Gary Kinsman is a long-time queer liberation, AIDS, anti-poverty and anti-capitalist activist. He has been involved in the AIDS Committee Of Toronto, AIDS ACTION NOW!, the Newfoundland AIDS Association the Valley AIDS Concern Group and is currently involved in the AIDS Activist History Project, http://www.aidsactivisthistory.ca/. He is the author of The Regulation of Desire, co-author (with Patrizia Gentile) of The Canadian War on Queer, and editor of Whose National Security?, and Sociology for Changing the World. He is also the author of "Managing AIDS Organizing" and "'Responsibility' as a strategy of governance: Regulating people with AIDS and Lesbians and Gay Men in Ontario." His website Radical Noise is at http://radicalnoise.ca/ He recently retired from teaching sociology at Laurentian University on the territories of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek nation. More here: http://aidsorganizing.ca/

1. Resisting State and Professional
Management of AIDS
Organizations: Memories of AIDS
Organizing in ‘Canada,’ 1983-1990.

2. DEDICATED TO MICHAEL SMITH: 1958- FEB. 5,
1991.

3. EPP = DEATH
 Entry point into talk
 Recently found banner – importance to
memory of objects, contexts and histories.

4. ACTIONS AT THE CANADIAN CONFERENCE ON
AIDS, 1988
 May 14-15 CAS conference,
followed by the Canadian
Conference on
AIDS, May 16-17th.
 On May 16th a
combined
die-in outside
and unfurling
an “EPP=Death”
banner at the
opening session.

5. AIDS ACTIVISM HEATS UP
 The next day at
the closing of the
conference a large
demo of about
300 people took
over the streets
and burnt an effigy
of Jake Epp at
Nathan Philips
Square.

6. EFFECTIVE ACTIVISM BRINGING TOGETHER AIDS
ACTIVISTS AND PEOPLE IN COMMUNITY BASED
AIDS GROUPS
 A few weeks later Epp was called into
Mulroney’s office and asked why people in
Toronto were so angry with him that they
were burning him in effigy.
 Important composition of struggle bringing
AIDS activists and many people involved in
what are becoming ASOs together against
state neglect and inaction. Can this be
rebuilt or remade in our new historical
context?

7. CREATING BASIS FOR ‘NATIONAL AIDS
STRATEGY’
 Creates basis for development of ‘National
AIDS Strategy’ and some important
advances like the Treatment Registry but
also the new state/professional regulatory
strategy of ‘consultation’ and ‘partnership.’

8. STARTING FROM MEMORY WORK
 Pain, mourning, anguish, but also
anger and rage – AIDS activism politicizing
this – Deborah Gould.

9. FIRST WAVE OF AIDS ORGANIZING AND ITS
TRANSFORMATION
 “GAY PLAGUE HAS ARRIVED IN
CANADA”Toronto Star, 1982.
 Community organizations initially drawing on
aspects of feminist health activism.
 One of first 3 employees of ACT.
 Safe sex education
 Support work -- Gay waiters –
who gets excluded? Class and
professionalization.

10. FIRST WAVE OF AIDS ORGANIZING AND ITS
TRANSFORMATION
 Liaison work with the Haitian community –
professional relations and racism.
 From Community based groups to AIDS-Service
Organizations. Funding, Boards of
Directors, control over funding. Away from
advocacy and activism. Work of Roxana Ng.
Incorporation and charitable tax status.

11. NEW WAVE OF AIDS ACTIVISM BASED ON
SURVIVAL AND TREATMENT ACCESS
 From AIDS ‘victim’ to people living
with AIDS/HIV.
Vancouver PWA Coalition formed
by Kevin Brown, Warren Jensen,
and Taavi Nurmela. March 26, 1986
march for a viral laboratory in BC in
Victoria. Push for access to AZT.

12. ACT UP – SILENCE = DEATH
 Impact of ACT UP groups forming in US.
Contradiction between knowledge of promising
treatments and survival and being denied them.
Only public health and palliative care. Direct Action
politics.

13. FORMATION OF AIDS ACTION NOW!
 Group of HIV+ men, gay activists, and
primary-care physicians start to meet in later
87.
 Large community meeting inspired by Right
to Privacy Committee and ACT.

14. FIRST ACTION FOR ACCESS TO AEROSOLIZED
PENTAMIDINE AND OPPOSITION TO A TRIAL
WITH “CLINICAL ENDPOINTS.”
 March 25, 88 First AAN! Demo. 500 people.
From the 519 to TGH with empty coffins to
symbolize those who would die in the trial
because they were not given AP. Challenge
to standard research and ‘science’ –
treatment access. Ended with a vigil outside
the hospital.

15. TREATMENT ACTIVISM
 Bringing in drugs from
Buffalo. The Pentamidine
Project.
 Taking treatments on
Parliament Hill – May 25, 88.
 Focus on treatment information and access.
Non-cooperation forces development of
National AIDS strategy – commitment to
treatment information.

16. DDI
 In 1989 realized we were up
against not only state and
medical professional relations
but also up against drug
companies – refusal to release
ddi on compassionate grounds.
 While a media conference was going on we
attempted to occupy the office of Brystol Myers.
Seven of us were arrested. First civil disobedience
DA ever involved in.

18. WINNING EXPANDED TREATMENT ACCESS
 As a result of this DA protest and our documents
and media work – as George Smith put it we
needed documents
and demonstrations –
we got expanded
treatment access,
treatment arms in clinical
trials, and more release
through the EDRP on
compassionate grounds.

19. TAKING OVER THE OPENING OF THE MONTREAL
INTERNATIONAL AIDS CONFERENCE
 Initiated by ACT UP NYC, AIDS ACTION
NOW! and Reaction SIDA take over the
opening of the Montreal AIDS Conference in
89.

20. MULRONEY YOU HAVE LEFT US TO DIE!
 When Mulroney finally speaks to officially
open the conference we unfurl a banner
saying “Mulroney you have left us to die” and
AIDS activists turn their backs to him pointing
to their watches.
 By the end of the conference a closing
speaker Don deGagne from the Vancouver
PWA Coalition is added in.

21. BROADENING OUT THE ACTIVISM AND MAKING
THE CONNECTIONS
 Racialization, gender and class. Sex
workers, injection drug users, hemophiliacs,
prisoners, social assistance and paying for
drugs.

22. AIDS: SILENCE = DEATH, ACTION =LIFE
 We fought against the early
homosexualization of AIDS; developed
erotic-positive safer sex and safer practices;
supported people living with AIDS/HIV; and
through direct action pushed for and won
greater treatment access. Direct action = Life

23. THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF FORGETTING
AND THE RESISTANCE OF REMEMBERING
 Ruling and the social organization of forgetting
activism and resistance – that we have and can
change the world. The antidote is the resistance of
remembering in an embodied fashion.

24. DIRECT ACTION = LIFE
 Safe sex as an erotic, community
practice. Not criminalization of
people with HIV.
 The Global South and the need to
transfer wealth and resources.
The Montreal Manifesto. AIDS as
a condensation of all social
relations.
 Winning treatment access for many
in the North.

25. RESISTING BUREAUCRATIZATION AND
‘PROFESSIONALIZATION’
 Resisting state and professional regulation-commitment
to grass roots activism and
organizing.
 Resisting strategies of ‘consultation’ and
‘participation.’
 How to get resources while at the same time
avoiding regulation and constraint.
Within/Against/Beyond.
 Addressing class and state relations as
central.

26. THANKS TO:
 Alexis, the AIDS Activist History
Project, and to Alex and this
conference organizing committee.
* AAN! and Rites magazine for photos.
 To those who have been involved in
the PWA Coalitions, ACT UP groups
and AIDS ACTION NOW! including
all those who died.
 To my partner Patrick and our son
Mike.