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• 1 2024-01-29T22:01:51-08:00 Mary, Nancy, and the ACT UP/LA Women's Caucus 7 image_header 2024-06-22T22:04:04-07:00

  ACT UP/LA

  The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in Los Angeles (ACT UP/LA) was founded in 1987. Their mission is to fight to end discrimination against people with AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), and demand equal access to healthcare services for all.^[1]

  Direct actions, marches, mailing campaigns, phone zaps, and communicating with government and corporate bodies were common ways that ACT UP/LA put pressure on governmental and medical entities for their demands. This strategic dynamic would be known as the Inside/Outside Strategy. Inside organizers would be in direct contact with government or corporate officials, working on solutions, proposing ideas, and asking them questions. Outside organizers would be people working outside the system or out in the streets doing actions and civil disobedience.^[2] Supporting people with AIDS (PWA) through health and social services such as counseling, education, delivering meals, walking people's dogs, working phone hotlines, and improving access to medical insurance were also important parts of AIDS activism.

  ACT UP/LA's Women Caucus

  In 1990, Mary Lucey and Nancy MacNeil were among the original members of ACT UP/LA’s Women’s Caucus. The goal of the Caucus was to change the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) definition of AIDS to represent symptoms and manifestations of the disease in women and intravenous drug users who were left out of early definitions of the disease and clinical trials, and to spread awareness of safer sex among women sleeping with women.
  
  Mary Lucey lived with HIV, finding out she was positive while pregnant and battling addiction. Mary was tireless in fighting for people with HIV and AIDS, especially women in prison who had no access to medical care, safe sex and HIV/AIDS education, or proper food. She devoted her personal and professional work to develop, implement, and fund healthcare services and change public policy to help people with HIV/AIDS, people facing addiction and substance abuse, and persons with disabilities. Mary funded the first needle exchange in LA as interim City AIDS Coordinator, co-founded Women Alive, an advocacy group, and helped organize the 1997 National Conference on Women and AIDS.^[3] She joined the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP/LA) Women’s Caucus to help fight for women who found themselves like her, alone, HIV positive, and without access to medical care. ACT UP/LA became her family and friends when acting up, fighting back, and fighting AIDS.^[4]
  

  
  Nancy MacNeil was an LA activist who grew up in Highland Park. She became involved in the Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement, joining the Lavender Left, and organizing for civil rights, queer liberation, and national healthcare for all.^[5] By the 1990s, MacNeil’s friends were dying from AIDS, causing her to join ACT UP. She used direct action to fight for women with AIDS, by researching and reporting on AIDS when the government was not, and by working within organizations devoted to social services and counseling supporting women with AIDS. She co-founded Women Alive Coalition in 1993 to support and empower HIV+ women and women with AIDS through health services and programming. The coalition established a 24-hour national hotline and a newsletter.

  After meeting in 1990 through ACT UP, Lucey and MacNeil would spend the rest of their lives together as each other's “one true true love” both passing on February 11, 2023. 

   “We loved each other more than we ourselves could understand. Our love was so real that above all else we were forever loyal to each other, always comfortable and truly happy in our ‘little lives’"^[6]
  -Mary Lucey and Nancy MacNeil

  
  
  
  

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  Citations
  [1] “ABOUT US/Mission Statement,” ACT UP LA, accessed October 23, 2023, https://www.actupla.org/about-us
  [2] Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2021), 86-89.
  [3] "R.I.P. Lesbian AIDS Activists Mary Lucey and Nancy Jean MacNeil," POZ, accessed October 23, 2023.https://www.poz.com/article/rip-lesbian-hiv-aids-activists-mary-lucey-nancy-jean-macneil-act-up-
  [4] Mary Lucey autobiographical writing, n.d., box 1, folder 1, Mary Lucey and Nancy MacNeil Collection, June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, CA.
  [5] "ABOUT US/Nancy MacNeil,” ACT UP LA, accessed October 23, 2023, https://www.actupla.org/about-us.
  [6] Mary Lucey and Nancy MacNeil, “READ ME,” n.d., box 1, folder 1, Mary Lucey and Nancy MacNeil Collection, The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, CA.