“Silence = Death” poster

A consciousness-raising group of gay men affected by the AIDS crisis began meeting in New York City in 1986, among them Avram Finkelstein, Chris Lione, Jorge Socarrás, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, and Brian Howard. Their discussions led them to create a poster to spur the LGBTQ community into action. To protest the U.S. government’s silence about AIDS, the design featured the pink triangle that homosexuals were assigned to wear in the Holocaust. This poster became the key symbol of the AIDS activist organization ACT UP, which emerged the following year.