New York, NY, May 17, 2022 – Treatment Action Group (TAG) today mourns the premature loss of transformative LGBTQ and AIDS activist Urvashi Vaid, formerly executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (now the National LGBTQ Task Force) at the height of the U.S. AIDS crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and peerless leader of the LBGTQ movement for many years thereafter.

Urvashi embodied the concept of “intersectionality” in her ground-breaking work long before it entered the mainstream, bringing together issues of race, class, gender, solidarity, and equity in the mid-1980s and throughout her career.  Urvashi also embodied the “inside/outside” strategy even before it was used by ACT UP, conducting insider activism with policy targets and government officials while freely demonstrating, picketing, and getting arrested alongside her people fighting for rights and liberation.

Over the past four decades, Urvashi was a trusted ally to thousands, including to ACT UP and later TAG. We extend our deep condolences to Urvashi’s wife, Kate Clinton, to her sisters Rachna Vaid and Jyotsna Vaid, and her entire family and community.