Act Up

Act Up is a association Militant E Activiste of fight against AIDS, created in June 1989, according to the American model, born two years earlier. This model essaimé primarily in western world (New York, Philadelphia, etc, in France: Paris, Lyon and Toulouse), each association profiting from a total autonomy, and are characterized by a certain number of techniques activists relative as well to the visibility of the committed fight as to the internal operating process of the collective (decision making to the consensus for example).

The patient émancipé by the collective

The objectives of Act Up consist:

to alert the media on the epidemic of AIDS, to make pressure on the political personalities to improve the image and the assumption of responsibility of the patients whatever their kind, their sexuality or their inclusion in the Democracy representative (drug addicts, captive, Without-papers , people prostitutes);
according to the American model of the Principles of Denver, to share, transmit, include and reinvest in reality the knowledge of the patients.

Act Up is moreover a group with a strong identity collective “homosexual - Séropositif”, but opened with multiple identities. Its militants come from all the categories of the population which are touched by the epidemic, which makes of this group a political movement that one can really indicate as Queer insofar as it is defined only by his oppositional character.

The disease with multiple crossings

The fight against AIDS binds for Act Up the merry resistance and the sexual policy to a social mobilization around multiple questions such as those of the “race”, of the kind (for the equal rights of the people LGBT), of the Pauvreté, the Prison, the Toxicomanie, the phobia of the sex, the journalistic representations, the reform of the system of Santé, of the laws about the Immigration, of the Medical research, the capacity and the responsibility for the Expert S ou/et of the Drug company.

Techniques activists

Prostitute S with the Whore Pride with Paris in France, on March 18th, 2006]]

Its interpellations consist of blows of glare, which they call “zaps”, to denounce what association considers being as an injustice. Act Up uses also the “ die-in ” (while lengthening by ground) to appear deaths of the AIDS.

Its mode of expression, the recourse to the illegality and the civil Disobedience, is regularly the controversy object, in particular at the time of Sidaction 1996 when its president apostrophized harshly the Minister for the Culture Philippe Douste-Blazy to be opposed to expulsions foreign patients, treating France of “country of shit”; but also the June 5th 2005 at the time of an action followed by a sharp dispute caused by the service of order, when its militants invest the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris to celebrate a show of Homosexual marriage, after the Messe of Sunday morning; or, even more recently, the countryside of posters whose Nicolas Sarkozy was the target. Act Up was blamed to have degraded the frontage of the Elysium on November 30th, 2004. Act Up threatened into 1999 of outer a deputy, homosexual and present at the demonstration anti Pacs of the January 31st 1999 where slogans Homophobe S were heard, but did not do it.

Others

Like all other associations of patients, Act Up was confronted a fall of the number of its militants in second half of the Années 1990 with the arrival of the Trithérapie S.
the June 5th 2005, the vice-chancellor of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris deposited felt sorry for against Act Up for aggression on his person and the 5 watchmen of the security service. This one is denied by the militants of association, who deposited felt sorry for the June 8th for insults and Homophobie against the authors of e-mail and mails in matter abusive and threatening in their opposition (in particular of the death threats). The complaint of the vice-chancellor having been classified without continuation by justice on October 8th, 2005, Mgr Patrick Jacquin, being considered victim of wounds by these militants, decided to carry felt sorry for to the civilian. The April 25th 2007, it obtains win of the Court of Bankruptcy of Paris which considers that the “show of church wedding”, organized “in the central alley of the cathedral” “in front of the furnace bridge where the marriages in the catholic liturgy are actually celebrated”, had proceeded “without the authorization of the vice-chancellor of the cathedral and even against its will and in spite of its expressly expressed opposition”. After having estimated that the militants of Act Up “obviously had carried reached” to the basic principles which are the religious liberty and the free exercise of the worship, he declares that he is “indifferent”, according to him, “that (they) intended to act, not with an aim of (…) to ridicule the Catholic church, but to challenge this one on the discrimination of which they estimate to be victims”. For these reasons, the first civil court of the court condemned association to pour with the vice-chancellor one euro of damages, like 2.000 euros of allowances.
the militants of Act Up assert the right to the civil wedding for two homosexual people, as well as the rights which result from this, of which right to the Adoption.
In December 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy is the target of a campaign “to denounce a racist speech and a fatal policy” while sticking through Paris and the province of the posters comprising a photograph of Nicolas Sarkozy and a text for legend: “Vote Le Pen”.
the September 3rd 2006, Act Up invites to express against the name change of the Place of the square Notre-Dame in Place Jean-Paul II, considering that “in 26 years of reign, Jean-Paul II perhaps made fall certain walls but it really consolidated others of them: sexism and misogyny; homophobie, lesbophobie, transphobie; not assistance to populations in danger”.
During the presidential campaign 2007, Act-Up again attacked the candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, presenting her photograph surrounded by a death's-head and following slogan: " 2007-2012 - We will not survive it - You either ".

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