United In Anger Themes

United in Anger – A History of ACT UP is a documentary film about the ACT UP organization which emerged in the United States during the AIDS epidemic. The movie follows how the organization and the activists challenged various institutions to take the epidemic seriously from 1987 to 2007. Some of the most known demonstrations were held against the Wall Street, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Catholic Church, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There were also local demonstrations held at the City Halls to hold the state politicians accountable, as wells as demonstrations held outside the White House to hold the President accountable. ACT UP played a crucial role in challenging the misrepresentation of AIDS and made the epidemic into a pollical crisis.
One of the themes which overlap with materials covered in the class is the social stigma attached to being a …show more content…
As pointed out in the movie, despite over 40,000 people dying of AIDS, there were no initiatives being taken by the federal government to addressing the epidemic. This was also heighted in the article written by Larry Kramer which we read in our class as he mentioned how CDC and NIH were deliberately not doing anything to learn about AIDS or help curb the epidemic. As a result, hospitals and doctors were unprepared and underequipped to help the patients. Many people were unbale to get hospital beds and had to be turned away or simply die in the hospital corridors. Even when the first drug AZT was invented to treat AIDS, its price was set up too high which made it unaffordable to the patients. It was due to this blatant institutional discrimination that many lives were lost until ACT UP fought to lower the prize of the drug and make it accessible to gay men, women, drug users, and people of