ACT-UP and the Queer Commons

Focusing on the way that ACT-UP actually achieved many of its goals while also creating a commons around belonging, protest, and disability, this article interrogates the displaced position of ACT-UP and AIDS organizing and protest in recent discussions of the commons and protest more generally. Drawing on short readings of Sarah Schulman's People in Trouble and David Feinberg's Queer and Loathing, this article invokes the importance of not forgetting the power of protest during ACT-UP to envision the world as something other than it is and to necessarily dwell in the utopian possibilities opened up by this particular queer commons.