On this day in queerstory: ACT UP is founded

March 24 is one of those dates where queer history gets unmistakably loud — less quiet groundwork, more direct action, urgency, and people refusing to be ignored.

The clearest anchor here is the founding of ACT UP in New York City on March 24, 1987. The group emerged out of a meeting at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, where activists gathered in response to government inaction during the escalating HIV/AIDS crisis.

By the late 1980s, AIDS had already claimed thousands of lives, particularly among gay men, while political leaders remained slow to act and funding for research lagged. ACT UP’s response was unapologetically confrontational. Their slogan — “Silence = Death” — wasn’t subtle, and neither were their tactics.

Within months, they were staging high-profile protests: shutting down Wall Street, disrupting the Food and Drug Administration, and targeting pharmaceutical companies over drug pricing and access. These weren’t symbolic gestures. ACT UP fundamentally changed how clinical trials were conducted, forcing the inclusion of patients in decision-making processes and accelerating access to experimental treatments.

Their activism saved lives — quite literally — and reshaped what grassroots political action could look like. Angry, strategic, media-savvy, and deeply personal.

March 24 also appears in the ongoing story of global HIV/AIDS awareness. It coincides with World Tuberculosis Day, and in recent decades LGBTQ organisations have used the overlap to highlight how HIV and TB disproportionately affect marginalised communities, particularly in parts of South Africa, India, and Brazil.

Activist groups have marked the date with campaigns pushing for better healthcare access, medication availability, and intersectional approaches to public health — a continuation of the kind of advocacy ACT UP helped pioneer.

Culturally, March 24 has also been part of the rollout of queer-inclusive television in the streaming era. In 2022, the second season of Bridgerton premiered on Netflix. While the series is not exclusively queer, its diverse casting and growing inclusion of LGBTQ characters reflect a broader shift in how historical narratives are told on screen.

Period dramas, once rigidly heteronormative, have increasingly begun to incorporate queer storylines — reimagining the past in ways that acknowledge identities that were always there, even if they were erased or hidden in traditional retellings.

March 24 also lands in the thick of LGBTQ cultural festival season. In London, the BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival often wraps up around this time, closing out with final screenings, awards, and the slightly emotional comedown after a week of intense cinematic immersion.

Films showcased here often go on to define the year in queer cinema — stories about trans lives, diasporic identities, chosen families, and relationships that don’t follow familiar scripts. Festivals like BFI Flare remain crucial spaces where those stories are not just shown, but celebrated.

Meanwhile, March 24 has also been a date for protest and resistance beyond the United States. In the 2010s, LGBTQ activists in Istanbul and Moscow organised demonstrations around this time of year despite increasing restrictions on public assembly. These actions often came with real risk — arrests, harassment, and violence — but they continued nonetheless.

That persistence is a recurring theme in queer history. Progress is uneven, and rights gained in one place can be threatened in another. But across different countries and political systems, the pattern repeats: visibility, backlash, resistance, and change — sometimes slow, sometimes sudden.

And then, as ever, there’s the everyday layer of history. March 24 shows up in archives as a night for drag shows, cabarets, and community fundraisers in cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, and San Francisco.

Those spaces were — and are — more than entertainment. They’re where people find each other, where ideas circulate, where activism begins over a drink and a conversation.

So March 24 stands out as a day when queer history raised its voice. From the founding of ACT UP to ongoing global activism, it’s a reminder that some of the most important progress hasn’t come from polite requests, but from people demanding — loudly — to be heard.