(No) World AIDS Day 2025: We Refuse to Be Silent
A black circular logo on a bright yellow background features a red HIV/AIDS awareness ribbon above the words “THE BLACKYARD COLLECTIVE,” with “World AIDS Day is December 1st” in red text below.
On Tuesday, November 25th, a post appeared on my Facebook timeline that read, “The U.S. Government will not be commemorating World AIDS Day this year.” As is my practice to never overreact to what I see on social media, I immediately began searching for official guidance. This time, the rumor was true. The government has now formally confirmed there will be no federal commemoration of World AIDS Day in 2025.
The timing is no coincidence. Just one day earlier, on November 24th, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, was dissolved—leaving in its wake a trail of reckless cuts that have devastated global health systems. Among the most catastrophic of these decisions was the halting of PEPFAR. Between February and July alone, experts report more than 330,000 AIDS-related deaths worldwide. In short: the richest man in the world is responsible for policies that have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of the poorest, most vulnerable, and most marginalized people on the planet.
For what?
The answer is both deeply complicated and painfully simple. Since the mid-1980s, the reality of AIDS has forced the Western world to confront what many wished to avoid—what happens in bedrooms and bathhouses, in drug houses and jailhouses, and in impoverished communities at home and across the globe. I remember being ten years old, terrified of a disease that felt so close to my own future as a Black queer person. I can still hear the whispered judgments: “People like that die of AIDS,” “AIDS is God’s punishment.”
Fast forward to age 51: I now live in a world shaped by HIV and AIDS—not the cursed world I was warned about, but a world built on resilience, activism, access, creativity, and care. A world kept alive by movements of warriors, dead and living, who refused to be silent. A world where antiretrovirals are widely available, where preventative medicines exist, where people living with HIV can thrive, and where people who are negative can remain so without fear or stigma. A world where we stand on the brink of ending HIV—both its biological impact and the shame historically attached to it.
And now, on this government-declared (No) World AIDS Day, we are being asked to return to silence.
We decline.
This year, we choose truth over silence.
May we speak clearly as we face a year approaching one million AIDS-related deaths.
May we direct our outrage not at people living with HIV—but at the systems and leaders who dismantle lifesaving programs and attempt to drag us back to the darkest days of the epidemic.
May we lift our voices for the Black, the poor, the queer, the trans, the globally marginalized—for everyone whose lives hang in the balance as access to medication is stripped away.
May we commemorate this (No) World AIDS Day not by abiding an immoral edict, but by refusing to be silent.
We honor the dead. We fight like hell for the living.
Ashe.
