What does ACT UP mean?
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.
The London chapter opened in 1989.
It was set up because people were dying from AIDS-related complications.
So many people were dying and yet the government wasn’t doing anything.
There was also a lot of fear.
ACT UP organised and protested because they wanted the HIV pandemic to end.
Plus, they wanted to see the end of injustices and inequalities.
The spread of HIV was getting worse, and ACT UP wanted to stop this.
You know how protestors do a ‘lie-in’, with people lying down as a form of protest?
ACT UP decided to protest with a ‘die-in’ instead.
Protestors would lie on the floor to represent people who had been killed by AIDS.
The two black-and-white photographs you see here are an example of a die-in.
They’re from the 1990s and the photographer is Gordon Rainsford.
The colour photograph was taken by Ben Gilbert.
He took the picture in 2025, showing an ACT UP die-in at Trafalgar Square in central London.
ACT UP used to be a big movement, before decreasing in size.
In 2014, it was refounded.
Activist Dan Glass was one person who helped with this.
He said:
“For World AIDS Day 2025 we staged a Living Act of Resistance.
“We held a minute’s silence, then lay on cold, damp ground with cardboard gravestones, roses and candles – marking millions lost to AIDS-related deaths and condemning government complicity in preventable loss.
“Above us, birds cut a V through the sky, rotating leaders, sharing responsibility.
“A lesson in survival. Nature knows how to organise far better than Westminster does.
“Lying there, grief and rage intertwined.
“Public mourning is political: it insists that our lovers, friends and family should still be here, kissing, arguing, creating and dancing.”
But they’re dead.
Under a cold winter sky, protestors chanted:
“We mourn the dead. We fight like hell for the living.”
Resistance is intimate and collective.
A refusal to let silence win.
Artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz said in 1989:
“I’m carrying this rage like a blood-filled egg.”
Forty years later, we’re still incubating it.
It’s forty years into the AIDS crisis and people are still dying.
The government is doing nothing: stalling and stigmatising.
Healthcare used to be publicly and widely available, and yet now more and more healthcare is being privatised. If you want good care, you have to pay for it.
Thought die-ins were finished? A thing of the past?
You’re wrong. They’re still happening today.
Die-ins are still needed so we remember our history.
Turning memory and mourning into action.
We won’t forget.
We won’t accept institutional bigotry.
We need healthcare for all.
Stop spending the budget on war.
We will not be silenced.
Will we ignore this? No.
Act up!