(1989) ACT UP, Richard Deagle and Victor Mendolia for ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), Know Your Scumbags Poster, New York
Description
Richard Deagle and Victor Mendolia for ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), Know Your Scumbags, 1989
Political advocacy poster
Designers: Richard Deagle and Victor Mendolia
Issuing organization: ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)
Country: United States
Offset lithograph
This poster features a portrait of Cardinal John O’Connor juxtaposed with a condom and the phrase “THIS ONE PREVENTS AIDS.” The bold red headline reads “KNOW YOUR SCUMBAGS.” The design uses stark typography and visual satire to frame opposition to condom use as materially harmful during the AIDS epidemic.
Produced in 1989 amid escalating tensions between ACT UP and the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the poster aligns with the activist campaign that culminated in the “Stop the Church” demonstration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in December of that year. ACT UP criticized the Church’s public opposition to condom distribution and comprehensive sex education, arguing that such positions contributed to preventable HIV transmission and death.
The work belongs to a broader series of Deagle and Mendolia protest graphics targeting political and religious figures perceived as obstructing effective AIDS prevention policy. Unlike more symbolic ACT UP imagery such as Silence = Death, this poster employs direct naming, satire, and confrontation. The juxtaposition of clerical authority with a condom reframes public health as a matter of life-saving practice rather than doctrinal debate.
Although individual impressions of this poster do not carry printed ACT UP attribution in the lower margin, it is widely recognized within ACT UP New York archival holdings and activist documentation as part of the organization’s protest graphics of the late 1980s.
