Political Funeral Staged by 300 AIDS Activists

Police on horseback dispersed more than 300 AIDS activists protesting in front of the White House on Sunday after demonstrators tossed funeral urns containing ashes over the wrought-iron fence.

Steven Hardway of Oklahoma City, a member of the group ACT UP who threw an urn that he said bore the ashes of his lover who died of AIDS, was escorted from the scene, but the U.S. Park Police said he was not arrested or charged.

ACT UP characterized the demonstration as a political funeral to protest President Clinton’s AIDS policies and to press their demands, which included guaranteed access to anti-AIDS medications, more AIDS research and a federally funded needle exchange program for drug addicts.

Clinton, campaigning in the West, missed the protest. The White House had no comment.

The group marched to a slow drumbeat from near the Capitol, beside the AIDS Quilt--with the names of thousands who lost their lives to the disease--laid out on the Mall and on to the White House.

There, some members placed pictures of dead loved ones on the fence as others tossed in the funeral urns and shouted complaints against the Clinton administration.

One demonstrator was Jeff Getty, an AIDS patient from Oakland, Calif., who had baboon bone marrow transplanted into his body in December in an experimental treatment.

“One less missile fired at Iraq could help reduce the size of the quilt,” Getty said. “We have to fight the president to get these drugs paid for.”

Clinton viewed the AIDS Quilt on Friday as volunteers laid it out along the Mall, stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

Kate Krauss, an ACT UP member from Philadelphia, said she considered Clinton’s presence on the Mall a political act for his presidential campaign. “Once you’re dead, you’re not controversial anymore,” Krauss said.

ACT UP, which stands for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, has chapters worldwide, including ones in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco and Paris.