Biography
David Pasquarelli was a San Francisco AIDS activist and a leader of ACT UP/San Francisco, a dissident faction that controversially disputed the link between HIV and AIDS. He co-founded ACT UP/Tampa Bay before moving to San Francisco in 1993 and being diagnosed with HIV in 1995. In November 2001 Pasquarelli and Michael Petrelis were arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy, stalking, and making terrorist threats over a campaign of late-night phone calls to San Francisco Chronicle reporters and public-health officials, whose coverage of HIV and of rising STD rates among gay men the activists were protesting. Pasquarelli was held on $600,000 bail; the unusually high bail and felony terrorism charges for activist phone harassment drew free-speech concern and divided advocates, and supporters publicly described him as a political prisoner. In 2003 he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of making threatening phone calls and received a one-year jail sentence, suspended in favor of three years' probation, anger management, stay-away orders, and written apologies. He died on March 8, 2004, at age 36, of complications from AIDS.
