ACT UP/New York’s 38th Anniversary Death By 1000 Musk Cuts Saturday, March 29, 2025 Action

ACT UP is joining forces along with Housing Works and other NYC direct action groups to commemorate ACT UP/New York’s 38th Anniversary Action! It’s our first health-focused joint street action of the new Trump 2.0 era!

WHAT: Death By 1000 Musk Cuts – ACT UP 38th Anniv Action

WHEN: Sat March 29. 12pm rally. 12:30pm march.

WHO: ACT UP, Rise & Resist, Housing Works, and all

WHERE: NYC AIDS Memorial (W12th St & Greenwich Ave) followed by march to Tesla Showroom (W13th St & Washington St.)

EVENT: https://actionnetwork.org/events/death-by-1000-musk-cuts-act-up-38th-anniversary-action

FB: https://www.facebook.com/share/17qkafMW1T/

**Masks Required**

Here’s how YOU can help:

• WE NEED YOU Saturday at 12pm at the AIDS Memorial to hit 1000 protesters (1 for every cut Musk is making) and march to the Tesla showroom. Please share the attached graphics, chant sheet, etc and bring a friend.

  If you don’t have a role, please show up at 11:30am to assist with marshaling.

• Spread the word! — Use this meme below, this Facebook event, and/or this Action Network event.

• Share your opinion and real-world lived experience! We are getting positive responses from media outlets who will be covering the ACT UP anniversary protest on Saturday, so it’s not unlikely that someone may approach you with a camera or microphone for an impromptu interview. If you feel comfortable speaking with them (and you can always chose to decline), please prepare yourself with brief, pithy, powerful responses with good sound bites that they can use:

  • Why you are there — what motivates you to show up

  • What’s at stake for YOU, your family, your community with all the funding cuts, staff layoffs, and destruction that Musk, Trump, RFK Jr., and Congress are planning and doing with regard to HIV/AIDS, and public health and health care more broadly. Tell YOUR own personal story — how have YOU benefited from these federal programs, and what does it mean for YOU to lose them.

  More specifically, if you are someone who gets your health care, Rx drugs, or housing through a federal program like Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, ADAP, or HOPWA, please arrive a bit early by 11:45 and be prepared to share your own story and concerns (in less than a minute.)

  Finally, just be your authentic self — you don’t have to worry about being a policy or legislative expert or anything like that. Just be you, an everyday New Yorker with an opinion and real-world lived experience.

  FYI — Folks from the local Telsa Takedown movement have alerted us that a few trolls have been showing up at their weekly protests, so we should be aware of that on Saturday. They sometimes pose as media professionals with fake credentials to interview people, hoping to snag us into “gotcha!” video and audio moments that they can take out of context and use online to disparage and discredit us. So people should be careful who they talk to and make sure that they are legit, and don’t take any obvious bait from trolling folks — just ignore them.

Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and RFK Jr. are killing people living with HIV/AIDS across the US and around the world:

• Closing down vital public health programs, like PEPFAR.

• Destroying government health agencies, like US AID.

• Defunding health care programs for everyday people, like Medicaid, Medicare, ACA, ADAP, and HOPWA.

…all to pay for EVEN MORE HUGE tax cuts for large corporations and billionaires. We have to stop them!

Event partners [list in formation]:

• ACT UP New York

• HealthGAP

• Housing Works

• Metro New York Health Care for All

• Rise and Resist

Questions? info@actupny.org

Download (JPEG)

Download (PDF)

About ACT UP

Founded in 1987, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. ACT UP currently meets every Monday night at 7PM ET via Zoom. Notes: you will be asked to contribute your first & last name and email address to access online meetings, and KN-95 masks are required for ACT UP NY in person meetings/actions/gatherings. All individuals are welcome!