Izzy Silver | Student Life

Washington University’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department hosted a lecture featuring author Sarah Schulman about the research she conducted for her book “Let The Record Show” at Left Bank Books, Feb. 27.

Schulman spent the duration of the lecture explaining her research for the book and taking audience questions. Her book is about the AIDS epidemic and the United States’ response to it. The book heavily focuses on the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), a grassroots political group dedicated to alleviating the AIDS crisis. 

Schulman was a journalist stationed in New York City in the 1980s, primarily writing for press centered around gay and feminist outreach. She explained that her work was focused on people with AIDS.

Schulman was critical of the U.S.’ response to the AIDS epidemic, and specifically about the widespread healthcare management practices.

“AIDS is about 100 years old, and we know that it was in the United States in the 1940s,” Schulman said. “We know that it was in New York City in the 1960s, but science did not notice the pattern that came to be called AIDS until 1981. And this is because we don’t have a functional health care delivery system.”

Schulman said that reframing one’s perspective when dealing with past events such as the AIDS crisis was important, especially when attempting to understand oppression.

“The term gay cancer, for example: there’s no such thing as gay cancer, cancer cannot be gay,” Schulman said. “But [the phrase] shows you what the mindset was. From the very first day, AIDS has been misrepresented and continues to be misrepresented. Now we understand that AIDS existed, people died in this country, and the government did absolutely nothing. And pharma did nothing.”

Schulman said the United States failed to take the AIDS crisis seriously and did not support gay individuals, and that gay people found community with each other.

“You can see things like the gay men’s health crisis,” Schulman said. “There was a Puerto Rican social worker named Diego Lopez, and he started this thing called the buddy system. You’d be assigned a person with AIDS, and you would hang out with them, help them do their laundry until they died, basically.” 

Schulman states that this volunteer-based work within the gay community was halted due to the 1986 Supreme Court decision, Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld that the 14th amendment cannot prevent sodomy laws, or laws that criminalized private sexual conduct between same-sex couples.

“[Upholding the sodomy law] was the turning point in the gay community’s response to AIDS because people were in rage,” Schulman said. “There were angry demonstrations in New York and Washington without permits, and this was really what a different level of politicization started to set in.”

Schulman said gay communities and their activism often manifested in organizations like ACT UP. ACT UP is a direct-action organization that focused on non-violent protesting, Schulman explained. 

One of their most effective demonstrations was interrupting a Catholic Mass in protest of the church attempting to limit the distribution of condoms, Schulman said. She added that about 7,000 people attended the protest, leading to mass media coverage and better representation of people with AIDS.

“It was on the front page of every newspaper in the world,” Schulman said. “I did an interview with a photojournalist who told me that when she was selling photos to magazines, they always wanted to portray emaciated helpless men with AIDS dying in their beds. After the church action, they wanted [to portray] people with AIDS fighting for their lives.”

Senior Brianna Chandler said she came to the book lecture primarily to further educate herself.  

“I’m really interested in the history and movement scholarship and just looking at the ways different movements have been able to make their mark on American history,” Chandler said. “But also just ways they missed the mark in regard to creating change.”

Chandler said that she enjoyed the lecture, not only because of the content, but because of how Schulman presented it.

“I think she’s very captivating and very clear,” Chandler said. “[She is] clearly educated and informed. And the fact that she was not only someone doing scholarship on the movement, but someone who was involved, really makes her narrative strong.”

Schulman said direct action is one of the best ways to generate change, especially when attempting to get media coverage.

“You identify an issue that’s local to you that may be emblematic of a larger problem,” Schulman said. “You design a solution that’s winnable. You present it to the powers that be, and when they say no, you do nonviolent, theatrical civil disobedience that in some way conveys your argument visually to the public through the media.” 

In terms of activism broadly, Schulman said that organizations like ACT UP were successful because of direct action, in her opinion.

“ACT UP had no theory,” Schulman said. “There was no theoretical discussion. There were no study groups. There was nothing like that; it was action oriented. The questions that come up are real and applicable. You cohere your values by going action first, and that’s how ACT UP functioned.”