HIV/AIDS activism

Social and political activism to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, as well as to raise funds for effective treatment and care of people with AIDS (PWAs), has taken place in multiple nations across the world since the 1980s. As a disease that began in marginalized populations, efforts to mobilize funding, treatment, and fight discrimination have largely been dependent on the work of grassroots organizers directly confronting public health organizations (often government-managed medical bureaucracies) as well as politicians, drug companies, and other institutions.

Inaction from the Reagan administration in the US in the early 1980s, rampant homophobia, and the spread of misconceptions about HIV/AIDS led to outright discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, especially in the early days of the AIDS pandemic. Protest movements like ACT UP arose to fight for the rights of PWAs and to work to end the pandemic. Methods of demonstration have included the writing of position papers and making posters, public marches and civil disobedience, candlelight vigils, die-ins, and many creative approaches to direct action, such as kiss-ins.