In the face of federal funding cuts that have hampered health care for those with HIV and AIDs worldwide, dozens of Baltimoreans held a vigil for World AIDS Day on December 1 in a display of solidarity and resistance.
The gravity of the ongoing threats to public health was not lost upon those gathering at the Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Bolton Hill. President Donald Trump has seemingly abandoned the global fight against a crisis that has killed Black men who have sex with other men at disproportionately high rates in Baltimore, leaving members of the faith community and local activists to strike a balance between a solemn day of commemoration and a resolve to fight for their neighbors’ lives.
“I hope that today is a day to renew our commitment to our people, to our community,” said Brother Merrick Moses. “It is a day to remember not only those who we have lost, but those who have survived. I challenge all of us to continue to fight because in the end, we will win.”
At the vigil, attendees lit candles, distributed red ribbons, said prayers, and sang gospel songs. The music reverberated throughout the church as those in the pews joined in. The mood was somber as Baltimoreans took turns paying homage to those impacted by the decades-long crisis.
It was a moment of commemoration, but also an acknowledgement of how high the stakes are for people with HIV and AIDS..
This year was the first since 1988 that the U.S. did not officially commemorate World AIDS Day. The move comes as the federal government has slashed public health spending globally and domestically.
Some have drawn comparisons between the current administration’s actions — or lack thereof — to the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first published findings on rare cases of pneumonia among gay men. At the time, President Ronald Reagan largely ignored the crisis, which allowed the diseases to fester and spread in the U.S.
Since then, HIV has killed more than 44 million people globally, more than 700,000 of whom were Americans.
“It was like a genocide in and of itself,” said Akiva Scherer, a queer human rights activist who spoke at the vigil. “Our killer being loud hatred and silent neglect [by] our very own government.”
Baltimore was not left untouched by massive amounts of preventable deaths, which continue to this day.
In the last decade, Baltimore has had some of the highest rates of HIV among men who have sex with men, according to a 2020 study in JAIDS: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. Black men accounted for 76% of total cases in 2017 in Baltimore, up from 57% in the early years of the crisis. Older Black men were at particularly high risk.
Even though overall cases have decreased significantly since the height of the crisis, the disease’s disproportionate impact on Black men continues. Nearly 180 people were diagnosed with HIV in Baltimore in 2024, down from over 1,000 at its peak. But 75% of all cases are Black men, according to the Baltimore City Health Department.
David Lascu, a deacon at the church, was emotional as he recounted his best friend’s struggles with AIDS, which eventually killed him.
Lascu described him as a “bright light” who was an actor in New York City. He was diagnosed in the 1980s, and his condition progressively got worse until pneumonia led to his death in the 1990s.
Lascu said he was concerned by not only the federal government’s apathy toward World AIDS Day, but also the uncertainty regarding the direction the country is going in terms of health policy.
“It’s not just HIV and AIDS, it’s cancer and all other diseases,” he said. “We just don’t know where we’re going.”
The HIV/AIDS crisis is a prime example of how activists and impacted populations have often been forced to take public health into their own hands, mobilizing to demand officials put more resources into finding a cure.
In the 1980s, it served as the impetus for the American harm reduction movement. Organizations such as the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or ACT UP, played a crucial role in fighting for the rights of injection drug users — who are at high risk of transmission — to have access to sterile syringes.
As they fought for a cure, activists recognized that they were up against a crisis that was a culmination of stigma, homophobia, racism, and a lack of accessible health care.
“When treatment is blocked by poverty, racism, or homophobia, when stigma keeps people from testing or care, when policies value profit over people, when fear is louder than truth, God of justice, break what needs breaking and heal what needs healing,” Reverend Jennifer DiFrancesco said in a prayer at the vigil.
While there has been notable progress in developing medications to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS, advocates have cited both a lack of political will and widespread stigma as barriers to accessing treatment.
Democratic members of Congress have attempted to pass legislation to increase access to pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a daily medication taken to prevent HIV, but those efforts have failed to gain momentum in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Instead, Trump and his colleagues have pushed back and proposed cuts to research funding that is imperative to HIV prevention and treatment.
Those interested in HIV-related services in Baltimore can find available resources on the Baltimore City Health Department’s website at https://health.baltimorecity.gov/programs/hivstd-services.
The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing’s Center for Infectious Disease and Nursing Innovation also provides care options for those at risk of HIV or those who have already been diagnosed at https://cidni.org/.
Correction: This story previously misnamed the The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing’s Center for Infectious Disease and Nursing Innovation.