GAG and ACT UP: Learning From Your Elders

The Los Angeles chapter of Gays Against Guns is largely influenced by ACT UP's activism. The two founders of the L.A. branch, Bobby Heller and Abe Gurko, lost many of their friends to the AIDS crisis. Now they are channeling that energy into activism with Gays Against Guns. The Orlando tragedy was a wake-up call for Gurko, who felt compelled to do something in response. After reading an article in The New York Times about Gays Against Guns, Gurko messaged one of the men who got the group started in New York, and the rest is history, as the cliché goes. 

In this 1989 photo protesters lie on the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange in a demonstration against the high cost of the AIDS drug AZT.

Members of ACT UP demonstrated July 25, 1990, in New York while President George Bush spoke at a Republican fundraising event at the Waldorf-Astoria. The demonstrators contended that Bush and the U.S. government weren’t doing enough to fight AIDS.

Members of Gays Against Guns march in the 2016 New York City Pride Parade.

Members of ACT UP marched in New York's annual Gay Pride Parade, June 25, 1990. About 200,000 people marched in the 21st gay and lesbian parade, demanding better AIDS treatment and civil rights.

There was a huge Gays Against Guns contingent in the 2016 New York City Pride Parade.

Bold, direct graphics were the hallmark of ACT UP.

The gun and the rose became Gays Against Guns' emblem.

ACT UP did not spare the emotion when delivering a message.

Gays Against Guns does not shy away from the emotional dimension either.

Demonstrators from ACT UP, angry with the federal government's response to the AIDS crisis, protested in front of the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, Md., October 11, 1988, and effectively shut it down. A police officer stepped into the group, and by mid-morning some 50 of the protesters were arrested.

A Gays Against Guns contingent lands on Fire Island, ready to carry the message to vacationers on the beach.

ACT UP members shouted and raised their fists in front of the stage as they disrupted the opening ceremonies of the Sixth Annual Conference on AIDS, June 20, 1990, in San Francisco.

Members of ACT UP erected a tent across the street from Cook County Hospital, April 21, 1990, in Chicago. About 200 protesters held a 24-hour vigil to urge hospital officials to admit more patients with AIDS.

Protesters with signs and others draped in white gauze parade down the beach on Fire Island.