Subject: Bios of AIDS Cure Party Candidates
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 12:02:06 -0400

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About Ann Northrop
Vice Presidential Candidate
AIDS Cure Party

 Ann Northrop is a writer, lecturer, and activist on Lesbian and Gay issues
and on the AIDS epidemic.  She is also a veteran, award-winning journalist.
 Northrop, 48, is a native of Windsor, CT, and was raised in suburbs around
the United States.  She was a Boston debutante in the mid-60's and is a 1970
graduate of Vassar College.
 Northrop spent 17 years (1970-1987) working for both print and broadcast
media (National Journal, ABC Sports, Good Morning America, CBS Morning News),
but left mainstream journalism, fed up with its "intellectual bankruptcy."  
 In September 1987, Northrop began work as an AIDS educator and educator on
homosexuality for the Hetrick-Martin Institute for Lesbian and Gay Youth in
New York City.  She spent the next four years talking to high school
students, teachers, social workers, police officers, corporate managers and
others, doing basic education.
 At the same time, enraged by government, corporate, and public indifference
to the AIDS epidemic, Northrop joined the direct action protest group, ACT
UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, and started participating in civil
disobedience.  Since 1988, Northrop has been arrested in perhaps a dozen
street demonstrations, and was convicted on four misdemeanor counts for her
part in the infamous demonstration inside St. Patrick's Cathedral in December
1989 (one of the first cases broadcast on Court TV).
 Northrop left Hetrick-Martin in 1991 and now works independently, lecturing
on the college circuit.  She writes a regular column for LGNY, New York
City's Lesbian and Gay newspaper.  She co-hosts Gay Cable Network's weekly
news show, Gay USA, seen in about a dozen cities nationwide.  Northrop is a
member of the board of directors of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian
Strategic Studies, was a founding member of the Lesbian and Gay Alumnae  of
Vassar College, and was the only openly Lesbian or Gay delegate in the New
York delegation to the 1992 Democratic National Convention.  She was one of
the organizers of Gay Games IV in 1994 in New York City and she remains
active with ACT UP/New York.
 Northrop has received national awards for her journalism and her activism.
 She is featured in the books "Making History," by Eric Marcus, "Wolf Girls
at Vassar," by Anne MacKay, and "Uncommon Heroes," by Philip Sherman.

Steve Michael
Presidential Candidate
AIDS Cure Party

 Steve Michael is an openly Gay, HIV positive, AIDS activist.  He lives in
Washington, D.C. with his lover of five years, Wayne Turner.  Both are active
in ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.  A veteran AIDS and Gay
activist, Michael moved to Washington DC from Seattle in 1993 to work full
time on AIDS and health care.  Michael combines traditional grassroots
organizing through campaigns and voter registration drives, with direct
action and civil disobedience.
 As a founding member of ACT UP's notorious Presidential Project,  Michael
was instrumental in helping focus national attention on AIDS, traveling in 17
states organizing rallies, press conferences, marches and disruptions.
 During the 1992 presidential campaign, the ACT UP Presidential Project was
successful in obtaining AIDS positions from Governor Bill Clinton, Senator
Tom Harkin, Senator Bob Kerrey, and Governor Jerry Brown.  Amid death threats
and under police protection, Michael and Turner applied for (and were denied)
a marriage license in Hop Arkansas, where they also distributed condoms and
HIV prevention information to high school students.
 Michael challenged President George Bush in Washington State's Republican
Presidential Preference primary in 1992 after gathering 1000 signatures.  The
campaign aired uncensored television commercials that discussed the use of
condoms and water-based lubricants, including a same-sex kiss between Michael
and Turner.  The commercial aired statewide and became the lead news story
the night before the election.
 On July 2, 1992, Michael seized a stage belonging to billionaire Ross Perot
on the steps of the Washington state capitol.  Michael refused to surrender
the stage until he had a meeting with Perot to discuss AIDS policy and Gay
rights issues.  That action garnered extensive national attention, including
the next day's lead New York Times article on the presidential campaign.
 Michael has been involved in ACT UP Washington's prevention projects
including illegal needle exchange programs.  Michael was an active member of
Senator Paul Wellstone's Single Payer health care coalition.  Working with
the Gray Panthers, Planned Parenthood as well as various religious and labor
organizations, Michael helped develop media strategies and campaigns to focus
national attention on the single payer alternative.  
 Michael and Turner edit and publish DCQ, Fag Boy News.  The paper targets
sexually active Gay men, features news, commentaries, and HIV prevention
based upon the harm reduction model.  DCQ has earned the praise of leading
Gay and AIDS publications and activists from across the country.
 Philadelphia's AuCourant says, "There's a new paper in DC, and it's the
antithesis of the staid, conservative weekly Washington Blade.  DCQ...it's
one helluva read for activists...with packed AIDS briefs.  It's angry, sexy,
energetic and brings street-activism to Gay journalism."   
 Since testing HIV positive four years ago, Michael has become a nationally
recognized spokesperson on AIDS issues.  His commentaries have appeared in
over 25 Gay and Lesbian newspapers and many mainstream newspapers.  In 1995
Michael debated Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala on CNN's
Early Edition about condom availability and needle exchange.
 Michael, 40, chairs the Fiscal Oversight Committee of Metropolitan
Washington Regional HIV Health Services Planning Council.  Michael also
serves on Mayor Marion Barry's Gay and Lesbian Advisory Panel.  
 Michael has also been featured in several books about AIDS, including
Protocol for a Plague by Neal Dickerson, Between Little Rock and a Hard Place
by Tommi Mecca, AIDS, The Gravest Show on Earth, by Elinor Burkett, and
Virtual Equality by Urvashi Vaid.