AIDS and Political Activism in the 1980s

Presenter: Bryan Nunez

Presenter Status: Undergraduate student

Academic Year: 20-21

Semester: Spring

Faculty Mentor: Hillary Homzie

Department: Communication & Media Studies

Funding Source/Sponsor: SYRCE Symposium

Screenshot URL: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=17ckrOmnym2Xf6-M1LLbVP54MIZaI-7AT

Abstract:
For my project I decided to focus on how AIDS affected the lgbt community and lead to political activism. I decided to show that by painting different panels representing the different information and show how member of the lgbt community were treated but also focus on people that fought back againt the discrimination. I had a total of 5 panels, the first one showing someone using foul language and hating on a gay person. Gay people were already treated badly before the whole AIDS epidemic. The second panel shows a grim reaper and people looking grey to present how AIDS really affected the lgbt community and plenty were dying so fast. The third panel shows a hospital dying to help AID patients and people yelling bad things to the lgbt community. It presents how more hate grew against the lgbt community and how no one wanted to help. The fourth panel shows a pride flag and name of people. I did that to show how the lgbt community came together and started protesting against the hate they were facing and got help, the names are some of the activists in the 1980s. The last panel is supposed to look like a "quilt" to memorize people who died because of AIDS. The quilt idea came from Cleve Jones who organized the AIDS Memorial Quilt where he got thousands of people to make quilts in memory of people who died because of AIDS. I really enjoyed doing this project and I learned a lot and hope you guys enjoy my project.