“FIGHT A.I.D.S., NOT GAYS,” Vito Russo (July 11, 1946 - November 7, 1990), ACT UP demons

“FIGHT A.I.D.S., NOT GAYS,” Vito Russo (July 11, 1946 - November 7, 1990), ACT UP demonstration, New York City, 1987. Photo © Lee Snider. @the_aids_memorial. There are few people who had as much of an impact on the course of gay history as Vito Russo, who died twenty-six years ago today. As a Stonewall rioter, a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (@glaad), and ACT UP, Russo was among those who led the modern gay liberation movement through its most trying decades. And, importantly, Russo was among those who consistently called for an inclusive approach to gay liberation, in that he recognized that “gay” liberation necessarily meant “queer” (i.e., LGBTQI) liberation. While in the GAA, Russo screened classic Hollywood films as social events at the GAA Firehouse, starting a decades-long pursuit to catalog and analyze queer representation in film; this work ultimately led to the groundbreaking lecture series, book, and film, “The Celluloid Closet.” In 1983, Russo created and co-hosted one of the first LGBT-focused news series, “Our Time,” for WNYC-TV. Russo’s expertise in queer representation in media made him particularly well-suited to co-found GLAAD in 1985, which was a response to the New York Post’s defamatory AIDS coverage. That same year, Russo was diagnosed with HIV, and he subsequently became one of the most visible and powerful figures in ACT UP. Vito Russo died of AIDS-related complications on November 7, 1990; he was forty-four years old. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #QueerHistoryMatters #HavePrideInHistory #VitoRusso (at New York, New York) -- source link

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