[00:00:00]
Brandon Cook: Could you just state your name and place and date of birth?
Marc Cohen: Uhh, Marc Cohen.. where I was, place that I was born?
BC: Yeah.
MC: Boston, Mass. Umm, December 1968.
BC: Ok, and what was your family situation like?
MC: Growing up?
BC: Yeah.
MC: Uhh...
BC: Did you have any siblings, or...
MC: Yeah, one brother two years older, parents are still married; salesman, school teacher. From Brockton, Massachusetts.
BC: And so you went to high school in Massachusetts then?
MC: When to public highschool, Brockton High, about a thousand kids.
BC: So how did you then later get involved in ACT-UP?
MC: I was going to Brown, and umm... it was the summer before my senior year, and I was living off campus. And I was living with a friend of mine who was just visiting for the summer, and he had been involved in ACT-UP elsewhere and it's interesting cause he's this queer straight guy who got me involved in ACT-UP so he was one of the people that go against the belief that ACT-UP was only gay, although it was primarily... and he had been living with AIDS for a while cause he had hemophilia, so he had been active in several cities. And just my friendship with him, he used to go to meetings all the time and he finally started asking me as I started coming out, “Do you want to go to these meetings?” And eventually I said sure. And that's how it started.
BC: And around when was this?
MC: I graduated in '91, so that would've been in 1990, summer of 1990.
BC: Ok. So did it feel like the Rhode Island chapter of ACT-UP was still fairly young when you joined, or...?
[00:02:04]
MC: No, it had been going for a while. I didn't know much about the history before, umm, but they'd been having regular meetings they were I think at that point meeting at the Providence center and they had been meeting at other places before that. And they had a good number of people that were showing up, a core every weeks, so...
BC: What was the community like, like the membership?
MC: Umm, it was... ooh... it was primarily gay. Although I remember a straight woman who was, a couple who were very very involved, and my friend Kevin who wasn't gay. I believe it was more men than women, and I remember that sexism became a big issue at some points in the chapter, a big issue.
BC: Do you remember any details about any instances or anything where that arose?
MC: Yeah, several. It arose when people were talking about what do we want to do around safe sex and how much money do we want to spend on dental dams vs condoms. Do we want to spend equal money on lesbian health and lesbian sex as we do on gay male sex? Do we want to spend any money on it? And there were some men who have, and I believed at the time and looking back still believe who were very dismissive then... like this is sort of gay male oriented gay men started this and this is who we have to take care of, these are the people who are dying the most – lesbians have sex, sure there's some risk, but we need to put our money where we think the biggest problem is. And there was a lot of sexism under that, and that angered some of the, some of the women. And so there was a lot of hostility at some points, and some people sort of left... so that was...
[00:04:35]
BC: How sizable would you say the female...
MC: Oh, it depended on the time. When I first started there were, oh, this is gonna be really inaccurate.
BC: It's alright.
MC: Cause I really, I have a hard time remembering. There were at least, I remember meetings when there were at least four women. Five... at least four female identified folks. No, at least five female identified folks. And then at different times there were less, maybe a couple times more, but...
BC: And when these kinds of divisive issues came up, how would they usually be resolved? Would you vote, or...
MC: Well we decided things by consensus, so somethings didn't get resolved. Because we couldn't reach consensus. And some people got mad and would take it personally. So some things never got resolved, and some, would lead to some people leaving. So... yeah.
BC: Moving into that, could you talk a little about how meetings themselves were conducted?
MC: Mmmhmm. A different person would be the sort of person that would take notes and set the agenda; the facilitator. So that was rotating. And then it was sort of open, what agenda items do people want to add. And then we'd just go through them, and anything that needed a decision, there was always supposed to be a consensus before we did anything spent any money decided on an action. So it depends what was going on at the time, what projects we were working on.
[00:06:43]
BC: Do you remember any umm specific projects?
MC: Mmhmm. Umm, there was probably several... there was one ongoing project about keeping anonymous testing in Rhode Island, because there was a threat of it all being converted to confidential testing which would still have names of positive tests reported to the department of health. So part of it was that we wanted to have several sights maintained around the state. And then there are people who just don't have access to transportation. And then we also wanted just to keep it existing at all anywhere, cause it was in danger of not happening anymore. There was a push for more statistics from the department of health, I dunno if it was grant funding, it was related to money or to mandates from the federal government. So there was that, and then there was related to that the need for unique identifiers so when somebody tests positive that gets reported to the department of health and it had been by name so there was a concern that they'd just be discriminated against, and in Rhode Island there's certainly worries about confidentiality where so many people know everybody, know your uncle and grew up with your sister and umm... so that was another sort of project. So I remember there was a big protest at the Department of Health around, that one was around trying to keep various testing sites doing anonymous testing around the state.
[00:08:56]
BC: Do you remember any of the specifics of that action?
MC: I should cause I was there. I remember it was on the plaza next to the Department of Health which is across the state from the State House and next to the Department of Administration building. I think it involved... chalk? [laughter] I dunno it if was outlining bodies like we did sometimes. And it certainly involved a bullhorn, cause most things involved a bull horn. And that's all I remember.
BC: Did it seem to stir a lot of attention – did it seem like you often got lots of media attention at your events?
MC: At some of them, at the larger ones, yeah. Yeah.
BC: From all media outlets universally, or... what was the relationship between ACT-UP Rhode Island and the media like, did you think?
MC: It depends which media, I mean we had a big protest outside the Providence Journal building where we had a mock trial of the editors and had a guilletine on wheels and had a mock execution of them. And they were found guilty for their reporting, for their bad editorial standards on reporting things around HIV and letters to the editor that they published; certainly people over and over got published that were really really... horrendous. And, and the lack of reporting in the new section, on HIV and the lack of good reporting on gay issues as well. So, and that led to us meeting with several of the editors and outlining our concerns and why we thought that they were full of shit. [laughter]
[00:10:56
BC: The day of the demonstration?
MC: Oh no no, not... no not at all. Several weeks later. But the demonstration was a lot of fun, and got some really good coverage – even in the journal. And we had big long poles, and we held the heads up on the poles. It was, it was good street theater.
BC: Do you remember about when that was?
MC: No. But I think I have an article with a picture, from the journal, that I saved somewhere so I can figure it out.
BC: And did it seem like the editors were very responsive when you spoke to them later?
MC: Umm.... some were somewhat, some of them were. Some of them weren't, some just didn't get it. Robert Whitcomb just didn't get it, and said some offensive things. Don't ask me exactly what they were, but... except the way he sort of just referred to “you people.” And he just didn't get why we were mad.
BC: What was the meeting, what was it like. Were you guys sitting around a table?
MC: A big conference room table in the Journal building. And there were some people that were a little more receptive. There was at least one closeted reporter from the Journal who was there... who didn't want to identify herself as such.
BC: And was the entirety of the ACT-UP Rhode Island chapter there? Did people just opt to go?
[00:12:45]
MC: Oh no. A subset. And people that just, anybody that wanted to. And then we had a few meetings talking about, just to prepare what we wanted to say how we wanted to say it. I think we might've even brought in some photocopies of things that appeared in the Journal that we thought were pretty bad. One in particular I remember was Warren Francis, who is a medical doctor, was a professor or was somehow related to the Medical School at Brown, got repeatedly published saying saying just horrendous things about AIDS sort of blame the victim type stuff and really authoritarian about the need to, to have sort of state control over stuff. And he just got published over and over and over. So that was one of the things I remember that we pointed out and brought in photocopies to point out, see these are all the times he appeared in the letters to the editor. Umm... anyway.
BC: Did it seem like umm, how much of the ACT-UP Rhode Island chapter do you think was actively participatory in demonstrations and events?
MC: I'd say probably most. I mean, that was the main thrust of what we did. You know, actions, ACT-UP. So, and people tend to get energized by them, and it was a good outlet for a lot of the anger that people had, which was the anger that sort of brought people together in the first place, so...
BC: Did it seem like the community held together outside of demonstrations and meetings as well?
MC: When you say the community, do you mean the members?
BC: Yeah.
[00:14:52]
MC: Yeah, it was definitely, also became a social network. And after meetings, people would go out to dinner. So that was just networking, fun, social... sometimes more planning and discussions related to the meetings or just not at all related. Yeah, it was definitely, there was a social aspect to the membership as well as to meetings. It was a community. And, and for a while it was a very strong community. I remember when I graduated I'd been going for about a year to meetings and one of the reasons why I decided to not leave providence was because I'd become involved in that and a couple other things in the gay community, and I thought well I've got these roots here and why leave? And I've got a good support network and... so it really felt like there was a community feeling about the people who were there.
BC: Was there much dating within the community, or was it much more fraternal?
[00:16:13]
MC: Umm, I mean get any group of young gay men together and there's gonna be some dating. Especially depending on how broadly you define it. But because there was a consistent, because the membership changed over time but sort of slowly, yah there was some dating but since there were often the same people that showed up it wasn't like a place that you'd go to meet new people – except maybe the first couple times you went. I remember I had a, we had a friend who used to come down and when he stopped coming I was asking him about it and he said [laughter], he said one of the reasons he came was he was just this horny gay guy from New Bedford, and this was a way for him to connect with people. So. It served many purposes.
BC: Did it ever seem like that romantic tension spilled over into meetings? Or were meetings strictly business?
MC: I don't think there was anything too strict about it, although when we got off topic during the time Peter Cohen was there, he was renowned for telling people “People, focus, focus!” And trying to get people back on task. Umm, so...
[00:17:45]
BC: Umm, do you remember much interaction with the rest of the gay community? Like how did it seem like ACT-UP Rhode Island was perceived by the rest of the community or interacted with?
MC: Depends who they were. I think there was, well I'd like to think there was a good amount of respect. But we also took people to task if we felt that they were doing something that was not helpful or was hurtful. So there were a lot of people that worked at Rhode Island Project AIDS that didn't like us. There...
BC: When you say something that's not helpful, what do you mean by that?
MC: Umm, like their spending a lot of money dedicated towards helping people with HIV and AIDS and we don't think they're spending it well, we think they're, that a lot of it goes to staff and not services, that it's not, that they just don't manage themselves well and that they're not helpful to the community that they're trying to serve. Umm, we had some conflict with the alliance for lesbian and gay civil rights over, I think it might've been whether they were gonna co-sponsor something we were doing. But for a while there was tension with them too. But you know, we had a purpose and we weren't just gonna make nice to make nice.
BC: And do you remember much interaction with any of the other chapters of ACT-UP? Or did it seem like Rhode Island's ACT-UP just kind of functioned independently?
MC: Well they all functioned independently but there was some cross over at times between the somwhat shortlived Brown ACT-UP chapter, so there was that...
BC: Brown had it's own independent chapter of ACT-UP?
MC: Yeah.
BC: Really?
MC: Yeah.
BC: Do you remember about when that happened?
MC: That was, I think around '91. '90 or '91, because it was before I graduated and I'm not sure if it lasted after I graduated.
[00:20:08]
BC: So were you active in that as well as in Rhode Island's ACT-UP?
MC: Not really, I knew the people and was friendly with them from queer Brown circles. But no, I didn't, I don't think I ever went to one of the meetings.
BC: Did any of them seem to spill over into ACT-UP Rhode Island?
MC: Sometimes, but it was... so sometimes, but I think it was mostly separate. And then sometimes we would do, like we would go to Boston Pride and march with ACT-UP Boston. We went to, we marched in New York with a bunch of ACT-UP chapters there. So, so there was some. But in terms of projects we were working on, we were working on stuff in Rhode Island and pretty much only in Rhode Island, except when President Bush – the first one – came to Rhode Island for a fundraiser we went and protested there and held signs and screamed and stuff. I mean, that was still Rhode Island based cause he was here at one of the country clubs raising a lot of money and, so.. it wasn't necessarily a local issue though, except that he controlled so much money and power and never mentioned AIDS during the height of, or at least part of the height of the Plague, so...
BC: As time progressed, did it seem like the membership... you mentioned that it slowly evolved, how exactly did that pan out? And did you stick with ACT-UP Rhode Island through the end, or...?
[00:22:07]
MC: Not through the very end. Partly my job responsibilities, I started working on nights when they were having meetings, but there was also – I was just mad at some of the people that were there for some decision that had been made and so there was some conflict around the time, I decided not to rearrange my schedule to go to meetings that got me angry. Umm, so yeah.
BC: Do you remember about when you stopped going?
MC: No. [laughs] I really don't.
BC: And to umm, if you feel comfortable I'm going to shift things a little bit, was your family award of your involvement in ACT-UP?
MC: At some point they were. I'm trying to... I know I came out to them my senior year, which was '91. Like my last semester at Brown. And then I was involved for several years after that, so... so yes, I'm sure they did I just don't remember any conversations in particular but I do remember sort of them knowing.
BC: And how did it feel to be participating in ACT-UP, personally?
[00:23:55]
MC: Oh I felt good about it, I thought it was important I thought that even looking back that there were a lot of positive changes that wouldn't have happened if ACT-UP hadn't been around. So I thought it was important work and, and I liked and respected the people in it and several of them were just really good friends of mine and still are to this day. So a lot of reasons why I liked it and I thought it was important.
BC: How much of the membership would you say was HIV positive?
MC: It changed depending on when. There were times when it was verrry little. And sometimes I didn't know exactly who was HIV positive and who wasn't. There were certainly meetings where there was only one person who was HIV positive. And... but then there were meetings, especially when the group was larger, where there would be... it's hard to come up with a number, but 6? 7 maybe at times? I remember we also had, for a while we had a small set of folks who were straight and were involved in HIV through intravenous drug use. So there were some other non queer, or at least non gay members. You had to be somewhat queer to be involved in ACT-UP.
[00:26:01]
BC: Did it seem like the membership ever segregated along those lines?
MC: Segregated? I don't think so.
BC: I mean when you mentioned there having been some tension between the male and female members, did it seem like those kind of tensions ever erupted between the drug users, or the straight or the gay, or the...
MC: No, the only time I ever felt that there was – sometime after I first started going, back when I thought I was bisexual and I dated a woman who was also identifying as bisexual at that time so... for some of the first times I was going there I was dating a woman. And when we stopped dating and I was, I dunno somehow more queer identified, there was a guy who never used to talk to me. And he said “Oh, I didn't realize you were gay.” And then he started talking to me after that. So it was obvious that he really had felt he had no use for some straight guy that might be coming to meetings. But that was the only time I really noticed it. Either for people I know, or for other people in the group.
BC: Do you remember any more, or any other demonstrations that you were involved with?
MC: Yeah. There was another one related to the Providence Journal which I thought was interesting. You know they have the red boxes all around the state where you put in 25 cents or 50 cents and it will open for you to take the paper? We took the writing, copied the writing from let's say the Providence Journal, we made something up that we slipped in the boxes, in the front of the boxes where they would slip the paper so you could see the front page? And they would say “The Providence Journal is Out of Order” in big letters so that's, if you looked quickly that's all you would see is OUT OF ORDER. And in then it said underneath, “On HIV and AIDS issues and gay and lesbian issues.” And we put those in as many boxes around the state as we could. Partly so that they would lose revenue, but just to make a point to them that we were really serious about it and that we thought it was really bad and then maybe some of the people that would go to get the paper would see what it said. And I think we had stickers as well that were smaller that we'd put over the coin slot. So anyway, so that was also around the journal stuff...
[00:29:25]
MC: Umm... there were a lot. We certainly went to things like the pride parades to have a presence and passed out stuff...
BC: What kind of literature would you pass out?
MC: Umm, I know what type of stuff we would pass out, but I don't remember specifically. And I remember one of the things we used to do in parades was we used to blow an airhorn and just stop, even if people were marching. And most of the people would just lie down on the street sprawled out and then people would come with chalk and trace their bodies sort of. So you'd leave these things that looked like criminal scene, dead body marks on the street... and we'd be yelling or chanting something, I dunno... so I mean, those are sort of actions just to keep awareness up, and we'd have tables and pass out stuff. Umm, and I'll be thinking about it in the back of my mind as we continue to talk, or maybe I'll come up with other stuff.
[00:31:00]
MC: Maybe some of these will remind me of... [reaches for folder of old news clippings on the table]
BC: Did it seem like ACT-UP's primary focus was in public demonstration, or did you guys distribute a lot of information?
MC: Yeah, and this is something we distributed. It says ACT-UP Rhode Island clearly, and it's about safer sex and what they don't teach you in school, things about penetration, oral sex, and umm... and different types of testing that are available and places to get tested and just basic information about the virus and how to use a condom and other groups and resources in the community. This is dated 6-16-95. So this is a type of thing that we'd pass out.
BC: So you were still with the organization by '95?
MC: I think so. And then you know, letters to the editor that we would write... umm.... more letters, that's another safer sex thing... oh, we made some great t-shirts and I was looking for it but I left it up in the attic. But we basically took something that was, appeared as an ad for something else, and it was two men in black short bathing suits sort of wrestling on the beach. And it said “Play safe, wear a condom. ACT-UP Rhode Island.”
[00:33:08]
BC: Were those just distributed to the members, or...
MC: I think we sold them too. Yeah, I think we sold them at a pride thing. Umm, oh here's another thing we did, we met with Brunap, yah... Brunap, the Brown University Aids Program? We had questions about their community advisory board, the makeup of it and why there wasn't representation of people of color and that's what I remember. And we also had questions about what things that they were choosing to do trials on. I remember when protase inhibitors were first getting tried, were in clinical trials in other parts of the country and they looked promising and they proved to be what really started to save people's lives, and so we were sort of telling them why aren't you, you need to be doing clinical trials on this rather than some of the other clinical trials you're doing on AZT combination therapy with other things that just work a little bit. So umm...
[00:34:28]
BC: Do you recall how they reacted?
MC: Umm, yah, they were receptive and they tried to explain this is how they tried to recruit people, and yes they'd like to have a more representative community advisory board, and more folks in their trials and these are the efforts they've made, and you know they were pretty reasonable. And we didn't, we actually... you know for ACT-UP we were pretty reasonable too, we didn't go in yelling, we didn't have a demo outside their office and call them murderers or throw blood on them... umm...
BC: Which you would call kind of par for an ACT-UP demonstration?
MC: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we didn't throw blood on people in Rhode Island, but we did show up where people worked and shamed them publicly, loudly.
BC: Do you remember any more demonstrations having to do with Brown University or any of the other Universities in the area? Or anything else having to do with education?
[00:35:50]
MC: Umm... I'm trying to remember something Brown did that wasn't ACT-UP Rhode Island, and it was something on – I think it was parent's weekend, it was either parent's weekend or graduation, it was a time when a lot of parents were going to be there – and they put up signs, oh darn, about something they were angry with that was related to the university. And I just, I forget what it was. And then there was another time where they had some provocative images on sort of posters, or 8.5 by 11 pieces of paper it might've been, so they wheat pasted it to the ground where people walked. I remember that they were sort of, they were graphics from that were being used in other parts of the country, and they were pretty explicit. And that got a good amount of attention at Brown. Oh, and I remember another, a couple of other ongoing things that Brown, or that ACT-UP Rhode Island did. There was a lot of wheat pasting of informatin about how to clean your works for IV drug users. You know, going into areas where IV drug users would be and just wheat pasting the information on walls, onto bridges, on buildings... so that was an ongoing, an ongoing thing. Did Bill Talk about the Funnelator?
BC: A little bit, but I'd love for you to...
[00:37:52]
MC: I mean I didn't actually do the funnelator, but I know about it because that was the time I was there. So umm... the funnelator was two large, and we were talking about this just a couple of weeks ago, two large pieces of surgical tubing that were really stretchy that we'd basically use as a rubber band, and a sling shot. And then there was an actual funnel in the middle, umm, and you'd fill up the glass Christmas ornaments with – was it red or pink paint, I forget which? And you'd put it in this like slingshot thing and you'd pull the funnel back and two people would be holding the sides, and you'd aim it at a billboard and you'd create this big mess on the billboard. So we were targeting, I think it was Marlboro and things relating to the parent corporation that does Kraft and Marlboro and... Phillip Morris, that was it. Phillip Morris was a huge corporate sponsor of Jesse Helms' campaign and just a lot of nasty conservative things, so there was a boycott of Phillip Morris all of Phillip Morris products for a while, we supported the boycott and funnelated some of the billboards. Umm, there was a wheat pasting over a billboard too, but I forget... I forget what the billboard was and what was pasted over it. So those are somet other things that were done.
[00:40:02]
BC: Do you remember any involvement with law enforcement at any time?
MC: Umm, no real bad involvement with law enforcement. And actually, I just need to take a break for a sec...
BC: Oh that's fine.
[recording paused]
BC: Ok.
MC: You're asking about law enforcement. I don't specifically remember people getting arrested, but I do remember we did sponsor a training on umm... I'm forgetting the term...
BC: Civil Disobedience?
MC: Yeah, civil disobedience training, thank you. Which I couldn't attend, I was doing something else that weekend. So sort of getting people for that sort of protest cause a lot of other chapters were doing that and... I didn't do any of those with ACT-UP Rhode Island, and if ACT-UP Rhode Island did those they weren't ones that I remember. So yeah, I don't remember anyone getting arrested with ACT-UP Rhode Island.
BC: Were most of the demonstrations Providence Specific, or did you ever leave the city?
MC: Oh yah, we left, when President Bush came he was at I believe it was the Quidnessett Country Club, and that's somewhere in Warwick, West Warwick, Coventry area. There was some wheat pasting around the middle town Newport area, around IV drug use cleaning work stuff. Cause there were some folks that traveled up there – up here from there for meetings. Umm, and... but I guess most of the other ones that I remember, actually actions, were Providence based because the Journal was, Providence Journal was here, the Department of Health was here, Rhode Island Project Aids was here, so a lot of things either were here or were happening here. So it was, yeah, and it was easier to get attention in the city. Umm, I said we went to different Pride parades to march all at ACT-UP things, we went to one on the Cape when they had, I think it was Hyannis had their first, if not their very first pride parade, so we went there to sort of show support. But most was in Providence.
[00:43:03]
BC: After you left ACT-UP Rhode Island, did you continue to be close with the community?
MC: Oh, I was still close with some of the people that were going. When I left it was, it had dwindled there were like 5 people going on a regular basis and, well I'm still friendly with some of them now. So yeah. You know, there were some personality conflicts, some big personality conflicts, there were some big personalities. And so there... there are still people that like won't speak to anybody else from ACT-UP, like ever again. But yeah, it did sort of, it started to peeter out towards the end.
BC: Did you go on to do any other work in political action?
MC: Yeah, I went on, I was on the board of the Rhode Island Alliance for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights for a number of years after that. I had done some of the weekly candlelight vigils in front of the State House, which was Queer Nation organized, before the civil rights bill passed – along with with the civil rights bill actually passed. I was on the gay and lesbian speaker's bureau when that actually existed. You know, an escort at Planned Parenthood, which isn't exactly gay, but is... so I did other community stuff.
BC: And what are you up to today?
[00:45:00]
MC: Umm, I work for the Department of Mental Health in Massachusetts as a therapist, and I work for youth pride, which is the LGBQQ youth group? And I do part time counseling with the youth there. And I went to a political action committee meeting lastnight for OUTPAQ, which is the sort of gay identified political action committee – that actually a couple people who had been involved in ACT-UP had founded, and people from the Alliance that I was involved with, originally founded a number of years ago and then it died and it's nice to see that people revived it. So... and then just having my social life. So that's, that's mostly what I'm doing now.
BC: Cool, is there anything else you want to talk about?
MC: Umm, umm... no, well the only other thing is I think it's interesting to talk about Peter Cohen's book for a little bit because, the title of which was Love and Anger, and I know one of his premises, one of the things he was arguing was it served as umm, as a way for people to meet each other and date and that's a large part of what kept it going. And that was part of it, but I think that was a little overemphasized. And I think also the context of umm, of the time when at least I started going and certainly before that when really it... there was just so much death in the gay community and there was just so much death related to sex. It was just a really really scary time. It was a scary time to be gay because people were, had this whole backlash against gays. And it was also, even if you said yah gay's fine everybody's full of shit, it was a scary time to say, “Ok. I could very easily die.” So it was a really, so I think that fueled a lot of the frustration that people had. And it was part of what brought people together, but it was a really complex mix of factors I think, for individuals who were coming and looking for an outlet socially but also their frustration, their anger, and our trying to make sense of our own lives in the middle of... well I was doing it sort of a closer, not quite the height of the plague, sort of afterwards. But certainly before we had the drug cocktails that we have now that we know can save peoples lives – that didn't exist then yet. So there were still people dying on a regular basis, and still getting HIV was a death sentence. And I only remember one person who was actively involved when I was who died during the time I was involved. But so, it was... I knew people there who had literally lost whole groups of friends. Some of the people who were older than I was, who came... so there was, it was a lot more complex than it sometimes is made out to be. So...
BC: Ok. Well thanks.
MC: Sure.
[00:49:23]
[end of interview]