Originally posted on Media Co-op (Sudbury)
Recovering the history of direct action AIDS organizing in Canada
by Scott Neigh
Scholar and activist Gary Kinsman of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, introducing the film *United in Anger: A History of ACT UP* and talking about the new AIDS Activist History Project that he is working on with Alexis Shotwell of Carleton University in Ottawa. SUDBURY, ON — It was an era when rage and creativity won life-saving victories. Neglected by governments, scorned by much of the public, and facing rapid illness and death, in the mid-1980s people living with HIV/AIDS and their supporters began taking radical direct action in cities across North America. Yet this history is in danger of being forgotten.
Earlier this week, the screening of a film about the New York chapter of the direct action AIDS group ACT UP served as the first public event in Sudbury, Ontario, for a new project seeking to recover some of that radical history in the Canadian context. The work is being spearheaded by Alexis Shotwell, a sociologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, in collaboration with Gary Kinsman of Laurentian University in Sudbury.
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