Blotcher was volunteering at the Gay Men's Health Crisis in 1987, working the telephones for donations to its annual AIDS Walk New York, when he first heard about the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). A friend came into the office and told him a group of activists was marching on Wall Street the next day to protest the high price of azidothymidine (AZT), one of the only drugs then available to fight HIV. Blotcher said that resonated with him, so he attended the demonstration the next morning. A few months later, when he saw ACT UP at the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, "in all its fiery fury, all of its grandeur, all of its sexy anger", he wanted to be a part of it.