WASHINGTON, November 28 (RIA Novosti) - Seven AIDS activists who said they wanted to “expose the naked truth” about pending budget cuts to AIDS programs staged a nude protest Tuesday in one of the Capitol Hill offices belonging to John Boehner, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
“We needed to send a message that this is serious for people who are facing these cuts and feel like they are being stripped naked by the federal government,” said Amirah Sequeira, a spokeswoman for the Student Global AIDS Campaign which organized the protest along with ACT Up and several other groups.
The protestors entered Boehner’s office and began chanting as they removed their clothing to reveal body paint that read “AIDS Cuts Kill” and other messages.
Boehner was not in the office at the time, but his staff called Capitol Hill police.
A number of staffers and others poured into the front office to see what the commotion was all about, and photos of the protesters showed up on Twitter.
One Boehner staffer who spoke on background only and didn’t want to be identified admitted it’s not every day they get naked people in the Speaker’s office, so the protest attracted a great deal of attention.
Three people – all women – were arrested for “lewd and indecent acts” after they put their clothing back on.
Four men who also disrobed were not arrested.
“We arrested all those people that were witnessed by officers committing violations,” US Capitol Police Public Information Officer Shennell Antrobus told RIA Novosti.
Organizers say if mandatory budget cuts are allowed to go into effect at the end of 2012, global health programs will lose $689 million, and domestic AIDS programs will lose another $538 million.
Boehner’s office would not confirm specifics of the negotiations underway on Capitol Hill.
Sequeira said the seven protesters held “quite a few practice runs,” in which they took their clothing off and got comfortable with the idea of being naked in public.
“People who do this are very committed to the issues involved,” she said. “Obviously.”
