If you had to vocalize the sound of your niche emotional cadendron, will it be? It's like it's like punching through a car window while weeping while the like sex in the city song is on in the background. Welcome to Proxy. I'm Yo-Way Shaw, your emotional investigative journalist. Today, the case of the organizer who's constantly pissed off. That's after some ads. As listeners of this program know, pouring your heart out, really confronting your emotions helps you understand yourself in the world better. So you can be better. That's what the podcast, how to be a better human, is all about. Host and comedian Chris Duffy skips the typical self-help advice and instead talks to experts unpacking big, relatable questions about how we navigate being human. Somehow I made the cut and was recently on an episode, even though I don't identify as an expert. And I had so much fun talking to Chris. We got into the weirdness of being laid off to why friendship breakups hit so hard and so much more. Listen to how to be a better human wherever you get your podcasts. I have this friend, Nicole. And while she contains multitudes, there are two primary modes that are very Nicole. There's party starter Nicole, who's fun and funny. She's got the gift of gab throws the best parties. Fun fact, Nicole was once a professional party starter at a casino. And then there's agro mode Nicole, which I've never discussed before. At least now with her. I do remember early in our relationship being like, oh yeah, Nicole feels very passionately about things. You definitely scared someone. I stand on business that I will scare your boyfriend and your husband. And then I will be happy about that. I'm sorry, I love you, Kyle. But yeah, like I think that that would be a common reframe from people who met you. It's like Nicole's kind of scary. Unfortunately, that's literally flattering to me. Nicole's a labor organizer and she's very good at what she does. Like she's won actual laws to get labor protections for domestic workers. She helps start the union at her job. Even outside of work, she's always organizing. Always strategizing with friends about the next fundraiser for trans healthcare, the next protest against the genocide in Gaza. So going full throttle on the mission and being angry, even scary, it's something she channels every day. Honestly, I wish I could get more agro like Nicole and harness it like she does. Anger is easy for me to feel to just like keep pounding through on like agro and meetings and actions and lobby visits and rallies and whatever. A lot of people could say it's unsustainable and I'm like, bitch, I've been here for 15 years. When we gonna stop getting sustained, like I do find like it is fueling, you know, I think more people need to get mad. If you're not mad, we're not chill. Nicole knows she's ranting again. As her friend of 15 years, it doesn't bother me. I think it's cute. I like to joke that my contribution to making the world a better place is giving her massages to help her relax and keep going. But as useful as agro can be for Nicole, she doesn't want it to spill over into her personal life. What does getting stuck in agro look like? You're like hanging out with people and they're like, what's up? And you're like, wow. And then like, and then everyone's like, oh, fuck. You can like see their little like whale-eyed stairs. That's when I like, I'm not like acting as kindly to other people as I want or to myself. A recent example. Nicole's hanging out with a friend. The friend tells Nicole she had dinner with someone who recently moved to Israel and thinks the war in Gaza is complicated. And then Nicole clicks into agro mode without meaning to. I just like ripped into it. What is the nuance in genocide? I just went off so fucking hard. And it was literally just a report back of a conversation of my friend who strongly disagreed with that person. And everyone in our 3D reality is like, who are you talking to? We agree with you. But I was like fighting with some like phantom. And like, what did I gain there? Like, it's just, dis me yelling at a ghost. Do anything except for alienate my loved ones? This is the part where I am duty bound to tell you that Nicole has worked on this. She listens to a lot of terror Brock. She cuddles with her Boston Terrier Henry. She's been in therapy. And it all helps. I am most of the time, self-reflective and like regulated and grounded enough. Please keep this in the tape. But even on the day we spoke, agro mode had managed to slip out. I think I might have made my mom cry this morning by accident. No, my mom is like the kindest and most generous person in the world. And then she'll like call me to see how I'm doing. And I'm like, mom, can't you tell that I'm at work? And I'm like, I would never talk to anyone like that poor Marge. We love Marge. I know. I know. Just like all of my frustration is there. And then it's like coming out on my poor mother who just like wants to make sure I've like eaten which news flash I probably haven't. Sorry, mom. Nicole has a theory. She thinks she's getting stuck in agro mode because it's easier for her to plan the next action, the next meeting to keep organizing on the hamster wheel to stay away from feeling grief. Grief for everything going on in the world because that's scary. Grief is such an overwhelming feeling and I think I'm afraid that if I slow down to feel it, then it will just like totally overtake me. And if I'm stuck in like my sadness, am I going to be unable to put one foot in front of the other and like make a plan around this? Like organizing is a very practical toolbox with like real next steps. And if I felt that then would I be able to do the next steps. There is however one sad thing that Nicole allows herself to dwell on. Sometimes late at night, Nicole will curl up with her dog Henry in bed. She'll open up her laptop and pull up these videos from a queer activist group known as Act Up who lost countless members during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. The videos are raw footage of their meetings, even their funerals. In one action, activists march towards the White House, carrying ashes of their lovers, friends and family in earns. And when they reach the iron gates, they throw the ashes onto the White House lawn. Nicole watches these videos and cries. It's the one tiny island of grief she allows herself. Do you think it's kind of like going to see a sad movie and like letting yourself feel sad? Yeah, I mean, it's like a safer place to have an emotion. But when it comes to the overwhelming sadness of everything happening here and now, Nicole just organizes. And if that means sometimes carrying her friends, boyfriends, so be it. It is just easier to get stuck in big mad and work, work, work and plough through than just being like this is horrifying. Period. But Nicole wants to know, is this healthy? Is this just the fate of an organizer? After the break, Nicole talks to someone who's been in her exact situation just 38 years ago.
[Music] This episode is brought to you in part by OneSkin. Hello, Bedragel podcast, Paul Skyle. Hello. So I dragged you out of bed to do this ad because about a month ago, I made you start using this moisturizer and I cream by OneSkin. Yeah, I guess you felt like it was an emergency intervention. Yes. Okay, so it's been about a month of using it. What do you think? What do you think in terms of ease of use in terms of what it's doing to your skin? Can you stop moving around? There's a lot of sound in the background. Oh, sorry. I would say that, um, you know, first I was like, I don't know. I don't know if this is doing anything, but once I got on the routine and then I would forget to do it. I would look at my face and be like, oh my god, my face looks like a leather wallet. I saw a photo that we took the other week and I was like, huh, Kyle's skin looks supple. Doesn't look parsed and sad. Well, for a limited time, you can try OneSkin yourself and you can get 15% off using code proxy. Just go to oneskin.co/proxy and when you check out, make sure to tell them we sent you. Did I tell you anything about OneSkin? Kyle, are you curious who made it? No, yeah, I am. You didn't. Well, let me just tell you, let me just tell you about the people behind it because there's like actual scientists. They're longevity scientists with PhDs in stem cell biology, skin regeneration and tissue engineering and their special sauce is this patented OS1 peptide that they invented. It is apparently the first ingredient proven to target senescent cells which are the root cause of wrinkles, crepiness and loss of elasticity which are all key signs of skin aging. And these results have actually been validated in five different clinical studies. And actually, if you're looking for a fancy gift for your mom or yourself for the holiday season, OneSkin just launched their limited edition holiday sets including the nightly rewind gift set. It features their bestselling face moisturizer, their brand new peptide lip mask and a sculpting gouache-a tool. Each element is designed to help renew the skin at the cellular level for a stronger, smoother and more youthful looking complexion. So for a limited time, try OneSkin for 15% off using code
[email protected]/proxy. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them and please support our show and tell them we sent you. Do you have anything to add, Kyle? Thank you OneSkin for making me look a little less old. How are you feeling? I feel nervous, but also I've been on vacation in the woods for a week and a half. So you know, six pence on the red door over here. I don't see you nervous very often, I have to say. I know I'm really, I'm having a niche emotional conundrum which is I'm nervous. Do other people experience that? Well, why are you nervous? I'm nervous because I like extremely admire act up of the 80s and 90s and have been fan-girling about this topic for like 10 months and feel like very emotional about it. So I don't want to seem dumb. Uh, the proxy's here. Are you ready? I'm so ready. So the proxy. I knew I wanted to find someone for Macdub. So I started poking around and came across someone who not only was an active activist, she'd also studied the exact questions Nicole was asking about grief and anger. She was a political theorist who focuses on emotion, specifically the feelings that encourage or discourage political activism. She'd even written a book looking at the role of feelings in the rise and fall of act up. Reading through it, I was like, this is extremely my shit. It was so excited for Nicole to meet Deborah Gold, who goes by Debbie. Okay. All right, I'm going to let her in. Hi. Hi there. Hello. Hi. Hi. Can you hear me? I'm, I think I'm using the correct microphone. We do around of instructions. Okay. Well, hi Debbie. I'm extremely excited to talk to you. I'm Nicole. I am a labor organizer. I organize domestic workers. So Nannies and house cleaners and caregivers. Nicole tells Debbie her whole deal and I love dogs. And then Debbie tells Nicole about herself. Okay. Let's see. I teach at UC Santa Cruz. And that's when I realized just how many similarities the two of them have. Like Nicole, Debbie's queer. We formed a group called Queer to the Left, which is what it sounds like. Like Nicole, Debbie is Jewish and anti-zionist. And in part of a group here called Santa Cruz Jews for a free Palestine. Love it. And like Nicole, she's a union die hard. And now I'm co-chair of our faculty union obsessed with your biography. I already I just have to note for the listener, when Debbie was going through her biography, Nicole's fanning herself. And then when Nicole was going through her, Debbie just raised a fist. All right. But it's especially Debbie's work with ActUp that a new Nicole would be fascinated by. So let me give you a little context about ActUp if you're not aware. Because these activists were seriously bad-ass. I'm embarrassed to say I only just learned how much they accomplished. A mystery disease known as the gay plague has become an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine. That can nearly 80s when the AIDS epidemic broke out and thousands of people were dying, mostly queer people, drug users, sex workers, black and Latino people, the media and even some medical authorities blamed gay men for causing the epidemic. Religious leaders claimed AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuality. People with AIDS were evicted from apartments, fired from jobs, disowned by their families. Hospitals refused to treat people with AIDS. Funeral homes refused to handle their bodies. And what did the government do? Nothing. For years, no plan, no emergency funding. They clearly did not care. For example, listen to this in 1982, the first White House press briefing where AIDS is mentioned. It would be another three years before Reagan would even publicly acknowledge AIDS. In response to this inaction, a group of people came together in chapters across the country to force the government to do something about AIDS. Like Debbie. In 1997, Debbie was a PhD student in political science in Chicago, and met someone for a MacDep. They invited me to an act-up meeting and I never left after that. Debbie dropped out of grad school, got a job at a bookstore, and threw herself into act-up. Mainly because I was learning a lot more in the streets. Act-up won huge victories. They accelerated FDA approvals for life-saving drugs. They secured major funding for AIDS research and services. They made public health policy and research more inclusive. They changed the way the mainstream saw AIDS in queer people. They saved countless lives, even if they didn't save many of their own. Debbie lost 10 friends herself for AIDS. And then in 1995, Debbie's act-up chapter in Chicago disbanded. She went back to grad school to make sense of what had happened, and as she was doing her research, she felt an emotion. She hadn't felt in her entire time with that. I'd be looking at something in a newspaper article, and I would just burst into tears. And sometimes it was someone who I knew who had died.
But sometimes it wasn't. It was just something more mundane. And that grief was really jarring to me because I had really mostly felt anger. And so I kind of was undone by doing the research. I fell apart and that started me down a whole path trying to figure out what had we all done with our grief. Yeah, this is like very like designed in a lab exactly for me. So thank you both for facilitating that. So I have been an organizer since 2010. And I have been burning on anger for 15 years and I haven't slowed down and I'm not getting burnt out. Nicole tells Debbie how obsessed she is with act up. But she feels a kinship through the activism she does with queer friends and comrades after her work day as a paid labor organizer is done. I cry very regularly reading about that, about the organizing about the-- But how she's afraid to feel grief about the bad things happening today. Last week, a mentor of mine self-deported to a country she hasn't been to for 21 years because she doesn't want to get hunted down and like permanently incarcerated in this gulag of a country. And if I were to stop and feel my feelings and like experience grief every time something happened, I would never get off the floor. Yeah. And now just like we are down the barrel of like so many guns of things and people and issues I care about and probably feeling sad would be a do I need to question for me. That really makes sense to me act up was an antidote to despair. That's how when it formed in a moment where no activism had translated into any effective wins and people were dying and no one cared. So as a movement to be a proper AIDS activist, you had to be outraged. And in that culture of feelings, there was very little space if any for what I would call bad feelings, hard feelings like despair or grief. We didn't really want to talk about it or allow it. If this is too personal, please, obviously, but like how you dealt with so many friends dying, I cannot like I feel very emotional thinking about that. Like thinking about I'm in meetings all the time. Like meetings for my paid organizing work and my unpaid organizing work and looking around and being like, what if four of these people died? Like that I cannot stand thinking about that. In terms of dealing with the deaths of so many comrades really and friends and for many people lovers and ex lovers, I mean, one thing is many of us engaged in caretaking during the movement. One from among us would start to get sick and people would set up a schedule doing people's laundry and buying groceries and bringing meals. It included changing diapers and going with people to doctors appointments and people who were wasting away and could no longer walk. And we were in our 20s and 30s. We were doing things that people are age really in this country and in privileged communities don't typically have to deal with. So it was really intense on that level but I think the way we dealt with it or this is the way I dealt with it and I think many of us was through our anger and through planning another action, making another fact sheet, taking over someone's office, disrupting a meeting and also all of the fun stuff that we did as well. I think helped to fill the holes that opened up every time someone died. I remember when, or Tess Alderson, he was in act up New York but he then had moved to Chicago and a bunch of us were on his care team because I remember his lover, I think worked nights or something and so we were often there like evenings into the night and I remember at his memorial service, other people did eulogies and I got up and I read a bunch of statistics about who was dying, how they were dying, how much money was not being provided to convey I guess to people that, or Tess didn't die, he was murdered by the government and by a society that didn't care that gay men were dying. I was just full of fury but I also think it was a way for me to not fall apart as I was commemorating my friend and I think that's often how we leftists think about emotions is we need to convert them, you know, don't mourn, organize, turn your grief into rage. Yeah, you talk about this moment in your act up chapter where someone proposes to start meetings with a moment of silence. Oh yeah, that's right. And the chapter instead votes to start meetings with a moment of rage. Yeah, I mean, I don't remember who proposed it but it was so counter to the ethos of act up Chicago and I think to act up more generally that it just wasn't going to fly. Every meeting we began by saying we are the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, United in Anger, committed to direct action to fight the AIDS crisis before saying if there are any cops in the room, you need to identify yourselves and leave. Man, I would have gone so well in act up. I am right there with the emotional culture. Debbie, were you an angry person before act up? I have a hard time with my own anger actually like in my personal life, I have no problem expressing anger at authority figures. That's not as difficult for me. Much more difficult is when I'm angry at like my lover or my parents. It can be hard for me to get angry. I feel it but I have an anxiety that my anger could really get out of control and so I think I really damp it down. And so I probably was drawn to a movement where I could access anger and express it. Do you think there's something there around like people who had unleashing the anger of people whose anger had been so structurally systematically tamped down? Women, queer people, ripping a mask off and just going like book wild. Yeah, I think many of us were very familiar with being good little queers like hiding ourselves, hiding our true feelings in order to survive. And I think that act up really shifted that where the shame was on society and on the state. Act up gave us an opportunity to rip into this society that hated us. And we knew they hated us because they didn't care that people were dying. You know, do you think that it was like and we're not supposed to use words like bad and good and I have certainly been accused of being a black and white thinker sometimes. But like was it bad that the primary emotional driver was anger? Is that like an unhealthy dissociative response? It feels real. Yeah, absolutely. I don't feel like it was bad at all. I feel like it was a very important as you put it driver of act up activism and millions of people's lives were saved as a result of it. So yeah, and I don't think anger is toxic and I don't think anger is bad. And I think anger in these forms is vitally important for most activists. Well, I mean, like maybe I feel so drawn in part to act up because I can form to the emotional palette of act up in a way that I actually feel like I can be out of sync with the organizing milieu that I'm in now. Nicole is talking about her unpaid activism, not her labor organizing job. Yes, yes, right. That makes sense to me. You're nodding vigorously, Debbie. Why does it make sense? It makes sense to me because I do feel like activists today are sometimes attuned to feelings in a way that is a little off-putting to me as well. Someone can hold a group hostage by their particular strong feeling about something or turn an activist scene into a therapy session. And that's to me, that's not appropriate. We're not a place to deal at that level with the fact that we're all broken people because we all live in a society.
that has broken us. So it's not appropriate there sometimes. I'm not saying this is across the board or anything. I think they're much more sophisticated about feelings than I'm suggesting. - Maybe. (laughing) Like I've been part of, oh I'm like the fuck are we talking about this for? Like you need to go deal with your therapist, you need to go talk to your friends about this. - I'm sorry, that makes me sound so harsh. But when people are doing that, I feel the need to like go into this counterweight. And then I feel like judgmental of myself. I'm like, it's so harsh of me. That's not actually who I am. Like I'm coming from a deeply empathetic perspective. - Maybe it's useful for us to think not in terms of either or, but in terms of both and. Navigating some of those feelings doesn't mean letting them take you over or losing track of what we're really here for. But as I'm saying this, I'm also thinking about situations I've been in where I feel like someone is holding the group hostage with their feelings. And that happened in act up too, by the way. - Can you give an example? - Well, this might not be exactly that, but in act up, I do recall one of the refrains that happened amid internal conflicts was people saying to one another, where's your anger? First they would say people are dying. You're talking about women and the opportunistic infections that they get, but meanwhile, people are dying. Where's your anger? And it was a very complicated moment where within the movement, there was so much desperation, such a scarcity mentality, that people who were fighting AIDS as it was affecting a particular population were sometimes seen as not caring about other people with AIDS. - Did anyone say that to you, Debbie? - Well, sometimes we were so furious that some gay white men weren't dealing with racism, weren't dealing with sexism, or were even acting in sexist and racist ways that we would wanna do a teaching. And they would say people are dying. We don't really have time to do this. It was actually similar around grief. People are dying. We don't have time to grieve these deaths. It's like a crisis mentality, which is really understandable and it doesn't acknowledge that we're in it for the long haul. - After the break, the important feelings to feel for staying in it for the long haul. - Welcome back to the show. At this point in the conversation, Nicole wants to know what emotions besides anger and grief would be useful for organizers to tap into with the goal of winning. And Debbie walks us through the feelings that played a role in the rise and fall of act up, beginning with the first act up meeting that made her immediately want to lock in. - When the epidemic started, I let's see, 1981, I was 17 or something. So I was as ignorant as everybody and didn't really get involved until that act up moment. But the activism that I was doing on campus was about an anonymous group of students who went by the name the Great White Brotherhood of the Iron Fist had engaged in an orchestrated hate campaign with death threats of campaign against gay students and faculty and they had been suspended for their suspected involvement. But they were then being allowed to graduate. And so people found out that they were gonna be allowed to graduate and we all started protesting that. And so someone from ACT UP came to one of those protests and invited me to come talk to ACT UP about what was happening and to see a fact up would support us. So I really went to my first ACT UP meeting not thinking that I was gonna hang around just trying to get their support for what we were doing on our campus, but it was so exciting and so vibrant. - Well, it was exciting and vibrant about it. - I mean, it was very sexy. There was already an ACT UP uniform by that point. The uniform was white t-shirts, cut off jeans, combat boots, dock martens, piercings and tattoos, just really good looking people. - Yeah, very clear, very, very clear. - Debbie, I heard about the ACT UP uniform from Nicole. - Oh, that's so funny. - It's a test. - Oh, in leather jackets, I forgot to say leather jackets, of course. - Yeah, I got one wearing it. (laughing) - I'm in it for the hot people of 1987. - So basically you walked into a room of very hot stylish queer people. - Sounds awesome, ideal. - And also incredibly smart and politically savvy. I mean, I do think that feelings are really important in nourishing activist spaces and movements and in ACT UP, I think in a world that hated queer and where there was no recognition of anything that we had to offer the world. The movement was a space where we started to recognize one another. I think I quickly felt that we were creating a world where I could become different than I was. I think there was a lot of shame about gay sexuality and the so-called fast gay lifestyle among many gay men because there was a sense that maybe we brought this on ourselves by having multiple partners and having fun. And so there was something about how sexual everything was that we did. Meetings where people were flirting and cruising and sitting on one another's laps and kissing and there was just a lot of erotic energy. What's like a favorite sexy story? - Well, I did have more public sex, like sex in parks than I had ever had before or since. (laughing) You know, because people would be out to all hours and it was a way to sustain ourselves. - Man, I'm like, I'm about to go buy more white t-shirts. Debbie mentioned this story where one day in 1990, she in about 150 fellow activists got arrested and thrown in jail. But it didn't go the way the cops planned. - They didn't have enough jail cells and so they put us into this one large holding area, big room. And everyone was in really good spirits. A lot of joking around and a lot of erotic energy. People were kissing. There was a lot of touching. And at a certain point, some police officer got really pissed off at people and demanded that we stop kissing. No same sex kissing in jail. You have to now sit boy girl, boy girl, boy girl. And then Ortez, Alderson, who I mentioned earlier, Ortez, every so often would stand up and say, there will be no kissing. And we would all start kissing. They couldn't control us. - This reminded Nicole of something she's experienced with her extracurricular organizing. Something she sent me. Many has stressed out voice memo about. - So part of my direct action experience is you're doing the direct action. And there's multiple people that you're dating who are at the thing. And multiple people who you just dumped or who dumped you and they're a new person. And you're just like, this is cool. This is also pretty stressful right now. And sometimes I'm like, Jesus Christ, I got myself into this insane situation. I better not be putting the patty wagon with the same person. And I just, I wonder if you ever had experiences where you're like, it's too many lovers at one action. - I don't remember feeling that. I may not have had quite as many lovers as you. (laughing) That may be what the difference is. - That's the fast-queer lifestyle. (laughing) - Right. Sometimes it was people lived in different cities, so it wasn't really a problem. - You got to date across chapters that you got to be strategic. - Yeah. - So like the emotional palette is like, extreme erotic energy and extreme anger. Are those the two main emotions? - That's what I'm hearing. - I mean, there was also a lot of humor, a lot of campy humor. Also, I don't know if this is an emotion, but an intensity. I mean, to be honest, everything else bored me. I found the rest of the world utterly boring at that point. We were living at such a high pitch where you felt like you were engaging in really meaningful work that was changing things. And the right wing was so intense.
in that moment. There were calls to quarantine, people with AIDS to tattoo, people with HIV. It was a really horrific time in terms of the right wing. We were fighting for our lives and the lives of our comrades. I think that lent a sense of urgency to what we were doing. It was like us against the world and it felt very powerful and exciting. It was so fun, even in the face of all the death. It was so fun. It's like such a buzz kill to talk about. Our movements need joy. I don't want a party with anyone who is speaking very tenderly about joy. But I think it's really important for people to have fun. I think sometimes we activists because the issues we're tackling are so serious and the injustices are so enormous and frequently deadly. I think we tend to inject seriousness into activist spaces. That sometimes can crowd out the possibility of humor and campiness and even creativity because those can be cast as unserious or you're having too much fun given the world we live in. We can do both. I think it's like that element, which is just actually true, collective camaraderie. That's the gateway drug to me, I think, is genuinely having fun. Part of that is like cruising in the park after the action. On the tip of effectiveness, I'm wondering what the relationship between emotions and anger and grief and the ending of act up Chicago, if any, there were. What advice you would give for other people around that? Well, it was very difficult to deal with the ongoing deaths and the sense that even though we had had all these victories, we're not winning. Everyone I know is dying. We're not going to be able to save anyone's life, including perhaps my own. The early-to-mid-90s were difficult time for act up. The drugs that initially seemed promising had ended up disappointing and people were still dying in massive numbers. Plus, the gay community was turning away from AIDS to issues like gay marriage and gays in the military and bound act up to be a threat to the acceptance of gay people by mainstream society. In that climate, that says, act up activists began to feel desperate, prompting internal conflicts. They were exhausted by the sheer difficulty of what they've been doing for years with no end in sight. So what did people who felt despair end up doing? People were feeling it, but because there was no space for it in the movement, a lot of people just kind of exited, quietly exited the movement. And I'm not convinced we could have dealt with that despair. How would any of us have been able to deal with that despair? But I do wonder what would have happened if we had been able to collectivize it in some sense. The despair, because we created no space for it, was incredibly individualizing. And almost shameful, because to despair was to basically convey that you had given up. And that was not an acceptable thing. I think that that contributed to the movements demise. Debbie still remembers the last meeting of act up Chicago. They were talking about how their bank account was being charged because their balance was below a certain amount. And so they voted to close the bank account and to no longer meet at the restaurant because it was too expensive. In other words, they were voting to shut the chapter down. At one point, Debbie began to laugh at the absurdity of closing up shop for such mundane reasons when people were still sick and dying. She laughed so hard, she started to cry. She was just 30 years old. In hindsight, would you have done it differently? If there had been more space for the morning and the collective grief, do you think that would have cut down on the despair that led to people leaving and the ending of the group? I mean, the devastation was tremendous. So it's hard to say that if we had dealt with it, we would have lasted longer as an organization or something. It's more that I think a lot of energy can go into disavowing a feeling. That exhausts me. I've done that too much in my own life, trying to get away from the really hard feelings. So just at the level of energy and being able to continue on, I think, figuring out ways to deal with that. And not in ways that derail the movement, not in ways that turn the movement into a therapeutic situation, but inventive ways, creative ways. Not just saying, "Hey, we don't have time for that. We don't have time for grieving right now. It's too urgent. We need to just act." And I think we should listen when we say stuff like that, we should wonder about ourselves a little bit. Yeah, I feel like it's thinking about how I can be more attuned of when I'm like, "The real work is over here." Like, anytime I'm probably talking about like the real work, it should probably be a flag that I'm like trying to disavow other things that are happening in the space that are important. Yeah. So you said you fell apart when you ended with act-up and you're going back into disartating. What was that about? I remember I was in Chicago. I was in my apartment reading through newspapers and magazines. And I don't think it went on for days and days, but I think it happened frequently during the research. And it would take me by surprise. It was that sort of being caught really unaware and suddenly just weeping and then kind of having to pull myself back together. You know, as I said, it kind of undid me. I don't know if it was within language really. Maybe what do you think not feeling grief for so many years? What do you think that did to you? I'm not sure that I even know, but back to Nicole to your conundrum, actually. I think one of your concerns was that if you allowed yourself to go there, you would be a puddle. And I don't think it really would take you out of the struggle, but I also think that it's maybe useful for us to think about how movements really can't rely on so few people. A movement can't sustain itself if people feel like I'm the only one who can do this. I have to do this. Everybody needs to be able to take a break. Yeah. Crying as leadership development is what I'm hearing. And there are like, there's tons of people, but constant battle for me to not feel that way. Yeah. I feel like I have a lot more permission now to feel the range of my feelings and I feel like I'm going to be more what was the right like the emotional culture. I feel like I want to think more about the emotional cultures that I'm trafficking in and think about how those shape how I feel. That feels like a really new idea to me. And to be perfectly honest and cool sounds to me like you're already completely attuned to all of that. It is a battle every day living in hell. I just I really just I feel like now I'm going to experience my grief or whatever. I do love to cry by the way. I just I appreciate the conversation and I'm just also so deeply appreciative of you and what all of the act up people did. And I just really really know that like because you all did we can now. And I'm like so appreciative. And like the that legacy is like extremely alive in me and in so many other people. Oh Nicole, thank you. I think that the this cross-generational thing matters deeply. And what all the young people are doing like the change in language and the they them and the possibility of living gender differently that has been opened up by mostly younger people. That is just so important for me. But also it really inspiring. So they can't really put anything back in the bottle. That's the thing. They're going to damage a lot of us if the harms are beyond belief. But they can't
put the stuff they want to put back into the bottle, they can't put it back into the bottle, because we carry it forward. I am fanning myself in a different way now, so as to dry my tears. Full-storkel, standing at the beginning, standing at the end. That's the binary. Thank you to Nicole for being so good at channeling your aggro and for being self-aware about it. And thank you to Deborah Gold for being our proxy. She wrote a book called "Moving Politics," "Emotion and Actups Fight Against AIDS," and she's working on a book called "The Not Yet of Politics," also about political organizing and emotion. I cannot wait to read it. Okay, you feeling sick-os. That was our last full episode of the year. We're going to take a break for the next few months to recharge, i.e. sleep, and work on the next batch of cases for you. Speaking of which, we're in the market for some niche emotional conundrums at the moment. On my wish list of things to investigate, conundrums having to do with clothing, design, history, food, spirituality. Really, I'm open to it all, though. Get in touch at
[email protected]. In the meantime, we'll be popping into the feed every so often with a bonus teaser, because we have a full catalog of exclusive episodes you can listen to if you are that hard up for proxy over the next few months. Just go to patreon.com/proxypodcast to become a member. Proxy is an independent podcast that depends on listener support. Thank you so much, everyone. Starting at $5 a month, you'll get access to our exclusive bonus episodes plus ad free episodes in the chat. And if you just want our newsletter, you can become a free member. Our newsletter is chock full of BTS updates and liner notes for episodes. This week, you will get piping hot reading wrecks from Nicole and Debbie. Just go to patreon.com/proxypodcast to get all those brownies. This episode was edited by Tim Howard, mixed by Kyle Pouley, and produced by me, Yoay Shah, with help from Charlie Klein. Music in this episode by Tim Howard. Our theme music is by breakmaster cylinder. Proxy is a proud member of radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator-owned listener-supported podcasts. Audrey Mardovich is the executive producer of Radio Topia. Yuri Luzordo is the director of operations. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm. As always, you can follow us on Instagram @proxypodcast and I'm at Yoay Shah. And if you like the show and want to help us grow, consider reading and reviewing us on Apple podcasts. That's stuff matters, apparently. You can also tell a friend about the show. Like, if you know someone who would get something out of today's episode, text them a link right now. Alright everyone, thank you for listening and getting us to a year two of emotional investigative journalism. You guys rock, happy holidays, and take care of yourselves and each other. I also have watched a lot of footage of their meetings. Oh, really? More nerdy than watching many multi-hour oral history interviews is just like a shaky camcorder in of like, basement of people like debating how many hours of meetings have you watched? I don't want to talk about it. Radio Topia. From PRX.
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