They Were Warriors

When you cross a battleground and read a plaque commemorating the fallen and the brave, you start to believe you can feel the history in your bones. But what about the unmarked battleground, the one that the next day resumes its role as a city street, an office window, an intersection?

April 20 to 23 marks the 30th anniversary of the National AIDS Action for Healthcare, a weekend of gatherings and rallies that culminated in a massive protest in downtown Chicago — one of the largest AIDS demonstrations ever held. The Chicago chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, played host to activists who came from around the country to protest increasingly glaring inequities in the way the health care establishment was responding to the AIDS crisis. At a time when the disease was a death sentence, when promising new treatments cost thousands of dollars a month, when insurance companies were effectively redlining gay communities, this massive public plea for fair and adequate health care was nothing less than a bid for survival. The demonstrators’ props were banners, costumes, and mattresses; their motto, emblazoned on T-shirts, was “Silence = Death.” For some, it was their first protest. For others, battling with all they had left, it would be their last.

Like many Chicagoans, I was unaware of the protests at the time. (In my defense, April 20, 1990, was my 12th birthday.) But in the research I undertook for my novel The Great Believers, which chronicles the AIDS epidemic in Chicago, I discovered that our city was home to one of the most important, complex, and effective actions in the history of AIDS activism. The protest brought national attention to the epidemic in the Midwest, shed light on the fact that it wasn’t just young white gay men who were dying, and brought about crucial changes at Cook County Hospital, which, like many urban public health facilities, had lagged in meeting the challenges of the epidemic.

I recently sat down with 10 people — sometimes in pairs, usually one on one — who were there. They range from key players to then-neophytes, activists to academics. Their words bring to life not only their own experiences but also the heroism of those who didn’t live to tell their stories.

I. “SOMETHING FRIGHTENING IS HAPPENING”

OWEN KEEHNEN, writer, LGBTQ historian, and bookseller I arrived in Chicago in 1985 from Quincy, Illinois, and in ’88 I started working at Unabridged Bookstore. People would come in, they’d look fine; they’d come in, they’d look sick; then they didn’t come back.

MARY PATTEN, artist, activist, writer, and educator I moved here in 1983, after serving a one-year sentence on Rikers Island following an anti-apartheid protest. There I met Angie Caceres, a beautiful Puerto Rican dyke and former NYU student with drug issues. We corresponded after I got out; I sent her stamps. In her last letter, she wrote: “I’m in the infirmary. Can you believe it, they told me I have AIDS.” She died quickly. It was like zero to AIDS, no HIV stage. Angie’s the first link. She’s deep in my heart.

STEVEN MIGALSKI, associate professor of psychology at Adler University I was such a baby gay. I was an undergrad at Loyola. I was out to three or four of my closest friends. And I’d been going to Pride alone since I was 18. I remember being like, Oh my God, what am I doing here? I was living with my parents in Jefferson Park, a multigenerational home where Polish and Italian were spoken. I just couldn’t come out to them.

BILL Mc MILLAN, activist and hairstylist I was born and raised in Chicago. I’d never been political before AIDS touched me.

JUSTIN HAYFORD, director of government and foundation relations at Esperanza Health Centers I came here for college at Northwestern. In 1990, I was a waiter, and I was making performance art and volunteering at the AIDS Legal Council once a week. I’d walk in and ask, “What should I do today?” I was writing grants for them, newspaper articles, doing deliveries to law firms.

LORI CANNON, activist and founder of Open Hand Chicago and Vital Bridges Food Program I started driving the Coach bus for all the shows at the Arie Crown in the early ’80s. The headliners, they had their limos. The singers, the dancers, they all rode with me. And where did they want to go at the end of the show? To a club. They looked for a place to dance, meet other gay men.

JEFF EDWARDS, educator and union organizer When I was in grad school in Minnesota, I knew some people who were sick, but they weren’t close to me, so it was only in the back of my head, until I went to a rally about AIDS in ’86 or ’87. One speaker said, “By the end of this decade, either you’ll be dead or the person next to you will.”

senior director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center At a Puerto Rican funeral, caskets are open, but in the ’80s we began to see closed caskets, which was anathema in our culture. When you dig deeper, you