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>> you'd be in jail. >> certainly in trouble. i think steve's point is we lived through eight years of drama. every day there was some excuse for something they didn't do. i'm not arguing that she shouldn't be a nominee and i'm not arguing she might not be president, but at end of the day, she'd better clean the act up pretty quick. >> she's been talking on the campaign trail about the division between the rich and the poor and how, you know, she's going to be the candidate of the middle class. you're exactly right. how does she pull this off? she's been making $200,000 a speech. this is more ...

Its second decade members of new york's confrontational advocacy group act up are looking for new ways to get the message across. >> as we got into the 1990s the number of our frenz within that were dying is just escalating, and, you know, 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, act up's activists sees the opportunity to put aids research on the national agenda. >> act up began a year-long campaign called campaign 92, aids vote if your life depend...

>> people getting fired from their job, evicted from their apartment, denied health insurance. everything. city government was also absent and koch's administration was not talking about aids publicly. >> act up is born in 1987 emerging from the powerlessness that many affected by the disease are feeling. >> act up's original motto was also its formula. anger into action. our grief after a while became anger, and we took that anger and frustration, and we focused it. >> a key part of act up strategy is to use the media to spread its message. >> act up is very, very savvy. we had people like an...

Into -- >> march 28th, 1989. >> called act up. the aids coalition to unleash power. act up cofounder was diagnosed with h.i.v. in 1984. >> one of the things we realized was that writing articles or letters to the editor about health crisises wasn't getting the public's attention. we decided, yeah -- people in their daily lives. -- >> what weather a mysterious disease started spreading among gay men and intravenous drug users. >> they didn't know what was causing these cancers that cause big purple calus-like lesions all over the bodies of people

Loved most. this is what's left. >> act up continues to perform acts of civil disobedience for the next few years. in the mid 1990s the group splits apart due to internal disagreements. in the end the coalition is considered ground breaking for the attention it brings to aids. >> what got the drug companies and the federal government to develop treatments that were extending lives and stopping the immediate carnage. >> by 1996 a drug cocktail was 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 heal...