OBNOXIOUS PROTEST STIRS NO SYMPATHY FOR CAUSE

During last Wednesday's opening session of the Missouri General Assembly, state lawmakers unwillingly sampled a form of lobbying that inexplicably proliferates despite its ineffectiveness. Moments after a prayer opened the proceedings, members of a group called AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP)lived up to its acronym and began a demonstration in the House gallery, blowing whistles and showering the legislators with pamphlets. It defies reason how these tactics further the aims of those advocating AIDS legislation; instead, they demean the lawmaking process and handcuff those representatives who might be inclined to support the activists' arguments.

The five-minute outburst was ended when security guards hauled away demonstrators to the applause of others in the House chamber. Though brief and nonviolent, the effects of such a scene might be felt for a while. The demonstrators will be remembered, but not in a way that will do them good.

Organizers of the demonstration were advocating redistribution of money appropriated to treat AIDS patients, an end to nursing home discrimination of AIDS patients, a voluntary check-off on state income tax forms to donate money for AIDS treatment and the expansion of Medicaid to cover anti-AIDS drugs.

Of note is the fact that the AIDS activists might have some good points to make. Obviously, the appropriation of money for AIDS programs is a rather new endeavor and the state government might not be spending the allotted money, regardless of how much it is, in the most efficient way. In suggesting that block grants be given to private not-for-profit AIDS service organizations instead of the Missouri Bureau of AIDS Prevention, the activists might have found a way to trim bureaucracy and get services to the people who really need it; it is certainly in the activists' - and the taxpayers' - best interest to see this done.

Trouble is, what lawmakers with marginal interest in this issue will be won over to the cause as a result of last Wednesday's rally? Our guess is that sympathy will be hard-won from this point on.

The tactics in this case are not terribly different from those of the environmental group Greenpeace, which favors noisy publicity stunts and dangerous acts of disobedience in calling attention to its goals. Again, the problem with these techniques is fundamental: Once the furor has died down, who remembers the cause being espoused? The gamesmanship overshadows - and in some cases destroys - the work of those whose commitment to the cause is just as intense, if more diplomatic.

Not all lawmakers were disenchanted by the demonstration, which also featured the shouting of obscenities in the Capitol rotunda and a man chaining himself to a stairwell. Rep. Gail Chatfield of St. Louis observed: "Thank goodness they have the right to do that and not get shot." That is, indeed, putting the best face on it. If all else fails, we can at least love our democracy. We believe, however, that not much useful came from such an obnoxious show.