The Power Here Is You

The history of AIDS in the United States is often framed through the experiences of coastal cities like New York and San Francisco. But Milwaukee developed its own distinctive response model built through grassroots organizing, sexual-health infrastructure, public-health research, unlikely coalitions, and networks of trust established long before many institutions fully understood the epidemic.

Milwaukee’s response to AIDS was shaped not only by activists and medical professionals, but by bathhouses, clergymen, corporations, Republican politicians, and ordinary community members who organized systems of care in the face of fear, stigma, and uncertainty. While popular memory often imagines LGBTQ+ history radiating outward from the coasts, Milwaukee reveals the Midwest as an overlooked center of organizing, innovation, and civic resilience.

The Power Here Is You explores how communities survive crisis before outside institutions fully mobilize — and how people within the LGBTQ+ community built the relationships, infrastructure, and leadership networks capable of saving lives.