From Mayor Ed Koch's indifference to homelessness and poverty, to the injustices in healthcare towards women and people of color, the overwhelming governmental neglect and incompetence set the stage for the AIDS epidemic, and activists' call for alarm. Much of the book is Schulman's own writing, in which she contextualizes, at length with accuracy, the times in which New Yorkers lived. Some participants, like myself, who devised smaller yet clever actions, declined to be interviewed. With 188 interviews (which can also be viewed online via various libraries and museums), the book provides multiple insights and reflections from the major organizers and members in the organization.

The most interesting parts are not so much the theory and rhetoric, but excerpts from interviews Schulman conducted over several years, with film director Jim Hubbard, those interviews and archival meeting and protest footage would later become the film United in Anger ( link to film).įull disclosure I was an active member of ACT UP/NY from 1988 to 1992, and participated in most of the larger actions documented in Let the Record Show, along with the hours-long weekly Monday night meetings held at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, and later, as ACT UP grew in numbers, at Cooper Union. In the Preface, Schulman wastes no time in critiquing popular culture's interpretation of the AIDS crisis, from the film Philadelphia to the play Angels in America, in which, she notes, playwright Tony Kushner used AIDS as a metaphor, not a historical account. The influence of feminism, the conflicts of racism within and outside the group, and the divergence of street theatre protests and scientific research make up the tree of knowledge and empowerment the organization brought to its members and to People With AIDS.

Schulman divides the more than 700-page tome into 'books,' sections that take on specific subjects. In the lengthy Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, author Sarah Schulman documents and analyzes the ideals, actions, successes and failures of the people who made up the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, specifically the first chapter in New York City, from its early days to its diminution in the early 1990s.

A political history of act up