#StopErasingBlackPeople 2015 Die-in at TAM

In December 2015, Tacoma Action Collective was joined by community members launching the #StopErasingBlackPeople campaign with a die-in protest at Tacoma Art Museum. Our protest was a response to the Art AIDS America exhibit which purports to "explore the whole spectrum of artistic responses to AIDS." We noticed that it almost entirely excludes Black artists. Black Americans represent over 40% of the death toll (nearly 270,000 AIDS related deaths since the 80's) but only 5 out of 107 contributors to the exhibition were Black.

Our protest mourns and honors the nearly 700,000 Black Americans past and present who have directly suffered in this epidemic and for whose lives the exhibit neglected. This is critical because arts movements have been the center of raising public visibility throughout the history of the HIV AIDS epidemic, and while HIV prevalence decreases in nearly every US demographic, it continues to increase among Black Americans due to lack of access to medical care.

For Black Americans the crisis is not over. 1/3 Black trans women are diagnosed with HIV and 57% of all HIV diagnoses under age 24 are of Black youth. Black Americans also die more frequently and sooner from AIDS related complications than any other group in the US based on lack of access to medical care and identification of the virus in late stages of development. In an era when Black bodies are targeted from seemingly every direction, the fundamental lack of empathy or regard by this exhibit is disturbing. The exhibit which largely displays HIV as a white crisis from the 80's, erases the reality of the continuing Black struggle in the HIV AIDS crisis.

#StopErasingBlackPeople !