Nicole Can't Stop Being Aggro

Summary

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Proxy with Yowei Shaw

Episode: "Nicole Can't Stop Being Aggro"

Release Date: December 2, 2025
Host: Yowei Shaw
Guests: Nicole (labor organizer), Dr. Deborah "Debbie" Gold (political theorist, former ACT UP activist)

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Overview

This episode of Proxy dives deep into the “knotty” emotional conundrum of being stuck in “aggro” (anger) mode as an activist. Nicole, a passionate labor organizer, struggles with containing her activism-fueled anger, especially as it leaks into her personal life. To help unravel this, host Yowei Shaw connects Nicole with Dr. Deborah Gold, a queer Jewish theorist and veteran of the AIDS activist group ACT UP. Together, they explore the interplay of anger, grief, camaraderie, and sustainability in activist cultures—spanning decades and generations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing Nicole: The Perpetual “Aggro” Organizer

• Nicole is a high-achieving, high-intensity labor organizer.
• Two sides: Party-starter Nicole (fun, lively, social) vs. “Aggro” Nicole (intense, scary, unfiltered)
• Nicole on her intensity:

  “I stand on business that I will scare your boyfriend and your husband and then I will be happy about that.” (05:10)

• Her anger is both a driving force and a liability: It propels her work, but she worries about its toll on relationships and self-regulation.

2. The Function—and Fallout—of Anger in Activism

• Anger as Fuel: Nicole views anger as sustaining, effective, and necessary for change.

  “Anger is easy for me to feel...It is fueling...I think more people need to get mad.” (06:14)

• But Anger Spilling Over: She recognizes when “aggro mode” in social settings alienates friends, causes regret, and hurts loved ones.

  “You can like, see their little whale-eyed stares...I’m not acting as kindly to other people as I want or to myself.” (07:11)

3. Avoiding Grief Through Activism

• Nicole’s theory: Staying in organizing mode is a way to outrun grief about injustice.

  “Grief is such an overwhelming feeling...If I slow down to feel it, then it will just, like, totally overtake me.” (09:44)

• A rare exception: Watching videos of ACT UP activists and letting herself cry—"a safer place to have an emotion.” (11:30)

4. Seeking Advice from the Past: Enter Dr. Debbie Gold

• Debbie’s Background: Former ACT UP Chicago member, now a political theorist at UC Santa Cruz.
• Debbie’s parallels: Also queer, Jewish, anti-Zionist, a union organizer, and immersed in activism for years.

  “Obsessed with your biography already.” —Nicole to Debbie (16:13)

5. ACT UP: Anger and Action in the Face of Crisis

• ACT UP Response: Anger at governmental and societal indifference to the AIDS crisis was channeled into major victories.

  “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.” —Debbie (19:53)

• No space for “bad” feelings: Grief and despair were suppressed within ACT UP, and “Don’t mourn, organize” became the ethos.

  “We didn’t really want to talk about it or allow it.” —Debbie (21:54)

• Meetings opened with a “moment of rage” rather than a “moment of silence.” (26:03)

6. The Risks of Suppressing Grief

• Suppressed grief led to burnout and silent exits: Members quietly left when they couldn’t process despair collectively.

  “A lot of people just kind of exited, quietly exited the movement...because we created no space for it, [despair] was incredibly individualizing and almost shameful.” —Debbie (43:06)

7. Emotional Cultures in Movements: Then vs. Now

• Nicole sometimes feels out-of-sync with today’s focus on emotional processing in activist spaces, preferring action over endless group therapy.

  “Some people can hold a group hostage by their particular strong feeling...That’s not appropriate.” —Debbie (29:25)

• Counterpoint: It’s not about either/or, but “both/and”—action and feeling can coexist (30:41).

8. Other Emotions: Joy, Erotic Energy, Camaraderie

• ACT UP was more than anger: Meetings were marked by humor, eroticism, joy, intensity—members flirted, joked, and partied together.

  “It was very sexy...Just really good looking people, you know. Very queer. Very, very queer.” —Debbie (34:58)

• Humor and fun: “We were living at such a high pitch where you felt like you were engaging in really meaningful work...Even in the face of all the death, it was so fun.” —Debbie (39:31)
• Nicole: “It’s like that element which is just actually true kind of collective camaraderie, that’s the gateway drug to me...is genuinely having fun.” (41:31)

9. Sustainability & the Lessons of Collapse

• ACT UP's demise: Suppressing despair made it individual and shameful, contributing to the group's eventual dissolution.
• Nicole asks: Could collectivizing grief have sustained ACT UP longer?
• Debbie:

  “It’s hard to say...But a lot of energy can go into disavowing a feeling...just at the level of energy and being able to continue on, I think figuring out ways to deal with [grief]...not in ways that derail the movement...inventive ways, creative ways.” (44:58)

10. Advice Across Generations

• Nicole: Afraid that if she faces grief, she’ll lose her organizing edge.
• Debbie:

  “I don’t think it really would take you out of the struggle...A movement can’t sustain itself if people feel like, ‘I’m the only one who can do this.’ Everybody needs to take a break.” (47:22)

• Crying as leadership development: Feeling the full spectrum of emotion is strategic, not merely therapeutic.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On “aggro” as reputation:

  “Nicole’s kind of scary...Unfortunately, that’s literally flattering to me.”
  —Nicole & Yowei (05:20–05:30)

• On channeling anger:

  “We need to convert [our emotions]. Don’t mourn, organize. Turn your grief into rage.”
  —Debbie (25:54)

• On ACT UP culture:

  “The uniform was white T-shirts, cut-off jeans, combat boots, Doc Martens, piercings and tattoos. Just really good-looking people, you know. Very queer. Very, very queer.”
  —Debbie (34:58)

• On internal conflict:

  “People would say, ‘Where’s your anger?’...And it was a very complicated moment where within the movement, there was so much desperation, such a scarcity mentality…”
  —Debbie (31:13)

• On fun and sustainability in activism:

  “It’s like such a buzzkill to talk about—our movements need joy. I don’t want to party with anyone who’s speaking very tenderly about joy. But I think it’s really important for people to have fun.”
  —Nicole (40:40)

• On the risk of suppressing despair:

  “Because we created no space for it, [despair] was incredibly individualizing and almost shameful...I think that contributed to the movement’s demise.”
  —Debbie (43:06)

• On carrying the baton:

  “They can't really put anything back in the bottle...because we carry it forward.”
  —Debbie (49:23)

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 05:00–07:11 | Nicole on being “aggro”, scaring friends, struggling with anger in personal life | | 09:22–11:34 | Nicole on avoiding grief, using ACT UP videos as outlet for sadness | | 15:13–16:50 | Introduction of Dr. Deborah Gold; setting up parallels between Nicole & Debbie | | 19:53–21:54 | Debbie on anger as coping in ACT UP, the absence of grief processing | | 25:54–26:03 | ACT UP’s culture: “Don’t mourn, organize” and the “moment of rage” meeting openings | | 31:13–32:50 | Navigating emotional cultures in activism (now vs. then) | | 34:56–39:31 | The highs of ACT UP—erotic energy, camaraderie, “the ACT UP uniform” | | 43:06–44:58 | The cost of unacknowledged group grief, the slow dissolution of ACT UP | | 47:13–48:42 | Advice: Balancing action and feeling, emotional sustainability in activist work | | 49:23 | Cross-generational inspiration and the endurance of activist legacies |

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Tone & Style

The episode is raw, direct, and conversational—blending activism’s urgency with vulnerability, irreverent humor, and candid emotion. Yowei remains empathetic and probing, while Nicole is self-aware, unabashed, and endearingly blunt. Debbie offers deep reflection, historical perspective, and generational wisdom, with a tone of both nostalgia and realism.

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Summary Takeaways

• Anger has a crucial role in movements against injustice but can be corrosive if not matched by spaces for collective grief, joy, and camaraderie.
• Sustaining activism requires “both/and”: action and feeling, rage and mourning, seriousness and levity.
• Suppressing vulnerability—in the name of toughing it out or focusing only on “the real work”—carries hidden long-term costs for movements and individuals.
• New generations of activists inherit not just strategies, but emotional cultures, and can benefit from learning how affect and sustainability intertwine.
• Legacy is forward-looking: “They can’t put it back in the bottle because we carry it forward.”

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Recommended for listeners who wrestle with the personal cost of activism, the emotional dynamics of social movements, or anyone seeking cross-generational wisdom on how to stay in the fight—without losing yourself.

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Further Reading:

• "Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight Against AIDS" by Deborah B. Gould
• (Bonus: Watch historic ACT UP meeting footage for the full “aggro”/joy/chaos effect.)

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If you have a knotty emotional conundrum, you can reach out to Proxy at [e-mail].

Transcript

[A]

If you had to vocalize the sound of your niche emotional conundrum, what would it be?

[B]

It's like punching through a car window while weeping while the Sex and the City song is on in the background.

[A]

Welcome to Proxy. I'm Yowei Shah, your emotional investigative journalist. Today, the case of the organizer who's constantly pissed off. That's after some ads.

[C]

Hey everybody. The fall Radiotopia fundraiser is here and.

[A]

I thought I'd answer some questions I've been getting about it.

[C]

Okay, yow way I hear Radiotopia in the credits all the time, but what is it? Again, excellent question. So Radiotopia is a podcast network that champions independent creators. Instead of trying to squeeze as much profit as they can out of us, they don't give us money to produce the show, but they do help with promo ad sales, the actual technology, and they don't ask for any of our ip. Think of it like an independent record label. And we are a collective of eight indie podcast bands. Like Normal Gossip, Articles of Interest, Ear Hustle, Hyper Fixed, Never Post. If you haven't listened, you should definitely check them out. These are some of the most beautifully crafted, ambitious and interesting shows happening right now. And I feel honored to be in the same network. But Yowi, didn't you just have a membership drive? Yes, I did. And thanks to you, we reached enough members to cover the costs of making a year two with the supportive grants. The Radiotopia fundraiser is for a different cause.

[A]

Think of it like this.

[C]

The Proxy membership drive was to help us get to a year two, and the Radiotopia fundraiser is to help the entire network of podcasts grow. When you donate to Radiotopia, the money is split among all the shows in the network. We are trying to reach 1500 donors across the network by end of year. Right now we are at around 200. So ways to go in. If you can swing it and want to support this collective of indie podcast fans, head to Radiotopia fm. Donate to make your gift. That's Radiotopia fm. Donate. Thank you so much for listening and supporting independent media.

[A]

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[B]

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.

[A]

I think that that would be a common refrain from people who met you. It's like, Nicole's kind of scary.

[B]

Unfortunately, that's literally flattering to me.

[A]

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 helped 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 a mission and being angry, even scary, it's something she channels every day. Honestly, I wish I could get more aggro like Nicole and harness it like she does.

[B]

Anger is easy for me to feel, to just like keep pounding through on like aggro and meetings and actions and lobby visits and rallies and whatever. A lot of people could say it's unsustainable, sustainable. And I'm like, 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.

[A]

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?

[B]

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 stares. That's when I like, I'm not like, acting as kindly to other people as I want or to myself.

[A]

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 aggro mode without meaning to.

[B]

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 Disney yelling at a ghost. Do anything except for alienate my loved ones.

[A]

This is the part where I am duty bound to tell you that Nicole has worked on this. She listens to a lot of Tara Brock. She cuddles with her Boston terrier Henry. She's been in therapy and it all helps.

[B]

I am most of the time self reflective and, like, regulated and grounded. Enough. Please keep this in the tape.

[A]

But even on the day we spoke, AGRA mode had managed to slip out.

[B]

I think I might have made my mom cry this morning by accident. No, Marge, my mom is the kindest and most generous person in the world. And then she'll call me to see how I'm doing and I'll be like, mom, can't you tell that I'm at work? And I'm like, I would never talk to anyone like that.

[A]

Poor Marge. We love Marge.

[B]

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 newsflash I Probably haven't. Sorry, Mom.

[A]

Nicole has a theory. She thinks she's getting stuck in aggro 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.

[B]

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 gonna 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?

[A]

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.

[D]

Bringing the dead to your door.

[A]

In one action, activists march towards the White House carrying ashes of their lovers, friends, and family in urns. 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?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's like a safer place to have an emotion.

[A]

But when it comes to the overwhelming sadness of everything happening here and now, Nicole just organizes. And if that means sometimes scaring her friends boyfriends, so be it.

[B]

It is just easier to get stuck in big mad and work, work, work and plow through than just being like, this is horrifying, period.

[A]

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.

[E]

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[D]

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[E]

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[D]

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[E]

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[D]

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[A]

How are you feeling?

[B]

I feel nervous. But also, I've been on vacation in the woods for a week and a half, so, you know, sixpence, none the richer over here.

[A]

I don't see you nervous very often, I have to say.

[B]

I know. I'm really. I'm having a niche emotional conundrum, which is I'm nervous. Do other people experience that?

[A]

Well, why are you nervous?

[B]

I'm nervous because I, like, extremely admire act up of the 80s and 90s and have been fangirling about this topic for, like, 10 months and feel, like, very emotional about it. So I don't want to seem dumb.

[A]

The proxy's here. Are you ready?

[B]

I'm so ready.

[A]

So the proxy. I knew I wanted to find someone for Mac'd up, so I started poking around and came across someone who not only was an ACT UP 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. I was so excited for Nicole to meet Deborah Gold, who goes by Debbie. Okay. All right, I'm gonna let her in.

[D]

Hi.

[B]

Hi there. Hello.

[D]

Hi. Hi. Can you hear me? I think I'm using the correct microphone.

[A]

We do a round of introductions.

[B]

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.

[A]

Nicole tells Debbie her whole deal.

[B]

And I love dogs.

[A]

And then Debbie tells Nicole about herself.

[D]

Okay, let's see. I teach at UC Santa Cruz.

[A]

And that's when I realized just how many similarities the two of them have. Like Nicole, Debbie is queer.

[D]

We formed a group called Queer to the Left, which is what it sounds like.

[A]

Like, Nicole, Debbie is Jewish and anti.

[D]

Zionist, and I'm part of a group here called Santa Cruz Jews for a Free Palestine.

[B]

Love it.

[A]

And like Nicole, she's a union die hard.

[D]

And now I'm co chair of our faculty union.

[B]

Obsessed with your biography already.

[A]

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 ACT UP that I knew Nicole would be fascinated by. So let me give you a little context about ACT UP, if you're not aware, because these activists were seriously badass. I'm embarrassed to say I only just learned how much they accomplished.

[D]

A mystery disease known as the gay plague has become an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American American medicine.

[A]

Back in the early 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. The lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an 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 1987, Debbie was a PhD student in political science in Chicago and met someone from ACT up.

[D]

They invited me to an ACT UP meeting and I never left.

[A]

After that, Debbie dropped out of grad school, got a job at a bookstore and threw herself into ACT up.

[D]

Mainly because I was learning a lot more in the streets.

[A]

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 maids. 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 ACT up.

[D]

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.

[B]

Yeah, this is very 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 burnout.

[A]

Nicole tells Debbie how obsessed she is with ACT up, how she feels a kinship through the activism she does with queer friends and comrades after her workday as a paid labor organizer is done.

[B]

I cry very regularly reading about that, about the organizing, but how she's afraid.

[A]

To feel grief about the bad things happening today.

[B]

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.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

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, right.

[D]

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.

[B]

Okay, 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 next? Like that. I cannot stand thinking about that.

[D]

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 doctor's appointments and people who were wasting away and could no longer walk. And we were in our 20s and 30s. You know, we were doing things that people our 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 Ortez Alderson, he was inactive 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 Ortez 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. Don't mourn, Organize. Turn your grief into rage.

[A]

Yeah. You talk about this moment in your ACT UP chapter where someone proposes to start meetings with a moment of silence.

[D]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[A]

And the chapter instead votes to start meetings with a moment of rage.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

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 gonna fly. Every meeting. We began by saying, we, 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.

[B]

Man, I would have done so well in ACT up.

[A]

I am right there with the emotional culture. Debbie, were you an angry person before ACT up?

[D]

I have a hard time with my own anger, actually, like in my personal life, I have no problem expressing anger at authority. Fig. 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.

[B]

Do you think there's something there around, like, people who had, like, unleashing the anger of people whose anger had been, like, so, structurally, systematically tamped down?

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Women, queer people ripping a mask off and just going like, buck wild.

[D]

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.

[B]

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.

[D]

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's activism, and millions of people's lives were saved as a result of it. So, yeah, and I don't think anger is toxic. I don't think anger is bad. And I think anger in these forms is vitally important for most activists.

[B]

Well, I'm like, maybe I feel so drawn in part to ACT UP because I conform 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.

[A]

Nicole is talking about her unpaid activism, not her labor organizing job.

[D]

Yes, yes, right. That makes sense to me.

[A]

You're nodding vigorously, Debbie. Why? Why does it make sense?

[D]

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.

[A]

Eh, maybe.

[B]

I mean, like, I've been part of it. 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.

[D]

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 two, by the way.

[A]

Can you give an example?

[D]

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 are 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.

[A]

Did anyone say that to you, Debbie?

[D]

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 want to do a teach in. 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 doesn't acknowledge that we're in it for the long haul.

[A]

After the break, the important feelings to feel for staying in it for the long. Ha. 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.

[D]

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 a orchestrated hate campaign with death threats 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 going to be allowed to graduate. And we all started protest. 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 if ACT 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.

[A]

What was exciting and vibrant about it?

[D]

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, Doc Martens piercings and tattoos. Just really good looking people, you know. Very queer. Very, very queer.

[A]

Debbie, I heard about the ACT UP uniform from Nicole.

[D]

Oh, that's so funny. It does. Oh, and leather jackets. I forgot to say leather jackets.

[B]

I got one already. I'm in it for the hot people of 1987.

[A]

So basically you walked into a room of very hot, stylish queer people.

[B]

Sounds awesome. Ideal.

[D]

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 queers 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. You know, meetings where people were flirting and cruising and sitting on one another's laps and kissing and, you know, there was just a lot of erotic energy.

[A]

What's like a favorite sexy story?

[D]

Oh, well, I did have more public sex, like Sex and Parks than I had ever had before or since, you know, because people would be out till all hours. And it was a way to sustain ourselves.

[B]

Man, I'm Like, I'm about to go buy more white T shirts.

[A]

Debbie mentioned this story where one day in 1990, she and about 150 fellow activists got arrested and thrown in jail. But it didn't go the way the cops planned.

[D]

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 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.

[A]

This reminded Nicole of something she's experienced with her extracurricular organizing, something she sent me many a stressed out voice memo about.

[B]

So part of my direct action experience is you're like, doing the direct action and there's like 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, how did I get myself into this, like, insane situation? I better not be put in the paddy 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.

[D]

I don't remember feeling that I may not have had quite as many lovers as you. That may be what the difference is.

[B]

The fast queer lifestyle.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Sometimes it was people lived in different cities, so it wasn't really a problem.

[B]

You gotta date across chapters. You gotta be strategic.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So like, the emotional palette is like extreme erotic energy and extreme anger.

[A]

Are those the two main emotions?

[B]

That's what I'm hearing.

[D]

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, and it was so fun. Even in the face of all the death, it was so fun.

[B]

It's like such a buzzkill to talk about. Our movements need joy. I'm like, I don't want to party with anyone who's speaking very tenderly about joy, But I think it's really important for people to have fun.

[D]

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, and that sometimes can crowd out the possibility of humor and campiness and even creativity, because those can be cast as kind of unserious or you're having too much fun. Given the world we live in, we can do both.

[B]

I think it's like that element which is just actually true kind of collective camaraderie, that's the gateway drug to me, I think, is genuinely having fun.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And part of that's like cruising in the park after the action.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

But on the tip of effectiveness, I'm wondering what the relationship between, like, emotions and anger and grief and the ending of ACT UP Chicago, if any there were, and, like, what advice you would give for other people around that.

[D]

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 win. Everyone I know is dying. We're not going to be able to save anyone's life, including perhaps my own.

[A]

The early to mid-90s were a 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 found ACT UP to be a threat to the acceptance of gay people by mainstream society. And in that climate, Debbie says ACT UP activists began to feel desperate, prompting internal conflicts. They were exhausted by the sheer difficulty of what they'd been doing for years with no end in sight.

[D]

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. How. 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 movement's demise.

[A]

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.

[B]

In hindsight, would you have done it differently if there had been more space for the mourning 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?

[D]

I mean, the devastation was tremendous. So it's hard to say that if we had dealt with it, think 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. And I think we should listen when we say stuff like that. We should wonder about ourselves a little bit.

[B]

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. Anytime I'm probably talking about the real work should probably be a flag that I'm trying to disavow other things that are happening in the space that are important.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So you said you fell apart when you ended with ACT up and you're going back into dissertating. What was that about?

[D]

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.

[A]

Debbie, what do you think? Not feeling grief for so many years. What do you think that did to you?

[D]

I don't. 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.

[B]

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.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

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 phrase? 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.

[D]

And to be perfectly honest, Nicole, it sounds to me like you're already completely attuned to all of that.

[B]

So it is a battle every day. Living in hell. I just. I really just. I feel like now I'm gonna experience my grief and 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 that. That legacy is like, extremely alive in me and in so many other people.

[D]

Oh, Nicole, thank you. I think that 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 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. The harms our 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.

[B]

I am fanning myself in a different way now so as to dry my tears full circle.

[A]

Fanning at the beginning, fanning at the end.

[B]

That's the B.

[A]

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 Act Up's 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 sickos? That was our last full episode of the year. We're gonna take a break for the next few months to recharge that is Sleep and work on the next batch of cases for you. Speaking of which, we're in the market for some new 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 atproxy the podmail.com 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 recs 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 Pulley and produced by me Yowei Shaw 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 Martovich is the Executive Producer of Radiotopia. Yuri Lozurdo is the Director of Operations, Discover Audio with vision at Radiotopia FM. As always, you can follow us on Instagram ProxyPodcast and I'm oweishaw. And if you like the show and want to help us grow, consider rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts. That stuff matters. Apparently you can also tell a friend about the show. Like if you know someone who who would get something out of today's episode, text them a link right now. All right 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.

[B]

I also have watched a lot of footage of their meetings.

[A]

Oh really?

[B]

More nerdy than watching many multi hour oral history interviews is just like a shaky camcorder in a like basement of people like debating how many hours of.

[A]

Meetings have you watched?

[B]

I don't want to talk about it.

[D]

Radiotopia.

[B]

From PRX.