Washington DC Demonstrations, Conference October 5-13

A week of meetings, cultural events, and demonstrations, including a National AIDS Activism Conference (October 8), an activists meeting (October 9), and demonstrations at the Department of Health and Human Services (October 10) and the Food and Drug Administration (October 11), will mark the anniversary of last year's March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Those who want to go should make travel plans now to get the low rates.
ACT NOW (AIDS Coalition to Network, Organize, and Win), a national coordinating group of various local ACT UP organizations, is sponsoring the treatment meetings and demonstrations. The Names Project, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and other organizations, are sponsoring other events during the week.
For more information about the events, you can call the Names Project at (415) 863-5511, the National Gay & Lesbian
Task Force at (202) 332-6483, or your local ACT UP group. In San Francisco, the ACT UP number is (415) 821-9087.
United Airlines is offering group discounts, plus a donation the Names Project for each ticket sold. Call them at 800-521-4041, and use group account number 8664N.
Nicholas Sempeti of FOG Travel Service in San Francisco gave us pointers on buying tickets. For those who might be arrested at the FDA demonstration, where nonviolent civil disobedience is planned, he suggested a "refundable" rather than "nonrefundable" round-trip ticket. The refundable one, which costs a little more, allows changes with a 25 percent penalty for any leg of the trip changed. The nonrefundable ticket is lost if not used at the reserved time, requiring an expensive one-way trip back for those who spend time in jail. And of course it's important to buy tickets early; even if
airline rules set a deadline for low fares such as two weeks before the flight, only a certain number of tickets are set aside for those fares, and often they sell out before the official deadline.
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