Closed Doors Shield AMA From Chicago Protesters

By FRASER KENT Staff Writer

CHICAGO The American Medical Association barricaded itself inside a small, ornate ballroom of the Palmer House yesterday for the opening session of its policymaking house of delegates.

This prevented disruption of the meeting by a loose coalition of peace, civil rights, welfare, antipollution, antiabortion, women's liberation, homosexual and antiflouridation groups.

Newsmen, association members and their wives watched the routine proceedings of the house of delegates via closed-circuit tel-

evision.

The security precaution was the result of demands and threats by the Medical Committee for Human Rights and Students for a Democratic Society. Protesters have disrupted association meetings in San Francisco and New York.

PRECAUTIONS worked so well, protesters could not find the delegates' meeting. When they arrived at the door of the grand ballroom, where the session was to have been held, they found only a movie-size television

screen.

At this point, the dele-

gates were honoring the TV program "Marcus Welby MD" with a special award.

The association attempted to divert demonstrators by opening "a public forum for the discussion of consumer and other interests," but this disintegrated after demonstrators seized the microphone to prevent open discussion of issues.

"We're in the right what is there to discuss?” shouted one leather-trousered women's liberator.

It had been intended that an association panel of nine doctors would listen to recthe forum and prepare a reommendations presented to port for the house of delegates. However, most of those formally invited to the meeting were not heard.

WHILE DEMONSTRATORS were at the forum six "witches” staged a carefully rehearsed improvisation. A male speaker broke into tears during his argument for "more sensitivity." A group protesting air pollu-

tion in the interest of better health smoked steadily throughout the bedlam.

The protest focused on demands to stop the war, end discrimination against women and Negroes, and eliminate the "profit-making element" in medicine.

In his opening speech to

the house of delegates, speaker Dr. Russell B. Roth, of Erie, Pa., said: "Protests, chanting of slogans and name calling" did not deserve serious attention.

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The Chicago police department had 24 uniformed patrolmen around the hotel. The hotel management brought in security officers from other cities. They could be identified by small red flags on their lapels. The plainclothesmen screened the outer foyer of the hotel's convention floor, and blocked the inner lobby leading to the small ballroom in which the 244 delegates met.

IF THERE HAD been a noisy fracas in the outer foyer, association members probably would not have been able to hear it. If the meeting had been disrupted, Dr. Roth was prepared to adjourn immediately.

There is no assurance to-

day's committee meetings

or tomorrow's house of dele-

gates meeting will be free of disruption, so the hotel is maintaining maximum (but polite). security.