The Life and Death of ACT UP/LA explores the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, Los Angeles, part of the militant anti-AIDS movement of the 1980s and 1990s. ACT UP/LA battled government, medical, and institutional neglect of the AIDS epidemic, engaging in multi-targeted protest in Los Angeles and nationally. The book shows how appealing the direct action anti-AIDS activism was for people across the United States; as well as arguing the need to understand how the politics of place affect organizing, and how the particular features of the Los Angeles cityscape shaped possibilities for activists. A feminist lens is used, seeing social inequalities as mutually reinforcing and interdependent, to examine the interaction of activists and the outcomes of their actions. Their struggle against AIDS and homophobia, and to have a voice in their healthcare, presaged the progressive, multi-issue, anti-corporate, confrontational organizing of the late twentieth century, and deserves to be part of that history.

Author: Benita Roth
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 05/18/2017
Pages: 260
Weight: 0.9lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781107514171

About the Author
Roth, Benita: - Benita Roth is Professor of Sociology, History, and Women's Studies at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, social protest, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. Her first book Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave (Cambridge, 2003) won the Distinguished Book Award from the Sex and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association.