Fight AIDS, Not Arabs: Visions of Care and Collaboration from ACT UP New York to Gaza
Watch online at TQFF.ca. ASL available.
Over the last 30 years, LGBTQ+ activists have argued the United States should be spending its resources to “Fight AIDS, Not Arabs.” In 1991, the HIV activist group ACT UP protested that the United States should be investing money to save people dying from HIV, not on a war in the Persian Gulf. During the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and again during the war on Gaza in 2023, the very same activists organized to force the U.S. to spend money on infectious disease, instead of on policing Black people in America and dropping bombs on Arabs in Palestine. Speaking from lessons learned writing his book The Viral Underclass, Steven W. Thrasher will discuss how AIDS activism has taught him that a world without HIV, COVID, or m-pox is only possible in a world without war and policing.
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