Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, AIDS activists in New York City staged large, loud and sometimes unruly protests — much of it directed at Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his perceived indifference to the crisis.

“It’s important not to let Mayor Giuliani sit and fiddle while Rome proverbially burns because he’s not paying attention to the AIDS crisis,” a protester told NY1 in 1994.

“He just doesn’t care about us,” said another. “God forbid someone in his family gets AIDS. Then his opinion will change.”

Giuliani was confronted at town halls, and acts of civil disobedience — including at City Hall — led to mass arrests.

Often at the center of it was Tom Duane, who was the first openly HIV-positive candidate to win public office in the country when he was elected to the City Council in 1991.

Duane’s activism was the inspiration for a new online project called “Panic, Politics, and Policy: New York City during the AIDS Crisis.”

“We think we broke new ground in this exhibit,” said Stephen Petrus, director of public history programs at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College, which produced the digital exhibit.

The project includes video interviews that serve as an oral history of the era.

“We ended up doing 17 interviews with former elected officials like C. Virginia Fields, current elected officials like Deborah Glick, as well as activists and community organization leaders,” Petrus said.

The exhibit also includes photos and other materials, much of it drawn from Duane’s personal collection.

Duane won many battles during a long career in the City Council and in the state Senate, where he led the fight for gay marriage.

“We fought, fought, fought, and stopped the cuts to AIDS services,” Duane said in an interview. “And I think having a seat at the table was very helpful.”

The online exhibit seeks to tell that story of not only the dark times of the epidemic, but also the triumph of activism in the face of government inaction.

“For most of the ’80s, those who were HIV positive were gay men, and then it became increasingly injecting drug users. And so the exhibit really captures this transformation and the different responses,” Petrus said. “These groups were often considered socially expendable by politicians, lacked political clout. So it really took organizing to make change.”

“By constant and loud, annoying action, you can get government to respond,” Duane said. “And that’s the only thing that made it possible for people to live.”