| UNFAIR PARK | The Gay Urban Truth Squad held many demonstrations in the 1980s to draw attention to queer discrimination. courtesy William Waybourn At the height of the AIDS crisis, the Gay Urban Truth squad fought for health care and respect in Dallas. Their battle continues. GUTS AND GLORY BY SIMONE CARTER T 44 he staccato thud of hammers broke the predawn stillness one morning in 1988. Activists dotted the vacant lot. They carried some 700 hand-painted white crosses bearing the names of Dallas County residents who’d succumbed to AIDS. Mem- bers of the Gay Urban Truth Squad (GUTS), a Dallas activist group, drove the wooden stakes into the dirt at the intersection of Lem- mon and Cole avenues. GUTS leader William Waybourn remembers the sun crawling over the horizon, its rays catching the crosses. Their shadows stretched across the grassy field, he says: “It was a beautiful day.” For years, the empty lot was home to a large hole that had filled with stagnant wa- ter, an eyesore landmark brought by a devel- opment project gone south. The Dallas Morning News had dubbed it the city’s own “Grand Canyon.” Dallas City Council ap- proved spending $500,000 to pack the cra- ter the same year it had devoted just $55,000 toward AIDS funding, according to a 1996 D Magazine article. Media swarmed the make- shift potter’s field, which was featured on the evening news. The city was so embar- rassed by the demonstration that they left the crosses up for a couple of days, Way- bourn says, laughing. But it worked. Officials spiked AIDS sup- port to $552,000 the following year. The group’s genesis rested in another gay rights organization called ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which was located in cities like New York, Los An- geles and San Francisco, Waybourn ex- plains. Being the “good Dallas boys that we were,” he says, they asked for permission to use the name. No luck. So, GUTS was born, which some joked stood for “Gay Urban Terrorist Squad.” “We were popular,” Waybourn says. Like the potter’s field, other GUTS dem- onstrations were equally colorful and effec- tive. They shut down an airport terminal on Thanksgiving Eve. They fashioned roughly 100 dummies out of clothes and rags and dumped them outside the county health de- partment. They sketched chalk outlines out- side City Hall Plaza, again representing the ever-increasing number of AIDS cases. Then-Mayor Annette Strauss accused the activists of defacing public property, but she eventually backed down after taking flak, Waybourn says. The macabre contours washed away in the rain. Activist Bruce Monroe recounted that GUTS members drew some 1,200 outlines during the City Hall demonstration, accord- ing to LGBTQ+ history website The Dallas Way. The city threatened to sue them for damages before a donor offered to cover the cleanup. One of the demonstrators, LGBTQ+ community leader Terry Tebedo, was seri- ously ill at the time and eventually died >> p6 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 JUNE 23–29, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com
