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Ann Northrop
(Photo: Bill Bytsura) |
Ann Northrop
Already a veteran of antiwar protests, the feminist skirmishes of the seventies, and some gay-rights
work, Northrop joined ACT UP in February 1988. Her experience—and also her years as a writer and producer for CBS Morning News—made her one of ACT UP’s most levelheaded activists. Her specific innovation was the idea that everyone in the group had to be ready to act as its spokesperson; she regularly drilled members in developing three- and five-second sound bites. “There was no hierarchy,” she says. “We each had to take responsibility for making decisions.”