Tipper Zapped, Paul Davis' report on Philly Demo

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Apparantly three activists zapped Tipper Gore at a Manhattan Fundraiser
last night.  Eric Sawyer may want to share some more info on this.

Also, this is Paul Davis' report on the Philly demo.  

  Jamie

----------------
Subject: Philly Demonstration
   Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 18:00:05 -0400 (EDT)
  From: "P. Davis" <pdavis@CritPath.Org>
    To: aidsact@CritPath.Org, treatment@CritPath.Org, bobl@poz.com

On five days notice, ACT UP Philadelphia sponsored a 400 person
demonstration yesterday at an Al Gore fundraiser.

The VP had rescheduled his campaign stop to make his main press appearance
earlier in the day, in a tightly controlled space in a hospital.

The press were kept away from the demonstrators by police. The
demonstrators were kept away from the hotel bny the police. This is
unusual for Philadelphia demonstrations.

The demonstrators sang, chanted, and marched. Blocked "TWO BLOCKS OF
TRAFFIC" (dumb tv news report).

Wer had a 20 foot tall drug company executive, who was operating a seven
foot tall marionette of Al Gore. We asked Al Gore to come down and "cut
the strings! cut the strings cut the strings!"

He didn't come.
His political director did, however. She delivered to us the Gore letter
that has now been distributed to tons of press. The Gore letter is in
response to a letter from the chair of the congressional black caucus that
ACT UP Philadelphia drafted. The political director of the Gore campaign.

SPEAKERS:
ACT UP Phila member John Bell spoke.
Reverened Henry Wells spoke
Rita Addessa, chair of the Phial Lesiban Gay Task Force spoke.
Susan Rodriguez, ogf SMART University in NYC spoke. AND worked alot on
helping fill and organizing a busload of demonstrators from NYC to join
the seven busses from Philadelphia.
The brand new ACT UP's choir sung at the action!

PRESS:
The Philadephia Inquirer (leading daily) wrote a medium length, nearly
okay article very similar to the previous aritcles that have run in the
Baltimore Sun AND THE WASHINGTON POST (damn caps lock).
The AP and the Inquirer sent photographers. Good photo in the Inquirer,
Medical Apartheid and Apartheid 2000 signs are very visible, held by  
African American demonstrators.

AP, UPI and Reuters did a story, but I can never figure out how to find
these stories on the web, and I havn;'t seen thm in local papers, since
local press sent their own reporters.

The Phila Tribune (philly's leading African American Paper) sent a
reporter.

ABC Nightly NEWS sent a crew to work on a dumb story about grassroots
activism that may or may not run next week. If it runs, it will include
at least something about the action.

All local television news stations - ch: 3, 6, 10, 17, 29

WHYY - Local NPR station

Jim Hightower Radio show

Pacifica- Democracy Now show

Advocate - havn't seen it

Phila Gay News

Phila City Paper (weekly paper)

the yesses we had from CNN and NPR, as well as a Soth African press outlet 
were vasiously no-shows or were prevented from getting to the
demonstration by the police.

.paul davis
.pdavis@critpath.org
ACT UP Philadelphia
FIGHT BACK

215.731.1844 Voice
215.731.1845 Fax

-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org