Recalling POCASE: AIDS Activism Based in Community, Culture, and Justice

By: Amaya McCutcheon, USD '26 (Spring 2025 Intern).

When we think about AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s, many of us imagine the big national groups. However, some of the most influential and effective work was accomplished by the smaller local groups that organized with people who were often disenfranchised. One example is POCASE, People of Color AIDS Survival Effort, which was based in San Diego.

POCASE started in the late 1980s when communities of color were being excluded from the
conversation about AIDS and public health. Activists involved in POCASE did not just fight for access to care, but for all the racism, homophobia, classism, and sexism that were fueling it. What they did was ensure that their lives were valued and respected.

They worked closely with elected officials like California Senator Pete Wilson in a bid to gain more funding for AIDS initiatives. They used their campaign message to raise awareness and to advocate for the concerns of people living with AIDS. They criticized other larger AIDS groups for failing to provide culturally targeted services and instead created their own spaces where people of color could receive care, community, and representation

One of the most powerful parts of my work was learning about how POCASE used not just healthcare and political activism, but art and narrative. This photograph of tombstones in Balboa Park, for example, honored people who had died of AIDS in a way words simply couldn't. It was an emotional, visual, personal one. These actions were symbolic, but they were also intended to educate and mobilize change.

As a gender studies and sociology student, studying POCASE helped me see what intersectionality actually looks like in action. The organization was not simply tackling one complication. It was tackling race, sexuality, class, gender, and public health all at once. And they were already doing that work prior to intersectionality becoming part of mainstreamed vocabulary in the worlds of academia and activism.

What is most striking about POCASE's story now is that the same problems remain. There remains unequal access to healthcare. LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people and people of color, continue to be targeted by discriminatory laws. Politicians continue to close their eyes to the needs of the most needy. POCASE does not forget that change most times starts with individuals on the ground building networks, setting up systems of care, and fighting for each other when nobody else will.

This is not just an account of history. This blog post is an alert that activism is ongoing. People like the members of POCASE prepare the ground for the kind of justice work that we still struggle for today.

Source:
"And a New Day Dawns...." Update, 14 Feb. 1990, p. A-11. Archives of Sexuality and Gender,
link.gale.com/apps/doc/OWXJFR986358976/AHSI?u=lambda&sid=bookmark-AHSI&xid=7
4bdcb75. Accessed 14 Mar. 2025.