8”x10” — 2024
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the connections between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the COVID pandemic become clearer with each passing day.
similarly to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s, our government is downplaying the severity of COVID because it disproportionately affects disabled people, immunocompromised people, people of color, and queer and trans people.
we’ve seen this play out before — the spread of a novel deadly and disabling virus, the initial surge of attention and resources like treatment, testing, and research, and then the attempts to erase the ongoing crisis from our field of vision. so that we forget, so that we normalize mass disablement and death.
and again, community groups of disabled people are the ones picking up the slack and doing the work of resource distribution, consciousness-raising, and loudly advocating for continued precautions and care in the face of these calculated erasure efforts from the state. just as people with HIV/AIDS were the main ones caring for each other at the height of that epidemic, disabled people and people with long COVID are the ones showing up for each other — because we know intimately the pain of institutional abandonment and gaslighting, and the need for community for survival.
HIV/AIDS activists have given us a blueprint for how not to handle a pandemic. which, predictably, the government has not followed — after all, we know how the state weaponizes illness as a tool of white supremacy and colonization — it’s happening right now as the IOF punishes Palestine for their resistance.
community groups like ACT UP are the reason why we understand the HIV/AIDS epidemic the way we do — as a stunning example of govt negligence, as a period of devastating preventable loss, as the reason why our current population of queer elders is a fraction of what it should be.
it behooves us to note the similarities between the govt’s handling of HIV/AIDS and COVID — because it gives us a playbook for how to move forward and resist. we have the blueprints for how to keep each other safe — masking and testing, yes, but also organizing and direct action. we can learn from the strategies and tactics of groups like ACT UP, and see what works and what doesn’t — and why community organizing is the only way to survive this societal abandonment.
description 1: a letterpress and screenprinted print. black lettering reads “if i die of COVID forget burial, just drop my body on the steps of the CDC” in a variety of different typefaces
description 2: a letterpress print. black lettering reads “if i die of COVID forget burial, just drop my body on the steps of the CDC” in a variety of different typefaces
8”x10” — 2024
—————————
the connections between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the COVID pandemic become clearer with each passing day.
similarly to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s, our government is downplaying the severity of COVID because it disproportionately affects disabled people, immunocompromised people, people of color, and queer and trans people.
we’ve seen this play out before — the spread of a novel deadly and disabling virus, the initial surge of attention and resources like treatment, testing, and research, and then the attempts to erase the ongoing crisis from our field of vision. so that we forget, so that we normalize mass disablement and death.
and again, community groups of disabled people are the ones picking up the slack and doing the work of resource distribution, consciousness-raising, and loudly advocating for continued precautions and care in the face of these calculated erasure efforts from the state. just as people with HIV/AIDS were the main ones caring for each other at the height of that epidemic, disabled people and people with long COVID are the ones showing up for each other — because we know intimately the pain of institutional abandonment and gaslighting, and the need for community for survival.
HIV/AIDS activists have given us a blueprint for how not to handle a pandemic. which, predictably, the government has not followed — after all, we know how the state weaponizes illness as a tool of white supremacy and colonization — it’s happening right now as the IOF punishes Palestine for their resistance.
community groups like ACT UP are the reason why we understand the HIV/AIDS epidemic the way we do — as a stunning example of govt negligence, as a period of devastating preventable loss, as the reason why our current population of queer elders is a fraction of what it should be.
it behooves us to note the similarities between the govt’s handling of HIV/AIDS and COVID — because it gives us a playbook for how to move forward and resist. we have the blueprints for how to keep each other safe — masking and testing, yes, but also organizing and direct action. we can learn from the strategies and tactics of groups like ACT UP, and see what works and what doesn’t — and why community organizing is the only way to survive this societal abandonment.
description 1: a letterpress and screenprinted print. black lettering reads “if i die of COVID forget burial, just drop my body on the steps of the CDC” in a variety of different typefaces
description 2: a letterpress print. black lettering reads “if i die of COVID forget burial, just drop my body on the steps of the CDC” in a variety of different typefaces
