This drawing was done in January 1989. I had joined ACT UP/LA in the fall of ’87. Since I and my husband had just bought a house with a garage and a back yard, I volunteered my house as the site for the signage painting and float construction. ACT U? LA was a really fun, artistic group, with lots of great, humorous-yet pointed ideas for activism. It didn’t dawn on me, at first, that the majority of the members had AIDS or HIV. Duh. Comparatively speak, I was a dilettante, a fair weather activist. My life wasn’t at immediately at stake; I and my husband got tested for HIV for the first time in that summer.
My spouse was not a member of ACT UP; he was active in Democratic politics; in fact he was a delegate committed to Jesse Jackson in the ’88 presidential election. The delegates had to meet (twice a month? One a week on Fridays?) in Sacramento because it was equally inconvenient for everybody.
