Talk:ACT UP

Name
Kimiko, you recently edited the page so that all "ACT UP"s read "ACT-UP", which I've seen to be the most common spelling (in the news and such), but the ACT UP/New York site does not use this spelling. What do we do?-Hyacinth 20:35, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Actions introduction
I think the following paragraph should just be deleted, because it's obvious and to the extent that it's not obvious it's unencyclopedic. Please reinsert with explanation if you disagree.


 * Actions
 * Because ACT UP and its affinity groups organized so many diverse actions in a relatively short period of time, it is difficult and perhaps counter-productive to classify them in any particular way. As such, the actions are presented chronologically with no particular weight given. Accounts of the actions are drawn from Douglas Crimp's history of ACT UP as well as the ACT UP Oral History Project.

Aroundthewayboy 15:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Article organization
So, I just added "Stop the Church" under actions - I think this is an appropriate place for it b/c it was a major action taken by the organization. Now, though, there's duplicate info in this new section and "Criticisms and controversy". Perhaps, the best bet is to merge info from the Criticisms section into the Stop the Church section and add new, more inclusive text to the Criticisms section, as that section currently really only speaks of criticism of the one action. What do ya think? Zue Jay (talk)  20:09, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Some material is repeated, and avoiding/minimizing a "Criticisms" section or the like, while incorporating the relevant content, is a good thing. I would try to incorporate other criticisms into other sections in an integrative fashion.  Baccyak4H (Yak!) 19:09, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I just did this; the protest is coming back into the public eye because of the Moscow Pussy Riot trial, where, alas, they are facing a lot more than community service.

Critisism
The criticism section mentions ACT-UP saying something about some protest with a wafer, yet none is mentioned. 72.93.215.79 (talk) 02:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I am confused as to why we do not have an established section of this article that gives some background knowledge on Larry Kramer's creation of and later involvement with ACT UP instead of just a small portion in the introduction.Cwarner-haag (talk) 03:14, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Life site news
I don't think Lifesitenews qualifies as a reliable source, and I can find no other source for the claim that activists threw used condoms at the altar. Plus, it's a throw-away line in an unrelated article almost twenty years later, so I’ve taken that out and replaced it. -- Irn (talk) 04:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Dead link
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://williamapercy.com/pub-Outing.htm
 * In Don't ask, don't tell on 2011-03-17 13:39:20, 404 Not Found
 * In Ernst Burchard on 2011-03-18 08:26:11, 404 Not Found
 * In Gerry Studds on 2011-03-19 23:23:39, 404 Not Found
 * In Gerry Studds on 2011-03-22 05:01:29, 404 Not Found
 * In Harden–Eulenburg Affair on 2011-03-22 21:23:19, 404 Not Found
 * In AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power on 2011-06-20 00:33:18, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 00:34, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

longevity drugs as part of treatment
There are published studies of longevity improving drugs. Deprenyl, metformin, resveratrol, rapamycin There are also a number of popular articles on longevity science at Scientific American.

What is the right way to suggest to the Treatment Action Group that all hiv persons should be prescribed a longevizing drug as a standard part of their treatment. The "psychology" of this is that if hiv changes lifespan a longevity drug restores full lifespan as a kind of treatment right.

Some longevity drugs that have been published as effective at two or more mammal species. The medical rationale to prescribe experimental drugs that are unapproved is they they may save a persons life. The many years of life saved per person on a longevity drug then may have similar "quantity of life years gained" that goes with a person being cured of cancer, justifying the prescription of only partially researched preFDA longevity compounds to hiv patients.

further, the voluntary use of longevity drugs among hiv persons screens these drugs to benefit everybody.

from a wikipedia perspective the Treatment Action Group should have an online link to treatmentactiongroup.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.223.120.163 (talk) 21:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

"Stop the Church"
I've redirected the Stop the Church article here for now. This isn't meant to be a vote against having it, just that it's not big enough at the moment to be worth bothering. The version I redirected, and some previous versions, have a few minor bits in them that are unsourced but perhaps worth looking into at some point, but for now I think it's more productive just to look for new sources directly. Wnt (talk) 16:23, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Move. Cúchullain t/ c 16:27, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power → ACT UP – Act up/ACT UP already redirect here and most sources refer to the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power almost exclusively as ACT UP, sometimes not even mentioning the backronym. Individual chapters are named ACT UP/x, making it the WP:COMMONNAME. Relisted. BDD (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2012 (UTC)   Gobōnobo  + c 13:03, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose per MOS:TM and WP:ALLCAPS. The current title is in use (not creating a new one), so I see no reason to move. --Labattblueboy (talk) 13:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:COMMONNAME. The ostensible name "AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power" is merely a backronym, and is obscure and unfamiliar.  Similar to Patriot Act, where we have the title at the name that is in actual use, not the highly contrived backronym "Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" or "USA PATRIOT". — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:39, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * There is nothing in the article to indicate that this is a backronym. Can you provide a reliable source to this affect?--Labattblueboy (talk) 17:26, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Seems self-evident. Regardless, it's not worth debating this point, since the actual policy-based argument is WP:COMMONNAME. In particular, the common name is well-known and official name is highly obscure. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 22:09, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * There may be cases where a name is self evident, this however is not one of them. No shortage or news hits on the current title and a google search of the current title, with wikipedia removed (search term "AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power" -wikipedia) produces 180K hits. No doubt ACT UP may produce more hits but its still an acronym, still in all caps. Further, We only use an acronym for a page name when its almost exclusively known by that name (WP:ACRONYMTITLE), and that's obviously not the case here.--Labattblueboy (talk) 02:26, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not saying "the name is self-evident" (whatever that means), only that it seems like an obvious backronym. You are misquoting WP:ACRONYMTITLE, which does not say we should only use an acronym for a title if it is almost exclusively known by that title. Nothing there is inconsistent with WP:COMMONNAME. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 05:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose as long as Act-up and ACT-UP both redirect here I see no reason to change this international group's title. And I don't know where the backronym is coming from unless the claim, which isn't presently in the article, is that "ACT UP" preceded AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, which I think is false. My understanding is that a call went forth to create a direct action group and by consensus the title was chosen knowing the acronym would be used by the media and at events. In reporting I generally see both presented. In short renaming is a very bad idea that does not serve our readers. Insomesia (talk) 17:40, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * "the title was chosen knowing the acronym would be used" is exactly the meaning of backronym. --JBL (talk) 15:13, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe backronyms can be thought of at the same time, this doesn't supersede the name of the group. Insomesia (talk) 21:49, 15 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Support as the common name -- it's self-evident that this is the name that was intended to be used, and indeed it's the one by which the organization is commonly known. --JBL (talk) 15:18, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No, the name of the group has always been the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, the acronym has also been used since the beginning. I see no benefit in this move at all, especially as the two common acronyms already direct here. Insomesia (talk) 21:49, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Support as the most common and widely known name of the organization. Yes, it is an initialism but ACT UP itself usually used/uses ACT UP and not AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. FWIW I've had a look in about a dozen books I own that are used across Wikipedia as reliable sources and none of them refer to ACT UP by the spelled out name on first usage, and that includes ACT UP co-founder Larry Kramer in his Reports from the Holocaust. Buck Winston (talk) 19:32, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Removed some sourced text
I just removed the following sourced text, added by another editor:


 * Eric Pollard, founder of the Washington D.C. branch of ACT UP, asserted that "some of us" in ACT UP used Adolph Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf as a "working model" for their protests and direct actions.

It was not on-topic in the section "Structure of ACT-UP". I'm also skeptical about including a citation like this: why source to what seems to be essentially an attack piece rather than to the original Blade op-ed (which unfortunately I can't find online)? Also, does anyone happen to know if Linacre Quarterly is a WP:RS? (I've not heard of it before, and I was curious whether it's been discussed anywhere.) --JBL (talk) 21:03, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Anarchist/leaderless
In a paragraph, it is said that ACTUP was "organized as a leaderless and effectively anarchist network." This is not true and it contradicts the next paragraph which says "Leadership changed hands frequently and suddenly", so I have added a citation needed tag. 184.8.99.138 (talk) 09:01, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
 * And did you read any of the words between those two sentences, which give a detailed description of the leadership structure, including a complete resolution of this contradiction? --JBL (talk) 13:08, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Edit warring over neutrality of lede
As tiresome as this may be, two successive reverts calls for talk page discussion, before we get to WP:3RR. The revert in question is this. I changed the lede sentence from "an international direct action advocacy group working to impact..." to "an interest group that describes itself as taking direct action to impact...". My reason is severalfold. First, direct action is a method, not a type of group, so it makes no sense to describe the organization as such; one could say, e.g. "a group that engages in direct action." Second, the language of the lede is a paraphrase of the language of the organization, and its sole reference is to ACT UP's own website. This constitutes WP:PEACOCK and is precisely why we have the template Cherry-picked. Can you please provide your explanation for why these issues I've identified are not the case?  Ergo Sum  19:44, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Seeing no response, I am reinstating the initial edit I made. I would also remind you that it is a violation of Wikipedia's policy to use Twinkle to revert good-faith edits without an appropriate edit summary during a content dispute.  Ergo Sum  01:56, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Seeing no response" after six hours during which I was logged off, you decided the discussion was over? Oy vey.
 * On the substantive questions:
 * While the grammatical argument seems silly to me (I do not think any native English speaker could fail to understand its meaning), I have no objection to a change that would cause it to parse as a noun rather than an adjective. (Or to move it into a separate sentence.)
 * The phrase "interest group" is substantively vacuous and mildly pejorative (at least in American English).
 * The description in the current lead sentence is factual and to the point. The idea that WP:PEACOCK is relevant here is absurd.
 * In general the sourcing for this article could be better, but that is not a good reason to replace a clear and accurate description of the group with a less clear and less informative description.
 * --JBL (talk) 18:47, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm at a bit of a loss. You haven't provided a reason for your claims, you've just reiterated them.
 * 1) Interest group: Reiterating my edit summaries, it is certainly news to me that "interest group" is pejorative in the English language; I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any evidence to that effect. Vacuous? Hardly; it's a common descriptor of this sort of organization.
 * 2) Adjective vs. noun: I wouldn't call it silly. It's just logical, and not a very big point.
 * -- Ergo Sum  20:21, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * As I said above, if you would like to begin by making an edit related to the grammar of "direct action", I have no objection to that.
 * You have given no argument in favor of the farcical idea that WP:PEACOCK is relevant to the current first sentence of the article, so there is nothing substantive to discuss on that point at present.
 * Setting aside the question of whether the phrase "interest group" is pejorative: its substantive content is to say that the group advocates for a [political] position. This is slightly less vacuous than if the article began, "ACT UP is an organization made up of people", but what it does functionally is obscure rather than inform.  By comparison, the present first sentence tells the reader what are the positions that the group advocates for.  Not that one couldn't write a better such sentence, but there's no way the phrase "interest group" will be part of it.  --JBL (talk) 23:54, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It appears that a resolution is unlikely here without additional input. I've listed this discussion at Third opinion.  Ergo Sum  01:58, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. --JBL (talk) 02:20, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

3O Response: I Googled "direct action advocacy group" and about 75% of the first 50 hits were related to the subject (ACT UP), which makes it seem a bit like branding. I personally find it a little ambiguous, whether they are advocating that people take direct action or they advocate through direct action, though this may be a subtle difference. As an alternative, how about: is an international advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS (PWAs) and the AIDS pandemic, encouraging direct action to bring about and so on. Would that be an acceptable compromise? – Reidgreg (talk) 21:08, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks Reidgreg for your input. Your proposal is acceptable to me.  In answer to your question about ambiguity, what ACT UP is famous (infamous?) for is taking direct action, not advocating that others do so.  So perhaps this could be refined further.  As a separate issue, I suggest dropping "(PWAs)", since this abbreviation is never used again in the article.  --JBL (talk) 21:33, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In that case, maybe more like: is an international advocacy group which takes direct action to impact the lives of people with AIDS and the AIDS pandemic You should be able to find RSS in a Google News search of "act up" "direct action".  Here:  NPR, The Advocate, Boston Review, I'm sure there are better ones out there but that's a quick look, afraid I don't have time to be thorough. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:52, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the input. "to impact the lives" is still too self-promotional for my tastes. It is not generally regarded as appropriate on Wikipedia to describe an organization in the voice of the encyclopedia in terms of its mission statement. That's why many advocacy groups and political organizations are described self-referentially (as I suggest above) or with different language altogether.  Ergo Sum  23:12, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, the more we talk the better I understand your position. There is lots of possible room for compromise around the following principle: the first sentence should say what ACT UP is.  The problem with "ACT UP describes itself as ..." is that it doesn't say what ACT UP is.  But it would certainly be possible to move away from the self-description while staying inside the world of description.  --JBL (talk) 01:07, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment: PWA / "People with AIDS" is an incredibly common initialism from the time frame of ACT UP, and in all the relevant documentation in the '80s and on. There is nothing controversial about its inclusion, and it is easily sourced by any number of sources that are already in the article. ACT UP has historically provided the space for organizing direct action, as well as produced resources to enable others to form their own direct-action groups, so both descriptions apply. The groups Queer Nation, Lesbian Avengers, and others that do not have WP articles but were active in that era, all were formed by people who came out of ACT UP and its interrelated groups. How well-documented this is, I'm not sure. For some of it we have to rely on internal documents and zines, but some of these materials are archived at library collections. - CorbieV  ☊ ☼ 00:45, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's not controversial, it's just unnecessary: if GMHC were only mentioned once then it would also not be worth including the abbreviation, and if the abbreviation "PWA" were used elsewhere in the article then it might make sense to have it in the lead. --JBL (talk) 01:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

"Smoothing" caused problems
This edit was really problematic. It suggests that ACT UP engages in "legislation, medical research, treatment and advocacy, and changing public policies", but this is untrue, since ACT UP does not write legislation, perform medical research, or render treatment. (The not-wrong terms are also kind of redundant -- "advocacy" is just a catch-all term that adds nothing when one is already explaining in detail the nature of the advocacy.) I am inclined just to move it back to how it was before, but other suggestions would be good, too. --JBL (talk) 11:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)