The picture of a sunny day.

artoftransliness:

World AIDS day is December 1st.

fenwayhealth:

Read more about new information on HIV/AIDS among young people in the U.S.

You can also help raise awareness by sharing these infographics on Facebook.

Download/share a high-res PDF of this infographic here. 

(via neutrois)

lacigreen:

fromonesurvivortoanother:

This was not an exaggeration. The government ignored the issue of HIV/AIDS for years before anything was done. Gay and Queer communities had to form their own clinics because no government agencies cared for them. Back then, being diagnosed was equivalent to a death sentence or extreme debt and poor quality of life/a significantly shortened lifespan.

Things got so desperate that people literally had “Die-Ins”— in contemporary usage this refers to masses of people simulating death in order to protest something (like the War in Iraq). In this case, however, fatally sick people would literally lie down in public places and protest with what little energy they had left until they died. There is some footage of a church Die-In in the documentary Beyond Stonewall.  The middle image here of that person’s jacket is not an extreme political statement; it’s what people had to do because they had no other options.

The horror of the AIDS epidemic gives me chills.  It was a truly despicable and inhumane period of inaction.

To learn more about the politics behind the 80s AIDS epidemic, check out And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts.

I had the amazing opportunity this evening to meet Dona McAdams, a photographer who has done work documenting the queer rights movement since the 70s (she used to buy film from Harvey Milk’s Castro Camera!).  She was a member of Visual AIDS, an artist collective within ACT-UP.  

They were the ones who designed the red ribbon as a symbol of HIV/AIDS awareness.  Dona said that it was originally intended to look like a peace sign, and as a response to the yellow ribbons that were popular in the early 90s that were supporting troops in the Gulf War.

Just FYI…