FDA Protest On October 11, 1988, Wojnarowicz and nearly 200 other AIDS activists who formed the coalition ACT UP, protested outside of FDA Headquarters, demanding that experimental AIDS drug therapies were a form of health care and access to that must be everyone’s right. ACT UP activists staged a protest in front of the FDA building and shielded its façade in banners. As a result of the protest, activists contend that the FDA and NIH began paying greater attention to those suffering from AIDS. According to LATimes, Police officers, wearing surgical gloves and helmets, started rounding up the hundreds of demonstrators and herding them into buses shortly after 8:30 a.m. Some protesters blocked the buses from leaving for 20 minutes. Authorities arrested at least 120 protesters, and demonstration leaders said they were aiming for 300 arrests by day’s end. “Hey, hey, FDA, how many people have you killed today?” chanted the crowd, estimated by protest organizers at between 1,100 and 1,500. The protesters hoisted a black banner that read “Federal Death Administration.”

About the October 11, 2017 Tribute In a tribute to the piece Silence = Death by David Wojnarowicz, Judy Swearingen will sew their mouth shut in an hour performance at the hands of professional piercer in front of a live audience. “Openly resisting dominant culture is a privilege many cannot afford,” says Swearingen. “As a performance artist, I use my middle-class, white, American privilege to confront my fears based on consequences of speaking out. As a young queer individual, I benefit from the many before me who suffered the consequences of a less tolerant society. Allowing me to be more vocal than past generations. This performance is an homage to the artist, David W. who with his visual and written artwork resisted and staked claim to his rights and dignity and free speech of a queer people and art.” The October 11 performance action is part of the exhibition Cultural Platforms for Resistance, which highlights the radical creativity of a new generation blurring the boundaries between art, advocacy, and activism through a series of programs and events. The exhibition features a cohort of seven artists from the DMV area and is curated by VisArts Emerging Curator Ashley DeHoyos, and was recently extended thru November 5, 2017.

According to The Atlantic

If "drugs into bodies" had been central to ACT UP from the beginning, the protest at the FDA represented both a culmination of our early efforts and a turning point in both recognition by the government of the seriousness and legitimacy of our demands and national awareness of the AIDS activist movement. This turning point occurred for two interrelated reasons: 1) the demonstrated knowledge by AIDS activists of every detail of the complex FDA drug approval process, and 2) a professionally designed campaign that prepared the media to convey our treatment issues to the public. The entire body of ACT UP was schooled in advance with knowledge of complicated issues that until then had largely remained in the province of Treatment and Data Committee members. Most affinity groups improvised their own costumes and props for the occasion. ACT UP's Majority Actions Committee made a reproducible design for T-shirts and posters, WE DIE -THEY DO NOTHING, spelling out in fine print who WE are [People of color, whether we are Afro-American, Native American, Hispanic Latino, or Asian, women, men, IV drug users, partners of IV drug users, lesbians, gays, straights, the homeless, prisoners, and children affected by the AIDS crisis], who THEY are [Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Michael Dukakis, the NIH, the FDA, the U.S. Congress, the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucus, our national media, our national minority leaders], and declaring, around the border, WE RECOGNIZE EVERY AIDS DEATH AS AN ACT OF RACIST, SEXIST, AND HOMOPHOBIC VIOLENCE.

The success of SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA can perhaps best be measured by what ensued in the year following the action.