[00:00:00]
DS: My Name is Duncan Smith and I was born on july 27th, 1962. And I can't remember exactly when I joined ACT-UP Rhode Island, but it was sometime in either 1989 or... it was '89.
BJ: It was while you were at Fuck You, Fuck You, and Fuck You.
DS: Yeah. Yes, it was definitely, see I date everything from -
BC: Uhh... what was that?
BJ: That's an old legal, a law firm.
[laughter]
BC: Wow. Ok.
DS: This is, it was a big mistake in my life. Needless to say, and this is going to be a sweeping generalization that everybody disagrees with, but lawyers suck. They really do. Don't become a lawyer [laughter], that's my advice to you, if you have any conscience. And you can quote me on that. Uhh, yeah, and so in '88 I think is when my sister died which is why I have to date everything from that period. And so umm I was definitely working for tripple Fuck Yous. And I think I joined ACT-UP, yeah, it would've been around 1989.
BJ: Well I'm Bill Jesdale, born July 6 1967. One of 41 palendromes in the century. Umm, and in Ithica New York. And I was not there for the very very beginning of ACT-UP, but pretty close, pretty close. They had one demonstration downtown where they released a bunch of baloons.
[00:02:03]
BC: In Rhode Island?
BJ: Yeah, in Providence. And the balloons had condoms attached to them. Let them all go, and the TV was there. Umm, I don't know a whole lot about that one except that most of the Balloons ended up in a tree, umm...
DS: ACT-UP Rhode Island actions tended to have weird and sort of anticlimactic conclusions. I mean, we definitely made our case, but it was, you know, there were definite actions that ended up not going as planned.
BJ: I, this is Bill again, I think in general at that time the main message was just being gay and talking about AIDS in a public space. I mean, it was at a time when nobody did that, so just that alone, we could've just said three incomprehensible news and it still would've been news because... yeah. Where as now, you actually have to be eloquent and on message and have fabulous graphics – all of which comes from ACT-UP, no, all of which is... ACT-UP generally played a role I think in making activist organizations kind of more...
DS: Chic.
BJ: Yeah, chic and media savy.
DS: And yeah, media savy. I think the reason I was initially attracted to ACT-UP was because the actions that they had were very clever. They weren't just getting out and protesting in front of the health department or a pharmaceutical company, they were always done with sort of really clever twists just designed to get media attention.
[00:04:00
BJ: Yeah, before that point there was, a lot of stuff just wasn't very media savy. Like, you'd have a demonstration and you'd have a spokesperson as opposed to the demonstration being... well, I guess there's always counterexamples to that, but that was the thing that people kept noting about ACT-UP was that there were graphics associated with it, there were, there was all this media awareness. Umm, which I don't think was unique at all, but I think it caught a lot of media people by surprise because they weren't used to dealing with people who were, kind of had their interests in mind as well.
BC: Do you remember much of the specific relationship bet ween ACT-UP Rhode Island and the media organizations in Providence? Was it easy to get coverage, and did it seem like the coverage was ussually fair?
BJ: This is Bill, it was always extremely easy to get coverage. And I may disagree, at the time anyway I disagreed with people on this where it didn't really matter to me whether it was fair or not, just the fact that it was covered was enough to let people know that there was AIDS activism and even if the coverage was horrendous, it's kind of like that old thing how all publicity is good publicity? Umm, so yeah, it was very easy to get coverage it was not very easy at all to... get them interested in doing their own research on a story or whatever. Cause to talk about AIDS meant that you had it, basically. Or that you didn't care if people thought that you had it. So even for a reporter, I think it would've been difficult to really do a story that was terribly thoughtful. So I mean basically you know we'd just set up a big show and they would come with their cameras. Oh, I think the best show we ever had was [turns to Duncan] where you there when we did Duprete's campaign opening?
[00:06:36
DS: Umm, I don't remember that...
BJ: That was, well it's just a good example of how the interactions with the media went. Ed Duprete was announcing his -
DS: He was a governor of Rhode Island that ended up being indicted and he went to, like most public officials in this state he was indicted and he did some time and got out and I think he still lives in Cranston somewhere.
BJ: Yeah, he was, he was a republican. Had been governor already, and was running again. I don't remember the year exactly, but basically a bunch of us got up and got dressed in republican drag. And umm...
BC: What's republican drag?
BJ: Oh you know, suits and ties. Or at least that's what we thought it was and we seemed to fit in ok, so... and we had these banners and stuff under our shirts. And we went to this fundraiser gala anouncement of his reelection campaign beginning. It was in Garden City, the Garden City mall in Cranston. Oh and it was his headquarters, I was trying to remember what building it was in but he'd rented out space for his headquarters. At least, I think that's what it was. Anyway we went in there and we were hanging out and hanging out and listening to all these speakers – you know he was the main line event so they had all these other people announcing their campaigns saying how great a guy he was and so on and so forth. So we had, we had a lot of time to butter up the media.
[00:08:34]
BJ: And basically we went around and sort of buddied up with each of the camera people and showed them our flier and told them what we were going to do. Which was basically the second he took the stage to erupt with some chant or another and try to hand these fliers out and so and so. It was perf- and then, so anyway, finally after the 14th republican running for the 4th ward of so and so and made their little spiel finally he got introduced and he came out. And all the sudden we just started yelling “ACT-UP: fight back, fight AIDS” I think that's what it was. And it was really, A all the cameras were set and ready so they just swooped from him down to us and back to his shocked face. And it was beautiful. But the other thing we totally didn't anticipate was that because we were in a room full of republicans, it was like umm... I'm trying to think of like, when you like drop pepper into a pot of boiling water and it all the sudden just goes PSHOOO! All the sudden there was this massive 6-8 foot gap around us in all directions because they were petrified they would get it or something. So every once in a while one of them would come in and try to swat at us, swat, get us. And we'd try to hand fliers back to them, and they'd try to grab the fliers sort of off the floor.
[00:10:34
BJ: Anyway, we were chanting for quite a while before we were escorted out. They didn't have to force us out, it was like we'd made our point. They wanted us to go. There's only so many times you can say “ACT-UP: fight back, fight AIDS” and have it mean anything, so um we eventually left. I remember the Brown republican, a kid from the Brown republican group. I don't remember his name, but he was so livid cause he and I had been chatting about like, I thought I had to butter him down, you know? So he was “Oh, you're from Brown, that's great, we really need to build up our support base there” and everything, I was going, “Well...” He was just, he was furious his face was totally livid and angry. And he wouldn't, he was yelling at us and he was so scared about, he wanted to confront us but he was really scared about keeping his distance because he didn't want to get AIDS. So it was just this fascinating tension. Anyway, that's, that's one of my favorite memories. I wasn't even thinking of it over the last couple days in preperation, it's just the day we meet...
DS: I wasn't there. For that one, that was before me, but uhh.... [laughs]
BC: Did it umm -
BJ: There were a lot, I mean, I dunno cause there were plenty of demos here in Rhode Island that I never made it to. So it could've been something like that where you know you may have been around but...
[00:12:20]
DS: I was there but I didn't go to that demo... but as I recall, I attended most of the demos that were during my tenure at ACT-UP. And I just kind of, as I'm thinking about it now, remember the more humorous catastrophes of ACT-UP's actions rather than any of the... I could be prompted to remember some of the more effective things, but back then, I think some of the more humorous ones were sort of effective.
BJ: The uhh... Patrick Buchanan? [laughs]
DS: The Pat Buchanan was one. But then there was one...
BC: What, what happened there?
DS: [laughs] Well maybe we'll get back to that. Umm, I don't remember even what we were protesting, but we were outside the Biltmore hotel
BJ: Oh, that was when Dan Quail came to visit.
DS: Oh, right right right right... that was Bill by the way, this is Duncan again. Do you still need to like...?
BC: I'll probably be able to differentiate.
DS: Ok, so you don't need to...
BJ: I just figured I'd do it every 3 or 4 switchbacks so...
DS: It's not like treetowels.. it's not like the treetowels...
[laughter]
DS: Umm, I just, I don't remember a lot of this action but as Bill said I guess it was about Dan Quail being in town and um we'd rented a room in the Biltmore hotel, that at some point during the action...
BJ: It was just when his limo pulled up.
DS: Yeah, something that, yeah you know the details. All I remember is that John Winkleman was the person in the hotel room who was supposed to... oh, I'm sorry [laughs] should I not be mentioning, no names, is that...?
BC: It's completely up to you, I can purge something if you want me to later.
BJ: Well I just think, I just think unless we've spoken to him about him...
[00:14:25]
DS: Ok, John was extraordinarily nervous. Umm, and what we were going to do...
BJ: He was up there with somebody else too...?
DS: Yeah, but he was the one that was going to be actually doing it. Anyway, so the room was way up and it was on Washington St I think? It was like between city hall and the Biltmore, so it was very public. And what was going to happen is that he was going to put this long thin banner out the window that would basically say as Dan Quail was driving up in his Limo, ACT-UP... I can't even remember what it said, it was some clever protesty kind of thing. And...
BJ: It was like 6 stories tall, too.
DS: Yeah, it was huge. Anyway, so... and I think we anticipated weighting it down, and I seem to recall that we weighted it down with... shoes or something like that?
BJ: Tennis shoes, yeah.
DS: Tennis shoes, ok. Which, because it was a rather gusty and windy day, did not -
BJ: And they were falling 6 stories.
DS: So basically what happened was is he unfurled it but instantly the wind took it. It was just like this enormous flag that just got pushed up and twisted around and just never was seen by really anybody.
BJ: I dunno if this is just convenient recollection... or, what do they call it, made up memory or what, but uhh... didn't one of the shoes come down and hit his limo? Or like landed nearby and all these secret service guys reached into their vests?
[laughter]
DS: Yeah, yeah, it was... [laughs] I mean, I'm not sure about the shoe falling.
[00:16:26
BJ: Well one of the shoes fell, I know that. I may be hoping that it is...
DS: In any case, the banner was thrown and blown around and the shoes were obviously inadequate to hold it down, they were..
BJ: Thank god the PVC piping didn't... there was like PVC piping to make it straight on the top and the bottom, and that stayed put.
DS: Yeah, so that's, that's the Dan Quail action. But it still got press, and you know, they had a camera showing the banner blowing down the street...
[laughter]
BC: [turning toward Bill Jesdale] You yourself mentioned you, you were a Brown student at the time. What was, what was umm-
BJ: For part of it, yeah.
BC: What was the membership mostly like? Was it... were there a large proportion of Brown students or was it more community oriented?
BJ: It depends on when you're talking about. I mean, the major impetus for it came from Brown and RISD students initially. Eliza [Jackson], Liz Deschean, Stephen Gendin – was that, that's a name you've come across?
BC: Yeah, certainly.
BJ: Ok. Jenny Hoffa. I think Jenny and Stephen were roommates. If they weren't, they would become roommates. Anyway, umm... those were sort of the main – and Joe Cavalarro – those were sort of the main instegators at least as far as I know. And maybe James Mcgrath was in there from the very beginning?
DS: Yeah, I think he was.
BJ: He may have shown up a little tiny bit later.
DS: He was Brown though, wasn't he?
BJ: No, not at all. He was running umm.. Rocket.
BC: Oh, yeah.
DS: Which was the predecessor to AS220, right?
BJ: Well, they were in the same building but they were never affiliated with each other.
[00:18:26]
DS: Or Club Babyhead was what Rocket evolved into, and I guess that sort of...
BJ: Yeah, now it's Hell I think? Uhh... that's a whole 'nother story. You got to talk to James, he sounded very eager, so that's good. Umm...
BC: Was most, did it seem like most of the community was like college age though? Or...
DS: No, not really.
BJ: Well, that's what, it matters when you're talking about cause like in the first month, yeah. But after that, it uhh, expanded quite a bit. It was still mostly college age or recently college age people for a while but uhh... there were, there were a bunch of people who were umm... I mean, as far as I can recall there wasn't anybody like in their 60s. But there were plenty of guys in their 40s.
BC: And was it predominantly male? Or...
DS: No, there were quite a few women involved. It was, obviously a lot of lesbian women. Most of the men were gay. You know, supposedly a federation of them. And I just want to say something right here that's not really... well, it is relevant. This is what Peter [Cohen] wrote about in this book [picks up Love and Anger from coffee table]. Umm, which if you want a good expose or story about not the activisms part so much but what his thesis is is how, and this is true at least in my experience, is a lot of it was a place where politically motivated gay people would come to meet other politically motivated gay people. And it was really the only forum where if you were upset about the AIDS epidemic and you wanted to do something about it, but you were also looking to meet other people that were involved in all that, you would come to ACT-UP. Well, sort of obviously, sort of not. But what I wanted to say also was that a lot of the people who kind of came and then went were people who weren't particularly interested in AIDS or activism, but they would come and basically cruise or check out the guys – cause it was mostly gay men there I guess – and I don't know if they hooked up or not. But they would leave very quickly because of the, ya know, the emphasis on the activism and all of that but they weren't really interested in doing that. So it was a big kind of, not big, but there was a certain strong element of cruising going on, and I think a lot of the...
[00:21:52]
BJ: Yeah, I... was kind of oblivious to that.
DS: Well you were very focused on the AIDS epidemic, you always have been. Umm.
BC: Did it seem like that romantic tension existed within the core community itself too, or was it mostly these others that would come in for, you know, a few months at a time?
DS: I think it also existed within the core community too. I think that it really bridged, I can't say this about all of the ACT-UP chapters, but I'm pretty sure that all of them had this element to them. Which is that people like I said who were interested in exposing the intense negligence to put it mildly of first the Reagan and then the Bush administration to deal with the AIDS epidemic found other people who were also like that. And there was, that was a good place to meet people for romantic evolution to your relationship because you had such a strong thing in common. And gather that it was more than just the AIDS epidemic, that you were somebody who was passionately committed to a politically on cause. And that's how you would very easily identify other people who were also passionately interested in trying to make social change.
[00:23:31]
BJ: Yeah. I mean I dunno if, this is Bill again sorry, I dunno... I mean I really don't know what it was like for other people in terms of romantic stuff within ACT-UP Rhode Island but for me it was like this group of people were much too tight for that, for me anyway, it would be like... fucking my brother? Thank god I don't have any brothers, otherwise that could get taken badly. But uhh, just such an intense community that to me it was almost like it didn't even occur to me to look for a romantic relationship among this tight group.
DS: Well actually, I -
BJ: But, whenever we went to other demos like in New York or whaterver, I always hooked up. Cause it was just so much fun, and there were so many cool people.
[00:24:42]
DS: I mean I guess thinking about my own sort of boyfriend history, I did meet both hookup kind of one night stands and also at least one boyfriend through ACT-UP I mean... and i don't think that he was really committed to what... actually he was, he was, he lived in Taunton at the time and he came cause he was older than me and he was an alcoholic at the time though he's cleaned himself up yeah. But he was of the generation that had a lot of sex in the late 70s and somehow someway he was spared. This is before they knew about the AIDS virus. And literally every single one of the people that he was friends with at the time were dead. So he was kind of in a way shattered because if you think about it a lot of your own history is wrapped up with your friends. And particularly if you're gay and you have that adversarial relationship with your parents, your parents don't accept you or whatever, literally so much of your social history all of the stories and adventures that you had together, they all died with all of his friends. And he had essentially nobody to talk about his early adult life... so I guess that was his motivation in coming to ACT-UP where I met him and eventually sort of had a relationship. But yeah, that was... that was my I guess example of, I mean I never thought about it that way, but I actually did hook up with people through ACT-UP. But I was also serious about the protest and all of that.
[00:27:00]
BJ: Oh, there was one. But we don't need to go into that.
DS: Oh yeah, wasn't that that guy?
BJ: Mmmhmm...
DS: [laughs] ok.
BJ: I don't, I mean, I don't want to drag him into it, I dunno.
DS: But you've said a lot of other names like first name and last night. Like Jenny Hoffman
BJ: Yeah, but I didn't say anything incriminating about her or that would be describing some sort of relationship she had with me.
BC: Do you guys remember umm the way that the organization functioned itself like in meetings? How would you come across, how would someone put forward an idea for a demonstration or, and how was the consensus...
DS: [addressing Bill Jesdale] I want to start, I want to answer that and then you can, you can do it.
BJ: Yeah, I need to take a little break anyway, so.
DS: Ok umm, it was very egalitarian which was something I very much respected about the group. You'd all get together and at that meeting somebody would be appointed facilitator, somebody would volunteer to be facilitator. Clearly, like in most groups, that was limited to the few people that actually did most of the work because obviously ACT, like any other organization, there's always a core people which expanded and contracted over the years who were doing a lot of the organizing a lot of the leg work. But generally what would happen is you would appoint a facilitator who would basically facilitate. And I remember being a facilitator at pretty large groups, like I was a – a large group for ACT-UP Rhode Island would be 30 to 40 people at it's height, and umm...
BC: Were you meeting in The Rocket at this point, or had you moved to -
[00:28:49]
DS: No no no, we met, in my tenure we met at The Rocket for only, I can't remember exactly but for the first year. And then we moved, we may have moved somewhere in between very briefly, but we ended up at the Providence center up on Hope street? We met there for a few years until we did something that both mentioned them and mentioned sex or had a strong sexual context. And that was toward the end of ACT-UP Rhode Island's tenure anyway, and they asked us not to meet there anymore. But umm... so anyway, the facilitator would, to keep things organized and to keep thing, people from all talking at once and devolving into separate groups that had different agendas, the facilitator would basically say, “Ok, you speak right now.” That person had, they could speak forever basically, fillibuster – I just learned what that word meant a little while ago – or most people would talk about a given action or propose a given action and say “Ok, I want to protest this” or “I want to have an action about this.” It wasn't talked so much about protest it was talked about, at least in my recollection, the term was action. And so that would happen, and you know you'd have your group meeting and I think it was from a certain time at night to another time at night and for a long time peopl would go out afterwards like go to dinner whaterver. Continue on with the discussion or maybe not, the dominate discussion of what was going on. So.
[00:30:48]
BC: And would you then vote at the end of the meeting to determine, or was a consensus generally...
DS: I don't think there was ever a vote, or if there was -
BJ: Oh no, there were votes. But that, I think that was more of a later thing. Like, earlier on there were...
DS: But did it have to be consensus or was it majority rule?
BJ: I think it depended on the issue. Like -
DS: Cause I really don't remember votes, I just remember that certain people would take charge and the reality of that is that somebody would take the ball about a given action and it might peeter out, it might not go anywhere. I can remember at the end all these caucuses forming which I was dead against, like the woman's caucus and this caucus and that caucus and I'm like “No, we're here collectively about HIV and if we can't do that collectively then what's the point?” It's a coalition, it's not individual caucuses breaking off from the main group. First of all we didn't really have that many people when that whole caucus thing started but that was just me I can't really speak for the group because.. I don't know if Bill here is going to disagree, but I think possibly there's a chance that he will because we've had disagreements about this in the past, so.
[00:32:20]
BJ: Well there were, to take it back a bit from the caucus thing, there were umm... well I missed some of what you went over, so sorry if i repeat it, but... I mean, yeah, we pretty much came to consensus on things I mean there were occasionally things that we voted about. I can't even remem- they might have been minor things like, “Ok, is there enough energy in the room to actually do this or not?” That kind of thing. But if it was a contentious issue a simple majority vote would not be sufficient. Like if there was a... and yet I wouldn't say we always came to 100% consensus either. If the room was split, the focus would be more like umm, ok, well how do we come up with something that everybody can get along with or where only the one schmuck in the room is going to disagree with it so who cares? I mean, not that it was ever actually like that, but just saying. Umm, and... oh ok, but there were especially while we were meeting in the Providence center I remember we'd be, we were working on a whole bunch of different issues at the same time and there would be people who'd be more interested in this and less interested in that so we started coming up with these subcommittee meetings – we never had any committees we only had subcommittees. [laughs] Umm, we'd have, you know we'd have the subcommittee meeting on this which would... our general meetings were Tuesdays either 6-8 or 7-9 I can't remember. But anyway, so the subcommittees would often meet at a different time or just before the meeting or something like that.
[00:34:45]
BC: And were they open membership? I mean, could you just -
BJ: I don't follow.
BC: Could you just choose to be on any subcommittee you wanted to and...
BJ: I don't... yeah, no, there was no...
DS: There was no like ex... anybody that was interested, see the things is that when you're an informal group like ACT-UP Rhode Island was, if you have people that were interested in doing some portion or organizing some portion of an action then yeehaw, go for it. Because often times you know subcommittee would form and a lot of people would not show up or... you know, it's like a small essentially volunteer organization, nobody was really paid. So to answer your question, anybody could join a subcommittee. Ussually the subcommittee members were at the main meeting when the subcommittee would be determined and umm... and I don't remember anything, yeah, that's just the way it would work.
BJ: I wouldn't say, yah, there was certainly no formal membership policy for ACT-UP at all let alone a subcommittee. So I mean, there were people who said they were part of ACT-UP who I didn't remember ever seeing at a meeting and you know probably just showed up at a demonstration or something. But you know, hats off. And likewise there were people who would come to meeting after meeting after meeting but wouldn't consider themselves a member per se because they were either there with their boyfriend or there because they felt like they wanted to learn a lot more about AIDS. I mean there was... oh that reminds me of Bill's News Headlines.
[00:36:45]
DS: Yeah yeah, I was gonna say something early on...
BJ: There was, there was nothing... you know, at the time there was nothing, there wasn't a gay press. And there wasn't anything really in... I mean the only way you really got to learn about AIDS was if you have it and you were going to a social service agency or you were talking to your friends or you went to a medical clinic or whatever. But there were a lot of people who knew somebody with HIV or whatever and just wanted to know more about it. And they would come to the meetings too. And at some point I started writing Bill's News Headlines, or basically... this is all pre-web, ok? [laughter] Basically I'd be going through, there were a few AIDS publications, there was AIDS Treatment News, umm...
DS: Yeah, Pos wasn't even out back then.
BJ: Oh no. And there was... you know whatever I could find in the New York Times or the Boston Globe or the American Journal of Public Health or the American Journal of Epidemiology or this or that or the other. I would write up a little you know like one paragraph summary of it and hand it out at the beginning of every meeting, five or six things I'd been able to find. But I mean that was a fairly formal process, but there was a lot of, there was a lot of umm... really good information sharing or information networking that was, that had nothing to do with the actions. It was just like, you know, what's going on with this drug or that drug or... I dunno, things like, there'd be... I don't remember exactly, I'm thinking back to the Rocket days when the – which is sort of right after it first started until, when did we leave the Rocket, I dunno.
[00:38:54]
DS: I, well that's when I first joined so I dunno how long you were there at the Rocket.
BJ: Really?
DS: Yeah, I was at the first... I can't remember, I remember at least a couple months maybe as long as a yeah of going to the Rockets on Tuesday nights for the meeting.
BJ: Oh, oh.
DS: But again when I first joined the group, I didn't do much, I just kind of participated. And there weren't that many people there, umm.... I mean obviously you were there, and a couple of other...
BJ: Stephen and then Jenny and...
DS: No, I, Jenny maybe, I was never at a meeting that Stephen was at. So umm he had left or maybe even moved. I mean I went to, when I was at brown he was a student there, I knew him but... this was, uhh, he was part of it before my time. And he had actually I think even moved away...
BJ: Yah. Hmm.
DS: ...to New York. Umm, before-
BJ: Anyway I was thinking, I was thinking the general agenda would be like any kind of news that came up.
DS: Yah, that's the other thing that the facilitator would take the agenda, the issues that were supposedly going to be discussed at the meeting. And that was all anybody wanted to talk about. Sometimes we wouldn't get around to all the things, and occasionally we tried to keep minutes. That never really happened... consistently...
BJ: Not consistently. [laughs]
DS: But no, there were a few valiant attempts. But basically the agenda sometimes would be carried over to the next meeting and stuff like that.
[00:40:36]
BJ: And I'd say for the first couple of years there were, we had absolutely no idea that there'd be any reason to save any of this stuff, that there'd be any reason to like look back at it. It was a very immediate time. Umm, but by the time we got to the Providence center, and I don't remember when that was exactly, but at that point we were starting to realize that it'd be important to record what we were doing. Although I think even then something like this would've seemed bizarre to me [laughs] because the idea was more to record it for ourselves, at least that's what I think. But anyway so on the agenda you'd have like, well first agenda item was always setting the agenda. And then you'd get into little updates that didn't really have anything to do with anything that we were going to be talking about. You know, like Astrazeneca was doing this, or... um and then we'd have blocks devoted to, not sub-blocks but we'd have either issues or names reporting or umm... what were some of the other issues we were working, I can't even remember now? Or specific actions like designing specific actions...
[00:42:19]
DS: Pharmaceuticals charging way too much money for AZT or co-opting the patents for AZT, Burroghs-Wellcome I think was the pharmaceutical company that was making that. And they actually had a plant, a manufacturing plant, it was not AZT that they were manufacturing but they had a facility off of 95 down in east Greenwich that we scope out, we never actually did a protest there but we scoped it out one time to see umm about security and all that. That, just as an asside I was driving back from Westerly yesterday, that facility has expanded. Hugely.
BJ: Yeah. Is that Amgem now?
DS: Yah, maybe something like that. Back in the day they were manufacturing alpha-interferon there... Umm I just want to say at some point during this about the art project at the end that you and I sort of did, remember that? Posted poetry, we had people write poems or...
BJ: Oh, ok, I got a little confused cause we used to call art pro - this is probably before you got – we used to call it an art project when we went over either to increase the artistic property of some artistic abandoned piece of property or cover up...
DS: We had this thing that would throw water balloons, throw paint, or... what was that?
BJ: The funnelator?
DS: Yah, The funnelator, Jeane always loved doing that.
BJ: But lets, lets the art project -
BC: What was, wait, what was the funnelator?
BJ: We'll get back to that.
[laughter]
BC: Ok.
BJ: But the art project, this was kind of like the very end-
DS: This was at the very end-
BJ: It was the last like- even like after... meetings had kind of fallen apart, but we were still doing these things every now and then.
DS: But a lot of people, ACT-UP members basically wrote either poems or paragraphs that were printed on this pink paper. I actually have a few of them at my place if you want them. And we, well it was pretty much Bill and me, umm we would post them on trees and things just around the city.
[00:44:45]
BJ: Never trees. Telephone poles.
DS: Ok.
BJ: Telephone poles. I'm serious, never trees, never put a staple in a tree.
DS: But that one, that one that got us into trouble was on a telephone pole near...
BJ: A playground.
DS: The playground, yeah... anyway we posted...
BC: And it got you into trouble because?
DS: Well because, actually I think I wrote it, it was about a sexual encounter I had with somebody who had HIV and how he was very careful never to expose me to that. But it was, you know, I never mentioned his name or anything like that, but. We did not intend to do this at all, we were just in the armory district and we were posting them. And we posted it. But it turned out it was at a playground and it was at a level – I mean, I posted it at my level, but it was umm... apparently kids could read it.
BJ: No no no, one parent thought it was possible that their kid might have like picked up a stepladder and gone up and read the thing... but never was there any claim that any kid read it.
DS: Anyway, he was outraged. And what did he do, he was...
BJ: He called, I don't know who he called, but we ended up on the... on some radio show.
DS: Well we ended up defending ourselves on the radio.
BJ: What was the name of the uhh... was it WALE?
DS: No no no, it was WPRO AM or something like that? I can't remember, it was talk radio and I can't even remember who the, it was like big in the early 90s. But we defended it and apologized for putting it where a kid might inadvertently see it even though as Bill is saying umm it was an adult that read it. And the guy who had read it actually called in, and we had a little bit of a dialogue with him. But in the end, he agreed that it was something that should be done or he agreed with why we were doing it, his beef was that it was done in a playground where his kids were playing, which I thought was...
[00:47:06]
BJ: Yeah, it was kind of a nice resolution.
DS: Yeah yeah, it was like...
BJ: I mean, the talkshow host was like trying to create this controversy while we were agreeing.
DS: Yeah, you know... fanning the fires and... but it was interesting, the guy actually called and we were able to state our case so that we were in agreement and he just said that was inappropriate. And if I'd really thought about what we were doing I never would've put it there. I just didn't think.
BJ: Yeah. And the sexual content of it, as I recall, was fairly minor.
DS: I can't remember but I remember writing it, so umm...
BJ: I mean it was in there, it was part of the story, but it wasn't like “His large purple member da da da da da da da”
[laughter]
BC: Do you remember any umm interaction with the other ACT-UP chapters? Like, did you ever interact directly with ACT-UP New York or Boston or...
BJ: Yeah, yeah. There were, at least, I wasn't so much involved with that stuff but Stephen was, at least in the beginning, shuttling back and forth because ACT-UP NY had its meetings on Monday which is why we had ours on Tuesday?
BC: Yeah.
BJ: Umm, and so he would go to, for a while he was going to both. And then also people like, I think, well certainly James Mcgrath and also John Winkleman and Joe Cavellero were also commuting a little bit. And there was a very influential uhh... I dunno what the term, there was a term for this, like The Power Tools?
DS: I dunno what you're talking about.
[00:49:10]
BJ: The Power Tools was this like group of people who would work on actions together and it was allegedly ACT-UP New York but a good half the members or more were from Rhode Island. And they did things like umm, they were part of the group – there was a big demonstration at the National Institutes of Health... was it there? I dunno, I can't remember where it was. Anyway, this group went into the building with like all these power tools stuffed in their jackets. And went into a board room or something and like screwed shut the door and made it pretty much impossible for anybody to get in, busted out the windows, and used it as a display place. So that was the sort of thing The Power Tools did. Oh, affinity group, that was the term. There were, Rhode Island didn't really have any affinity groups cause we were just too small, but New York had these affinity groups and this particular one included a bunch of people from Rhode Island. And to get them out of there, the police actually went through the wall, took them out that way. But umm... I can't remember if they got charged with anything in all that. I don't even remember who the target was, if it was... I think it was NIH but I don't, I don't remember. So there were these big demonstrations that were basically organized by ACT-UP New York that other ACT-UPs would come and support. There was the one that, you probably know more about this than I do, there was the one that they organized with Boston at Astra? Over GNHC? No no no, that's not it, g... ganciclovir...?
[00:51:40]
DS: Yeah, I don't really remember that. All I remember about ACT-UP Boston is that they weren't particular active. I mean, I thought isn't it ironic that Providence is a far more active chapter of ACT-UP than ACT-UP Boston is. I know that we probably did work with them and I know a lot of our members did eventually move up to Boston and joined ACT-UP Boston, but all I remember is that we were a lot more active and vocal than they were.
BJ: Yeah, I never really worked with ACT-UP Boston so I really don't know.
BC: What was the action you were just...?
BJ: The one that... well see that's the thing is I wasn't really involved with that one so I don't reallyknow, but it, ganciclovir is a drug – oh DHPG, that's the other name for it. Ganciclovir, its uhh, it's a drug that basically, I mean it's extraordinarily toxic, but it was the only thing that could save you from blindness if you had CMV retinitus? And they were charging, I mean we thought AZT was expensive? And DHPG they were charging 10, 15 thousand dollars a dose? Umm... which now they do for all kinds of drugs, because DHPG led the way, but umm... so they, ACT-UP Rhode Island and ACT-UP Boston worked together on this, but I don't know the details of it. They went up to this company in, Framingham was it? I dunno, I think it was Astra but I dunno...
[00:53:53]
DS: Yeah, we went up with Eddie, he was the van driver...
BJ: Oh, so you went on it?
DS: I'm, I'm just beginning to remember doing, but I don't remember anything more than going up with Eddie and I think Jon Hoffman was there and a few other people, but all I remember is driving up in the van and getting to wherever we were going and...
BJ: Well maybe instead of something we don't remember, we should go back to the funnelator?
[laughter]
BJ: Should we demonstrate?
DS: No, no. You can take that one.
BJ: Ok, the funnelator. There are various, there are some key parts to the funnelator, and it's used in art projects mainly to make clean an obscene piece of public property.
BC: What do you mean by that?
BJ: Like a Marlboro billboard? Because Philip Morris was the largest funder of uhh Jesse Helms, and they were also sponsoring this tour of...
DS: Do you know who Jesse Helms is?
BJ: They were also sponsoring a tour of, well they called it “The Bill of Rights” but it was really “A Bill of Rights”? And they put this really reactionary spin on it. Umm, and... oh, Rebecca Hensler was with us on that one. Not on the funnelating, I don't want to implicate her in the funnelating cause that's illegal, she, the stuff she did was legal. Umm, she went into the Bill of Rights display and like made a big scene. Anyway so Phillip Morris was on our shitlist and they had all these obscenities around the city, ie Marlboro billboards or anything displaying their products. So we used the funnelator to try to cover those over a little bit...
[00:56:00]
BC: Was, did it just like spray paint?
BJ: Mmm, well...
DS: You haven't described what the funnelator is yet.
BJ: Yeah, I haven't described it at all yet, I was just describing the goal. [laughter] Alright, so the funnelator consists of surgical tubing, a funnel, Christmas ball, paint, and paint thinner. Umm and basically you get about 10 feet of surgical tubing, through the magic of the power tools you attach the tubing to the funnel. And surgical tubing has this amazing elastical property, it's much better than rubber bands or anything like that, where you can stretch it a lot and it produces this very even release of power. And so you, we made these Christmas palls and filled them with pink paint and paint thinner so that they'd make a nice big splat. And put them in the funnelator. And basically you'd have two people standing with either end of the surgical tubing absolutely as tall as they could get, so like a good 8 feet in the air. And a third person would drag the funnel back another 12 ft or whatever to the ground, try to aim it and get it all lined up, and then release. The ball would go up, and pshhh, a big splatter and... umm, and uhh, there was one over Richmond St. that we got pelted really good. And then speaking of the things that don't quite work the way you think they're gonna? There was this huge one over '95 near the old Mirabar, and there's also like an asphalt plant right there too, anyway, so we went and set up in the parking lot of the asphalt plant. And we had, but that point we had that funnelator down, we could hit the eyeball of the Marlboro man at 60ft in the air. So we were coming, he ball would launch off, hit him in the eye, and then nothing happened. So we'd think, hmm, maybe we didn't see it right or maybe it didn't hit or whatever. We kept trying and trying and trying. Eventually somebody with very sharp eyes realized that it wasn't actually a billboard, it was like a painted curtain. So these balls would go up and the curtain would sort of absorb it and float away, so we weren't able to improve the visibility of that eyesore at all... but other ones got a good hard whack. So that's the funnelator. Do you know any other funnelator stories?
[00:59:12]
DS: No, and I don't really, I hesitate to bring this up because again I don't remember it but I may be able to prompt Bill's memory – wasn't there something we did over one of the highways? Some, something that stayed there for a while, I can remember driving under it periodically and saying “Well, I wonder how long it's gonna be before they take that down.” It was like a...
BJ: You mean the silence equals death thing under the India, under the Point St overpass?
DS: Yeah, something like that. There was... another one...
[00:59:50]
BJ: There was a, yeah, we picked, there was a... now it's a big mural that's all, it's basically advertising made to look like art. The big... under 195 as it crosses Point st there's all these pictures of Mona Lisa and King Tut and so on and so forth and all the adresses and phone numbers of all the supporting businesses? Umm, but you know it's nice, nice that they're making it pretty and all that... but uhh , but before they put that up the area had a really long history of sort of like a forum for public expression? So we joined in on that and painted these big pink triangles and “Silence equals Death” under it. We were really worried about police catching us in the act? I don't know why we were so worried about it but anyway, we got these walkie talkies and we had a paint crew and we had two people each in three vehicles at the major access points to that aread. And of course nothing happened. I think even a police car maybe even just drove by while we were worried about it... but umm, I think I was on the paint crew, I can't remember... yeah yeah yeah, so we had two sets of walkie talkies. This is before cell phones. [laughter] It got me thinking, I mean like, we were able to organize, at the risk of going into a totally different angle, we were able to organize really well without any email.
[01:01:43]
DS: Well that's what, it was before all of this, so in hindsight it seems like an impossible task given the resources that are available now.
BJ: I mean you'd call 40 people in a night, and it wouldn't, it didn't seem -
DS: I mean they built cathedrals with people, you know, just no power anything... so... it took em a long time, but it was done.
BJ: That's the thing, the phoning around, I don't remember that taking an inordinate amount of time. Like now, you'd just send out a mass email but...
DS: I think we had a calling tree or something like that...
BJ: Yeah... There was that, but then there was also – I mean the meetings were one thing but then there was also all this, the rest of the week there was still -
DS: Oh and we had a list, we had a list of all the people you could call who were interested in putting their name on the list. They weren't necessarily going to the meetings but they wanted to be on the list we could call if we were doing an action.
BC: And did you communicate primarily through telephone calling or was there much actual mailing and...?
DS: Well asside from the meetings, yeah, I think that was...
BJ: Yeah, it was telephone, yeah it was telephone.
DS: It was telephone, it was... we had a calling tree, do you know what the calling tree is, like each person calls so many other people then they call other people.
BJ: They don't do it anymore, but it's this antiquated custom where you would get a call and you would have to call the next two people on the list, and they would... and I think this is also just about the same time that answering machines were starting to come out. So calling, you know, you'd have to call and call and call again until you'd actually reach the person. So all this technology that we know and take for granted, we didn't see as any hindrance at all, we were just you know make calls and... I must've called 20, 30 people a night sometimes and not really...
DS: That's just the way you did it, cause you don't know the technology that's coming down the line, so... it seems like such a herculean task now, but...
[01:03:57]
BC: When you mentioned being worried about law enforcement during the uhh, the painting, did you ever have any trouble with law enforcement throughout any of your demonstrations?
BJ: Very little, very little.
DS: I remember, where you there when Glen Frenkel, we were passing out condoms at high school proms and....
BJ: It was the one at -
DS: Yeah, we went to Moses Brown and then we went to that one that was happening out in Seekonk?
BJ: Seekonk, yeah.
DS: Do you wanna, do you wanna say?
BJ: Yeah that was towards, that was one of the latter things. But basically we were handing out condoms and little brochures about how to use them and where to get... oh no it wasn't how to use them it was where to get tested for HIV and what the difference between anonymous and confidential was. Why you should always go for anonymous and blah blah blah. Ok, that's another thought, but I wanted to get back to it. But umm, so we went to Moses Brown, it was pretty boring because everybody came to the prom, picked up a condom and a brochure, and then went into the prom.
[01:05:18]
DS: Mmmhmm, yeah, no big deal.
BJ: Nobody really had anything to say one way or the other, they just did their little... they went into the prom. But so, I think there were two others we were planning to go to that night. But the next one was Seekonk, so we went out Seekonk and uhh... at Seekonk there were like 3 police officers stationed at the entrance to prom. I guess they were expecting some sort of suburban riot or something else. Umm and, so they're like Ok, you're not highschool students from Seekonk. And they started asking us questions, and well we had to leave. But one person made it a little more complicated, I dunno... you can tell the story.
DS: It's difficult to do this without telling names. Umm, but essentially one person, the guy that was sort of took the ball and was running with this one, when the guards started interro- questioning us like we were really going over the line, he got all flustered and he said he was somebody else who was sort of a prominent artist in like an underground artists in the community. And...
BJ: Just because it was the first name that came to his head.
DS: Yeah, just because it was the first name that came to his mind and he didn't want to give his name which, he should've done ultimately.
BJ: Well what we should've done is just walked away.
DS: Anyway so he got all flustered and he gave the name of this prominent artist, and I dunno if this prominent artist ever got...
BJ: Informed?
[laughter]
BJ: Or hassled, poor guy.
DS: It was like, yeah, it was just like an unnecessary thing to do.
[01:07:29]
BJ: Maybe, the only time I can think of... there were, as far as I know, only two arrest situations? You know most of the time would be, we realized pretty quick, in New York... lemme back up a little bit. In New York if you want to get in the paper, you have to have at least a hundred, preferably a thousand people arrested. Otherwise it's not even, it's not gonna make page 16. Umm, in Rhode Island we just had to use the first three letters of the word AIDS and we'd be on all 4 stations. So we realized pretty quickly that we didn't actually need to create this antagonistic relationship, so why do it if you don't need it and it's expensive and...? Umm, but the first, there was sort of one - I mean it wasn't like we had a hard and fast rule saying that, it's just the way it worked out. The first arrest situation was the one at the, the big demo at the health department that I was involved in. And then the second one was -
BC: And what happened there?
BJ: We'll get back to it.
BC: Ok.
BJ: The second one was in Newport. And I wasn't there actually myself, but umm, there was a woman who was using the ACT-UP megaphone. And apparently in Newport it's illegal to have an amplified device without some sort of permit. So anyway she got no warning, she just got arres – I don't even remember who that was but anyway – she got arrested and hauled down to the station and so on and so forth. So that was probably the worst case scenario because nobody expected an arrest and it happened so there was no backup plan or, nobody really knew what to do or... and like I said, I wasn't there and I don't really remember how it all went down. But the one in, the one at the health department was the first major demo, and it was a couple of weeks after the balloon releasing thing, the balloons with the condoms? And basically the object there – or the object of the one in Newport before i let Carline off the hook, was uhh, there's this guy who umm was a major pain in the butt in the legislature, David Carline was that his name? I dunno, representative from Newport anyway, he owned the big tennis hall of fame thing and some big restaurant. Anyway, so all these people went down, it wasn't just an ACT-UP thing, it was ACT-UP and various, it was more about gay rights so it was a whole bunch of people. Probably queer nation was involved and probably members from the alliance for lesbian and gay civil rights although I doubt that the alliance for gay civil rights was involved. So they all went down and made a big fuss outside his restaurant and informed his patrons what kind of man they were supporting. Apparently through a megaphone. Where is that megaphone?
[01:01:20]
DS: I don't have the megaphone.
BJ: Oh no, I had it and I gave it to somebody... I don't even remember who I gave it to but they were like doing this activist thing and I was like “This has been through the battles... here...” you know?
DS: And you also ended up with the budget, which you ended up donating to somebody right? The ACT-UP budget?
BJ: Yeah, we gave -
DS: Oh no no no, the budget, it was all.. budget and then you have later on all the needles but...
BJ: Yeah we split half the budget and we gave half the budget to that thief, umm... this person's sentence is about to end I think..
DS: Oh I think we can name, yeah.
BJ: uhh... what the hell was his name? Oh Garreth, yeah.
BC: I actually need to switch tape real fast, let me...
BJ: Oh good, cause I need to pee.
BC: Ok.
[end of disc 1]
[01:02:13]