It was a story where the whole country was on our side from the beginning. Everybody was offended by the $10,000 a year.
So, it, but it really, and again they ignored us. But it really got full steam going in August of ’88 when the government released new data on AZT showing that it helped people with, not only with full-blown AIDS, but it also looked helpful with people with AIDS-related complex. And, everybody said okay, well the market’s going to expand for this drug. T&D [ACT UP’s Treatment & Data committee] started working in coalition with mainstream AIDS organizations.
In a series of conference calls, and this was with GMHC and Lambda Legal Defense and AIDS Action Council in Washington, and AmFar. And we were all trying to work on multi-pronged ways to pressure them. AIDS Action Council was looking at pushing for congressional hearings with Kennedy, etcetera, and Waxman. In fact there were congressional hearings to bring in the executives of Burroughs Wellcome to explain the $10,000 price. And there was media being generated with New York Times editorials and so it was actually great coalition work. ACT UP was almost took all the credit for the price decrease, but it was actually wonderful diverse coalition work that ACT UP didn’t do a lot of it that time, but that happened, and that was happening. It was actually very cool.
So the company was feeling it from all sides and it was just snowballing. And the Stock Exchange action itself was just kind of the last push. They were under just tremendous public pressure by the time the Stock Exchange action happened. So it was kind of the last push that just pushed them over the edge.
And ACT UP, we actually met with them in coalition with all these groups at a hotel outside their headquarters, ’cause they wouldn’t let me near their headquarters in Raleigh-Durham about two weeks beforehand. And we told their PR people that the Stock Exchange action was going to happen. Not the one inside, but the one outside and that if they wanted us to cancel the action they had between now and then to lower the price and just constant trying to make this happen. And again that meeting was a complete stonewalling - just like the David Berry meeting earlier in the year.
And we had a member of ACT UP who actually worked as a trader on the New York Stock Exchange who was able to tell us how lax the security actually was. And there was this door that you could use to get into the Stock Exchange, one of the, there are various doors you could go through. But one of them is right under the columns that you see of the famous picture of the Stock Exchange. So, it faces Broad Street, where the columns are and right behind those columns is that big floor you see on the news. So, that door is literally, you go into it and then there’s three steps to your left, a little landing and another three steps up and you’re on that floor. It’s that close to the street. And there’s no traffic on that street anymore ’cause a bomb would really do a job on the New York Stock Exchange just from the street. So, and there was just one security guard there with no metal detectors. That’s all there was for the entire Stock Exchange.
So he told us about that door and I started quietly putting together a crew. Many had done the [Burroughs Wellcome] action earlier down in North Carolina. I had Gregg Bordowitz and, I’m trying to remember. We had James McGrath again, much of the same crew that I had before and there were seven of us. Robert Hilferty was one of the photographers, ’cause we needed to record the action without telling the press in advance. So we had to take our own pictures. And, what we did is, we needed to get those white trading badges. So, a couple of weeks beforehand we acted like tourists and we had video cameras. And we stood outside the Stock Exchange, acting like tourists during lunch when many of the traders are standing outside smoking and what have you. And we would zoom down and actually zoomed in on one of these trading badges. And then drew one up based on that design and took it to this kind of pawn shop in Greenwich Village that makes badges and things. And we told, we gave the guy a whole story that we were doing a skit for a holiday party or something like that, and we needed these badges for the skit we were doing. And they’re just these white plastic tags that had those big num-, the traders’ numbers on them with the name of the firm underneath and a black line through the middle – thick plastic rectangular things. They all had photo IDs, but our contact on the floor told us that nobody, everybody kept those in their wallets. Nobody had to show them to get in. It was just kind of a visual look. If you had the white badge, that’s all you needed. So, we had these badges made, very cheaply.
They looked great and we had to do a test run to make sure it worked. So, me and two others from the group – Robert Hilferty and one other, the Tuesday before the action, which was on a Thursday, we went in with the opening bell, the rush before the opening bell. It opens at 9:30 and there are a bunch of traders that stand outside that door smoking their last cigarette. So, at 9:25 we stood around with them in trader drag, with a tie and shirts and our badges, pretending to be traders, and we walked in with them in the rush, to see if that would work. And, the security guard didn’t bat an eye and all of a sudden we were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
And, I wanted to figure out where we would do the demonstration. So we’re walking around, the bell is ringing, trading is starting, everybody is busy, we actually pull out little pads of paper because that’s what people seem to carry around. (laughs) So, we’re looking like traders, and we discovered this old VIP balcony that wasn’t used anymore, that had a steep little staircase, an old wooden balcony. And it was perfect because it had a big NYSE banner hanging over it, which would be a great backdrop for the photo. And, there was no gate in front of it. It was unused so we didn’t have to push anybody aside, or have anybody wrestle with us once we got up there and I said – this is great, and you guys’ll just stand on the floor we’ll give you, we’ll have two cameras – in case one of the shots doesn’t work, two photographers – high ASA film so that flashes don’t go off, or anything like that. And we’ll chain ourselves up there and do our routine. But then I got stopped on the trading floor. This guy comes up to me, this old guy and says, “hey – you’re new!” And, I’m like, “ah, yeah!” I start to sweat. And, he says, “Bear Stearns.” I said, “yeah, yeah.” ’Cause all of our badges said “Bear Stearns.” We just picked a firm out of a hat. And he said, “that’s weird – 3,865” – my number was 3,000-something. He said, “the highest number on the floor is 1600, there are only 1600 traders here.” (laughs) And I said, “I don’t know. This is the one they gave me.” (laughing) And I’m starting to sweat more and he goes, “well, I guess so, I guess they’re trying a new system, well, welcome.” And he shook my hand and that was it, he walked away, and I was like – holy shit! So we went back to the pawnshop and said – you got to make all new badges. We had like 48 hours before the demo was happening, so.
And we all met at a McDonald’s beforehand that morning on Nassau Street, nervous as all hell. And seven of us, five that would go up to the balcony, two photographers, and, the photographers were supposed to take our picture and get out right away, outside, and hand the cameras over to the runners that would take them up to Associated Press. And, we had, each of us had stuff under our t-shirts. One person had a huge banner that was all folded up. He looked a little fat. I had a gigantic chain wrapped in a fanny belt that we’d chain ourselves to the banister at the top of this thing, so it would take them a while for, to pull us off the balcony. We all had handcuffs in our pockets. We all had little marine foghorns that were ear-piercing and that’s how we would announce our presence. And then we had these, in honor of Abbie Hoffman who was the first and only person to ever organize an action on the Stock Exchange at what was then the visitor’s gallery, which is now walled off because of Abbie Hoffman, with glass. He threw down fake, he threw down dollar bills onto the floor of the Stock Exchange, real dollar bills as a rant against how capitalism was funding the [Vietnam] war. We did something in honor of him, we had fake $100 bills made up that had, on the back of them. . . .
So, we all piled in at 9:25, walking right past security and the five of us walked up the stairs of the balcony and pulled everything, knelt down and pulled everything out from under our shirts and we waited for the bell and chained our, put the chain around the banister all handcuffed ourselves to it, got the whole banner unrolled which said “Sell Wellcome”. And, at 9:29 and 50 seconds we jumped up and put the banner over and all let off the foghorns, you couldn’t hear the opening bell, and it was extraordinary. The place just, for a second, just went dead quiet except for the foghorns as everybody tried to figure out what was happening. And they then started going into a rage as they realized what was happening. And the photographers took their pictures quietly and got out, handed the cameras off, but they saw that the crowd had started getting really, they were beginning to throw wads of paper at us and getting very angry and they were concerned, so they foolishly went back in and they quickly got nabbed. The traders were looking around for conspirators and they got real roughed up, shirt collars were ripped and stuff like that. And these guys were just raging at us, and I used to work with that testosterone and it was, ah, it was really one of the most gratifying moments of my life, ’cause I realized it was done. It was, we had succeeded, we got through security, it was done. The picture was taken, this was a gigantic news story. And they could scream all they wanted but we were going to be on the front page of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal the next day.
Question: Did their [Burroughs Wellcome’s] share price go down?
A little bit, a little bit. That wasn’t the goal. It was just to really keep this as a major story. And it was, the next day. And three days later they lowered the price by 20 percent. Which was the first, and unfortunately the last time an HIV drug has had its price lowered in the US. But, fortunately we’ve seen very dramatic price declines in the developing world.
But, it became a real, it became a real kind of “don’t cross this line” type thing, so the savings were way beyond just AZT.
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