David Wise's FIGHT BACK Returns March 19

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m a sucker for nostalgia -- however grim. That’s probably why Fight Back, David Wise’s immersive ACT UP meeting, stayed with me long after I walked back out onto West 13th Street.

In August, I wrote about being there and what it felt like to be dropped into an ACT UP New York meeting on March 13, 1989. There are no actors, no script and no audience -- just a room full of people asked to live, breathe and organize as if lives quite literally depended on it. Because at the time they did. From the moment you arrive at the New York LGBT Community Center, the clock rewinds, and suddenly you’re talking about Robert Mapplethorpe, Madonna, Jerome Robbins and Ed Koch’s deadly inaction as if it’s all unfolding right now. It’s unsettling, moving, occasionally frustrating and, at least for me, affecting.

So here’s the update: Fight Back is happening again, with the first 2026 event taking place Thursday, March 19, at 7 p.m. -- and you’re invited.

Remember: This is not theater in the traditional sense. It’s a carefully constructed experiment in empathy and collective memory. Every participant is assigned a real person who actually was -- or plausibly could have been -- at that 1989 ACT UP meeting. You decide, with guidance beforehand, how actively you want to participate. You don’t need to be an actor. You don’t need to speak at all. You just need to show up willing to step into the room and sit with the weight of that moment in history.

The meeting lasts about 2–3 hours and takes place at the Center, 208 W. 13th St., Manhattan. There’s a $19.89 required donation -- a thoughtful nod to the year at the heart of the experience -- with cost alternatives available when you sign up.

If you’re wondering whether it’s worth your time, I found it an effective way to put today’s reality into perspective and to remember how much of it was fought for.

If you’ve already done Fight Back, consider coming again. If you haven’t, this is the moment. And if you know someone who should experience it, spread the word.

THURSDAY, MARCH 19 @ 7pm

at the Center (208 West 13th Street, Manhattan)

Read more and sign up HERE. 

ACT UP NY’s Online Store Is Open for Business

To celebrate the launch of ACT UP's new online store, the limited edition Silence = Death Levi's vest has been marked down to $55 (regularly $98). One-hundred percent of sales benefit ACT UP -- the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power -- which by now I'm sure you know is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. An insider tells me the store is being completely run by volunteers, with a just small fee being paid to a veteran ACT UP alum who set up the site and will provide technical support. Great merchandise for a great cause!

Shop now HERE.

Revisiting 'Silence = Death' Three Decades Later

The Village Voice caught up with the five surviving NYC activists who created the "Silence = Death" poster -- including gay Zelig and my pal Jorge Socarras -- to recall its origins and hear about new social-justice-driven art they are creating. Reading the piece made me feel like I had been transported in time, to a hopeless place I wish never existed:

This is a to-do list from 1986, written in the journal of Avram Finkelstein, then an art director with Vidal Sassoon. He and five comrades — Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Socarrás — had gathered over several months to provide support for one another in the face of AIDS, and in doing so came up with an idea for a poster to address the epidemic then decimating their world. Their eventual creation — a pink triangle set against a black background, with the words “Silence = Death” below it — would several months later end up wheatpasted on walls throughout the city, and would eventually be used by the then-nascent activist group ACT UP (with permission from the poster’s creators) as its central visual. 

The origins of Silence = Death, which stands alongside We Shall Overcome, Sí Se Puede, We Are the 99%, and #blacklivesmatter as a touchstone of social justice movements, can be traced to a New York diner in 1985.

 Read on HERE.

Charles Krelo, Avram Finkelstein, Jorge Socarrás, Brian Howard, Chris Lione, and Oliver Johnston meet at Krelo's Chelsea apartment during the winter of 1987

Kramer vs. Kramer

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni writes that with HBO's adaptation of "The Normal Heart," a complicated hero gets his due:

I dreaded Larry Kramer, and sometimes I even detested Larry Kramer, but always — always — I knew that he was on the side of the angels and that we needed him there, in all his unappeasable and obnoxious glory.

Read HERE.

Clue-less

Very cool to see this on "Jeopardy!," even if there actually isn't a hyphen in ACT UP!