History.com: How Aids Activists Used "Die Ins" to Demand Attention to the Growing Epidemic

As the AIDS crisis took hold in the 1980s, killing thousands of Americans and ravaging gay communities, the deadly epidemic went unaddressed by U.S. public health agencies -- and unacknowledged by President Ronald Reagan -- for years. In response, a political group called ACT UP emerged, deciding it needed to do something shocking to draw attention to the crisis and jolt government agencies, drug companies and the mainstream media into action. So it began organizing protest events where masses of people lay down in a public space, feigning death.