ACT UP occupies Wall Street

HIV/AIDS spreads as services are cut. WW photo: Gerry Scoppettuolo

span class="byline">By Gerry Scoppettuolo
New York

Up to 1,500 people with HIV/AIDS and other activists marched on Wall Street on April 25. With more than 8,000 people still being infected every day worldwide and no cure in sight, the crowd confronted the cornerstone of capitalist profit with one demand: “Make the banks pay!”

Chanting “People with AIDS under attack, what do we do? ACT UP, fight back,” the demonstrators moved down Broadway from City Hall and stopped in front of the city’s Human Resources Administration to protest proposed mandatory drug testing and work requirements which would drastically reduce the number of people eligible for government HIV/AIDS services in New York. A total of 19 people were arrested at civil disobedience actions on Wall Street and Broadway organized by ACT UP and Housing Works.

Permanent, affordable housing has emerged as a critical need for people with HIV/AIDS who must survive on paltry Social Security checks, at the same time food stamps and other necessities of life are being cut back. According to the Boston Housing Authority, the minimum waiting period for such housing in Boston is five years. As one man living with AIDS told Workers World, “I don’t think I have five years!”

A chief demand of ACT UP New York is a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculative purchases. It is hoped this would provide billions of dollars for needed HIV services. “All of our needs are not being met,” declared Marcus Paul, an early founder of ACT UP in 1987. “We need this Robin Hood Tax.”

In addition to ACT UP New York, Occupy Wall Street and Housing Works, support for the demonstration came from ACT UP contingents from Philadelphia, Health GAP, the National Nurses Union, Harlem United, the East Side Harm Reduction Coalition, the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, Queers Rising and Stonewall Warriors/Boston. Most important for the future, newly revived ACT UP chapters from Boston, Rhode Island and Maryland organized buses to the demonstration.

The organizers focused attention on worldwide as well as U.S. issues. According to the World Health Organization, most of the 33 million people worldwide known to be infected cannot afford life-saving HIV medications. Here in the U.S. over 3,400 people with HIV/AIDS have been placed on waiting lists due to the collapse of the subsidized AIDS Drug Assistance Program in many states.

In several states, people who have HIV/AIDS but are deemed “too healthy” because of their T-cell count can no longer have access to anti-retrovirals or other needed medications. This privation exists even though the eight leading manufacturers of HIV medicines and other drugs netted more than $263 billion between 2006 and 2010. (annual reports of Merck, GSK, Roche and five other pharmaceutical companies)

Despite their daily struggle to stay alive, people living with HIV/AIDS again showed on April 25 that they will fight back and not rest until those who profit from their illness are made to return the great wealth they have taken from the workers to the masses who desperately need health care.

Scoppettuolo, co-founder of ACT UP/Nashville 1988-1992, can be reached at [email protected].