Seize Control of the FDA
On October 11, 1988, approximately 1,500 activists protested at the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration in Rockville.
Coordinated by a loose coalition of ACT UP members from across the country, "Seize Control of the FDA" sought to compel the FDA to speed up its work on AIDS drug research, development, and approval.
(FDA History)
By 1988, the AIDS epidemic was in its seventh year. Over forty thousand people had already died in the United States, and progress on putting an end to the crisis was frustratingly slow. It was not until 1987 that the FDA approved the first drug to treat AIDS: AZT, or azidothymidine.
As Katie Batza writes in LGBTQ America, "For most of the 1980s, doctors and the public struggled to understand AIDS, how it was transmitted, who was susceptible, and how to treat those infected. Fear informed policy. Educated guesses drove research. Desperation fueled treatments" (p. 22-13).
Many in the LGBTQ+ community soon grew frustrated with the government's lack of progress and transparency in the fight against AIDS. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded in March 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York City. ACT UP sought to end the AIDS crisis through non-violent demonstrations and civil disobedience. The organization's first action was a march on Wall Street in protest of the high cost and limited availability of HIV treatments.
Soon after its founding, local chapters of ACT UP were established across the country. These groups conducted local advocacy work and planned larger actions at the state and national level.
Seize Control of the FDA was one of ACT UP's first national actions. Coordinated by a coalition of ACT UP members under the name of ACT NOW (AIDS Coalition to Network, Organize, and Win), the protest was part of four days of activism in the Washington, D.C. area.
The protest took place on the first anniversary of the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and followed the second showing of the Names Project quilt on the Ellipse in front of the White House.
On the afternoon of October 10th, ACT NOW held a "mock trial" of people in the Reagan Administration who had hindered AIDS research. The trial took place in front of the Health and Human Services building in Washington, D.C.
On the morning of October 11, hundreds of demonstrators descended on the FDA headquarters, effectively blocking its main entrance as employees peered down from their windows. Members of some ACT UP affinity groups carried picket signs and chanted, while others took a more theatrical approach: one group dressed in lab coats with bloody handprints, while another laid down with cardboard headstones reading "Dead from FDA red tape."
Throughout the nine-hour protest, local and federal law enforcement officers maintained a police line at the building's entrance. While the protest was generally non-violent, 176 activists were arrested, mostly on charges of loitering. When county Ride-On buses arrived to transport arrestees away from the site, protesters attempted to stop them from leaving.
Above and below left: Protesters block the buses transporting arrestees away from the FDA (Montgomery History)
"When we blocked the departure of buses full of arrestees (176 activists did manage to provoke arrest), they dragged us out of the street and left us sitting in the grass. When we tried to enter the building, they forcibly restrained us, but refused to arrest us. We did, though, manage to stop business as usual, to occupy FDA headquarters at least symbolically. ACT UP graphics and banners covered the building's facade, and demonstrators staged one piece of theater after another as the television cameras rolled on." (Douglas Crimp, quoted in The Atlantic, 2011).
The ACT UP Oral History Project hosts several videos that were recorded during the planning stages of the protest and during the action itself. Click the link on the left to visit their page.
Responses to "Seize Control of the FDA" were mixed. On the one hand, FDA representatives maintained that the agency was doing everything in its power to develop new AIDS drugs safely and effectively. At the time, drug trials typically tested a small cohort of people and took 8-10 years to complete - a length of time that most people then living with AIDS would not survive.
The strategy at "Seize Control of the FDA" encompassed more than political theater, however. Prior to the protest, ACT UP's Treatment and Data Committee developed an "FDA Action Handbook" which it disseminated to its members and forwarded to the FDA. The handbook outlined specific demands to make experimental drug testing more efficient and equitable. Suggestions included testing more participants over shorter periods of time, and including people with AIDS in the agency's decision-making processes.
The demands voiced during "Seize Control of the FDA" proved successful. As Douglas Crimp writes:
"The success of SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA can perhaps best be measured by what ensued in the year following the action. Government agencies dealing with AIDS, particularly the FDA and NIH, began to listen to us, to include us in decision-making, even to ask for our input."
(ACT UP Oral History Project)