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ACTUP to be arrested--press conference noon Monday Jan 29
AIDS dissident group served is arrest warrants following appearance on national TV--Press Conference and surrender at the Hall of Justice on Monday
Subject:
60 Minutes Leads to AIDS Activists\' Arrests
Date:
Sun, 28 Jan 2001 21:58:50 EST
From:
ACTUPSF [at] aol.com
To:
ACTUPSF [at] aol.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 28, 2001
CONTACTS:
David Pasquarelli: (415) 637-4666
Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 487-9954
60 Minutes Report Results in ACT UP Arrest Warrants
-----
Activists to turn themselves in Monday to face trumped up charges filed by
D.A. three months after non-violent office protest
\"Radicals and reformers are not the darlings of their own times. Future
generations may regard them with respect, but their own considers them cranks
and pests.\"
-- Vincent Hallinan, father of San Francisco District Attorney Terence
Hallinan in his autobiography \"A Lion in the Court\"
SAN FRANCISCO -- One week after CBS News 60 Minutes shocked America by
exposing deformities and death caused by toxic anti-HIV drugs, San Franciso\'s
District Attorney issued arrest warrants for four industry whistleblowers
including three ACT UP members who denounce scientific fraud surrounding the
discredited notion that HIV causes AIDS and one website operator who publicly
criticizes AIDS funding abuses.
As a result, Michael Bellefountaine and David Pasquarelli from the
controversial San Francisco chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash
Power, will join veteran gay activist Michael Petrelis, Director of the
website http://www.AIDS-statistics.com, at the Hall of Justice for a press
conference to decry censorship and harassment of HIV-positive activists by
San Francisco\'s cartel of powerful non-profit AIDS organizations.
WHAT: Press Conference and Surrender
WHEN: Monday, January 29, 2001 at 12:00 noon
WHERE: Hall of Justice, 850 Bryant Street
The three men plan to turn themselves in to authorities at 2:00 p.m. while a
fourth activist, Todd Swindell, also of ACT UP, has agreed to surrender the
first week of February.
Activists learned that arrest warrants had been granted on Friday, January 26
-- five days after 60 Minutes aired the controversial segment \"AIDS: Nothing
More To Worry About?\" The investigative report featured ACT UP members being
interviewed by correspondent Leslie Stahl, including Pasquarelli, Swindell
and Bellefountaine who questioned the accuracy of HIV antibody testing,
warned against the use of experimental AIDS drugs and declared AIDS to be
over.
According to city officials, the warrants were a response to suddenly filed
misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace, unlawful assembly and inciting a
riot stemming from a three-month old peaceful office protest at the San
Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) over a vulgar and offensive anti-gay
advertisement placed in the local gay press. However, activists counter that
the charges are the latest example of the city\'s selective and malicious
prosecution of high-profile activists who criticize the lucrative AIDS
industry that brings San Francisco millions of dollars in federal funds and
research grants.
According to activists, the ongoing civil and criminal prosecution of
political protesters from ACT UP is tantamount to a witch hunt meant to
silence dissent and drive critics of the AIDS industry out of town. They say
such a reactionary and hostile atmosphere to ACT UP\'s message smacks of
vigilantism and is abhorrent for San Francisco, a liberal bastion that prides
itself on a tradition of defending dissent and tolerating protest.
\"It\'s a sad statement about San Francisco that District Attorney Terence
Hallinan, the man who initially defended Patty Hearst and the S.L.A. in the
seventies, would today be prosecuting non-violent gay protesters from ACT
UP,\" commented activist Michael Bellefountaine. \"Thanks to AIDS industry
greed and doublespeak the liberal left has now been perverted into peddling
poison as a cure and condemning condom-tossing as a violent crime.\"
=====
ACT UP San Francisco
1884 Market Street * San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 864-6686 * Fax: (415) 864-6687 * http://www.actupsf.com
60 Minutes Leads to AIDS Activists\' Arrests
Date:
Sun, 28 Jan 2001 21:58:50 EST
From:
ACTUPSF [at] aol.com
To:
ACTUPSF [at] aol.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 28, 2001
CONTACTS:
David Pasquarelli: (415) 637-4666
Michael Bellefountaine: (415) 487-9954
60 Minutes Report Results in ACT UP Arrest Warrants
-----
Activists to turn themselves in Monday to face trumped up charges filed by
D.A. three months after non-violent office protest
\"Radicals and reformers are not the darlings of their own times. Future
generations may regard them with respect, but their own considers them cranks
and pests.\"
-- Vincent Hallinan, father of San Francisco District Attorney Terence
Hallinan in his autobiography \"A Lion in the Court\"
SAN FRANCISCO -- One week after CBS News 60 Minutes shocked America by
exposing deformities and death caused by toxic anti-HIV drugs, San Franciso\'s
District Attorney issued arrest warrants for four industry whistleblowers
including three ACT UP members who denounce scientific fraud surrounding the
discredited notion that HIV causes AIDS and one website operator who publicly
criticizes AIDS funding abuses.
As a result, Michael Bellefountaine and David Pasquarelli from the
controversial San Francisco chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash
Power, will join veteran gay activist Michael Petrelis, Director of the
website http://www.AIDS-statistics.com, at the Hall of Justice for a press
conference to decry censorship and harassment of HIV-positive activists by
San Francisco\'s cartel of powerful non-profit AIDS organizations.
WHAT: Press Conference and Surrender
WHEN: Monday, January 29, 2001 at 12:00 noon
WHERE: Hall of Justice, 850 Bryant Street
The three men plan to turn themselves in to authorities at 2:00 p.m. while a
fourth activist, Todd Swindell, also of ACT UP, has agreed to surrender the
first week of February.
Activists learned that arrest warrants had been granted on Friday, January 26
-- five days after 60 Minutes aired the controversial segment \"AIDS: Nothing
More To Worry About?\" The investigative report featured ACT UP members being
interviewed by correspondent Leslie Stahl, including Pasquarelli, Swindell
and Bellefountaine who questioned the accuracy of HIV antibody testing,
warned against the use of experimental AIDS drugs and declared AIDS to be
over.
According to city officials, the warrants were a response to suddenly filed
misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace, unlawful assembly and inciting a
riot stemming from a three-month old peaceful office protest at the San
Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) over a vulgar and offensive anti-gay
advertisement placed in the local gay press. However, activists counter that
the charges are the latest example of the city\'s selective and malicious
prosecution of high-profile activists who criticize the lucrative AIDS
industry that brings San Francisco millions of dollars in federal funds and
research grants.
According to activists, the ongoing civil and criminal prosecution of
political protesters from ACT UP is tantamount to a witch hunt meant to
silence dissent and drive critics of the AIDS industry out of town. They say
such a reactionary and hostile atmosphere to ACT UP\'s message smacks of
vigilantism and is abhorrent for San Francisco, a liberal bastion that prides
itself on a tradition of defending dissent and tolerating protest.
\"It\'s a sad statement about San Francisco that District Attorney Terence
Hallinan, the man who initially defended Patty Hearst and the S.L.A. in the
seventies, would today be prosecuting non-violent gay protesters from ACT
UP,\" commented activist Michael Bellefountaine. \"Thanks to AIDS industry
greed and doublespeak the liberal left has now been perverted into peddling
poison as a cure and condemning condom-tossing as a violent crime.\"
=====
ACT UP San Francisco
1884 Market Street * San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 864-6686 * Fax: (415) 864-6687 * http://www.actupsf.com
For more information:
http://www.actupsf.com
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IMC Network
Here are the facts: HIV does cause AIDS. HIV infection leads to the eventual death of millions of people all over the world. The most common means of HIV infection are intravenous drug use and unprotected sex.
Here's why the Right loves your lies: You provide them with ammo to cut AIDS funding and education. You don't save gay men, you're helping the homophobic right kill them. And you attack from angles they don't readily have access to. Pretty cleaver, eh?
Simultaneously, you're terrorizing those who are making a difference in HIV positive people's lives, such as Project Inform, who provide treatment information to indigent people all over the country, from prisoners to young people. I mean, who needs neo-nazi skinheads when we have the Bellefontaine, Pasquerelli, and Burk crew ruffing up the "faggots" (ACT UP SF's own words).
You're not the revolutionaries you so dream of in the furtherest stretch of your immaginations. You're counter-revolutionary and you rank among the lowest of the nut-groups such as Operation Rescue, The Army of God, and Missionaries to the Pre-born.
Although, I don't believe jail is the appropriate place for nuts. I do have compassion. Jail isn't meant to treat mental illness, it's meant to punish. If punishment is what's in store, I think closing down your pot club "cash cow" would be first in order. Then, you should be forced to work in an AIDS ward, where you can tell people on their death bed that they're dying because they used too many poppers and had too much sex. I think you should have to face the people you so piously are trying to "save".
Fuck off!
chance martin