Andre 1
Andre
ENG 101 SPR
2013 WA2
HIV/AIDS and Social Movements
What role if any did social movement and activism play in making HIV/AIDS,
what was once and American crisis is now a national afterthought? Wikipedia defines
activism as an effort to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or
environmental change or stasis.” Activists try to persuade people to change their
behavior directly, rather than to persuade governments to change or not to change laws.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has had devastating consequences around the globe, and has
traumatized individual lives, communities, and health systems; it has also spawned
courageous and creative activism, including both individual acts of resistance and
organized political advocacy of social movements. Sociologist Joshua Gamson’s “Silence,
Death, and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement Newness.” delves
into ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash power) which is an international direct action
advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS, to bring about
legislation, medical research, treatment and policies to ultimately bring an end to the
disease by mitigating loss of health and lives. (Wikipedia)
“The HIV prevention industry is rooted in the gay bars of New York and the
bathhouses of San Francisco. It was fertilized by self-reliance in the face of
discrimination against gay men, and its fruit was a culture of activism that has been
plucked and exported around the world.” It is well known that the emergence of the
Andre 2
HIV/AIDS pandemic in the early to mid-eighties had a negative repercussion on the
homosexual community. At that time very little was known about the risk of HIV
transmission and the media, our politicians and the medical community prematurely
labeled it a homosexual disease, it was even called, at one time, GRID (gay related
immune deficiency) thus breeding fear and prejudice some people felt that gay men
brought the disease upon themselves. HIV related discrimination and stigma severely
hampers efforts to effectively fight the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Fear of discrimination
often prevented people from seeking treatment for AIDS or from admitting their HIV
status publicly. Combating stigma and discrimination against people who are affected
by HIV/AIDS is vital to preventing and controlling the global pandemic. ACT UP
spotlight on the “fight against aids” gave a voice to individuals with HIV/AIDS by
having a provocative stance, rebellious and in your face demonstrations that will not be
ignored. A new HIV/AIDS social movement was born.
Social movements are a type of a group action. They are large informal groupings of
individuals or organizations which focus on specific political or social issues. In other
words they carry out, resist or undo a social change. There a major vehicle for ordinary
people’s participation in public politics. Modern movements often utilize technology and
the internet to mobilize people globally. Adapting to communication trends is a common
theme among successful movements. Advocacy organizations linked to social movements
use social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action. ACT UP heard the
cries of the stigmatized and shunned HIV/AIDS community regarding how they will be
able to afford their HIV/AIDS medication so they can prolong their lives. ACT UP knew
that a bold demonstration to put a face on the injustice that was being done to which
Andre 3
society saw as behavioral brought on disease, who can live with HIV/AIDS boils down to
who can afford it was inhumane. September 14, 1989, seven ACT UP members infiltrated
the New York Stock Exchange and chained themselves to the VIP balcony to protest the
high price of the only approved AIDS drug, AZT. The group displayed a banner that read,
“SELL WELLCOME” referring to the pharmaceutical sponsor of AZT, Burroughs
Wellcome, which had set a price of approximately $10,000 per patient per year for the drug,
well out of reach of nearly all HIV positive persons. Several days following this
demonstration, Burroughs Wellcome lowered the price of AZT to $6,400 per patient per
year.” (Wikipedia)
Susan Sontag’s final observation in her “Aids and its Metaphors” states that “even
an apocalypse can be ordinary horizon of expectation constitutes an unparalleled violence
that is being done to our sense of reality, to our humanity. But it is highly desirable for a
specific dreaded illness to come to seem ordinary. Even the disease most fraught with
meaning can become just an illness….it is bound to happen with AIDS, when the illness is
much better understood and, above all treatable; for the time being much in the way of
individual experience and social policy depends on the struggle for rhetorical ownership of
the illness: how it is possessed, assimilated, in argument and in cliché.” So how can
progress be made in overcoming this stigma and discrimination? How can we change
people’s attitudes to AIDS? How can social movement aid us in doing just that? The end
result of many social groups are to bring attention to their cause and regardless if their
message falls short or even sway from their main objection, doesn’t take away from their
contribution to social changes. Social discontents are what translate into social movements.
We as humankinds become dissatisfied or frustrated with our social, economic, health
Andre 4
situation and yearn for change. HIV/ AIDS is not only a minority, homosexual or druggy
disease….and sometimes our behavior does impact our lives for the worse but should we
treat one another any less? (Sontag, Susan. Aids and its Metaphors. 1989)
Andre 5
Work Cited Page
Gamson, Joshua, Silence Death and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social
Movement
Stein, Von, Lorenz, Socialist and Communist Movements since the Third French Revolution
(1848)
Sontag, Susan, AIDS and it’s Metaphors (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1989)
Pisani, Elizabeth. Sacred Cows. In The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the
Business of AIDS. (Granta Books, 2008)