Larry Kramer

(1935 - 2020)

A playwright and screenwriter, Larry Kramer in 1987 cofounded the activist organization ACT UP, which advocated on behalf of people with AIDS and called on the FDA to grant access to experimental AIDS drugs. Members lay down in the middle of Wall Street, chained themselves to politicians’ desks, and interrupted pharmaceutical company meetings. In 1988 he wrote an open letter calling Anthony Fauci, who was leading AIDS research efforts, a murderer. “I was known as the angriest man in the world,” he said, “mainly because I discovered that anger got you further than being nice.”

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