Mark was diagnosed in 1985 with HIV in Chicago. It was the same week Rock Hudson died from AIDS; Mark had been extremely sick and he vowed that if he lived, he would leave Chicago, where he had been studying film, to live in New York. He did move to New York, where he became an AIDS activist and expert in HIV science and research — watch his ACT UP Oral History Project interview at actuporalhistory.org.
Through his radical activism, Mark shaped global and domestic HIV policies and held powerful officials to account for their deeds. He carried out countless acts of brave and meaningful civil disobedience during inflection points in the AIDS crisis, from disrupting Trump’s first inaugural address, to zapping White House Chief of Staff Andy Card during the Republican National Convention in Manhattan in 2004, to confronting the deadly greed of pharmaceutical executives obstructing widespread access to the first powerful combination antiretrovirals. He stubbornly put his body on the line over and over, in service of a vision of ending the AIDS crisis. Beyond HIV, he confronted evil and wrongdoing wherever he found it.
True to his character, he was making signs for protests, attending organizing meetings, and advising on strategies to fight back against Trump’s depraved HIV funding cuts right up until the effects of his cancer treatment made him too exhausted.
As an HIV treatment educator, Mark helped countless people understand and demand access to lifesaving knowledge about HIV science, building what would become a movement of patient empowerment that only became part of the mainstream because of pressure from people like him. As a longtime leader at ACRIA, he trained front line health workers and people living with HIV on HIV treatment and, more recently, on aging and HIV. Whether he was explaining scientific data or grilling politicians in an activist meeting, he was focused on what the real implications were of any data, and how he could best share those data with the people he served.
The campaign he was most proud to be a part of was the campaign to win access to lifesaving, affordable HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa and globally; he was the first to blow a whistle during iconic protests against Al Gore, when in 1999 Gore announced his candidacy for president in Carthage, Tennessee.
Gore had had a direct role obstructing access to affordable HIV treatment in South Africa, as well as in Brazil, Thailand and beyond. The Clinton Administration had been using trade pressure at the behest of big Pharma in response to moves by those governments to make cheap generic versions of HIV treatment available in response to massive numbers of preventable AIDS deaths in their countries. Al Gore was Clinton’s point man on South Africa trade policy, where he had promised big Pharma a “full court press” against the Mandela-Mbeki government.
Within months of repeated zaps and mass protests with ACT UP Philadelphia, Health GAP, and others, Clinton ended his shameful trade pressure campaign, and Gore began campaigning as a candidate who would fight AIDS as a national security issue. PEPFAR was created shortly thereafter, and after that, the price of HIV medicines was slashed to just pennies a day.
Mark will be remembered for his tenacity and his bravery — and also his love of Broadway show tunes. In 1997, the second time I met Mark, I remember spending a day in jail in New York City with him and dozens of others arrested during the mass protests on Wall Street marking the 10th anniversary of ACT UP. He was literally climbing the walls, singing show tunes to pass the time.
We had been planning with Mark a celebration to honor him with a Global Health Justice award in January. We will still celebrate his life and achievements with an award in early 2026. Watch this space for details.
We love you Mark and we will keep fighting on in your name.
