Red Pepper » Mark Pendleton

Fighting a plague

admin — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 12:00:41 +0000

At the peak of the AIDS crisis, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) developed an innovative model of social movement organising, featuring provocative direct action, striking visual propaganda and the use of a range of new technologies to document and disseminate its actions. It was also influential in transforming understandings of healthcare, drug testing methodologies, corporate profit motives, mass media reporting of the experiences of the marginalised and attitudes to queer people themselves. Given its major significance in social movement history and its abundant archive of audio-visual material, that ACT-UP had not been a subject for documentary film-makers had been a major source of frustration. With two major features out in 2012, however, that historical anomaly has begun to be corrected.
The better known of these films is the Academy Award-nominated How to Survive a Plague by journalist David France, which has also been optioned as a mini-series. The other is Jim Hubbard’s United in Anger: a history of ACT-UP, which he co-produced with prominent queer scholar and long-term collaborator Sarah Schulman. Both centre on the story of ACT-UP New York, draw on similar footage and interview subjects, were funded by similar sources and feature both filmmakers in each film’s credits. However, the documentaries diverge in tone, style and in their central case for the historical significance of ACT-UP.
For France, the lasting legacy of ACT-UP emerges from its early demand to ‘get drugs into bodies’ as a means of curtailing the dramatic effects of the ‘plague’ on New York’s gay male population. His film centres on the efforts of a small subset of ACT-UP, the Treatment and Data Committee, which later split off from the main group as the Treatment Action Group (TAG). This body transformed people’s relationship to the virus through radical self-education, revolutionising the relationship between healthcare providers, medical scientists, government regulators and the affected. France is not wrong – TAG’s activities in many ways transformed HIV care. However, watching his film leaves the viewer with the sense that the history of AIDS activism is one in which a group of (self-) educated New Yorkers, largely white gay men, stopped the plague in its tracks through forcing engagement with major drug companies and government regulators.
A more complicated history is told in Hubbard’s film, which sees the group as an object lesson in social movement organisation. Hubbard’s focus is on the tactical and strategic decisions of ACT-UP, including its use of weekly mass meetings and affinity groups. This dual structure allowed for collective decision-making, as well as autonomous organising in trusted small groups. United in Anger also places a much greater emphasis on visual imagery, graphic design and video, documenting the collective Gran Fury, whose iconic designs transformed the nature of social movement art, the Damned Interfering Video Artists Television (DIVA-TV), which recorded and distributed footage of ACT-UP’s actions, and the later ACT-UP Oral History Project, which Hubbard and Schulman coordinated.
Hubbard is also concerned that his film records not only the experiences of white gay men. Lesbians and other women were central figures in ACT-UP, as people who understood through their own experiences of organising against the unjust nature of privatised healthcare and inadequate public infrastructure. The impact of these injustices on the poor became more prominent as the virus increasingly affected broader populations. Hubbard’s documentation of the roles of IV drug users, people of colour, women and homeless people reveals that ACT-UP was much more than just a drug access movement. It saw that the institutions that governed US society – corporations, the state and the church – were all in need of radical transformation.
As a queer man who is just a few years younger than the central figures in this story, I am fortunate not to have had to live through the deaths of hundreds of lovers and friends. As beneficiaries of the legacy of ACT-UP, we must honour this history as a history of collective resistance to a virus that resulted in the radical transformation of treatment and health care for many people living with HIV. It is also essential, however, for us to honour this history as one that shows that access is an insufficient demand; our movements must be willing to demand structural and social change. Sometimes this requires us to literally put our bodies on the line.
As long as there is no cure for AIDS, as long as access to human needs is conditional on wealth and privilege, and as long as injustices remain in the world, ACT-UP’s battle is not over. These films remind us of those who struggled, achieving partial wins and suffering many, many losses. They also call on us to continue to ‘ACT UP, Fight Back, and Fight AIDS’.
Find out how to get hold of the films at www.surviveaplague.com and www.unitedinanger.com. Additional interviews with ACT-UP members can be viewed for free at www.actuporalhistory.org

Tokyo, behind the bright lights

admin — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:00:10 +0000

Okamoto’s Asu no shinwa (Myth of Tomorrow). Photo: Mark Pendleton
Is Tokyo just shiny commerce, fast trains and polite people? That might be your impression if you have read any commercial travel guidebook. However, a visit to Tokyo also provides travellers with the opportunity to explore the history of Japanese and American imperialism in Asia and connect with radical communities organising against nuclear power, resisting the continued US military presence, and struggling with the two-decade long Japanese economic stagnation that has resulted in an increasingly precarious existence for many, particularly young people.
Landing at Tokyo’s main international airport in Narita drops international visitors right at the heart of this history of radical struggle. When the airport was being built in a rural area outside of town, residents and their allies from the cities physically (and violently) resisted large-scale acquisitions of their land. They were defeated after a multi-decade struggle, but as you catch the train or bus into downtown Tokyo and pass the few remaining rice fields or small vegetable patches, spare a thought for those that were forced off their land to give visitors a shiny, new landing strip.
Those aforementioned guidebooks will inevitably point you towards the popular destination of Shibuya, a busy shopping, entertainment and commercial district. Once there, head up to the raised concourse in front of the Keio Inokashira line station, which gives visitors a view of the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing. Take the obligatory happy snap, but also take a moment to turn around and view the opposite side of the concourse. A 30-metre long mural by prominent mid-20th century artist Okamoto Tar lines the wall, and reveals much about Japan’s past and present.
Okamoto’s Asu no shinwa (Myth of Tomorrow) has been described as Japan’s Guernica, with its anti-war representation of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Okamoto died many years ago and the mural itself was lost for several decades before being found and restored in 2008. In 2011, in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Okamoto’s anti-nuclear message was updated by radical contemporary art collective ChimPom, who attached an additional Fukushima-themed panel to the Okamoto piece. While the ChimPom installation only lasted a few hours it caused a minor furore, alerting passersby to Tokyo’s contemporary fragility and its radical past and present.
Anti-nuclear activities such as those of ChimPom have long been a hallmark of Japanese activism, and in the months since that earthquake/tsunami saw the world’s greatest release of radioactive materials since Chernobyl, there has been something of a revival. Fear of exposure exacerbated by the increasingly obvious lies by nuclear operators and their allies in government and the media have fuelled a mass movement opposed to the reactivation of Japan’s nuclear industry, which had been progressively shut down after Fukushima. Friday evening protests at the prime minister’s official residence and adjacent parliamentary buildings (the Diet) continue, with thousands taking to the streets each week. Polls show that these activists have popular opinion on their side, with upwards of 70 per cent demanding that Japan wean itself off its reliance on nuclear power. You can check out the action by catching the subway to any of the stations near the Diet. Aim to arrive by 6pm to join the hordes of people flocking to the demonstration.
While you’re there, remember that you are in the middle of the largest public display of dissent in Japan since hundreds of thousands flooded those same streets back in 1960 to protest against the government’s forced passage of an extension to the US military treaty in the face of parliamentary and popular opposition. A young student activist, Kanba Michiko, was killed by police, reminding many Japanese of the ongoing power of the Japanese state, a power that people had hoped had dissipated after the collapse of the militarist governments of the first half of the 20th century.
The military alliance with the US continues to be a major flashpoint across much of Japan – particularly on the southern islands of Okinawa, which bear the brunt of hosting the bulk of the forces. Anger about the alliance also spills over onto Tokyo streets around the anniversary of the war’s end and in ongoing protests over Japan’s support for contemporary American military occupations in the Middle East.
History buffs may like to pay a visit to the preserved fishing trawler, the Lucky Dragon 5, which despite its name suffered a less than lucky fate when nuclear fallout from a US nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific drifted across its bow in 1954. The radio operator died as a result of exposure, reminding the Japanese of earlier atomic atrocities and serving as a catalyst for the anti-nuclear politics that Japan has since become famous for. You can visit the ship at the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall in Yumenoshima Park, down by Tokyo Bay.
Japan’s experience of nuclear war, along with post-war debates over the legacy of Japanese imperialism in Asia, has led to the creation of a range of radical peace museums across the country. A good option for a visit in Tokyo is the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in the Waseda area, which highlights the uneven impact of war on women, focusing particularly on testimonies from the so-called ‘comfort women’.
The inner western suburbs of Tokyo also contain vibrant contemporary activist scenes. A ten-minute walk east from Shinjuku station will find readers at the anarchist infoshop Irregular Rhythm Asylum. The crew at IRA have been in the mix of all things radical for several years now, including anti-war, anti-nuclear, precarious labour and alter-globalisation activities, and stock a wide range of materials on Japanese and international anarchist and other social movements. An irregularly produced guide to what’s on in Tokyo (the Nantoka guide) is often available at IRA, and you can also ask staff, who will usually do their best to point you in appropriate directions. The IRA website and blog contain some materials in English, including a map to the infoshop’s location.
Adjacent to IRA is Tokyo’s queer district – Shinjuku Nichome. While recent police enforcement of anti-dancing provisions in an antiquated occupation-era law has taken some of the edge off Nichome’s reputation for trashy nights on the dance floor, there is still plenty of cheesy music and cheap drinks for those so inclined. Tokyo’s largest HIV and LGBT community centre, named AKTA, can be found in Nichome as well as the usual mix of nightlife and queer community activities that you’d find in most major cities.
The district also houses a radical café called Café Lavanderia, which plays host to regular events and has a modest selection of food and drinks available. Lavanderia has an extensive collection of books and other material available to read in Japanese, English and other languages, and a couple of extremely friendly (if somewhat persistent) pet cats.
Heading further west, the area around Koenji also plays host to many activist groups, particularly those active in precarious labour and youth social movements. People associated with the ratbag collective, Shiroto no Ran (or Amateur Revolt), run an online radio station, as well as a series of event spaces, second-hand clothing shops and galleries just a short walk from the north exit of the main JR train station. Punk and other gigs are a regular feature here.
The Kotaka district, a short walk further north, had a large scene centred on the Kotaka Shoten group of studio, art and organising spaces, which unfortunately closed down after five years of operation in summer 2012. Keep an eye out, though, for additional activities in this area, particularly the occasional Mabashi Film Festival, which features alternative local and international film screenings.
While Tokyo has a reputation for being a bit of a tough city to break into, there is much for the radical visitor to explore. If you have time to get out of the city, a visit to Hiroshima or Nagasaki is also an essential visit for all historically and politically aware travellers.
Mark Pendleton teaches modern Japanese history at the University of Sheffield and has lived in Tokyo