Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 21, 1990 TAG: 9006210421
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/5 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO LENGTH: Medium
The demonstrators Wednesday were demanding greater efforts to fight AIDS and wider access to experimental drugs.
Most of those arrested were charged with interfering with police officers, a misdemeanor, authorities said.
The conference drew an estimated 12,000 researchers, doctors, social workers and other AIDS professionals, along with 1,800 reporters and thousands of activists.
AIDS activists have converged on San Francisco for the conference and the city's annual Gay Pride march this weekend. Paul Feldman of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, estimated the number of activists at a couple of thousand.
Feldman said most of the 40 ACT UP U.S. chapters were represented Wednesday, along with members from 25 foreign chapters.
A conference sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Hoffman LaRoche was disrupted when G'dali Braverman, a member of New York ACT UP, climbed onto the stage to decry the lack of access to the experimental drug DDC.
Some members of the audience yelled "Get out! Get out!" Others shouted, "Let him speak!"
The panel, led by Dr. Jerome Groopman of Boston's New England Deaconess Hospital, walked out. The conference resumed with the speakers addressing the audience from another room over a video system in the auditorium.
The audience of doctors and researchers had mixed feelings.
"How are you supposed to respond?" asked David Russell, a Boston doctor who treats AIDS patients. "I see their point, but we're here to try to learn so we can help."
Later, several hundred demonstrators marched to barriers surrounding the Moscone Center, carrying signs reading, "Their System, Their Profits, Our Lives."
"We're here. We're queer. And we demand access," they chanted.
After hearing speakers from New York, Los Angeles, Mexico and Chicago, crowd members began rattling the barricades and jumped over. Police used nightsticks to rap the fingers of those shaking the barricades. There were several bloody knuckles but no other injuries.
by CNB