The first AIDS Walk Los Angeles was held on the heels of a seismic moment in American popular culture. The actor Rock Hudson publicly announced he was suffering from the disease, becoming one of the first mainstream celebrities to disclose his battle with HIV.
Three days later, 4,500 people lined up at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, with the goal of walking to raise awareness and funds. With little help from the government, the fight against HIV/AIDS was taking place at the grassroots level.
Forty years later, the landscape looks very different. With the widespread availability of PrEP and antiretroviral drugs, the tools to exist to wipe out the disease entirely. For Craig Bowers, the chief marketing and external affairs officer for APLA Health, the organization behind AIDS Walk Los Angeles, that’s the ultimate goal.
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“We have come a long, long way. And there is still a long way to go in fighting this disease. But wow, it’s remarkably different from 40 years ago,” he said.
The 40th annual AIDS Walk Los Angeles will take place Sunday, when an expected 5,000 participants will gather in West Hollywood Park for a 2-mile stroll down Santa Monica Boulevard. The event is a strong symbol of progress, while also serving as a reminder of the work still needed to be done. Approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and 13% of them don’t know it.
The faces of AIDS today are largely Black and Brown, and they often live in medically underserved communities. As the most marginalized people in society, they don’t have representation in politics or the media at large.
That’s where an event like the AIDS Walk comes in. The mission statement in four decades remains unchanged.
With the walk just three days away, Queerty caught up with Bowers to talk about misconceptions regarding HIV, the celebrity-filled history of the AIDS Walk and his own run-ins with NBA royalty. Here’s what he had to say…
QUEERTY: What’s so significant about the AIDS Walk?
CRAIG BOWERS: You’ve got to go back to the origins of this event. For the first 15 years of the HIV/AIDS [crisis], it was an automatic death sentence. There was no treatment, there were no tests even available for some time. The walk was an idea around gaining visibility from one standpoint, basically members of our own community coming together to walk in solidarity. But also to raise funds. There was such a shortage of funding to figure out anything that had to do with this disease. So our organization, which was formerly known as the AIDS Project Los Angeles, these were grassroots organizations started by regular people who were trying to piece together as much information as possible. This wasn’t the government. It was ourselves that created these things in order to bring awareness and visibility.
What’s one misconception people still have about living with HIV?
It depends on your level of awareness. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I think your awareness of HIV is more well-rounded than a lot of people who aren’t impacted by the disease. For example, even in 2024, if I tell people about undetectable status, there’s a significant amount of the population that’s not aware of these things. We use our platform to get the messages out to people and help them understand what the disease looks like 40 years later, is dramatically different from what it looked like when this walk started.
Who are some celebrities who have been involved with the walk?
The person who everyone always cites is Madonna. She was always a very large supporter of APLA Health. We had a gala every year called Commitment to Life, where she performed, and then we had a fundraiser called Dance-a-thon, which Madonna headlined as well. For those early years, there was no cure, and there was no real economic support for fighting the disease. Everything we did as a community was a fundraiser to raise awareness and get funds to people who really needed it.
All of our celebrities come and go. Some other names are George Takei. He was at the first AIDS walk 40 years ago. Drew Carey has been a longtime supporter of AIDS Walk Los Angeles. Some other names: Jamie Lee Curtis, Salt N’ Pepper, NWA, Naughty by Nature. We’ve had great participation over time.
What are the biggest obstacles in HIV prevention today?
The biggest problem now is apathy. For the first 15 years, it was pretty much an automatic death sentence. It wasn’t until the emergence of antiretroviral therapy in 1996 that the trajectory of the disease changed. It changed first for the people who were doing OK, who had money and had insurance. That’s why the second phase of the disease has been more of a disease of Black and Brown communities, which in this country have traditionally been lower income. Those communities are also medically underserved. Those have become the faces of HIV, as well as members of our trans community. The disease is still out there, but we have the medical tools today to end this disease. It’s about getting access to these tools to people who need them the most.
How do you do that?
We do that by not just having our facilities in the LGBTQ+ parts of town. We have facilities in areas in which there’s an extreme medically underserved portions of LA County. You’ve heard of the phrase, “I’m bringing the mountain to Mohammed.” That’s the thing. If people are able to access our care in the areas in which they actually live, that ups the quality of care throughout the county. We have 19,000 patients and clients in LA County.
The other thing is wraparound support services. If you’re HIV positive and I want you to stay on your meds, I also have to figure out what’s going on with your housing situation. What’s going on with your food situation? We’re very much about these wraparound support services to ensure we can keep people in care, so they can remain undetectable.
What’s inspired you to dedicate your professional life to this work?
My passion is for the communities in which I exist. My passion for HIV care is driven by the standpoint of, “How can we live better lives?” And I think as a gay man, the medical side of things is such a signifiant portion of our lives. I’ve decided to concentrate on organizations that make a difference. I’ll give you an example. In 2014, we did LA Pride. At the time, there wasn’t a big deal of information out there about PrEP. Using something like Pride to get information out to the community, that’s something that’s always interested me.
Looking at your Instagram, it seems like you’re a big hoops fan! There are pictures with [NBA greats] Charles Barkley, Kevin Johnson. Who’s your all-time favorite player?
Magic Johnson! I’m from LA, born and raised. I grew up a diehard Lakers fan, and I’ve never seen anything like Magic Johnson. Nobody has seen anything like Magic Johnson. I always admire players who change the game and move the game forward. He definitely did that, even though it was so long ago at this point!
But all of those guys in the pictures, Charles Barkley wasn’t a very tall person. But he would always lead the league in rebounds. Kevin Johnson went to Berkeley, I went to Berkeley. I was always impressed with him. It’s cool to meet your heroes every now and again.
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