Three Activist Meetings, San Francisco Late January
At least three activist/community meetings are likely to occur at the occasion of people gathering in San Francisco for the Retroviruses conference (the 7th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, January 30-February 2, 2000, at the San Francisco Marriott). Fortunately, you do not need to be registered for the Retroviruses conference to attend these meetings (registration for the Retroviruses conference is now closed, but the activist meetings are much less formal, and are located outside the restricted conference areas).
"An AIDS treatment advocacy community meeting has been scheduled to take place on January 29, 2000 in San Francisco (the day before the Retroviruses conference) to discuss: (1) Long term HIV effectiveness research: the science, methodology, feasibility and need for appropriate funding, and (2) Highlights (an overview) of the NIH NIAID Division of AIDS (DAIDS) workshop on long-term clinical studies in HIV infection, which takes place January 12-13." The community meeting will be Saturday January 29, noon to 5:00 p.m. at the San Francisco Marriott, 55 Fourth St., San Francisco; the community meeting was organized by an ad hoc community steering committee formed at NATAF, the National AIDS Treatment Advocates Forum, December 11-14 in Miami. If you will be attending, please RSVP to Michael Marco (mikemarco@aol.com), the steering committee's logistics coordinator."
The other two meetings have not yet been officially scheduled:
At most major treatment conferences, activists gather for about an hour each afternoon, to share views on the important news of the day, and the most important presentations scheduled for the following day or later in the conference. Usually there is an initial meeting to set the time and place for the daily gatherings. This meeting has not yet been called. (A likely time is after the community meeting on January 29th, above.)
ACT UP/Paris, ACT UP/Philadelphia, ACT UP/New York, and other activists will likely meet on intellectual-property issues around access to pharmaceuticals in developing countries. No specific meeting time or place has yet been set.
There are many restaurants in the area suitable for small informal meetings, up to 15 or 20 people; they are unlikely to be crowded after lunch in the afternoon because they are set up to handle the larger crowds that come at night for entertainment, especially at the new Sony Metreon movie complex across the street from the Marriott hotel. At ICAAC in September, the daily activist meetings occurred outdoors at Yerba Buena Park, also across the street from the Marriott--but January is in the rainy season in San Francisco, so the weather may not be suitable for meeting outdoors.
We expect to have more information in our January 21 issue.
