This is from ACT UP’s famous Seize Control of the FDA demonstration, October 11, 1988! Specifically, this is a die-in staged by an ACT UP/New York affinity group, the Candelabras. According to his biography, the person lying front and center is David Wojnarowicz, the artist and AIDS activist who is also known for the jacket he wore to this protest reading “IF I DIE OF AIDS — FORGET BURIAL — JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A.”
Other tombstone placards read: “I GOT THE PLACEBO — R.I.P.”; “AZT WASN’T ENOUGH”; “DEAD FOR LACK OF AEROSOL PENTAMIDINE”; “DEAD FROM LACK OF AL-721”; “DEAD FROM LACK OF DEXTRAN SULFATE”, “BECAUSE WOMEN WITH AIDS DIE TWICE AS FAST.”
According to activist Douglas Crimp, “The success of SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA can perhaps best be measured by what ensued in the year following the action. Government agencies dealing with AIDS, particularly the FDA and NIH, began to listen to us, to include us in decision-making, even to ask for our input. […] Following the FDA action, ACT UP continued to lobby for parallel trials, meeting with NIH and FDA officials, negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, and testifying before congressional committees. One year after SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA, ACT UP’s idea, now called Parallel Track, was accepted by the NIH and FDA and went into effect for ddI (dideoxyinosine), the first antiviral AIDS drug to become available since AZT.”
More on Seize Control of the FDA:
ACT UP’s actual 40+-page handbook that prepared activists for the action
Footage of the action, including this die-in.
Coverage of the action in the documentary on ACT UP, United in Anger (2012)
Firsthand account of the action by activist Mark Harrington in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience (scroll to page 335; Harrington’s whole chapter, “AIDS Activists and People with AIDS: A Movement to Revolutionize Research and for Universal Access to Treatment,” is worth reading and starts on page 323.)
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