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>> ricardo gomes is also dealing with a reputation issue. he recently had a cup of urine confiscated from his cell. he says he was going to throw it at a particular officer, but an even more sinister concoction. >> i was planning on making a special remedy we used to do back in the old days called funky cold medina. it's kind of like skunk juice. it's made out of some really nasty parts, urine, feces, peanut butter and sour milk. and we mix it together until it's liquid. if you hit anybody with this, they ain't coming, they're not going to want to go home, trust me. >> bricks, i didn't finish ...

Of extra servings of food. >> oh, oh, oh, thank you jesus. number six, oh, look at that. see, look out for somebody on the tip and then he looks out for you with some food. see, that's how jail works. if you're good to people, people are good to you. if you act like an [ bleep ] -- >> over the last seven to ten days we're starting to see his behavior change because we've been giving him less attention. we've kind of been having just one or two people deal with him for the most part, as opposed to when he acts up, everybody shows up to include myself, sergeants, corporals. so what we've done is...

The next few years, but in the mid 1990s, the group splits apart due to internal disagreements. in the end, the coalition is considered groundbreaking for the attention it brings to aids. >> we got the drug companies and federal government to develop treatments that were extending lives and stopping the immediate carnage. >> by 1996, a drug cocktail is introduced that brings about dramatic improvements for many of the afflicted. >> those of us who had under 100 "t" cells and were really sick, our health started to rebound. >> eric sawyer is one of the longest terms survivors of hiv. he now wor...

Ed cotch's administration was not talking about aids publicly. >> actup is born in 1987, emerging from the powerlessness that many affected by the disease are feeling. >> actup's original formula was also its formula. anger into action. our grief, after a while, became anger. we took that anger and frustration and we focused it. >> a key part of actup's strategy is to use the media to spread its message. >> actup was very, very savvy. we had people like ann northrop who used to be diane sawyer's producer at cbs. we had bob ravsky who did pr for corporate america. from day one they told us how ...

Advocacy group, actup, are looking for new ways to get the message across. >> as we got into the '90s, the number of our friends within actup dying was just escalating and we were really getting tired of metaphors. and a lot of people were using rhetoric, when i die, throw my body over the white house fence. >> in 1992, with the presidential election looming, actup's activists seized the opportunity to put aids research on the national agenda. >> actup began a year-long campaign called campaign '92: aids, vote if your life depended on it. >> on october 11th, three weeks before the election, th...