One of America’s few remaining original ACT UP AIDS-activist chapters, ACT UP Philadelphia has celebrated the 20th anniversary of the larger organization’s 1987 founding by rethinking the movement’s iconic pink triangle. Long linked with the enduring slogan “Silence = Death,” the triangle became an emblem of gay—and ultimately all human—rights, especially with regard to HIV fear and stigma. This poster, designed by Courtney Dailey, is one of several Philadelphia HIV-prevention campaigns that have couched AIDS casualties in the larger context of Philadelphia’s battle with gun violence. At the end of 2007, the city ranked as one of America’s deadliest, with a per capita murder rate surpassing that of New York City. The ACT UP poster declares that people who live with AIDS are united with all those who seek social justice and freedom—whether from crime, police neglect and brutality, or poverty and its crippling symptoms.
