Photo credit - @davidsandison / Huge thanks to STOP AIDS.
People living with HIV + AIDS are facing ‘A bloodbath’: HIV field is reeling after billions in U.S. funding are axed putting millions in peril’
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power’s (ACT UP) tenacity, creativity and commitment to direct action to end the AIDS crisis are needed now more than ever. Please help us to Turn Our Outrage Way Up - This is no time to sit idly by. People’s lives are at stake. We have to put our bodies on the line.
The dual threats to people living with HIV and AIDS across the world from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump are deadly. In South Africa alone, funding cuts could lead to 500,000 deaths in 10 years, experts warn. HIV clinics across the world are now shutting their doors.
Now, Trump, Starmer, Musk, the Republicans and Labour party have placed about 20 million people living with HIV on death row. HIV clinics across the world are now shutting their doors. We need to stop Keir Starmer’s disastrous decision to carry out the largest cut in UK overseas aid in history to fund defence.
As a not-for-profit grassroots group we are asking you to help us to raise £10,000 to help to continue to unite in anger Fight AIDS not WAR. Your support will help us escalate to direct action to end the AIDS crisis, along with the broader inequalities and injustices that perpetuate it. Your generosity will help us mobilise against these cuts and demand pharmaceutical Gilead drop the price of drugs. This will hugely benefit the most marginalised, including criminalised populations such as the LGBTQIA+ community.
Your support will help us to
1 - £2.500 to ESCALATE our 'Who's afraid of the end of HIV?’ campaign targeted at Gilead to demand that the highly effective injectable HIV prevention drug 'Lenacapavir PrEP' is made accessible to all across the world that could benefit tens of millions of people. Experts say it can be produced at £40 including a 30% profit margin, whilst Gilead has priced that drug at £40,000. Without ensuring affordable and equitable global access, Gilead is prolonging the HIV epidemic. See 'ACT UP London protest HIV prevention drug maker to demand global access' Attitude Magazine
2 - £2.500 to ORGANISE and execute a Pride Celebration of AIDS Activism Fundraiser on a boat on the Thames with speakers and artists from the global HIV movement to build our energy to continue fighting. We need to catalyse our effective and educational programme of action rooted in radical joy, for our intersectional and intergenerational community, build radical healthcare partnerships and promote understanding of the nuanced experience of people living with HIV. Profits go to Positively UK, Positive East and This is My Culture.
3 - £2.500 to REVITALISE our campaign against Starmers cuts to the UK international aid budget. Analysis from the ONE Campaign shows that the UK cut to international aid will mean over 600,000 people will die from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as over 37.8 million fewer children being immunised against measles, polio, rotavirus and other deadly diseases - equivalent to more than twice the entire child population of the UK. This month our activists helped staged a die-in protest outside parliament during Prime Minister's Questions today demanding the decision to further cut the UK international aid budget by 40% is reversed.
“These cuts are a betrayal of millions. Living with HIV, I can live a long and healthy life because I have access to medicine that means I can’t pass it on. Around the world, millions don’t have access to the medicines they need and without it they will die. These cuts will kill. We must all fight back.” Jen, ACT-UP activist
4 - £2.500 to EQUIP 100 of our activists in creative activist techniques and ‘know your legal rights’ empowerment training in response to the Government's Public Order Act crackdown on the right to protest to continue creating high-profile awareness raising stunts.
Pic credit @functioningphotographer
For our entire programme we need venue hire, banner and poster material, money to support videography and communications and core costs to support the entire coordination.
We’ve won before, we can do it again. Mass demonstrations in the 80s, 90s and 00s saw communities and Global-South governments win generic ARVs to treat HIV, saving over 12 million lives. Where there is noise there is hope for change.
All your support is massively appreciated. Huge love and solidarity, ACT UP London X @actup.london / [email protected] / www.actuplondon.wordpress.com
ABOUT ACT UP
Since the 1980’s, ACT UP has been a strategic goldmine in the quest for healthcare for all and right now we are needed now more than ever. Since we reformed the London ACT UP Chapter we have helped lead life-saving and intersectional campaigns, protests and performances that have included campaigning for access to PrEP and coalition building to protect the NHS (such as the ‘Docs Not Cops’ network) and recently Positively UK / ACT UP Women's Catwalk for Power, Resistance and Hope and our Fund Healthcare Not Warfare movement. This has led to a monumental and historic success of the lowering of diagnosis’ in London (amongst certain demographics). Hundreds of healthcare workers and activists are involved in our actions such as the ‘Remember the Dead to Fight for the Living - Die-ins’ on World AIDS Day and ACT UP’s legendary ‘This is My Culture’ sexual freedom party that began a response to grieve and to honour HIV advocate George Michael.
Our movement ecosystem includes Positively UK, STOP AIDS, Positive East, National AIDS Trust, cliniQ (inclusive trans sexual health and wellbeing), NAZ UK, Just Treatment, HIV I-Base, 56 Dean Street Clinic and Gendered Intelligence. We also partner with leading LGBTQIA+ spaces (inc. The London LGBT+ Community Centre and Queercircle) and archives at the Bishopsgate Institute.
In the fifth decade of this crisis, we fight to ensure comprehensive and easily accessible treatment for all people, in all countries. And in a time of continuing stigma, silence, and isolation, we combat discrimination against and promote the visibility and leadership of those living with HIV and AIDS. Remembering that HIV & AIDS is foremost a political crisis, as well as a medical emergency, we will use every means possible to call out and contain this pandemic. We Will Never Be Silent.
“We have so much to learn from ACT UP about big tent politics and coalition work. I hope these daily reminders can inspire new innovations and ways to build the relationships that are at the center of progressive change.” Sarah Schulman, author of ‘The Gentrification of the Mind’ and ‘Let the Records Show: A Political History of ACT UP, 1987-1993'
ACT UP! FIGHT BACK! UNTIL THERE IS HEALTHCARE FOR ALL!