Act Up

During the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in New York, Avram Finklestein was inundated by the blaring noise of ambulance sirens outside his apartment. “Just day and night … it was constant,” he said. “Even though I’ve been social distancing, I have not been able to escape this pandemic, not for one second.” For Finklestein, a 68-year-old artist and activist who lives in Brooklyn, witnessing the U.S. government stand by as the death toll climbs to over 200,000 is especially painful. As a survivor of the AIDS crisis, the current pandemic has been what he calls “a revisitation of suffering that can only be triggered by America at its most cruel.”