Subject: BuKKKanan exposed!!!
From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 11:35:42 -0500

ACT UP Presidential Project

Michael pushed to the ground by Buchanan supporters
Republican front-runner exposed
for immediate release      February 18, 1996
contact: Wayne Turner at 603.641.9593

Manchester, NH- ACT UP activist Steve Michael was pushed and shoved to the
ground by supporters of arch-conservative Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan
at a campaign appearance held in Manchester, New Hampshire on Saturday,
February 17.  

 A handful of ACT UP protesters braved sub-freezing temperatures to counter
the "hateful bigotry of Buchananistas."  Michael displayed a sign reading
"BuKKKanan:  Racist, Sexist, Anti-Gay..The AIDS Crisis Must End" when he was
surrounded by approximately two dozen Buchanan campaign workers.  The assault
was captured by news cameras and was featured on NBC Nightly News, CNN, and
Manchester's ABC affiliate WMUR.  

 Michael told reporters that "the incident dramatizes Pat Buchanan's vision
for America, a fascist state, where people with AIDS, Queers, Blacks Jews,
Women are routinely assaulted by Buchanan Brownshirts.  It's worth taking a
few bruises if we can expose the brutality of a potential Buchanan regime."

 After his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses and an aggressive campaign in
New Hampshire, "Buchanan could very likely win the Republican nomination,"
Michael notes.  He continues, "If the Whitewater Hearings tie either Bill or
Hillary to any wrongdoing, Buchanan could pull off an election victory."

 Dan Sundquist, a New Hampshire needle exchange activist, adds, "we've had
Buchanan on the run.  Every time we appear with our signs at an event, he's
forced to sneak in a side entrance.  People are calling him 'Back-door
Buchanan."

 In the past couple of days, issues of homophobia and anti-Semitism have
plagued the Republican front-runner. .  On a radio talk show Buchanan stated
that he would not hire openly Gay Americans to serve in his White House.  The
Manchester Union-Leader reported that in 1992 Buchanan, then a communications
officer in the Nixon White House suggested donating money in the name of a
Gay organization to Nixon's opponent Representative Pete McCloskey.  The plan
was to then leak the information to the press.

 "The press corps has a responsibility to focus on these attacks against
minorities.  Each time Buchanan or his supporters say or do something against
any one of us, he is attacking all of us, and all  that is good about
America.  Our nation's diversity that should be celebrated.  Those that
attack those who are different from the majority should be exposed,"
concluded Sundquist.

 Michael, who is HIV positive and challenging Bill Clinton on a number of
Democratic primary ballots to promote AIDS issues, "If we ever hope to move
forward on AIDS we must start here, standing knee deep in snow, standing up
to the Pat  Buchanans of the world.  Our lives depend on it."