By Peter Cashman

"What the hell is this West Hollywood pretty boy doing here!"

That was my personal thought as I watched a curly-haired, slightly mustachioed, Levi'd, hard bodied fox work the room passing out fliers. We were at a November post-1987 March on Washington community meeting, which was packed to overflowing with both veteran activists and eager newcomers. The fox, I learned, was Mark Kostopoulos, from Echo Park, who had just turned 33. Four-and-a-half years later he would be dead, but what he accomplished in that short time is quite remarkable!

The flier announced a public meeting a week or so later to form a Los Angeles chapter of ACT UP. Could Mark have imagined that hundreds would turn out on a dark and stormy night to found the nation's second largest chapter, that in time his counsel would be sought by lawmakers, academics and people of faith, or that later he would be honored by California's largest health advocacy organization, Health Access, at a San Marino garden party? I doubt it! After all, Mark's politics had been forged in the deepest of red and would later be shaded in pink as a leading light of lavender left.

ACT UP had no leaders, said the mantra, but if ever there was a natural born leader it was Mark. The weekly public meetings of ACT UP/LA were governed by consensus votes. Grueling meetings and votes that were magnificently guided, and dare I say manipulated, by his sheer will, vision, and skill. Consensus would be arrived at, minutiae prioritized and action plans developed and executed. Fear amidst your dead and dying loved ones has a way of concentrating peoples' determination to take action and stop the dying.

Folks who came to ACT UP were politically diverse, ranging from Mark's left-through-moderate Democrats to disaffected Reagan Republicans, and libertarians. He adapted to these realities in time, as he went about educating, coercing, and strategizing like no one I had ever seen. Political correctness, always a great laugh in those days, was soon given short shrift. However it was impossible to be in Mark's company without being aware of the broader progressive issues, sensitivities and coalition building that would inform ACT UP/LA's AIDS activism.

Mark was a mail carrier by day and all his free time went to ACT UP. Well almost all -- somehow he found time to date. Being around Mark was not always serious -- in later years he would sometimes bicker with Gunther Freehill quietly and not so quietly during meetings. That they developed a partnership in activism and love that would endure until the end of his life was a tribute to them both.

Talk was needed, but ACT UP was committed to action, specifically non-violent direct action, to fight the “business as usual” policies that were hobbling a war on AIDS. Mark initially resisted efforts at the more genteel forms of political engagement, such as letter writing and lobbying. In time ACT UP would be famously effective in embracing these means to further pursue the issues it had angrily and often humorously voiced “on the streets.”

Whether it was shaming County/USC Hospital into creating a long overdue dedicated AIDS inpatient ward and eliminating the terrible conditions at the 5P21 outpatient ward, fighting AIDS discrimination, or demanding accelerated access to promising drugs and treatments, Mark was there, brilliant at keeping people focused.

Being Alive's Sean Kinney wrote in 1997, "For those who receive their care at 5P21 (the L.A. County AIDS clinic), not one single day should pass that you do not publicly speak the name Mark Kostopoulos in pride. You benefit from his courageous fights."

Nonetheless Mark's life was increasingly beset by his own health problems. Initially diagnosed with AIDS Related Complex in the late '80s, his incredible workload no doubt hastened an advance to a bevy of AIDS opportunistic infections by the time he died in mid-1992.

In January that year, Critical Path AIDS Project in Philadelphia reported that a war-weary Mark had been asked about whether his activism with ACT UP had prolonged his life. "I don't know if that's true, in fact some say that AIDS activism is killing me. I think the reality is that it doesn't matter. The point is the quality of my life. Certainly the activism I've engaged in has made for an amazing four years. I would not trade them away for anything. That's the point."

My final memory of that audacious flier fox of the fall of 1987 was visiting him very briefly a few days before his death on June 20, 1992. Ferd Eggan captured it shortly after, when he wrote, "It was not an easy death. He survived five bouts of PCP, but his body could not cope with disseminated KS, fungus in his lungs, MAC, CMV, and other infections, all at the same time".

Mark Kostopoulos was a helluva troublemaker. He told me once that his time with ACT UP marked the first time in his life he did not feel marginalized. What an over-achiever. He changed our lives. Those of us with HIV/AIDS who survived him, those who have succumbed to HIV since, benefited from all that he achieved. We are forever in his debt.