Image credit: Still from a video of an ACT UP San Francisco demonstration in San Francisco, 1989; footage by Charles Cyberski, Charles Cyberski Videotapes (1994-03), GLBT Historical Society.
This event will take place online. Please scroll down to “How to Participate” for more information. You will need to register through the Eventbrite link so that we can send you the Zoom link for the event. The event will also be livestreamed, and then archived, on our YouTube page at https://bit.ly/2UyGVbG.
Responding to the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, the GLBT Historical Society is relaunching its “Fighting Back” series as a weekly, online virtual forum. Introduced as a program series three years ago, “Fighting Back” is an intergenerational discussion that brings together veteran and younger LGBTQ activists to discuss how the struggles of the past inform our present. The new series focuses on identifying what lessons and strategies from the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic may help us understand and respond to COVID-19. The intention is to find ways to transform our feelings of anxiety, despair or anger into action, and to identify models for building community and solidarity in the midst of this pandemic.
The first program in this series brings together San Francisco ACT UP veterans to discuss what direct-action protest strategies were effective during the 1980s and 1990s and consider how these might be adapted during an epidemic that requires us to shelter in place. The panel will be moderated by GLBT Historical Society Executive Director Terry Beswick.
This event is organized by the ACT UP Oral History Project, a GLBT Historical Society initiative made possible by California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
SPEAKERS
Terry Beswick (moderator) was a co-founder of ACT UP in San Francisco and advocated for HIV/AIDS research and treatment with Project Inform, the Human Rights Campaign and the White House Office of HIV/AIDS Policy. More recently, he spearheaded a campaign to save the Castro Country Club for queer people with substance use disorders and founded the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. Currently, as executive director of the GLBT Historical Society, he is leading an effort to establish the first full-scale museum of LGBTQ history in the United States.
Gerard Koskovich is a San Francisco historian and rare book dealer. A founding member of the GLBT Historical Society, he has been active in the movement to create LGBTQ archives and museums for nearly four decades and has curated numerous exhibitions. Koskovich has presented widely, including talks at the Ecole du Louvre, Kyoto University and Oxford University. His writing on LGBTQ history and culture has been published extensively in English and French. He has lived in San Francisco since 1988 and was a frequent legal observer at ACT UP/San Francisco protests.
Brenda Lein was a Shanti volunteer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, providing practical support for people with AIDS. She also served as a member of ACT UP San Francisco and was a founding member of ACT UP Golden Gate. She helped to form WORLD, Women Organized to Respond to Life-Threatening Diseases, an organization for, by and about HIV-positive women. Lein also held the dual positions of director of information and advocacy and director of Project Immune Restoration at Project Inform. Most recently, she served as the program director for the Delaney AIDS Research Enterprise to Cure AIDS, a large, government-funded, international, multicenter, bench-to-bedside research effort. She is currently the president of the Linda Grinberg Foundation for AIDS and Immune Research, which funds cutting edge immune and HIV/AIDS cure research.
Lito Sandoval has served on many nonprofit boards in the Latino and LGBTQ communities. He is a former president of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club and was a former secretary of ACT UP/San Francisco. His essay “I Love You Alto” appears in the anthology Virgins, Guerrillas y Locas: Gay Latinos Writing on Love (Cleis Press, 1999).
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
This event will take place online. After you register above, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and instructions on how to join the Zoom webinar as an attendee. Please make sure to scroll to the bottom of the email from Eventbrite to see the instructions!
Attendees will be able to participate as a virtual audience by asking questions, participating in polls and chatting with one another and panelists. Attendee registration is limited to 100 participants.
We will also be livestreaming this event on the GLBT Historical Society YouTube channel and linking to the video on social media for an unlimited amount of viewers.
ADMISSION
Free | $5.00 suggested donation
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