A closer look
ACT UP: Silence=Death
How and why did AIDS activists repurpose a familiar symbol to represent their movement in the 1980s?
by Anne Valk, American Social History Project, Graduate Center, CUNY
Historical Context
In New York City, six gay men (four of them commercial graphic designers) formed the Silence=Death project to protest inadequate medical treatment and the lack of reliable public information about AIDS. In early 1987, they designed this poster, drawing on their experiences in advertising. Overnight, they illegally plastered three thousand copies on telephone poles, storefronts, construction sites, and other places in the city where they would attract attention. In order to make the poster easily discernible and highly visible to pedestrians and passengers in buses and cars, it made dramatic use of contrasting colors and included minimal yet powerful text. Avram Finkelstein later explained, the poster needed “to prompt the LGBTQ community to organize politically around AIDS and to imply to anyone outside the community that we already were. In order to speak simultaneously to multiple audiences, the poster would need to be densely coded.”
In the 1980s, the deadly AIDS epidemic instigated a widespread movement demanding more research, improved care, and better treatment options for those who were sick. Public health officials began to notice the unusual illness in 1981, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognized AIDS in 1982. But officials remained silent, refusing to publicly acknowledge the epidemic or to direct significant resources to AIDS research. In fall 1985, President Reagan first publicly mentioned the AIDS crisis, and Congress allocated millions of dollars for research; by that time, thousands—mostly gay men—had died.
What are some of the codes that can be seen on this poster?
Subversive Pink Triangles
The use of a pink triangle on the Silence=Death poster made a powerful connection to the Holocaust. In concentration camps, the Nazis sewed color-coded patches onto prisoners’ clothing to identify them according to their alleged offense. This chart instructed camp guards about the symbols and colors used to designate different categories of prisoners. Pink triangles classified those the Nazis labeled homosexual. Silence=Death literally turned the Holocaust-era pink triangle upside down. It also flipped the meaning of silence. During the Holocaust, “silence” could offer LGBTQ+ people protection from imprisonment or death. In contrast, Silence=Death urged assertiveness and visibility to address AIDS. In these ways, the new poster drew on history but rejected the associations with victimhood that the pink triangle symbolized in the context of the Holocaust.
What did the use of pink triangles by Nazis indicate about the ways they viewed and classified LGBTQ+ people? How does this utilitarian poster visually differ from a political protest sign?
Gay Liberation Traditions
The Silence=Death poster’s coded messages also drew on protest movement traditions. By the time the Silence=Death poster appeared, the pink triangle was a recognizable symbol associated with the movement to end discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ+ community. In the 1970s it began to appear on gay liberation posters, buttons, T-shirts, and publications. Wearing the triangle on buttons and T-shirts or carrying posters at Gay Pride events was a symbol of liberation: a way of “coming out” by declaring one’s sexual identity and advancing the gay liberation movement. This 1976 publication announcing the program of events at San Francisco’s annual Gay Freedom Day Parade, for example, prominently featured a pink triangle.
Who do you think the creators of this flyer saw as their audience and why? What visual elements in this poster would attract that audience?
AIDS and Genocide
In addition to the pink triangle, activists made other connections between AIDS and the Holocaust. AIDS activists spoke out against proposed policies that they associated with Nazi concentration camps. For example, in March 1986, conservative political commentator William F. Buckley had publicly called for people with AIDS to be tattooed in a misguided effort to protect people who might unknowingly come into contact with those who were sick. Buckley’s comments recalled the stigmatizing ways that the Nazis marked prisoners with tattoos. As this photograph shows, at this 1987 Pride Parade in Chicago, marchers equated mandatory AIDS testing, a proposal promoted by some federal and state health officials, with the Holocaust, suggesting that it might be a first step toward compulsory or dehumanizing treatment.
How do protesters in this photo equate AIDS and the Holocaust? How do they use banners and posters to convey their demands?
Silence=Death
In order to raise consciousness and provoke collective action, the poster’s text was as important as the image. Dominating the page, “Silence=Death” crystallized the message for all viewers. Small print at the bottom included a secondary message for those who could read the poster closely. It read: “Why is Reagan silent about AIDS? What is really going on at the Center for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration, and the Vatican? Gays and lesbians are not expendable...Use your power...Vote...Boycott...Defend yourselves...Turn anger, fear, grief into action.” By naming political, public health, and religious leaders, the poster called on people to take action against these and other targets.
How does the poster use design (color, size, fonts, layout, contrast, etc.) to issue a call to action? What did it urge viewers to do?
The Silence=Death Project made their image available to ACT UP, the most visible organization fighting for an urgent response to the AIDS crisis. ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) formed in New York in March 1987, around the same time that the poster first appeared. The poster image quickly became associated with the organization. Stripped of the text that appeared at the bottom of the original poster, ACT UP reproduced the image on posters, T-shirts, banners, and buttons. ACT UP raised funds to support its work by selling T-shirts and buttons sporting the graphic. As ACT UP organized protests at the Federal Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and many other sites, use of the symbol proliferated. With this visibility, the symbol created an enduring brand for ACT UP that became a rallying cry for action and has come to represent the broader movement against AIDS.
What are the ways that the Silence=Death poster was adapted and used by activists at this event? What impact does it have at this protest?
Reflective Questions
Who is the primary audience(s) for the Silence=Death poster? How do you know?
In this brief article, Avram Finkelstein, one of the poster’s designers, describes the many factors that influenced Silence=Death. After reading the article at https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/11/22/silence-equals-death-poster, discuss what made Silence=Death such an effective image?
How does this poster convey the political approach used by ACT UP?
How does the Silence=Death poster continue a tradition of LGBTQ+ people reclaiming words and images as a strategy to subvert negative symbols in order to give them positive meaning? Can you think of other examples? Does this strategy work?
What does this poster reveal about ways that art and artists can contribute to protest movements?
Additional Reading
Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).
Jake Newsome, Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022).
Related Chapters
Economic Adversity Transforms the Nation, 1973-1989Related Items
Silence = DeathNazi SS Triangle Chart
United for Freedom, 1976
Chicago Pride Parade, June 1987.
ACT UP Protest at the Federal Drug Administration