World AIDS Day was created in 1988 by the World Health Organization as an international commemoration of those we have lost to HIV/AIDS and to celebrate the advancements we have achieved in education, prevention, treatment, and care. Until 2025, the United States has always joined other nations in tribute of World AIDS Day to raise awareness of the continuing threat to public health.

In a patently cruel and malicious move, however, the Trump administration, through its State Department, announced that it will no longer commemorate December 1 as World AIDS Day, even though Trump commemorated the day each year during his first presidential term.

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The New York Times reported that the State Department told employees they may not publicly promote the day “through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches, or other public-facing messaging.”

In addition, though Trump ordered a suspension of federal government activities and events related to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and other “special observances” to conform with his executive order+ and his role back of all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, Trump has specifically proclaimed his own commemorative “special observances” including:

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• Anti-Communism Week, 2025 as a “solemn remembrance of the devastation caused by one of history’s most destructive ideologies.”

• Leif Erikson Day, based on a 1964 law authorizing it on October 9 to honor “the heroic life” of the Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first person of European-heritage to land on what is today known as “North America.”

• Thought Columbus Day has been challenged, contested, and observed in many cities in the United States as Indigenous People’s Day, Trump has reiterated his strong support for and commemoration of Columbus Day “to reclaim [Columbus’] extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory.”

• Though Trump sat out the initial event in 1775 because of his bone spurs, Trump issued a proclamation on June 17 declaring that day as the 250^th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill in Massachusetts as a day of remembrance for “the courage, determination, and selflessness of the patriots who fought at Bunker Hill.”

• And certainly not coming as a surprise, Trump issued a proclamation on May 28 on the 101^st anniversary of the U.S. Border Patrol. “We honor the thousands of patriots who dedicate their careers to defending our borders and upholding the rule of law, even in the face of grave danger and tremendous risk,” his proclamation reads. “Above all, we pay tribute to every brave soul who has perished in the line of duty while proudly serving our Nation.”

• Though Trump will not officially acknowledge or commemorate Juneteenth — and he often villainizes the 1619 Project, a multimedia project that explores U.S. history through the experiences of African-Americans — Trump has become the first president to commemorate and honor the anniversary of the Cape Henry Landing. In his proclamation, he stated: “The seeds of America’s destiny were sown when this courageous band of Christians erected a towering wooden cross at the crest of Cape Henry, Virginia. Our Nation honors the heroic souls whose faithful devotion and uncommon courage more than 400 years ago foreshadowed the birth of the greatest Republic in the history of the world – and it is in their memory that we pledge to forge a future that always celebrates our history, honors our heritage, and glorifies our God Almighty.”

Trump’s refusal officially to memorialize, remember, and heighten awareness of HIV/AIDS follows his literal murder by omission of approximately 127,073 adults and 13,527 infants due to this administration’s drastically cut federal funding for HIV prevention and treatment worldwide as part of the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The program, which began during the George W. Bush administration in 2003, has already saved an estimated 26 million lives.

In addition, the Trump administration’s closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), through Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.

Our continued war on HIV/AIDS

“We’re living through war, but where they’re living it’s peace time, and we’re all in the same country.”

This moving quote from Larry Kramer’s theatrical political drama The Normal Heart came to mind as I read about the Trump administration’s executive orders and other policy directives that have reversed the world’s forward movement in containing, preventing, and eventually curing deadly HIV infections.

Amidst this continuing international crisis, I remembered back to earlier times in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan’s Chief of “Communications,” Patrick J. Buchanan, spoke for many conservatives by calling AIDS nature’s “awful retribution” that did not deserve a thorough and compassionate response. Later, Buchanan said, “With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.”  

And why, you may ask, was the governmental response to HIV/AIDS so meager? According to Randy Shilts in his book And the Band Played On:

“No one cared because it was homosexuals who were dying. Nobody came out and said it was all right for gays to drop dead; it was just that homosexuals didn’t seem to warrant the kind of urgent concern another set of victims would engender…. Scientists didn’t care because there was little glory, fame, and funding to be had in this field…. Nobody at the National Cancer Institute seemed to be in much of a hurry. The new syndrome clearly was a very low priority, even as it was becoming clear to more and more people that it threatened calamity.”

In the face of this threat, we didn’t just sit back. We mobilized. The women’s health-care empowerment movement predates AIDS, as recorded in the ground-breaking work, Our Bodies, Our Selves.

By the time the effects of HIV were first felt, a grassroots network of medical, social, political, and informational organizations had already been put in place. Some of us, who under other circumstances would probably not have engaged in political organizing, were spurred into activism by the crisis.

LGBTQ+ and heterosexual people were at the forefront of a coordinated effort to provide care and support for people with HIV/AIDS. Existing LGBTQ+ community service centers expanded their services, while new centers were established dedicated to serving the needs of people with HIV/AIDS, including people of all races, socioeconomic classes, sexual and gender identities, and their loved ones.

These centers, sometimes referred to as AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs), provided counseling, education, medical consultation and advocacy, legal and financial assistance, and guidance through the dizzying maze of local and national agencies — just as many ASOs still do today. Volunteer “buddies” assisted people with HIV/AIDS, and trained volunteers staffed telephone hotlines to answer questions and refer people to local and national agencies.

In addition, we must not overlook an irony: LGBTQ+ people developed safer sex strategies and educational campaigns, and we remain some of the leaders in prevention efforts. Just think about it: LGBTQ+ people teach heterosexual people how to decrease their risks of infection during sexual activity.

As important as all of these initial organizing efforts were, some of us realized that we could do so much more to directly confront the crisis. We charged the government with being unconcerned with the epidemic because the majority of HIV-related cases existed in what we called “The 4-H Club”: homosexuals, Haitians, heroin users, and people with hemophilia. Many people considered all but the latter as “disposables” at that time, as many governmental and social institutions refused to take wide-scale action to assist them.

One can reasonably argue that if the majority of people with HIV/AIDS initially had been middle-class, white, suburban heterosexual males — rather than gay and bisexual males, trans people, people of color, working-class people, sex workers, and drug users — we would have immediately seen massive mobilization to defeat the virus.

We also faulted the very system on which U.S.-American medicine was based, and we declared that clinical drug trials and drug distribution procedures (as then constructed) were inhumane.

Subsequently, by 1986, a group of mostly young people organized militant direct-action groups known as ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). A network of local chapters quickly grew in over 120 cities throughout the world. I contributed my efforts to the Boston chapter.

Though independently developed and run, the network connected efforts under the theme “Silence = Death,” a slogan often displayed beneath an inverted pink triangle (turning upside down the insignia that Nazis forced men accused of homosexuality to wear in German concentration camps).

We reclaimed the pink triangle, signifying the ultimate stigmata of oppression, and turned it into a symbol of empowerment to lift people out of lethargy and denial and as a call to action to counter the crisis.

“We are a nonpartisan group of diverse individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis,” began the opening to many meetings of ACT UP chapters throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia.

Updating 1960s-style movement strategies, ACT UP groups continue to challenge what we still often regard as an intransigent government, arrogant medical establishment, greedy pharmaceutical and insurance industries, and a frightened and apathetic populace. We also are fighting against the internalized oppression within our own communities.

When looking back over the history of HIV, one thing seems certain: LGBTQ+ people have been in the forefront of organizing since physicians first recognized the syndrome. We continue working on the frontlines, and we will be there giving our knowledge, our compassion, our funding, and our muscle until HIV no longer poses a significant threat to the health of anyone on this planet.

Also, I can tell you with great certainty, in areas of health outside HIV, our leadership, creativity, and commitment will help this country and the planet survive into the next century.

We not only challenged traditional means of scientific knowledge dissemination, but more importantly, we questioned the very mechanisms by which scientists conducted research, and, therefore, we helped redefine the very meanings of “science.”

I have heard some people refer to our current era as one in which HIV/AIDS and the discrimination surrounding it no longer pose major physical and social barriers. Unfortunately, nothing can be further from the truth even though much has improved since those terrible early years.

Infection rates throughout the world still continue at a consistent pace, millions still can’t afford the constellation of drug therapies needed to keep them alive, and ignorance and prejudice remain major impediments. Now we must fight the Trump administration’s policies of killing the most vulnerable people across the globe through starvation and infection.

Joining together with the remarkable, dedicated, steadfast friends of ACT UP made real for me Margaret Mead’s insightful and stirring statement: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

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