Boy With The Bullhorn by Ron Goldberg

Reviewed by Rachel Pitkin

Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York.
By Ron Goldberg
Fordham University Press
2022, 512 pp.

On March 27, 1989, the community room of New York City’s LGBT Community Center (or, The Center, as so many of us now casually refer to it) spilled over with ACT UP members. Representing various affinity groups, they had gathered for a pre-action meeting in preparation for an upcoming event that would further ACT UP’s focus on a range of City Hall officials. Their new targets included Mayor Ed Koch and Health Commissioner Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, both of whom the group accused of distorting AIDS-related data and unrolling an inconsistent epidemiological policy that failed to grapple with the full spectrum of issues related to HIV infections. ACT UP’s City Hall action would be remembered as one of the group’s most significant local actions, but the pre-action meeting was also personally significant to member Ron Goldberg, who by that point had evolved from a reluctant activist to one of ACT UP’s core members. It was during that preparatory meeting that Goldberg was crowned ACT-UP’s “Chant Queen.”[1]

In six parts, Ron Goldberg’s Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP guides readers through what can often seem like a dizzying terrain of AIDS-related political networks, medical jargon, and direct-action campaigns. The tour is intimate and strikingly honest. Goldberg, a self-described unsuspecting activist, charts his growth from an aspiring theater actor to core ACT UP member and finally—with the publication of The Boy with the Bullhorn—to a “witness.”[2] In line with much tradition of New York City radicalism that simultaneously maintained both a regional and national reach, his perspective from within ACT UP New York as an intimate look at the group’s local dynamics while also speaking to broader ACT UP politics.

A variety of factors drew Goldberg from his theater ambitions and attracted him to ACT UP. In Part I, “Becoming an Activist,” he describes coming of age in the mid-1980s New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic, and the “pervasive cloud of dread” that haunted gay men like him and his friends.[3] It was Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (1985) which sparked his first emotional awakening. The play had brought to frightening life the painful and bewildering context within which many infected gay men and their loved ones attempted to navigate their survival. For the next two years Goldberg stayed as aware as possible, gobbling up the New York Native and the Village Voice, following the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), and studying the campy public actions of ACT UP. But in June of 1989, two chance encounters with the latter piqued his curiosity further: accidentally observing a raucous meeting at The Center in which members debated the use of Holocaust imagery for the upcoming Pride parade, and viewing the jolting concentration camp float that was subject of discussion from the parade sidelines just two weeks later. He found the ACT UP meeting electrifying and the float provocatively inspiring in that it forced people to take notice. 1989 Pride was one of many instances in which Goldberg observed that ACT UP produced results—later that same year, ACT UP successfully forced the resignation of Commissioner Joseph, and a series of successful national campaigns would soon follow. But the chance meeting at The Center was a turning point, and for the next five years Goldberg became one of ACT UP’s most committed members.

In Part II: Expanding the Agenda to Part VI: AIDS Campaign ’92, Goldberg details the depths of ACT UP’s networks and organizational planning, along with the internal unraveling that led certain members like himself to organize new forms of advocacy or retreat from the group all together. It is one of many sections that give insight into the dynamics of both popular and lesser-known actions that ACT UP orchestrated against a backdrop of menacing municipal policies, repudiation, and denial from a range of national political actors and the public. Some actors and actions need no introduction, like former President Bill Clinton and ACT UP’s presidential campaign of 1992, in which member Bob Rafsky helped force the group’s first-ever meeting with a presidential candidate—one that Goldberg himself attended. Yet even readers somewhat familiar with the AIDS campaign of 1992 will benefit from Goldberg’s perspective of associated events such as the “Clinton-Rafsky” confrontation and the behind-the-scenes look he provides into the nuanced planning and implementation of such campaigns. Similarly, his account of the City Hall action in New York sheds new insight into the daily, unrelenting nature of ACT UP’s strategy that targeted Health Commissioner Joseph, even to those familiar with Mayor Koch’s handling of the AIDS crisis. Goldberg simultaneously reintroduces audiences to the seemingly familiar and sheds light on daily strategy often lost within the narratives of large campaigns.

For those unfamiliar with later twentieth century queer politics, though, some dissenting actors might read as a surprise. Part III: Crashing Through describes emerging tensions between New York area gay advocacy groups. At both the 1987 and 1988 Pride Parades, for example, Heritage of Pride (HOP), who had organized the parade since 1984, questioned the timing of ACT UP’s confrontational tactics and accused the group of working against the interests of their own community when they planned a demonstration during Mayor Koch’s annual Pride month proclamation ceremony. While some, such as historian Martin Duberman, applauded ACT UP for returning Pride politics to its more militant Gay Liberation era roots, others such as HOP and gay rights advocate Darrell Yates Rist questioned whether AIDS had obscured other causes within the gay rights agenda and if ACT UP overwhelmed public attention. Because today ACT UP is credited for forcing government agencies such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to honestly reckon with the impact of AIDS in the United States and expand access to drug treatments, the memory of their successes often obscure tensions that emerged as a result of their politics of direct confrontation. Coalition-building proved complicated, even in the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. Those days were, in Goldberg’s words, “the hardest, most intense, most rewarding, most joyous, and most devastating” of his life.[4]

At the height of its influence, Goldberg facilitated ACT UP teach-ins and community meetings, wrote fact sheets and fundraising letters, and helped plan the details of complicated campaigns through his leadership on the Actions Committee. Though “Chant Queen” arguably fails to fully capture the extent of his involvement in ACT UP (he admits to initially finding it a reductionist term) he recognized the necessity of his role to the group’s public presence and so many of the direct-action campaigns and protests that forced reactions from politicians and agencies who otherwise chose to stay silent, churn misinformation, or vilify the queer community. Through it all, Goldberg also operated as an unofficial ACT UP archivist, collecting meeting notes, flyers, and teach-in guides. The ephemera, along with his own journals, allowed him to construct a timeline of ACT UP activity that served as the backbone of his memoir.

Given that his collections inspired the chronology, memories and personalized anecdotes pepper the pages of each chapter between accounts of Monday night meetings and various campaigns. Details of Goldberg’s time in ACT UP, then, are imbued with intimacy and connection—a strength of the work as a memoir, unique in comparison to other works of history that attempt to capture the emotionality of the group’s labor and existence. One of the most impressing ways in which these anecdotes surface is through memoriums that are deliberately placed within each chapter. Each memorium breaks with the previous paragraph, lists a name in bold, followed by the years of their birth and death, and the phrase “may his memory be for a blessing.” Not only was Goldberg a witness to the nuances of ACT UP’s organizing, but also to the death and loss of loved ones whose memory he preserves within the work’s pages. The incalculable nature of the sheer scale of loss, at times, almost seems palpable within the text.

The vulnerability with which Goldberg recounts his own growth and changing awareness is honest and absorbing. The City Hall Action of 1989 that earned Goldberg the reputation as chant queen proved personally instrumental for another reason: it was during this action that Goldberg received a political education unlike any he had before. As a Jewish Gay man, he explains that he was no stranger to the realities of antisemitism and homophobia. Yet although he was well-meaning—aware of the entrenchment of racism and sexism in United States society—he remained politically naïve. He credits a “Women and AIDS” teach-in organized by ACT UP’s Women’s Caucus for opening his eyes, forcing him to come away with an even deeper understanding of how women and people of color were rendered uniquely vulnerable by complex levers of a healthcare system that stymied their access to care or considered them undeserving. The teach-in gave Goldberg the language to articulate his evolving worldview and more fully understand the context of his activism. Goldberg brings this spirit to Boy with the Bullhorn, unflinchingly discussing his relationship with other minority caucuses and the ways in which he grew as a result of their leadership in ACT UP.

If lines blur between his personal experiences and larger narratives of ACT UP, it is because Goldberg deliberately sets out to tell a part-history, part-memoir. Given this ambitious goal, he endeavors to discern between the times in which he was present and those for which he was not, much of which reads with clarity. A departure from other community histories or memoirs, the style proves valuable, as moments of larger context serve to assemble a wide variety of names and places, anchored in Goldberg’s personal and local perspective.

By building a bridge for both academic and public audiences, The Boy with the Bullhorn accomplishes a difficult feat. Ultimately, the work reads as part memoir and part community history, but perhaps most significantly: a complete labor of love. Goldberg provides a gift of preservation, not only in the form of his and of ACT UP’s history, but in the form of a direct-action roadmap. Younger generations of activists and scholars will undoubtedly benefit from the lessons he so candidly discloses and accounts of the loss he bore witness to. In the current climate of reactionary rhetoric, anti-transgender legislation, and so-called “don’t say gay bills,” the time is rife for the nuance and energy that Goldberg details. And as he is sure to remind us, ACT UP provided light, laughter, and joy amidst pain and loss—a powerful message he hopes resonates with younger readers.

Rachel Pitkin is a PhD student in History at the City University of New York, Graduate Center, where she is a CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium and Graduate Fellow. Her current research interests include gender and sexuality in the twentieth century United States, the welfare state, public history, and state and local history.

[1] Ron Goldberg, Boy With The Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York (Fordham University Press, 2022), 153.

[2] Ibid., 436.

[3] Ibid., 7.

[4] Ibid., 184.