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sees his organization as part buyers’ club, part alternative treatment study group, and part
information clearinghouse. Informants at both organizations described themselves as much more
closely aligned to each other than either is to HEAL, the alternative therapy NPO which one
long-time buyers’ club participant dismissed as a “hypnosis group.” Yet the three organizations
have more closely connected organizational forms and practices than any of them have with most
of the rest of the field. HEAL, although isolated from most networking processes, expresses
empathy towards the buyers’ clubs. “The most radical stuff is the underground drug network,”
one informant offered, as a expression of respect.
By the end of 1986, as part of what one counselor at Body Positive called “the maturing
of the field of AIDS,” those involved with HIV/AIDS empowerment became attentive to the fact
that an increasing number of HIV-positive people did not have AIDS. “So there was a population
who were not on their death beds.” Setting off what would become a wave of new organizational
initiatives throughout 1987, Michael Callen and others at the People With AIDS Coalition
(PWAC) formed Body Positive, whose mission was “to teach people how to live” with HIV. This
was not a function that others were pursuing. As one activist associated with Body Positive
observed, “there is and will be an increasing need to deal with people who don’t do the
convenient thing and die.” The reference was to the public health sector’s lack of preparedness
for the long term care needs of HIV-positive individuals, whose well-being was left to their
private communities of care.
In both positive and negative ways, HIV/AIDS was finally becoming normal, losing its
sense of crisis, and community workers were beginning to see HIV/AIDS involvement as their
new careers, not a diversion from their careers. As one informant at PWAC explained about the
Convention