This Monday, Dec. 1st is World AIDS Day. It was started by two public information officers at the World Health Organization to raise awareness of the AIDS global pandemic and has been observed every Dec. 1 since it began in 1988.
But here is its official purpose as stated by the WHO, explained far better than I ever could.
The day is an opportunity for public and private partners to spread awareness about the status of the pandemic and encourage progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care around the world. It has become one of the most widely recognized international health days and a key opportunity to raise awareness, commemorate those who have died, and celebrate victories such as increased access to treatment and prevention services.
Approximately 32 million people have died from AIDS-related illness and, in the eighties and nineties, a number of them were my friends, co-workers, acquaintances and peers.
The fact that I somehow survived through that modern day Holocaust is a random stroke of luck I will never fully understand and not a day goes by where I don’t think of someone or something that reminds me of those times.
I understand why this is not on the minds of most people and I’m thrilled that HIV-AIDS is not the death sentence it was when so many in my circle endured an unimaginable and truly horrible demise.
At that time, the U.S. government, led by Ronald Reagan, turned its back on them in silence, ensuring its complicity with what amounted to the passive genocide of a significant number of young gay men who came of age around the same time that I did. There were others affected – I.V. drug users, hemophiliacs – and soon many millions more in “third world” countries not as fortunate to have access to the advanced health care that the gay community led the world in demanding.
When people around you are dropping dead left and right it’s easy to demand because nothing else much matters. And if I still sounds a little raw around this, well, yeah, it’s still personal for me.
And always will be.
That’s why it particularly cheesed me off when the Trump Administration this past week announced that its State Department was forbidding its employees and those receiving State Department grants from “publicly promoting World AIDS Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging.”
Needless to say it also announced not a penny of U.S. government funds should be used in the commemoration.
Because…um…they can?
Because Trump withdrew America from the World Health Organization when he took office in January?
Because he thought the U.S. gave them too many millions and wanted to cut costs?
Because other countries didn’t pay enough?
Because he blamed them for Covid-19, putting a blot on his presidency and not supporting his many and vast conspiracy theories around that disease?
Choose one or all of the above. But not none.
Because the cruelty is the point.
Here is an article from the NY Times that lays it out pretty well.
Here’s two others from The Guardian if you can’t get behind the N.Y. Times paywall.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/27/awareness-days-events-trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/27/world-aids-day
A State Department spokesperson makes the laughable claim that “awareness is not a strategy” in defending Trump’s actions.
But if that’s the case how does it square with such Trump pronouncements as Leif Erickson Day, Anti-Communism Week, National Energy Domination Month and his proclamation declaring May 28, 2025 the 101st Anniversary of U.S. Border Patrol?
Clearly, a commemorative day or anniversary or week or month or year is in the eye of the declarer.
Too bad a viral infection is not.
But this is the same guy who ended the global AIDS initiative started by George W. Bush, of all people, (PEPFAR), which is credited with saving more than 25 million lives from HIV since it began.
I’ll leave you all with the words uttered at the last AIDS march I attended, words that were coined by N.Y. activists in 1986, and posted beneath a pink triangle in direct reference to the Nazi era.
Silence = Death.
notes from a chair 