From: MPetrelis@aol.com
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 01:56:45 EST
Subject: ACT UP returns to St. Pat's on Dec. 12


For Immediate Release                                                         
         
November 9, 1999                                                    

Media Contacts:
Jay Blotcher (212) 727-7479
Michael Petrelis (415) 621-6267


        ACT UP VETERANS RETURNING TO ST. PATRICK'S ON 

         10th ANNIVERSARY OF INFAMOUS DEMONSTRATION

San Francisco, CA - Former members of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power who 
organized and participated in the December 1989 ACT UP demonstration "Stop 
The 
Church," announced today they will go back to St. Patrick's Cathedral in New 
York 
on Sunday, December 12 for a news conference.

Members of ACT UP and WHAM, the Women's Health Action Mobilization, joined 
forces in late 1989 after Archbishop John O'Connor and the Catholic 
Archdiocese 
bureaucracy demanded public health and school officials withhold lifesaving 
AIDS 
prevention information to students and abortion access to women.  

More than 5,000 people attended the December 11 demonstration, including one 
hundred protesters who disrupted mass to accuse O'Connor of meddling in 
public 
health concerns.

"We came to St. Patrick's in 1989 to repel the church's destructive intrusion 
into public policies concerning AIDS, gay civil rights and women's 
reproductive rights," said Michael Petrelis, an original member of ACT UP.  
"Ten years later, church policy on these matters is still hostile and breeds 
violence against gays and abortion providers."  Petrelis was one of the 
arrestees in the cathedral.

"In the decade since ACT UP and WHAM staged 'Stop The Church' the archdiocese 
continued to lobby against gay rights and abortion services, denying public 
opinion and medical facts," said Jay Blotcher, an ACT UP spokesperson in 
1989.  "The message we send to the Catholic hierarchy is simple: curb your 
dogmatic persecution of gays and lesbians, people with HIV/AIDS and those who 
support abortion."

The two ACT UP veterans ask their colleagues in the fight against the 
Catholic 
Church's persecution of gays, lesbians and birth control rights to join them 
for a news conference on Sunday, December 12, 1999 at 9:45 a.m., in front of 
St. Patrick's Cathedral.  No arrests are planned.

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