Sometimes we need to revisit the past
in order to protect the future.
Peter Staley went from a young trader on Wall Street
to a crucial figure in a radical advocacy group.
He literally made life saving medication affordable
for those living with HIV and AIDS.
After being diagnosed himself in 1985,
Peter joined ACT UP,
in its first days and helped create a movement.
At the time, there were over 20,000 reported cases of HIV.
It wasn’t until two years later
that a treatment hit the market.
In March of 1987
the FDA approved AZT,
the first ever treatment for the disease.
Finally,
there was hope.
And because of Peter Staley’s hard work, leadership, and radical protest,
the cost of AZT was lowered by over 20%.
Now, more than half of the global population
living with HIV have access to treatment.
The highest ever.
Peter’s core belief in helping those living with HIV or AIDS
has always been:
”knowledge = power"
Hi,
I’m Javier Muñoz and this is Legendary.
40 million infected people is a plague!
I decided to become a full time AIDS activist.
[Chanting] They say get back, we say fight back!
Hello, I'm Javier Muñoz and I’m here with Peter Staley.
Thank you for coming in.
Thank you!
ACT UP felt like...
Cowboys- you know what I mean?
Like, warriors in armor with axes.
I just remember that my journey of sort of every thing I was experiencing
and when my partner passed- thinking-
watching how it happened.
And how stigma and how judgement and how lack of information and education
took its toll from others- how they treated him.
And the dignity he fought to have through the end
is what inspired me to become an activist before I became HIV positive.
And I remember trying to figure out like ‘where do I fit?'
in that spectrum.
Because I feel like there’s little bits of
little parts of me that could work for a number of situations and organizations.
But like, that was my impression of ACT UP.
It was just like, 'we’re going to go in, and we’re going to go hard.'
ACT UP was like the tip of the spear, right?
We were the most visible component of what was a much larger community response to the crisis.
We were up against a wall of homophobia and racism.
AIDS was happening to fags, drug addicts, prostitutes—
groups that people didn’t care if we lived or died.
And so ACT UP realized that we had to confront America’s homophobia.
Talk about a challenge.
There’s a man that could’ve prevented these absurdities.
This man has said that he would like to see a kinder,
gentler nation.
Your actions are killing us, your words are lies.
[Chanting] 300,000 dead from AIDS, where is George?
And after we kick the sh*t out of this disease,
I intend to be alive to kick the sh*t out of the system
so that this will never happen again.
Thank you.
[Cheering]
One of the coolest moments I went through was
getting back at -
in a very cathartic way -
against the homophobia that I felt working on Wall Street.
And I stayed in the closet so I didn’t pay much of a price for it-except psychologically.
And that day - after I had been diagnosed - that day that I got handed that flyer for ACT UP,
other traders had been handed the same flyer
and I get on the trading floor,
and there’s a discussion happening
before trading starts among the traders, about AIDS.
The first discussion I think they’ve had.
And my mentor, the head trader on the trading floor
just viciously shut the conversation down and just said,
'well, if you ask me, they all deserve to die because they took it up the butt.'
And everybody was like 'whoa'.
So I started plotting, and there was this one member of ACT UP who worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
And I said to him, ‘can you help me figure out how we can get inside?'
Wow.
And because, it had never been done before.
He started looking at all the entrances,
we picked the shortest path entrance -
which is right under the famous columns -
And so a few hours before that big demonstration outside,
me and six others - all dressed in—
>>Suits?
Yeah, in Wall Street drag.
[Laughing]
We had these fake IDs,
the trader badges— those white badges.
We all "worked" for Bear Stearns.
And we had tested it and everything and it worked.
We all just walked onto the floor with the last minute smokers
before the opening bell.
>> That’s so smart.
And two of us had cameras
because we had to bring in our own press-
little cameras to capture the moment.
And five of us, after we walk in and mingle with the traders,
we walk up this VIP balcony that’s never used,
this old wooden balcony that has a great NYAC banner above it.
A great backdrop for a picture-
and we stayed ducked down and we’re looking for the opening bell in like 15 seconds.
And then I say 'go!'
We stand up and we handcuff ourselves to the balcony
and we throw a banner over it that says 'Sell Welcome,'
the company.
And then we have miniature foghorns and we all drown out the opening bell.
And the whole floor just turns and goes-
[Javier laughing]
And they became rabid.
Like their sanctum had been invaded.
And we took these fake hundred dollar bills
and we threw them out onto the floor.
And it said "F*ck your profiteering" on the back.
And they just went berserk.
But standing there,
I knew at that moment that we had done it.
They were throwing sh*t at us, they were yelling 'faggot, kill the faggots.'
>>All the things they could.
But I was like,
well, you know,
we’re going to be on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow morning.
We’re going to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal tomorrow morning.
[Laughing]
You can scream all you want, right now you are pawns in our action.
Three days later, the company lowered the price— AZT by 20%.
So it was a very dramatic moment.
[Chanting] ACT UP, fight back, fight AIDS.
"AZT, one billion dollars"- have you seen these around?
The US Government has spent one billion dollars over the past ten years.
[Rapping] While you’re at it, why don’t you open for tryouts
’cause the line of people you refuse goes on for miles
we got women with AIDS believe it please
you haven’t heard of pelvic inflammatory disease.
We got babies and children dying, for drugs they helped us find,
you ain't trying.
We got people of color with nowhere to go, do your trials address their needs?
No.
We got Ivy drug users in need of the same as everyone else
[speaking Spanish]
We were getting our asses kicked by HIV.
We were going to lose an entire generation of people.
And it would be never ending and just hit the next generation—
I mean, it was going to decimate queer America.
And ultimately it did become a worldwide pandemic.
So we had to respond.
And the totality of that response became this beautiful community reaction
that actually started turning the tide.
And then I was introduced to this whole new world.
For me, it had felt like I had found my church, you know?
It became— every living hour I was doing ACT UP.
I went on disability,
it’s where I found my boyfriends, it’s where I found my sex life,
it’s where I found all my friends.
And it’s where I found purpose.
It’s just so frustrating how stigma has been feeding this AIDS crisis
from day one.
It is like a God*mn wall.
And it’s time that we just start- whenever we see any small evidence of it,
that we really just confront it and get angry about it.
Racism has fed the crisis from the very beginning and continues to feed it
- now in a major way -
that younger African American gay men in the US are the most at risk group.
And the larger gay community has kind of moved on.
And what role is racism playing in that?
Don’t shut down and say, 'oh that’s a difficult conversation,'
challenge that.
[Various Chanting]