Biography
Michael Petrelis is a longtime AIDS and LGBTQ-rights activist known for confrontational direct action. After being diagnosed with AIDS in 1985, he helped found the Lavender Hill Mob (1986) and ACT UP New York (1987), worked to launch ACT UP chapters in several cities, took part in the 1989 'Stop the Church' protest, and later ran accountability and political-transparency campaigns in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, where he founded the AIDS Accountability Project in 1998. In November 2001 Petrelis and David Pasquarelli were arrested in San Francisco 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 — calls the activists said were angry protests against the paper's and the health department's coverage of HIV and of rising STD rates among gay men. The activists admitted making the calls but denied making threats. Petrelis was jailed on $500,000 bail; the unusually high bail and the felony terrorism charges for what supporters characterized as obnoxious but protected political speech drew free-speech concern and divided civil-liberties advocates. 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 classes, stay-away orders, and written apologies. He remains a San Francisco-based activist and blogger.
