Page 38 - Act Up News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> the situation worsens with each passing year. aids deaths skyrocket. by 1991, the number of people infected with hiv reaches 1 million. and there's still no effective drug treatment in sight. >> almost in step with the way the epidemic was exploding, the turnout to act up exploded. first it was a few dozen people planning, and then a thousand people or more showing up at a meeting. >> in january, 1991, around the 10-year anniversary of the epidemic, actup mounts a major coordinated protest, hoping to attract maximum media coverage. they call it day of desperation. >> we've gotten some progr...

Insurance. everything. city government was also absent. 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 photo 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...

>> people are having a very difficult time as they try to make their way home. reporting live from grand central terminal -- >> tony arena is a former videographer for actup. >> what i remember the most was the noise. i mean, we were so loud. >> so it's hundreds and hundreds if not a thousand people inside grand central. it was an incredible thing to see. >> seeing the banners hanging over the train schedule and the banners floating on the ceiling gave me a sense of pride, you know, like, we really did it. >> day of desperation attracts attention to the cause, but the urgency of actup's missio...

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...

>> i never saw cremated ashes before, but i was looking at the lawn. it was kind of a grayish-green, and bone fragments. you're looking at bone fragments of people. people you knew. >> we are gathered here today to pay our last respects to the bush administration. >> i think the ashes action was kind of drawing a line in the sand and saying, we aren't going to take it anymore. you know, we are bringing our dead to your door, and you had better start doing something to stop the dying, or, you know, you literally are going to be walking on bodies. >> shame, shame, shame, shame. >> it was the mos...