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Stories of Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ Community Members (2022 - )
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Mary Foltz
Interviewee
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Adrian Shanker
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-29.xml
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5.4 February 4, 2022 Adrian Shanker, Part 1, February 4, 2022 LGBT-29 01:22:12 LVLGBT Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive Collection Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository Support for the collection of this interview was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Adrian Shanker Mary Foltz video/mp4 ShankerAdrian_20220204_video_trimmed.mp4 1.0:|31(14)|76(14)|99(7)|118(4)|139(15)|160(4)|181(7)|200(7)|225(11)|254(5)|275(11)|296(5)|315(17)|336(9)|363(14)|386(2)|407(5)|424(8)|447(14)|470(4)|489(4)|510(4)|533(6)|554(6)|575(10)|596(12)|617(4)|642(2)|661(14)|686(5)|707(8)|736(5)|755(5)|780(7)|807(11)|832(7)|857(5)|880(13)|903(9)|926(8)|951(6)|974(14)|997(7)|1018(10)|1039(10)|1068(3)|1093(13)|1118(8)|1141(11)|1164(6)|1185(15)|1208(11)|1233(4)|1264(5)|1289(9)|1318(2)|1337(10)|1360(8)|1385(4)|1410(7)|1435(2)|1454(11)|1475(9)|1498(13)|1527(3)|1552(7)|1577(2)|1598(2)|1623(9)|1646(4)|1669(16)|1692(3)|1717(11)|1738(13)|1761(8)|1784(4)|1803(14)|1826(15)|1845(3)|1870(2)|1897(14)|1922(16)|1931(4) 0 https://youtu.be/ba_jW5pae2o YouTube video English 4 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz and I’m here with Adrian Shanker to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from ACLS this year and we are meeting today at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center on February 4th, 2022. So first, Adrian, thank you for talking with me today.
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 ; ADRIAN SHANKER: My pleasure.
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 ; MF: And I just want to start with a few business topics. Could you please state your full name and spell it for me?
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 ; AS: Adrian Shanker. He, him pronouns. A-D-R-I-A-N S-H-A-N-K-E-R. 0 95 Early Years of Life / Growing up in Westchester, New York MF: Okay, all right, business is out of the way. So I just want to start with a question. Would you be willing to tell me a little bit about the early years of your life?
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 ; AS: I was born in Manhattan and was raised in Westchester, New York in an activist family. My grandfather was the president of the American Federation of Teachers. My other grandfather was a gender theorist, is a gender theorist and psychologist who studies masculinity. And so I grew up in a very interesting home where -- very socially aware as a kid. I remember we had a family meeting about Magic Johnson’s AIDS diagnosis. We talked about Keith Haring’s Crack Is Wack mural in New York City that we passed all the time. 
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 ; 0 497 Values / Education & ; Activism MF: So you have a supportive family life. Imparting a variety of different values. Kindness, respecting people, navigating the early years of an epidemic with kindness for others and a sense of urgency that we’re talking about in family spaces. What’s happening to you in your educational experience?
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 ; AS: I’ll also just add for the earth as well. And other sentient beings. Today I’ve been -- I call myself an herbivore, but a vegetarian, for a long time. And I remember when I was a kid -- my mom tells me I was born to be a vegetarian, and that I remember going to a Chinese restaurant and they had a fish tank and there was also fish on the menu and I looked through the menu and I pointed to the tank and I said, “Fish.” Like people would eat those beautiful creatures, I can’t believe that. And so as a kid I ate like very little meat. Only the kind of stuff that you don’t always have control over your diet as a young kid. But in high school I became vegetarian. It’s also the same time I became an activist. And environmental justice has always been pretty important to me but at some point I made a decision to prioritize LGBTQ activism for my own career. But I definitely grew up in a community and a family where we talked about these as kind of in some ways intersecting issues, although we didn’t use that language. 0 920 ''Coming Out'' / Fox Lane GSA AS: [...] And remember going back to my school feeling like we can do this, we can become activists here. I also remember being surprised that I didn’t really lose any friends in high school when I came out. And I thought that I would because it was a time before mass acceptance for a lot of LGBTQ people, we’re still like early 2000s, so in terms of representation in mass media it still wasn’t there. I think Will & ; Grace was on. But that was probably it.
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 ; MF: Do you remember what it felt like before you came out? Were you anxious about it or --
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 ; AS: Not really, because it was really a self-realization more than a coming out. It was really a this is who I am and now I’m just going to tell people. It wasn’t an internal struggle. I had a very supportive family. And I was kind of in the group of students that would be self-defined as like punk rockers. So at the time many of them identified as bisexual which was fairly common among like punk rock-identified high school students in the early 2000s. Some of them still identify as queer or bi. But some don’t. 0 1155 Claiming Jewish Identity AS: [...] High school by the way is also where I claimed my Jewish identity. 
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 ; So I grew up culturally Jewish. I would say like Jewish heritage but religiously atheist, a secular family. But after my parents got divorced when I was in second grade, shortly after that I asked my mom if I could go to Hebrew school. And my mom was a very supportive mom, but I don’t think it’s what she was going for. But she did find one. We joined a Reform synagogue in Bedford, New York called Shaaray Tefila. And my mom was actually back in school studying to become a teacher, so she ended up teaching in the religious school there while she was in her graduate program. And I really loved going to Hebrew school. And I’m not sure why. But I really did. I loved learning about something I actually wanted to learn about. 0 1465 Life & ; Activism at Muhlenberg College MF: So let’s move a little bit further. What happens after high school to you? Where are you going next? How does the activity journey, your spiritual journey continue into the next years of your life?
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 ; AS: Yeah. So after high school I went to Muhlenberg College in Allentown, which is how I ended up in the Lehigh Valley as well. And I came into Muhlenberg basically expecting to eventually become a rabbi. And I was very excited about that actually. And there was a lot of reasons why I chose Muhlenberg for that reason. But I came in ready to go as an activist. And I had all the angst and all the passion and really no know-how for how to operationalize queer activism. 
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 ; And I remember early in college, probably my first month, there was a series that Muhlenberg has called Center for Ethics where they have a theme for the year and they bring guest speakers throughout the year, and they’re often tied to extra credit in classes if you attend and then do a write-up or things colleges do. And Kate Bornstein was one of the first speakers. And I didn’t know who she was, but I went, and it was recommended by one of my classes. And I also had the attitude that I really wanted to learn everything queer, so I was going to go. And she did kind of part talk and part performance. And I felt very inspired. And I still remember some of the things that she said in that talk my first year of college. 0 1847 Meeting Liz Bradbury and Trish Sullivan AS: [...] Another thing happened when I was in college, which is that I got connected with -- so the Hillel director at Muhlenberg, she’s no longer alive, but her name was Patti Mittleman. And she was a very important influence in my life. And one of the things that she did was she actually told me -- well, before that I had asked the community service office on campus if they could help me find an LGBT organization I could volunteer at. I had grown up going to the LGBT center in White Plains, New York for the youth program, and before that for a program they had for parents with gay kids. And when I moved here to go to college in Allentown I was looking around, there was no LGBT center. 
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 ; And I asked, “So is there an organization I can volunteer with?” And they took two weeks and came back and said, “We can’t find one.” And I remember complaining about this to Patti Mittleman, the Hillel director. And she basically said, “You have to meet these two people, Liz Bradbury and Patricia Sullivan.” And she connected me to them. We actually had one of the first events that I organized as a college student was for Liz to actually come speak on campus. And we did an exhibit of a photography series that she had created at the time about marriage equality, believe it was called Faces of Inequality. And as a student I actually in 2007 joined the board of directors for an organization that Liz and Trish had founded called Pennsylvania Diversity Network. 0 1940 Lobbying in Pennsylvania & ; Important Takeaways AS: [...] And before that in 2006 my first time lobbying in Pennsylvania was against the Pennsylvania Marriage Amendment in March 2006. And I got on a bus with some people who had become close friends and fellow activists. Reverend Goudy from Metropolitan Community Church [inaudible] Donna Cruciani from PPL Corporation, the head of their LGBT resource group before she retired, Steve Black, who had led PA-GALA, he’s unfortunately no longer alive. There was a few other people on that trip as well. And we met with legislators and as a college student it felt very empowering. 
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 ; It was also NRA lobby day in Harrisburg that day and I remember coming back and talking to one of my professors, Gary Jones, who taught a class I was taking called “Radicalism in American History.” And I was so upset that there was all these NRA people in the capitol. He said to me, he said, “Adrian, if you want to be effective working on gay rights in Pennsylvania you have to let them have their guns.” And he said, “What I’m telling you is pick your issue and stick with it.” So that was really when I started really thinking I have to pick my issue and stick with it and that issue is going to be LGBTQ issues. And it was a time before I was thinking about cross-movement solidarity and thinking a little bit about intersectionality. But in terms of movements like gun control and gay rights for example, seeing them as separate. 0 2177 Work with GenderPAC (GPAC) MF: You talked about the GenderPAC. You talked about working with PDN, Pennsylvania Diversity Network. Could you talk a little bit about GenderPAC? Was that a transformational moment for you? Did that prepare you to work with PDN? Were there specific things you learned at the GenderPAC?
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 ; AS: A little bit. Yeah. My internship with GenderPAC was actually through the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. They had a summer program for college students where you could take two classes and be part of a cohort and also do an internship. And so I did that. And being at GenderPAC I was very excited to go, before I got there I read Riki Wilchins’s two books at the time, Read My Lips and Queer Theory, Gender Theory. And I went in so excited. And then I was given the responsibility of working on this gender-neutral housing campaign. 
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 ; One of my supervisors there was Tyrone Hanley who is now at National Center for Lesbian Rights. And he was somebody who was very engaged in queer and trans activism and probably a little bit more radical than I was at the time as a college student. And the other staff there was also very very engaged and interested. 0 2496 Changing Municipal Policy with Pennsylvania Diversity Network (PDN) / Work in Local Politics AS: [...] When I was at college though, towards the end of my time at Muhlenberg, I started working through PDN, Pennsylvania Diversity Network, on municipal policy change. I had been involved in local politics here as a college student. I led the College Democrats at Muhlenberg as a student. During the Obama campaign I led the College Democrats through that with registrations, 80 percent of students showing up to vote in Allentown. 
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 ; We hosted events with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, all during that election. And I was the organizer of all of those. So I was very visible and engaged in the Democratic Party efforts as a college student. I volunteered on Sam Bennett’s congressional campaign in 2008. A very involved volunteer. I became really active with the Lehigh County Democratic Party as a college student as well. So I was engaged politically, and had helped to elect a number of city council people, and had good relationships with a number of people on city council in Allentown. And after getting them elected I really wanted to do something about LGBTQ rights in Allentown. 
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 ; And so I talked with Liz and Trish and Liz encouraged that the thing that was needed was domestic partner benefits. And at the time it didn’t feel like the most compelling issue to me. But she made a good case. And I definitely felt passionate about it. And we ended up working with -- he’s now a judge but then he was a city council person and council president, Dr. Michael D’Amore. And we asked if he would introduce legislation which we were going to provide. 0 2954 Other Work in the Lehigh Valley / Equality Pennsylvania MF: As you’re sharing the story, that whole project starts in college, starts with work with PDN, but then continues into 2011.
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 ; AS: I graduated college in 2009 and I stayed in Allentown. I stayed in Allentown actually because -- two reasons. One, I didn’t get the job that I wanted elsewhere. And two was I thought I could actually make a difference here. So I ended up working professionally in Civic Theatre of Allentown where I was on their fundraising team. I was the only person doing fundraising there. And I ended up leaving that at some point to go work for SEIU Local 32BJ, where I organized in support of food service workers for a company called Sodexo that paid the workers very very poorly. And so I was working on a campaign to unionize these employees and I was their faith organizer, so I worked with Lutheran and Jewish clergy to help them take action in support of food service workers. 
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 ; Around that time I also joined the board of Equality Pennsylvania, which had just been restructured by one of their funders. Basically they had a complete restructuring. The entire board and staff except for one board member and one staff member that stayed. And it was a rebuild. And so I was brought on to the board and was very excited. And the person who recruited me for the board was Brian Sims, who is now a state representative, but then he was a policy attorney for Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia, called GALLOP. And so a whole new board was being built. And there was early conversations at Equality Pennsylvania about where do we go from here. 0 3402 Invitation to the 50th Anniversary of the National March on Washington / Exit from Equality PA AS: [...] In 2013 it was the fiftieth anniversary of the national March on Washington, which was called the National Action to Realize the Dream. And I was actually invited to speak at it as one of six out queer speakers. It was actually very important for me because my grandfather was very close friends with Bayard Rustin, who organized the original 1963 “I Have a Dream” March on Washington. And Bayard was not allowed to speak at the march because he was gay. 
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 ; And there were six LGBTQ people invited to speak at this one at the fiftieth anniversary. I was so thrilled to be one of them and really the only state-based leader. All the others were national leaders. Randi Weingarten, the current president of American Federation of Teachers. Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU. There was leaders from Human Rights Campaign. And there were other LGBTQ people. But I was the only one from a state equality organization. 0 3486 Getting Married & ; Legally Validating Relationship AS: [...] . Before I go into starting the center, I want to talk about what it was like to get married during that time. So my ex-husband and I, his name is Brandon, we decided to get married right in between Windsor and Obergefell. So this was a time when Pennsylvania Diversity Network used to have annual freedom to marry rallies at usually the Lehigh Courthouse. One time we did it at the Northampton County Courthouse. But annual rallies. And people would go in and they would actually request a marriage license. 
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 ; I think it’s important just to remember what it was like in that moment first. So it was a moment where there was a lot of excitement and energy for marriage equality and still an enormous amount of lack of public support, including from Democratic politicians. Barack Obama when he ran for president originally didn’t support marriage equality. So it was this time period where there was a lot of energy and still lack in public support. After the Windsor decision which granted basically full faith and credit to marriages for the benefit of federal benefits, so if you were a resident of Pennsylvania but lived in Connecticut and you got married in Connecticut you could get federal benefits, even if you didn’t get state benefits in Pennsylvania. So not full faith and credit, but actually just federal recognition. 0 3882 Important Issues Targeted by Equality PA / Candidate Endorsements MF: [...] Were there other issues that were really important for you either at PDN or moving into the Pennsylvania Equality?
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 ; AS: Equality Pennsylvania.
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 ; MF: Equality Pennsylvania organization.
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 ; AS: Yeah. So I designed the candidate questionnaire for Equality Pennsylvania and really led the endorsement process for candidates that were seeking our endorsement. And in that questionnaire we asked about do you believe people who are incarcerated should be housed based on their gender identity or their sex assigned at birth. We asked questions. We were really trying to make sure that we were finding people who really understood our community and the way that we define ourselves. We asked about bullying in schools. We asked about nondiscrimination. We asked about marriage or other forms of relationship recognition. We probably asked about hate crimes legislation. And we asked about stuff that wasn’t legislative as well. We asked about people’s connection to the LGBT community in the area where they lived in Pennsylvania. We asked about their volunteer work with LGBTQ issues. 0 4120 Moving from Volunteer Work / Creating a LGBT Community Center MF: After you move from Equality Pennsylvania so you’re looking for a full-time position in this line of work, how do you make it from Equality Pennsylvania into a full-time position?
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 ; AS: So at the time I had been here for a while in the Lehigh Valley. But my LGBTQ activism was really statewide. And later during that time with Equality Pennsylvania one of the races that I got involved in was the Bethlehem mayor’s race. And Equality Pennsylvania played a pretty significant role in supporting Willie Reynolds when he ran for mayor of Bethlehem the first time. He had been our champion for nondiscrimination. 
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 ; And he was running against Bob Donchez, who was elected mayor, who was really not our champion. He ended up being supportive, I would say like lukewarm supportive, but was certainly not a champion when it came to LGBTQ people. And I worked with Willie on a number of his statements, and one of them was a mail piece he put out where we had a whole bunch of LGBTQ leaders standing behind him. And it said, “As mayor I pledge to not marry anyone until I can marry everyone.” He would only officiate at weddings for any residents once Pennsylvania gave him the legal authority to officiate gay weddings. And that was a really big statement for somebody in the Lehigh Valley. This wasn’t Philadelphia. This wasn’t Pittsburgh. It’s the Lehigh Valley. And before Pennsylvania had marriage. 0 4352 Reflection on Early Activism MF: Well, we’re just about at the end of our time. And we’re going to do a follow-up interview where Adrian will tell the origin story of Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. But since we’re nearing the end, and we’ve talked about your early years of activism, perhaps we could conclude with a question like looking back on all of that early work what mattered to you the most, is there anything you wish you would have focused on more during that time period. How do you reflect on those early years of activism in your life?
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 ; AS: Yeah. I’m really grateful for my time at Muhlenberg because it really kind of let me learn how to be an activist. It let me test out my activism in different ways and try different things. Learn also what didn’t work. It gave me an opportunity to become a better activist. And in many ways with my time in Equality Pennsylvania as well I was really young when I became the board president. I was 24. And there was a lot that I thought I knew that I didn’t. There certainly are things I would do differently now that I have had experience leading organization on the staff side. But I will say that that moment in time felt so important and so urgent. It felt like such a strong sense of urgency. And I’m really glad that I had the opportunity to be an activist then. 0 4621 Journey in Faith and Activism MF: Can I ask one follow-up question? I know we’re moving to the end. We had started this discussion of activism, especially at the college level, as being very much connected to your faith. Very much linked to your burgeoning, developing, or evolving understanding of yourself and Judaism in your life as being connected to politics and activism. It felt like hand in hand at the college. How did your faith journey move along with your journey into activism?
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 ; AS: So in college I really changed how I identified as Jewish. Again. I changed in high school and I changed again in college. In college I was working at the Reform synagogue in Allentown, Congregation Keneseth Israel. And I was teaching in the religious school. And that experience was really important for me because I met a couple people there. One, her name is Janet Hogan. And she was a religious school director. A straight woman, but a mother of an adult gay son who was married to a rabbi named Victor Appell. And she kind of invited me to her family events, like some family dinners. And I really had a really important -- she was my boss but became a mentor in many ways. 0 4909 Closing Remarks MF: Well, at the end I just want to thank you and give you the opportunity. Is there anything that you think we missed in this first oral history that you want to return to or something you want to say at the end of the interview today?
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 ; AS: No. 0 MovingImage Adrian Shanker recalls his life growing up in Westchester, New York, fighting for non-discrimination laws and the repeal of bans on same-sex marriage, his Jewish faith, and his activist work in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. INTERVIEW WITH ADRIAN SHANKER FEBRUARY 4, 2022 MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz and I'm here with Adrian Shanker to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from ACLS this year and we are meeting today at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center on February 4th, 2022. So first, Adrian, thank you for talking with me today. ADRIAN SHANKER: My pleasure. MF: And I just want to start with a few business topics. Could you please state your full name and spell it for me? AS: Adrian Shanker. He, him pronouns. A-D-R-I-A-N S-H-A-N-K-E-R. MF: Thank you, and will you please share your birth date? AS: April 4th, 1987. MF: And then a few questions about consent. I know you just signed a consent form with me before the interview began. But just to orally have that consent, do you consent to this interview today? AS: I do. MF: Do you consent to having this interview transcribed? AS: I do. MF: Digitized and made publicly available online? AS: Yes. MF: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats? AS: Yes. MF: Okay. And do you understand you'll have 30 days to review the transcript of the interview? AS: Yes. MF: Fabulous. And you can identify parts that you want to delete or you could even withdraw the full interview if you wanted. AS: Yeah. MF: Okay, all right, business is out of the way. So I just want to start with a question. Would you be willing to tell me a little bit about the early years of your life? AS: I was born in Manhattan and was raised in Westchester, New York in an activist family. My grandfather was the president of the American Federation of Teachers. My other grandfather was a gender theorist, is a gender theorist and psychologist who studies masculinity. And so I grew up in a very interesting home where -- very socially aware as a kid. I remember we had a family meeting about Magic Johnson's AIDS diagnosis. We talked about Keith Haring's Crack Is Wack mural in New York City that we passed all the time. I just remember growing up in a family that was just very socially aware. I remember my dad telling me stories about getting arrested protesting nuclear power or things along those lines. At one point my mom took me to a museum in New York City that had a worm exhibit. I was scared of worms at the time I guess. And I got the pleasure of holding them. I wasn't scared of worms after that. But it was very much about like -- we celebrated Earth Day as a holiday in my family. Grew up going to the Clearwater Music Festival, an environmental justice festival and music festival in Westchester, New York. And so my childhood was very much grounded around social awareness. I wouldn't say activism as much as social awareness in making individual decisions that keep the earth and the community around us in mind. I was definitely taught as a kid about kindness to other people and creating a kind world. And I grew up in a secular Jewish home. Would say culturally Jewish but atheist or nonreligious. And the values that I was taught were very much just about being a community citizen, being somebody -- I remember in 1992 the presidential election. My mom took me to vote with her. And so just some lessons I was taught really early. My parents got divorced when I was seven. Which was in 1994. And my mom came out to me and my brother, who was five years younger. So he was two and I was seven. And my brother and I moved in with my mom and her then partner. And so from a young age I was really aware of social differences in terms of LGBTQ people, although we didn't have that exact acronym yet. My dad was able to get remarried, within a year, legally remarried. And my mom couldn't. And I was very aware of the distinction and the difference. I also grew up with a lot of cultural context around what it meant to be an LGBTQ person because of my mom and some of her friends. Grew up going to Cape Cod in the summers for example. And we'd be camping in Wellfleet and going to Provincetown and so my childhood was definitely in a place where I was aware of -- at the time the word I would have used was gay and lesbian people. And that was just as a kid. MF: So you talk a lot about the kind of values of your family. And then how your mom's relationship and your dad's experience post-divorce introduced you to discrimination and structural homophobia frankly. How did you and your mom or you and your dad talk about LGBTQ people in a more personal way? Or was it really more about context? AS: It was more about context. I remember for example -- I don't remember how old I was. But I was young. I went to the Katonah Museum of Art with my dad. I come from a family that has always really appreciated and loved art. And the exhibit was by Pavel Tchelitchew and there was this painting that was like of the rear end of some animal. And I remember my dad saying something about like how Tchelitchew was a gay artist. A gay Russian artist. And he used some symbolism to let people know of his identity but he couldn't be as public and out when he was painting. So just contextual comments like that. Or comments like when we discussed Magic Johnson for example. And that was fairly early in my life. And relatively early in the AIDS epidemic. So it was more contextual conversations, more than personal ones. MF: How did you discuss Magic Johnson? What was that conversation like in your family? AS: I don't remember the details of it as much as I remember that it happened. But I remember that the conversation included a sense of like respect for people with AIDS at a time when that was not always discussed. And I'm pretty sure that this was before 1994. Because I think it was before my parents' divorce. But I don't remember 100 percent. And so as someone who was younger than seven years old, just the conversation about what it meant to respect people with whatever was happening in their life at a time when a lot was unknown. Certainly looking back a lot was unknown right at that time. But it wasn't like a family where we can't talk about things that are maybe hard in the world. My family has always been a family that talked about what was happening in the world. MF: So you have a supportive family life. Imparting a variety of different values. Kindness, respecting people, navigating the early years of an epidemic with kindness for others and a sense of urgency that we're talking about in family spaces. What's happening to you in your educational experience? AS: I'll also just add for the earth as well. And other sentient beings. Today I've been -- I call myself an herbivore, but a vegetarian, for a long time. And I remember when I was a kid -- my mom tells me I was born to be a vegetarian, and that I remember going to a Chinese restaurant and they had a fish tank and there was also fish on the menu and I looked through the menu and I pointed to the tank and I said, "Fish." Like people would eat those beautiful creatures, I can't believe that. And so as a kid I ate like very little meat. Only the kind of stuff that you don't always have control over your diet as a young kid. But in high school I became vegetarian. It's also the same time I became an activist. And environmental justice has always been pretty important to me but at some point I made a decision to prioritize LGBTQ activism for my own career. But I definitely grew up in a community and a family where we talked about these as kind of in some ways intersecting issues, although we didn't use that language. MF: You're moving in a way that -- this is where my question was going. What was your educational life like? AS: Oh, sorry. MF: No, no need to apologize. And I think that's an interesting segue because you're thinking about activism maybe in high school. So could you reflect a little bit upon your educational experiences? AS: I was an okay student in high school. I struggled a lot as a student actually in high school and earlier. I got bullied a lot in middle school including for having gay moms and so for me as someone who struggled a lot in those ways I also -- when I became an activist in high school, it was very much about claiming my own identity but also claiming my place in the school as an activist. And I found ways to be involved. So I really had a lot of negative feelings about going to gym class for example. Which felt very traumatic. And so sometime in high school I found a way I could volunteer on a high school committee that happened to meet at the same time as gym. And I never had to go. But it let me also become an activist. And I had a lot of support. So in high school I co-started a gay-straight alliance. And I graduated from Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York in 2004. I think 2004. And I started with some other people a gay-straight alliance that was the first time that high school had one. And I remember actually when I was in middle school we had a meeting with a guidance counselor in high school to transition each family. And I remember my mom asking the guidance counselor, "Is there a gay-straight alliance here?" And I remember being like, "Mom." And the answer was no, there isn't one. And I had heard about this other student who was gay and kind of picked on and ended up going to an alternative school. And I was a little concerned about "am I going to a place that's not welcoming". But in high school coming out and becoming an activist were very intertwined. And it was also 2003 so it was the time when -- so I might have graduated in 2005. We'll verify. But 2003 was the start of the Iraq War or the invasion of Iraq. And March 19th, 2003 I led a student walkout of class to a sit-in in the front of the school, 150 students. And a couple teachers joined us. I don't think the school was thrilled about that. And nobody got disciplined. But for me becoming an activist was very much am I an activist for animal rights, am I an activist for ending the death penalty, am I an activist for stopping -- we knew we were going to stop that war, Bush's war. And then I was very passionate about LGBTQ rights. At the time President Bush used an hour of his State of the Union in 2004 to condemn families like mine and prioritizing a Federal Marriage Amendment, a full hour. And it was right after the Massachusetts decision on marriage, Goodridge decision, where John Kerry and every other major national Democrat except for Barney Frank condemned the decision. And so I was coming into my activism at the same exact time. And feeling very angry. Feeling very -- it's like teen angst mixed with like animosity towards Bush. And really found my activist voice. But like most people that age I really didn't know what to do with that. Me and a couple other students, we were invited to a staff meeting for the teachers where we got to talk about some issues for gay students. We had our meetings. We did ask the school to change one of their policies. I don't remember if they did. Their nondiscrimination policy to include sexual orientation. And I actually started going to -- my mom had always gone to this conference in White Plains, New York. It used to be called the Healing the Hurt conference. But it was run by GLSEN the Gay, Lesbian & ; Straight Education Network's Hudson Valley chapter. My mom is a teacher. So she always went as professional development because teachers could get continuing ed credits. But they also allowed students to come as well, and when I was in high school I actually went with my mom one year. And I brought some teachers from my high school, I convinced them to go. And that was really transformative for me because I ended up meeting the leader of GLSEN Hudson Valley, her name is Mary Jane Karger. Actually she's from the Lehigh Valley originally, which is cool, she's from Hellertown. And went to Muhlenberg College as well. One of the first generations of women there I believe. And so she became a really important activist for me. She was a straight woman, a parent of a gay kid, and she was really the first major LGBTQ activist I knew. And I was very inspired by her and by the other activists that I met at this conference. And remember going back to my school feeling like we can do this, we can become activists here. I also remember being surprised that I didn't really lose any friends in high school when I came out. And I thought that I would because it was a time before mass acceptance for a lot of LGBTQ people, we're still like early 2000s, so in terms of representation in mass media it still wasn't there. I think Will & ; Grace was on. But that was probably it. MF: Do you remember what it felt like before you came out? Were you anxious about it or -- AS: Not really, because it was really a self-realization more than a coming out. It was really a this is who I am and now I'm just going to tell people. It wasn't an internal struggle. I had a very supportive family. And I was kind of in the group of students that would be self-defined as like punk rockers. So at the time many of them identified as bisexual which was fairly common among like punk rock-identified high school students in the early 2000s. Some of them still identify as queer or bi. But some don't. But my friend group was kind of alternative. Which was perhaps helpful for also my own self-realization. And I will say that like while I'm too young to have been there during punk, right? Punk rock was my first understanding of queerness and I was really into some of the music and photographs. And I actually don't enjoy that music at all now. But then I did because it was kind of public queerness. And it felt very affirming as a high school student. Pictures of Billy Idol. Or listening to words of Iggy Pop. Or like folks like that. Lou Reed, who were just so queer and so public about it. Felt very affirming. MF: With the GSA you described working on a nondiscrimination ordinance or promoting that at school, did you have any other specific things that the GSA was doing? Was it more social? Was it -- AS: It was a mix. It was a mix of social and also a little bit political. And it was about political but with a small p. It was like political for the school, it was like trying to make our school inclusive. So it was thinking about well, how come health class doesn't include us, or how come gym classes feel very unsafe, or things along those lines. So we would try to bring guest speakers into the school. Or we would do things to try to make those kinds of changes. It wasn't thinking broader. I do remember though I was invited as an out student to speak. My first public speaking thing was actually with Planned Parenthood in Westchester County where they invited me to speak as a student voice about comprehensive sex education. They were doing a panel at the public library. And so that was very empowering for me because I was asked to share my own experience about why the lack of comprehensive sex education was so challenging and so problematic. High school by the way is also where I claimed my Jewish identity. So I grew up culturally Jewish. I would say like Jewish heritage but religiously atheist, a secular family. But after my parents got divorced when I was in second grade, shortly after that I asked my mom if I could go to Hebrew school. And my mom was a very supportive mom, but I don't think it's what she was going for. But she did find one. We joined a Reform synagogue in Bedford, New York called Shaaray Tefila. And my mom was actually back in school studying to become a teacher, so she ended up teaching in the religious school there while she was in her graduate program. And I really loved going to Hebrew school. And I'm not sure why. But I really did. I loved learning about something I actually wanted to learn about. And in high school I got very involved in youth group kind of programs that really helped me solidify my identity as both Jewish and as a queer Jew. Although I wouldn't have used the word queer in high school. I went to Jewish summer camp and met other LGBTQ Jewish students and got very engaged in activism from a Jewish lens. Progressive activism. And actually I remember in high school I went on a weekend trip or a small trip with my synagogue's youth group to Washington, DC where we were meeting with members of Congress on a variety of issues. And it was through the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. And the issue that I was able to talk about was the hate crimes bill that hadn't been passed yet. And actually it was in a meeting with Congresswoman Nita Lowey, she's now retired. But I came out during that, while I was speaking to the congresswoman, it was the first time that my rabbi learned that I was gay. The rabbi I grew up with. And I just had never told him because he didn't have -- he had never said anything from what Jews would call the bimah but Christians would call a pulpit that made me feel like he was super embracing. We were the only gay family I knew in my synagogue. It was a very large synagogue. He had never talked about gay rights or marriage equality or anything along those lines. I couldn't remember a single instance of that happening. And so I didn't really know. And he was somebody who was seen as very powerful, very tone-setting, for what people would think or believe in. And I used that opportunity to speak directly to my congresswoman about an issue that was important to me as a gay high school kid and I didn't care that my rabbi was there hearing it. And afterwards he said something to me. He said, like, "I didn't know you were gay." And I said, "Well, you didn't ask." But it just came out naturally. It wasn't an internal struggle as much as it was self-realization and becoming an activist. MF: What happened after that with your rabbi? Did he start speaking about inclusivity? Did that change your relationship? AS: It changed our relationship a little bit. But mostly -- in a positive way. I also worked at the synagogue as a Hebrew tutor when I was in high school. And I was very very involved there. It's also around the time I started wearing a yarmulke all the time in the middle of high school as well. It was after Daniel Pearl was murdered. There was a book of essays that was published called I Am Jewish. People were writing about the importance of being visible as who you are. And so for me it was connected also to being visible as a gay person. As a high school person I had like rainbow belts and there was like pins and stickers and buttons everywhere. And also before that I had liberty spikes and then a very poorly kept Mohawk that turned into a mullethawk and then that was kind of replaced with a yarmulke at some point. And it was about being visible. And it's probably when I started to identify more spiritually or religiously as Jewish as well. MF: So let's move a little bit further. What happens after high school to you? Where are you going next? How does the activity journey, your spiritual journey continue into the next years of your life? AS: Yeah. So after high school I went to Muhlenberg College in Allentown, which is how I ended up in the Lehigh Valley as well. And I came into Muhlenberg basically expecting to eventually become a rabbi. And I was very excited about that actually. And there was a lot of reasons why I chose Muhlenberg for that reason. But I came in ready to go as an activist. And I had all the angst and all the passion and really no know-how for how to operationalize queer activism. And I remember early in college, probably my first month, there was a series that Muhlenberg has called Center for Ethics where they have a theme for the year and they bring guest speakers throughout the year, and they're often tied to extra credit in classes if you attend and then do a write-up or things colleges do. And Kate Bornstein was one of the first speakers. And I didn't know who she was, but I went, and it was recommended by one of my classes. And I also had the attitude that I really wanted to learn everything queer, so I was going to go. And she did kind of part talk and part performance. And I felt very inspired. And I still remember some of the things that she said in that talk my first year of college. And I went to hear other people speak as well. And some of them also queer in different ways. And I joined the college's gay-straight alliance, which I didn't create, It existed before me, right away. And I remember the first meeting they were like making stickers and doing like erotic writing group and things like that. But it didn't feel activist-y to me and I kind of spoke up and I said, like, "Can we do some activism?" And people were like, "Yeah, sure, go do it." So I ended up doing that, and a lot of other folks' interest was about like let's get a group together to go dance at the Stonewall on Thursday nights. Stonewall in Allentown. Or things that were more social. And my interest was more political. Six weeks into starting as a student I was in the president of the college's office demanding that the nondiscrimination policy be updated to include gender identity and I e-mailed him and I was like, "I noticed in the code of conduct that it does not currently include this and I would like this to be changed." And I got this e-mail back saying, like, "Why don't we sit down and talk about it?" And we did. And about six weeks later I got an e-mail from his assistant or from him saying that it was going to be changed and that the board had approved it. And I think they thought like okay, he's good now. And I turned around and within like a couple weeks or maybe a couple months with the gay-straight alliance we were petitioning the college to create gender-neutral housing. It would have been the first college in the Lehigh Valley to do so. And that summer I took an internship at the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, GenderPAC, founded and led by Riki Wilchins, no longer in existence. And my work there was focused on gender-neutral housing actually as a national -- this was before it was very common. This was in summer of 2006. And so therefore I started college in fall 2005 and graduated high school in fall 2004 by the way -- spring 2005. So yeah. Interning at GenderPAC. Coming back to Muhlenberg. And really fighting for gender-neutral housing. And it became a fight that outlasted my time at Muhlenberg. We won small victories. This dorm building can be gender-neutral. Or as long as it's not for first year students. Or case-by-case basis. So yeah, the fight for gender-neutral housing in Muhlenberg College was a really critical part of my activist journey. It's kind of how I learned how to be an activist in a more effective way. I learned how to pick my battles better. I learned how to pick targets better when it comes to activism, who can actually make the changes we want. It also taught me how to build strong coalitions and bring in the right voices. There was other parts of that activism on campus as a student whether it was about policy changes like housing policy or about other types of things to ensure that LGBTQ students had the kind of college that we all really deserved. And again it was a time that's a little different than now where that's common. At the time I actually remember the president of the college who was someone who I now consider a friend, but at the time one of the first things he said was, "Well, do we have any transgender students?" And my response to him was, "Where do you think people would want to sleep? You haven't created a space that people would feel comfortable being out as trans." And I don't actually remember any out trans students then at the time in 2006. There were obviously trans students. Today there's many. It's a college with a trans student activist club. But that I think happens in part with a college that came to embrace the policies that needed to happen to make people feel included. Another thing happened when I was in college, which is that I got connected with -- so the Hillel director at Muhlenberg, she's no longer alive, but her name was Patti Mittleman. And she was a very important influence in my life. And one of the things that she did was she actually told me -- well, before that I had asked the community service office on campus if they could help me find an LGBT organization I could volunteer at. I had grown up going to the LGBT center in White Plains, New York for the youth program, and before that for a program they had for parents with gay kids. And when I moved here to go to college in Allentown I was looking around, there was no LGBT center. And I asked, "So is there an organization I can volunteer with?" And they took two weeks and came back and said, "We can't find one." And I remember complaining about this to Patti Mittleman, the Hillel director. And she basically said, "You have to meet these two people, Liz Bradbury and Patricia Sullivan." And she connected me to them. We actually had one of the first events that I organized as a college student was for Liz to actually come speak on campus. And we did an exhibit of a photography series that she had created at the time about marriage equality, believe it was called Faces of Inequality. And as a student I actually in 2007 joined the board of directors for an organization that Liz and Trish had founded called Pennsylvania Diversity Network. And before that in 2006 my first time lobbying in Pennsylvania was against the Pennsylvania Marriage Amendment in March 2006. And I got on a bus with some people who had become close friends and fellow activists. Reverend Goudy from Metropolitan Community Church [inaudible] Donna Cruciani from PPL Corporation, the head of their LGBT resource group before she retired, Steve Black, who had led PA-GALA, he's unfortunately no longer alive. There was a few other people on that trip as well. And we met with legislators and as a college student it felt very empowering. It was also NRA lobby day in Harrisburg that day and I remember coming back and talking to one of my professors, Gary Jones, who taught a class I was taking called "Radicalism in American History." And I was so upset that there was all these NRA people in the capitol. He said to me, he said, "Adrian, if you want to be effective working on gay rights in Pennsylvania you have to let them have their guns." And he said, "What I'm telling you is pick your issue and stick with it." So that was really when I started really thinking I have to pick my issue and stick with it and that issue is going to be LGBTQ issues. And it was a time before I was thinking about cross-movement solidarity and thinking a little bit about intersectionality. But in terms of movements like gun control and gay rights for example, seeing them as separate. MF: You used this interesting phrase earlier, which is related to what you just shared. You said something like, "I learned how to pick my targets and think about effective ways or effective strategies." I'm just curious if you could maybe expand on that. During your college activism years what did that mean for you? Learning effective targets, effective strategies. What did that look like during that time period? What were some of the most important lessons that you were taking from that time period? AS: Looking back I can remember getting responses from people around our gender-neutral housing campaign that might not have been positive, and reacting to them, without really thinking through how important is it to win over that specific person. They're not the decision maker. So learning how to figure out who actually needs the time and energy devoted to winning them over, who has to be won over to be part of a strong coalition, who has to be brought in as a clear advocate. So for example the college didn't have any kind of LGBTQ resource center, director, or anything like that. And we had petitioned the college to appoint someone as an LGBT liaison. And they did and her name was Anita Kelly. And we ended up going to Anita and saying, "You have the administrators' ears. We need you as a staff person to really be our advocate here." And we went to the housing folks, Jan Schumacher and Aaron Bova, and asked them, "You're the people they're going to ask about how this will be operationalized. How can we help you understand this? Here's the other colleges that have it. Can you call your counterparts there and see how it works for them?" So learning how to win over the right people instead of what in the political world we would call a blank canvas. Trying to go and just get anyone we can, but those may not be the most influential people or most necessary people to win on the issue we need to win on. MF: You talked about the GenderPAC. You talked about working with PDN, Pennsylvania Diversity Network. Could you talk a little bit about GenderPAC? Was that a transformational moment for you? Did that prepare you to work with PDN? Were there specific things you learned at the GenderPAC? AS: A little bit. Yeah. My internship with GenderPAC was actually through the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. They had a summer program for college students where you could take two classes and be part of a cohort and also do an internship. And so I did that. And being at GenderPAC I was very excited to go, before I got there I read Riki Wilchins's two books at the time, Read My Lips and Queer Theory, Gender Theory. And I went in so excited. And then I was given the responsibility of working on this gender-neutral housing campaign. One of my supervisors there was Tyrone Hanley who is now at National Center for Lesbian Rights. And he was somebody who was very engaged in queer and trans activism and probably a little bit more radical than I was at the time as a college student. And the other staff there was also very very engaged and interested. One thing I learned from being at GenderPAC though was that there was kind of a dismissiveness of the so-called like mainstream LGBTQ activism. And I wasn't really sure that I agreed with that. But I also wasn't sure I disagreed. And I felt like I didn't know enough. When I was at GenderPAC though they let me go to -- one of the requirements of the program at the Religious Action Center was to go do a day on the Hill, a legislative day. And so GenderPAC let me go and meet with Pennsylvania legislators. And Rick Santorum was one of them. And so I got a meeting with Rick Santorum's staff person, and what GenderPAC sent me in to do with each of the meetings was to ask if they would sign a pledge saying that they wouldn't discriminate against LGBT people in their offices. So just their office staff. And Santorum signed it. And he signed it right in front of me. And then I got a picture with him. And so I came back to the office next morning and they were like floored. And this was the guy who -- I don't need to explain who Rick Santorum was. MF: But you can still explain for other people. AS: There's enough people can google. But he was a very conservative, very very conservative senator, later became a presidential candidate. He was awful, he really hated LGBTQ people. And he signed this thing. His chief of staff was gay by the way. A gay Black man actually. But Rick Santorum was very homophobic. And he signed this pledge. And so the next day GenderPAC puts out this press release. And a couple days later I get a call from a reporter at Agape Press, a genuinely Christian press, and the reporter says, "Are you the homosexual from Pennsylvania who got Rick Santorum to cave on the family?" And I was like, "Who are you?" But it made national news, Rick Santorum signing this pledge. He then rescinded his signature. And actually tried to say he didn't sign it. But we produced the photograph of him with me and it kind of was hard for him to say he didn't sign it. He then said he didn't understand it. So it was a formative time in terms of becoming an activist. I also think that I still didn't really know what I didn't know. But being in DC, I spent that summer and the next summer in DC. The next summer I was at Faith in Public Life, which was a program at the time of Center for American Progress, a Clinton alumni think tank. So a slightly left of center think tank. And as this was 2007 I was working with faith leaders to help them take action on progressive social justice issues. And basically to get them to stop talking about abortion and gay marriage and talk about instead hunger and homelessness and ending torture. And one of the issues at the time was the farm bill, which includes SNAP funding, nutrition funding. And so Jim Wallis, Pastor Wallis, famously said that here at a protest at the Capitol when I was doing that work, said, "The budget is a moral document." And that's something I've always thought about for my activism going forward. The budget is a moral document. And so that summer was equally formative because I started to really think about the intersection between faith and queer rights. Even though my work there did not include LGBTQ issues, it was about how do we utilize people of faith to help tell a story that's compelling for the broader public. And that's something that I really have continued to use in my activism. When I was at college though, towards the end of my time at Muhlenberg, I started working through PDN, Pennsylvania Diversity Network, on municipal policy change. I had been involved in local politics here as a college student. I led the College Democrats at Muhlenberg as a student. During the Obama campaign I led the College Democrats through that with registrations, 80 percent of students showing up to vote in Allentown. We hosted events with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, all during that election. And I was the organizer of all of those. So I was very visible and engaged in the Democratic Party efforts as a college student. I volunteered on Sam Bennett's congressional campaign in 2008. A very involved volunteer. I became really active with the Lehigh County Democratic Party as a college student as well. So I was engaged politically, and had helped to elect a number of city council people, and had good relationships with a number of people on city council in Allentown. And after getting them elected I really wanted to do something about LGBTQ rights in Allentown. And so I talked with Liz and Trish and Liz encouraged that the thing that was needed was domestic partner benefits. And at the time it didn't feel like the most compelling issue to me. But she made a good case. And I definitely felt passionate about it. And we ended up working with -- he's now a judge but then he was a city council person and council president, Dr. Michael D'Amore. And we asked if he would introduce legislation which we were going to provide. Liz was able to work with Suzanne Goldberg at the Columbia University gender and sexuality program, who was able to get us a draft of legislation. And then I brought in some local Democratic Party-affiliated lawyers, especially Tim Brennan, who really understood the municipal law process in Allentown. And we were able to get this passed through with unanimous support in Allentown. And I think it passed after I graduated. It passed I think in January, either 2010 or 2011. And from then I was really set on working on municipal policy for a while. I started to actually work on the same issue with the city of Easton. So we were able to get domestic partner benefits for city workers in Allentown and Easton. What's important to remember as a lookback is that before marriage equality if you worked for an employer that provided spousal health care, if you were a gay couple you could not put your spouse on health care unless they had domestic partner benefits policies. Even if you could get that you had to pay federal tax on the value of the benefits. But the ability to actually access health care was such a big challenge. It was before the Affordable Care Act as well. So the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. But it wasn't fully implemented for a little bit after that. So it was a very propulsive movement. We were in the movement for marriage equality and it felt also that winning partner benefits was kind of a vote in support of marriage equality. And that actually came up during these council meetings saying, like, "We wish we didn't have to do this, Pennsylvania should have marriage equality." So after winning in Allentown we started, or around that same time we also introduced identical legislation in Easton. And with each of these we did something that wasn't common in the Lehigh Valley, where we did public signing ceremonies. We had public events for the mayors to sign these laws, and to generate a lot of press on this issue. Press was really important because we were trying to win hearts and minds on marriage. So I worked on the Allentown ordinance very closely with Liz. I kind of led the effort on the Easton ordinance. And also on passing nondiscrimination in Bethlehem, which passed in 2011. Bethlehem at the time was the largest city in Pennsylvania that did not have a nondiscrimination law. And it was an entirely Democratic city council with a Democratic mayor. And the mayor, John Callahan, supported the legislation but wasn't moving on it. He said he supported it and he had this big press conference and then nothing was happening with it. And so of the entire city council only two were supportive. Karen Dolan and Willie Reynolds. And the two of them became our only two very strong champions. The rest of council was lukewarm at best or at the beginning even a little bit negative. And we were able to bring them all around but it was a very challenging time that actually included really really really having to work against -- the Catholic diocese sent a lobbyist to try to change the legislation. They knew we would pass the legislation, so they put all these poison pill amendments in, a sunset clause that would end the ordinance automatically after three years. An amendment that would gut all the powers of the human relations commission. So the ordinance would exist but nobody could be held accountable by it. Amendment after amendment after amendment. The city solicitor in Bethlehem also made major procedural errors and we had to redo an entire city council meeting. Each meeting was over four hours long. Hundreds of people testified. And it was mixed between pro and con. The people who testified against us were using some horrible anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and language. Suggesting that all gay people are child molesters or things like that. It was really really beyond the pale, especially for 2011. And to be honest we did not expect it to pass unanimously. The council president at the time, Bob Donchez, who then became mayor, ended up voting for it. But he was the last person in Bethlehem to decide how he felt about this issue and many other issues. And Dave DiGiacinto, who was on council, he's no longer alive, he was not sure if he was supportive. And then we had two council members who were, one of them had Parkinson's, Gordon Mowrer, the former mayor, and the other one had other health issues that really made it difficult to determine how aware she was of the issues that she was voting on, Jean Belinski. There was really no way we could communicate with her directly and it was a really big challenge actually. So what we ended up with was a unanimous nondiscrimination law that really set the table for starting to pass these again. At the time Pennsylvania had I believe 17 municipalities that had nondiscrimination laws. Today in 2022 it's more than 60, might even be 70. But at the time we were talking about less than 20. And that kind of helped to transition into some future activism as well. MF: As you're sharing the story, that whole project starts in college, starts with work with PDN, but then continues into 2011. AS: I graduated college in 2009 and I stayed in Allentown. I stayed in Allentown actually because -- two reasons. One, I didn't get the job that I wanted elsewhere. And two was I thought I could actually make a difference here. So I ended up working professionally in Civic Theatre of Allentown where I was on their fundraising team. I was the only person doing fundraising there. And I ended up leaving that at some point to go work for SEIU Local 32BJ, where I organized in support of food service workers for a company called Sodexo that paid the workers very very poorly. And so I was working on a campaign to unionize these employees and I was their faith organizer, so I worked with Lutheran and Jewish clergy to help them take action in support of food service workers. Around that time I also joined the board of Equality Pennsylvania, which had just been restructured by one of their funders. Basically they had a complete restructuring. The entire board and staff except for one board member and one staff member that stayed. And it was a rebuild. And so I was brought on to the board and was very excited. And the person who recruited me for the board was Brian Sims, who is now a state representative, but then he was a policy attorney for Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia, called GALLOP. And so a whole new board was being built. And there was early conversations at Equality Pennsylvania about where do we go from here. There was a lot against us. It was a conservative legislature, Republican governor, Governor Corbett. And a real propulsive need to ensure that we could demonstrate impact to funders. So I said, "Let's win municipal policies. We're not going to win at the state level." And so we did. So that was the push for Bethlehem, it was actually through my role with Equality PA. And then Equality Pennsylvania ended up getting some grants to work on municipal policy change around the state, passing nondiscrimination protections around Pennsylvania, and building public support for nondiscrimination through that process. About a year into my time on the board at Equality Pennsylvania I was on my way to a board meeting in Erie, and I got a call from Brian, who said, "I'm going to be stepping down from the board because I'm running for the state house against Babette Josephs," who was one of our champions on the issues, champions in the state house. And he was going to run against her because she was becoming less and less effective at winning the change. She was very vocal and very effective at getting media and public support, but not always as good at actually working with the other side to get results that we needed. So Brian said he was going to run against her. And I let him know that I would be running for the president of Equality Pennsylvania's board. I was unanimously elected and I was 24 years old. And the organization, we were also creating a PAC. And a 501(c)(4) entity. So (c)(3) entity is charitable, tax-deductible. Equality Pennsylvania Educational Fund, that's technically what I was president of. And then the (c)(4) is a political organization, can endorse in elections, etc. And then the PAC can actually give money to candidates. So three separate legal entities. And I was the president of the educational fund side but also on the board of the others. And so we were kind of building our political arm up. We were starting to make a real impact and build power for LGBTQ Pennsylvanians. We talked with candidates. I remember Det Ansinn was running for Bucks County commissioner. And at one point he said, "What are you looking for in candidates?" And we said that we wanted candidates who would talk to -- we wanted front porch Democrats, not back porch Democrats. We wanted Democrats that would talk to us, talk about our issues, when they're sitting on their front porch, not only in a private party in the back of their house where their neighbors can't see them. We wanted them to talk about LGBTQ issues everywhere they talked, not just when they were talking to us. We wanted them to be public about their stances, not private about it. It wasn't going to be like a little pinkie swear, I promise I won't vote against your rights. It was going to be on your website as part of your platform. And we started working with a lot of candidates across the state. One of them, for example, Erin Molchany, was running for the state house in Pittsburgh, and we were her first endorsement, or one of her first endorsements. And she became one of our strong champions. Eugene DePasquale was running for auditor-general in 2012 and we were very heavily involved in his race. I ended up on his transition team, where I drafted rewrites to the personnel manual around LGBTQ inclusion for auditor-general staff. And that was the role that Equality Pennsylvania was playing, was victories where we could find them. Some of them were behind the scenes. Not an issue I worked on, but the former executive director of Equality Pennsylvania, Ted Martin, worked with Governor Corbett's team to actually get a change in the driver's license policy to change a person's gender on the driver's license in a more simplified way. And part of the agreement was that there wouldn't be a press release, it would just happen. So it was changes where we could make the changes happen. Sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes very public. That was really the goal. My time at Equality Pennsylvania overlapped with the fight for marriage in Pennsylvania. Because I was on the board from 2010 to 2013. I served as president 2011 to 2013. And it was a very propulsive time for LGBTQ rights. Literally every day we were seeing different things happen in the national news around LGBTQ rights. On marriage and on other issues. Around "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Whole bunch of issues were changing. We were watching history as we were making it. It felt so energizing. But I was doing that work as a volunteer. And I was driving across the state as a volunteer. Not receiving reimbursements for mileage or covering my costs of this travel. And I was also just a couple years out of college, I didn't have a lot of money. But this was what was so important to me. And it definitely felt like a second full-time job. And I wanted to do this work full-time at some point. A couple other things happened during my time with Equality Pennsylvania that were pretty formative. In 2013 it was the fiftieth anniversary of the national March on Washington, which was called the National Action to Realize the Dream. And I was actually invited to speak at it as one of six out queer speakers. It was actually very important for me because my grandfather was very close friends with Bayard Rustin, who organized the original 1963 "I Have a Dream" March on Washington. And Bayard was not allowed to speak at the march because he was gay. And there were six LGBTQ people invited to speak at this one at the fiftieth anniversary. I was so thrilled to be one of them and really the only state-based leader. All the others were national leaders. Randi Weingarten, the current president of American Federation of Teachers. Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU. There was leaders from Human Rights Campaign. And there were other LGBTQ people. But I was the only one from a state equality organization. And that was just a very powerful opportunity in my activist career. Yeah. The decision to leave Equality Pennsylvania was in large part because I really wanted to do this work full-time. And yeah, I really wanted to do this work full-time. Before I go into starting the center, I want to talk about what it was like to get married during that time. So my ex-husband and I, his name is Brandon, we decided to get married right in between Windsor and Obergefell. So this was a time when Pennsylvania Diversity Network used to have annual freedom to marry rallies at usually the Lehigh Courthouse. One time we did it at the Northampton County Courthouse. But annual rallies. And people would go in and they would actually request a marriage license. I think it's important just to remember what it was like in that moment first. So it was a moment where there was a lot of excitement and energy for marriage equality and still an enormous amount of lack of public support, including from Democratic politicians. Barack Obama when he ran for president originally didn't support marriage equality. So it was this time period where there was a lot of energy and still lack in public support. After the Windsor decision which granted basically full faith and credit to marriages for the benefit of federal benefits, so if you were a resident of Pennsylvania but lived in Connecticut and you got married in Connecticut you could get federal benefits, even if you didn't get state benefits in Pennsylvania. So not full faith and credit, but actually just federal recognition. And it was also a time when the federal government was interpreting every single marriage benefit that they could as either state of celebration or state of residence. So for every guideline you could imagine, Social Security Administration says they'll recognize marriages based on state of celebration, where you got married. Federal Election Commission says state of celebration for if you can count as a spouse for higher ability to donate to campaigns. Every single agency, every single rule was making an interpretation after Windsor. And it was a time when there was just a lot of energy. My ex-husband Brandon and I decided to get married during that time. Then we had two weddings. The first one was a legal wedding where we started at the Lehigh County Courthouse and we were joined by our parents. Actually our parents didn't. I think Brandon's parents were here. My parents lived in New York, but I think they met us up there. But we were also joined by a reporter from Morning Call, Colby Itkowitz, who's now at Washington Post. And Jen Colletta, who was then the editor of Philadelphia Gay News. So they started with us, recorded us not being able to get a marriage license. It was not a shocker. We knew what the law was. But we paid the fee. We got a marriage rejection certificate which I still have, stamped. It says rejected or denied and it says the reason why we were denied, because two people of same gender. We got in the car, drove to Darien, Connecticut. Went into the town hall. Darien was the closest place to Lehigh Valley where you could get married in one day without a waiting period. And many people from Lehigh Valley got married in Darien for that reason. Got our marriage license there. My mom and her partner and I believe my dad joined us there as well. And then we went to a beach, Pear Tree Point Beach, right in Darien. Got married on the beach, very quick ceremony, officiated by Reverend Debra Haffner, one of the most vocal faith leaders nationally for sexual freedom and LGBTQ rights. And then as we were driving back, as the reporter Colby Itkowitz described it, when we crossed from New York to New Jersey, our relationship was given -- it was demoted to civil union. And when we crossed the free bridge into Easton we were sitting in a car together as complete strangers. And so that was the experience of getting married then. We then had a Jewish wedding ceremony as well, but the experience of getting legally married at that time was also really formative to my activism because it was such a hurdle. I remember that we got estate plans drawn up that we had to have 14 documents between the two of us, 14 documents. Because of being able to protect each other. HIPAA release forms. Things that are automatic for people who are legally married, but that we knew since our marriage wasn't going to be recognized in Pennsylvania, we had to have all these additional documents drawn up by lawyers. And that's just something that's important to remember now. Sometimes it's easy to criticize movements in the past for not going far enough. And frankly there were valid criticisms of the marriage movement. But one thing that we shouldn't forget was that for people who wanted to get married there was real serious reasons why they needed to. And it wasn't only about stigma, and it wasn't only about feeling equal in the eyes of the law. It was also about being able to take care of your partner with legal rights. And so I had criticism of the marriage equality movement. And also I was part of it. Because both were possible at the same time. We could simultaneously believe that health care shouldn't be tied to whether you're married or not or immigration shouldn't be tied to whether you're married or not, and we could also believe that people should be able to have the legal relationships that allow them to take care of their families. And so that was a very galvanizing moment in time. MF: In your description of that, both in terms of your college activism and then into your postcollegiate activism, you talked about housing issues on college campus. Then you talked about nondiscrimination legislation at the civic level. And then the fight for marriage equality. Were there other issues that were really important for you either at PDN or moving into the Pennsylvania Equality? AS: Equality Pennsylvania. MF: Equality Pennsylvania organization. AS: Yeah. So I designed the candidate questionnaire for Equality Pennsylvania and really led the endorsement process for candidates that were seeking our endorsement. And in that questionnaire we asked about do you believe people who are incarcerated should be housed based on their gender identity or their sex assigned at birth. We asked questions. We were really trying to make sure that we were finding people who really understood our community and the way that we define ourselves. We asked about bullying in schools. We asked about nondiscrimination. We asked about marriage or other forms of relationship recognition. We probably asked about hate crimes legislation. And we asked about stuff that wasn't legislative as well. We asked about people's connection to the LGBT community in the area where they lived in Pennsylvania. We asked about their volunteer work with LGBTQ issues. I remember one person who's now on the state supreme court, David Wecht, judges have to be careful about how they answer questionnaires. But we asked him to describe his judicial philosophy when it comes to historically excluded populations. And we asked about his past connection to LGBTQ communities in Pittsburgh where he lived. And he told us that he volunteered at an AIDS organization I believe in the '90s. Well, that was very telling for us because it was a time when not every lawyer wanted to volunteer with an AIDS organization. So we were looking for hints from people's past involvement, how they might be once they were elected. I remember there were some really interesting races that we were involved in. One of them was the attorney general's race between Kathleen Kane and Patrick Murphy. And Patrick Murphy when he was in Congress led the effort in the House to pass "Don't Ask, Don't Tell's" repeal. And we ended up endorsing him. And I remember one of Kathleen Kane's staff members calling me and saying, "I can't believe you're endorsing Patrick Murphy." And we said, "He kind of repealed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" And they were like, "Oh yeah, that thing." We were like, "That thing? That was like a very significant thing." What it also is, is it's proof of his commitment for somebody who's never held public office before where we don't have any proof. There's no proof we could get. And so sometimes we were endorsing against people that both said they were good on the issues but one had record and one didn't. And so we were always looking for that. Also with Equality Pennsylvania we were trying to be very aware that Pennsylvania was very key nationally. And during the Obama administration, those eight years, I was invited to numerous briefings at the White House or other types of ways to engage with national leaders. And I remember the Obama administration's LGBTQ liaison, Gautam Raghavan, who's now the director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in the Biden-Harris White House. We would ask and we would say, "What LGBTQ Pennsylvanians really want to see is the president come out for marriage." And he would always say, "I'm not here to make news today. Here's what I can tell you." And they were always very clear about what the White House was willing to support. And we were always saying, "There's one thing that's missing. And our voters, our people, are very aware of that." MF: After you move from Equality Pennsylvania so you're looking for a full-time position in this line of work, how do you make it from Equality Pennsylvania into a full-time position? AS: So at the time I had been here for a while in the Lehigh Valley. But my LGBTQ activism was really statewide. And later during that time with Equality Pennsylvania one of the races that I got involved in was the Bethlehem mayor's race. And Equality Pennsylvania played a pretty significant role in supporting Willie Reynolds when he ran for mayor of Bethlehem the first time. He had been our champion for nondiscrimination. And he was running against Bob Donchez, who was elected mayor, who was really not our champion. He ended up being supportive, I would say like lukewarm supportive, but was certainly not a champion when it came to LGBTQ people. And I worked with Willie on a number of his statements, and one of them was a mail piece he put out where we had a whole bunch of LGBTQ leaders standing behind him. And it said, "As mayor I pledge to not marry anyone until I can marry everyone." He would only officiate at weddings for any residents once Pennsylvania gave him the legal authority to officiate gay weddings. And that was a really big statement for somebody in the Lehigh Valley. This wasn't Philadelphia. This wasn't Pittsburgh. It's the Lehigh Valley. And before Pennsylvania had marriage. And so that campaign, which he didn't win, but he lost by only a very small amount of votes, it kind of let me know that I really liked doing work here in the Lehigh Valley. And I had also been involved with some other campaigns in this area. Including Matt Cartwright when he ran for Congress around that same time actually. And Congressman Cartwright, he wasn't a congressman yet, he called me to ask for LGBTQ community support. And I told him that we were concerned that he didn't support marriage equality. And he said something like, "Well, I'm just not sure that the area is ready for it." And I told him that he should go talk to his son and then call me back. And he called me back a little bit later and he said, "I talked to my son and he says that his entire generation thinks of this as a nonissue and that I should get with the times and support marriage. And so I'm going to." And I really started feeling like this is an area, and at the time his district included Easton. It now doesn't. He lived in Scranton. He's become a very strong champion for LGBTQ rights in Washington. But I felt like I liked being involved locally. And I also felt like I didn't have to keep doing elections and campaigns. I wanted to just find community. And so when I decided to leave Equality Pennsylvania it was to start Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. MF: Well, we're just about at the end of our time. And we're going to do a follow-up interview where Adrian will tell the origin story of Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. But since we're nearing the end, and we've talked about your early years of activism, perhaps we could conclude with a question like looking back on all of that early work what mattered to you the most, is there anything you wish you would have focused on more during that time period. How do you reflect on those early years of activism in your life? AS: Yeah. I'm really grateful for my time at Muhlenberg because it really kind of let me learn how to be an activist. It let me test out my activism in different ways and try different things. Learn also what didn't work. It gave me an opportunity to become a better activist. And in many ways with my time in Equality Pennsylvania as well I was really young when I became the board president. I was 24. And there was a lot that I thought I knew that I didn't. There certainly are things I would do differently now that I have had experience leading organization on the staff side. But I will say that that moment in time felt so important and so urgent. It felt like such a strong sense of urgency. And I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to be an activist then. I also think that in terms of the issues that we prioritized we weren't necessarily setting the agenda. The agenda was being set by national actors and national media around okay, :Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Okay, marriage equality. These things were happening. And state equality organizations don't exist in a vacuum. Because the state doesn't exist in a vacuum. So Pennsylvania is part of the US. And what's happening in the US affects Pennsylvania. So we weren't necessarily setting the agenda the way we may have wanted to or not. We were responding and leading in our state. And we can always look back on time periods and say, "Well, we should have done more on this." Or we could look back now and say, "Equality Pennsylvania should have done more on trans inclusion. Or more on racial justice. Or more on cross-movement issues." And we did some. For example Equality Pennsylvania got behind UFCW's campaign, United Food and Commercial Workers' campaign, to prevent the privatization of state liquor stores. Because as state employees liquor store employees are protected by a state executive order for nondiscrimination. We don't have state legislation that would protect private sector workers. We got behind an effort against school vouchers because it would provide tax dollars to schools who don't have antibullying rules in place. And they don't have nondiscrimination protections for students or teachers. So there were some cross-movement issues. But we always had to make that very clear LGBTQ case for it. And I think that looking back now we can look back to that time period and say we should have just been better at solidarity in general. But in that moment LGBTQ issues were considered deeply controversial. And front and center in the media. And most of us were doing it as a volunteer, with limited capacity. And doing the best and making the best decisions we could at the time. I do think that we helped to change Pennsylvania, although winning marriage in Pennsylvania came through the court. It came through the Whitewood decision. The ACLU of Pennsylvania represented a bunch of couples. And a Bush-appointed judge, Judge Jones, who also ruled in the case related to evolution in schools, the Dover case, he gave his ruling that Governor Corbett didn't appeal that granted marriage in Pennsylvania in 2014. And to get to the point where a Republican governor didn't appeal a ruling on marriage was in large part because of trying to make this issue propulsive in our state and really broadening public support for it. So I do think that our work at Equality Pennsylvania made a tangible difference. MF: Can I ask one follow-up question? I know we're moving to the end. We had started this discussion of activism, especially at the college level, as being very much connected to your faith. Very much linked to your burgeoning, developing, or evolving understanding of yourself and Judaism in your life as being connected to politics and activism. It felt like hand in hand at the college. How did your faith journey move along with your journey into activism? AS: So in college I really changed how I identified as Jewish. Again. I changed in high school and I changed again in college. In college I was working at the Reform synagogue in Allentown, Congregation Keneseth Israel. And I was teaching in the religious school. And that experience was really important for me because I met a couple people there. One, her name is Janet Hogan. And she was a religious school director. A straight woman, but a mother of an adult gay son who was married to a rabbi named Victor Appell. And she kind of invited me to her family events, like some family dinners. And I really had a really important -- she was my boss but became a mentor in many ways. And Ellen Sussman, who was the cantor at this congregation, who was also very supportive. And I really loved that job but I realized that it wasn't where I felt any kind of spiritual connection. And so I joined a Reconstructionist congregation in the Lehigh Valley called Am Haskalah that had a lesbian rabbi and many LGBTQ congregants. It was small and very grassroots. But that community was really important for me as well, especially in college and afterwards. I was still wearing my yarmulke all the time at that time period. And both in college and then throughout my time with Equality Pennsylvania. And I do think that how people read other people based on religiosity has always been really interesting when it comes to the queer movement. Some people have tried to paint -- some people meaning of a different ideology than mine -- have tried to paint it as God versus gay. And I think that when the leader of a state equality organization is wearing visibly religious symbols that are personally meaningful to them and that are not performative it does change that conversation a bit. When I would speak at rallies and people would see a visibly religious guy speaking about marriage equality, it made an enormous -- or when I would testify in front of local governments from Philadelphia City Hall to Bethlehem to small towns, Cheltenham Borough, Springfield Township, I would go to these small towns and testify for nondiscrimination, or for in the case of Philadelphia passing a couple other bills that weren't related to nondiscrimination. It did change the conversation a little bit. It undercut the opposition. Remember in Bethlehem, some people tried to suggest that religious people were against nondiscrimination. And it was like are you kidding. I do remember at one of the meetings, Bethlehem city council would always have a religious leader give an invocation at the beginning of the meeting. Which was an issue we actually -- we were going to pick our battles on. But that wasn't going to be our battle. I did feel very uncomfortable. And we were always concerned about who was going to give the invocation on the nights our issue was being voted on. Were they going to invoke council members, to pray for them to make a decision against equality? And there was a pastor who we didn't know. I looked him up and it was like an evangelical church. It was like uh-oh. And he got up and he spoke and gave his invocation. He said, "I didn't know what was going to be on the agenda tonight. But I'm so," these aren't his exact words. But he said something along the lines of, "I'm so pleased to see that the city council is poised to take action to support the equal rights of all residents. That's what my faith teaches. And it's what most faiths teach." And we were like sigh of relief. So for me it was a little bit symbolic and also very much personal religious decision to continue to be visibly Jewish through that time period. MF: Well, at the end I just want to thank you and give you the opportunity. Is there anything that you think we missed in this first oral history that you want to return to or something you want to say at the end of the interview today? AS: No. MF: No? Adrian, this is such a pleasure, I'm so grateful that you took the time today. Thank you so much. AS: Thank you. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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Adrian Shanker, Part 1, February 4, 2022
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Adrian Shanker recalls his life growing up in Westchester, New York, fighting for non-discrimination laws and the repeal of bans on same-sex marriage, his Jewish faith, and his activist work in the Lehigh Valley and beyond.
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LGBT-29
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2022-02-04
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories of Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ Community Members (2022 - )
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Mary Foltz
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Adrian Shanker
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5.4 March 4, 2022 Adrian Shanker, Part 2, March 4, 2022 LGBT-30 01:24:43 LVLGBT Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive Collection Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository Support for the collection of this interview was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Adrian Shanker Mary Foltz video/mp4 ShankerAdrian_20220304_video_edited_FINAL.mp4 1.0:|39(2)|66(13)|89(8)|114(10)|137(12)|162(8)|187(6)|206(9)|227(10)|252(12)|277(6)|300(9)|323(3)|348(15)|373(8)|396(6)|423(11)|448(13)|471(14)|494(7)|517(10)|538(15)|561(16)|584(11)|607(12)|630(4)|651(14)|678(2)|705(6)|730(17)|755(5)|782(9)|811(3)|834(13)|855(12)|884(3)|905(8)|932(3)|955(10)|982(3)|1009(4)|1034(10)|1059(6)|1082(8)|1109(6)|1134(7)|1155(8)|1180(13)|1201(10)|1222(10)|1247(3)|1268(15)|1295(10)|1318(14)|1343(15)|1366(13)|1393(5)|1418(10)|1441(8)|1464(15)|1487(14)|1512(8)|1539(7)|1566(3)|1591(4)|1616(6)|1639(8)|1664(11)|1689(2)|1710(15)|1737(13)|1762(11)|1793(7)|1826(11)|1853(4)|1876(12)|1903(6)|1928(5)|1951(12)|1970(12)|1989(13)|2014(11)|2037(6)|2060(3)|2081(4) 0 https://youtu.be/oro7sK8zntc YouTube video English 0 Interview Introductions Mary Foltz: My name is Mary Foltz, and I’m here with Adrian Shanker to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This year, our project has funding from ACLS. And Adrian and I are meeting at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center on March 4, 2022. First, I just want to say thank you so much for being here today.
 ; Adrian Shanker: Thanks for doing this.
 ; MF: And I’m just going to ask quick consent questions, and then we’ll jump into the interview. So do you consent to this interview today? 0 84 Starting a LGBT Center in Lehigh Valley MF: So I want to start with this question. How did you decide to start the center?
 ; AS: Yeah. Well, after I’d been leading Equality Pennsylvania as the board president, which was a volunteer position, for at that point three years, and I was on the board for four years. And it was a time in Equality Pennsylvania where my role as the board president was still -- it was a pretty small staff, so it was a pretty significant role, and one that required a lot of statewide travel. And I knew that I wanted to do LGBTQ work full time. And I had been, you know, driving around Pennsylvania for Equality PA, and kept coming back to the Lehigh Valley feeling like, how come I had to keep driving elsewhere to access the basic cultural programs that I really wanted for my own life? You know, they just weren’t happening here on a regular enough level, or thea small stipend, but it was really an all-volunteer effort. 0 181 Role of Pennsylvania Diversity Network AS: Pennsylvania Diversity Network was the predecessor organization to Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. And basically, Pennsylvania Diversity Network, the plan was for it to restructure into the center, with me as the executive director, and to move forward with a plan to open a physical space in the Lehigh Valley for LGBTQ people that would be a cultural hub, and a resource space, for our community.
 ; MF: Could you talk a little bit more about Pennsylvania Diversity Network, what they were doing before you got involved in visioning the center?
 ; AS: Yeah. So Pennsylvania Diversity Network was founded by Liz Bradbury and Patricia Sullivan, and it was pretty much an all-volunteer effort. 0 248 Importance of LGBT Centers AS: And as a result, it wasn’t an open-to-the-public community space, and there was really a need for that community space. And Liz and Trish and I, and others, had conversations about the need for a physical center for our community. I grew up going to an LGBT center in White Plains, New York. After my parents were divorced, I remember, when I was a kid, my mom took me and my brother to -- the LOFT LGBT Center had a gay parents with kids meetup in the ’90s. Later, there was an LGBT youth center, also in White Plains, New York, called Center Lane, that I went to in high school. So I knew the value of an LGBT center. And I was, kind of, surprised that we didn’t have one. And in my travels across Pennsylvania, I saw how important they were in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, for example, for the LGBT communities there. And a short-lived center had opened in Wilkes-Barre, and it didn’t last very long. But when that center opened, it was, like, Oh, if they can do this in Wilkes-Barre with a much smaller LGBT community, we can do this in Allentown, without question. 0 379 Obtaining a Physical Space for the Center AS: And at that announcement, we announced that the city of Allentown was going to sell us a building for one dollar that we could renovate. 
 ; 
 ; We had a design team already assembled of pro bono architects and engineers who were pledging their services to help us get the building ready. And we pitched to the community what the vision was. And it was very clear that we needed to raise a minimum of $75,000 from individuals in three months, so that we could demonstrate that the community was behind us. By the end of that three-month period, we had raised over $115,000. The average donor gave $400. So people did make stretch gifts -- what I mean by that are gifts beyond what they might normally donate in a year -- because they really did share the passion and the vision for having an LGBT community center. And from there, then, we started having conversations with corporations. And there was actually seven local-ish corporations who, together, provided additional funds needed to help us get into a physical space. 0 552 Problems with the First Space AS: That building we had been offered for a dollar from the city was on 11th and Turner. The exact address was 1021 West Turner Street. And it was a long-vacant building. It was a former, like, dairy building? And it had been in very poor condition. It was owned by the Allentown Redevelopment Authority. And we were able to work with Barry Isett & ; Associates, an engineering firm, who actually donated the cost of a Phase I Environmental Assessment. The assessment confirmed that there was over 1500 square feet of asbestos, and as a result, the construction cost was going to be much higher than we had anticipated, much, much higher. We already knew the building needed a lot of work, but now there was going to be major environmental remediation. 0 606 Looking for a Safer Building 0 806 First Two Grants So the first grant that we received was a very small grant from CenterLink to do a program called My 2024, where we had a community visioning session about people’s hopes, fears, and dreams about the next 10 years, after winning marriage equality nationally through the Obergefell v. Hodges decision. After winning marriage equality nationally, what did the Lehigh Valley LGBT community want to see for the next 10 years of the LGBT movement? 0 887 Creation of the LGBT Health Needs Assessment AS: And we were able to get funding to create an LGBT Health Needs Assessment, that we did as a pilot project in 2015 and ’16. In ’15, it was in the Lehigh Valley and central Pennsylvania. And then in 2016, it was expanded to four other regions in Pennsylvania, southwest PA, southeast PA, northeast PA, and, I believe, Philadelphia. And then after that, it actually became a biannual needs assessment. But that grant was very significant for us. At the time that we got it, it really allowed us to build up our credibility, and also, it gave us the funding we needed to really get off the ground. After we saw the data, though, that came back, I knew, and frankly, so did the Department of Health, that more work would be needed. And they awarded us other grants to do tobacco prevention and control. 0 979 Coming Together with the Community AS: I mean, we had so many volunteers here. The volunteers were so passionate. And really, it was the entire community coming together. We had churches and synagogues doing volunteer groups. We had corporations, like Air Products and Olympus, coming to do volunteer painting together. And we had individuals who were just coming and building community while they were volunteering. And Liz Bradbury actually led a lot of the volunteer activities, almost all of them. She oversaw the volunteers, really, as we were getting into the space, while most of my time was focused on continuing to fundraise, and making decisions about what the building would look like, and how we would pay for the building to look like that. So dealing with supplies, trying to get some pro bono support. For example, Habitat for Humanity Lehigh Valley came and retiled the floors in two of our bathrooms. Home Depot sent employees over to retile the floors in our front vestibule and our elevator, and donated all the supplies needed to do that project. So part of it was figuring out, like, what we were going to need, because we were really trying to not spend too much money to get open. 0 1067 Grand Opening of the Center AS: And our grand opening, in addition to remarks from dignitaries, it was just a momentous occasion. It was a rainy Saturday. I believe it was a Saturday. It was definitely on the weekend. And we had four hundred people show up. Everyone was really excited. We had a short VIP part for our founding donors, the people who gave five hundred or higher in that initial event that we hosted back in June 2014, right before the grand opening. And we had initially, right from day one, we said, founding donors will get the first view. And they came in a little bit before. We also had a volunteer recognition event that week for all the volunteers who helped us get the building ready, and that was a really exciting night, as well. You know, and from there, after the grand opening, it really moved very fast. So from that moment on, it was pretty nonstop. At the grand opening, we actually announced 10 programs that we’d be starting right away. And it wasn’t long before there was many more. 0 1185 Pulse Massacre AS: And really, throughout 2016, that continued. But something changed in the world in June 2016, which was two years after we announced our founding, which was the Pulse massacre. And so, you know, on the morning of Pulse, we all got the news just like everyone else did around the world. And we knew that we needed to respond, because we knew that our community needed us to respond. But in all of the work that we put into opening the building, we really hadn’t thought about security. And the Pulse massacre let us know that we needed to add security to the building, and we needed to do it pretty quickly. So we actually went to Air Products and PPL, and between the two companies, they gave us $16,000 of emergency grants to pay for security that we needed right away. And that was a challenging conversation, really. It was, we just hadn’t thought about it. And for good reason. We hadn’t had to have thought about it. 
 ; 0 1262 Community March for Orlando AS: [...] and we organized, within just a couple hours, a march from Candida’s to Stonewall. Hundreds of people showed up. And we marched. The police chief, at the time, joined us. Government officials, Republicans and Democrats. Congressman Charlie Dent was there as a Republican leader. We had many Democrats, as well. The owner of Candida’s, Candida Affa, joined us for the march. We started at Candida’s for some opening remarks, and then we marched over from her bar, which was on 12th and Chew, over to Hamilton Street, and then we marched down Hamilton Street to 10th Street, and then we turned to go on 10th Street over to the Stonewall. And in front of the Stonewall, people gathered on the steps of the Stonewall, hundreds of people. And we stood strong and resolved that love was stronger than hate. Our community would not keep from dancing. We would continue to do the work that was needed. We also, as a community in the Lehigh Valley, even though we were very new as an organization, raised about five thousand dollars to send down to the Orlando LGBT Center to support their urgent needs. And the next year, on the Pulse anniversary, we sent some additional money down to support the Pulse memorial. 0 1391 Programming Offered by Bradbury-Sullivan AS: But our programs continue to evolve. So in February 2017, we opened Project Silk, our LGBTQ youth program in partnership with Valley Youth House, through a grant. It was a quarter million dollar grant we received with Valley Youth House to start this program as a recreational-based safe space program for LGBTQ youth, specifically queer youth of color, and that it would be HIV-prevention focused. So the program started in February 2017, but we got the grant in the end of 2016 to be able to get started. And that was a really big win for our organization, to be able to get that kind of funding pretty early on. 0 1607 Gaining Support for the Center MF: [...] How does that happen in Pennsylvania or in the Lehigh Valley, where you and others involved in making the center able to motivate and activate wide support, from corporate support, governmental support, and then, of course, volunteer community support? 
 ; AS: I mean, we had to make a strong and compelling case for support, every direction we went. When we bought this building, we had to go appeal to Lehigh County to get property tax exemption, and we had to make the case that Bradbury-Sullivan Center was going to relieve the government of specific burdens in the types of services we would provide here. When we talked to the city of Allentown’s Redevelopment Authority earlier about receiving a one dollar Redevelopment Authority building, we had to make the case that having an LGBT center would not only serve the people in our community, but that it would beautify the neighborhood, it would provide economic benefit back to the community, and it would serve the entire community’s cultural needs, as well. And that’s what we’ve done. Even though we didn’t take that one dollar building, we have done that here in what was a vacant building. And this building, I didn’t talk about what it was. But historically, it was a warehouse. It was, at one point, a guns and ammo place, to my knowledge. The last thing it was before it was vacant for two years before we bought it was, the second floor was a law firm, the first floor was an architect office, and the third floor was the Lehigh County Drug and Alcohol building. And so it wasn’t conducive to one organization taking over the whole building. We had to do some work to make that, kind of, seamless. And it really felt like three different organizations, just the way the building was structured. And so we had to change that around a little bit and make it feel like one space, one community center. 0 1761 Vision for the Community: My 2024 MF: You talked about doing a community visioning, getting people together to envision what the center would be. And I’m just curious what some of those visions were that community members shared, and how that mapped out.
 ; AS: That wasn’t specific to the center, actually. It was just about, really, what the Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ community wanted from the LGBT movement for the next ten years. And that was back in October 2014, so looking 2014 to 2024. 0 1944 Results of the LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment MF: I want to ask a little bit more about the public health programming, because you had that first big grant for the Health Needs Assessment. I’m curious. What did you uncover in that assessment in the first year? How has that shifted over the years that you’ve done it?
 ; AS: So we learned right from the beginning with the first LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment that LGBTQ people in the Lehigh Valley experienced health disparities through all aspects of their lives, except for one, which was access to health insurance. But in every other area of our lives, we were faring a little bit worse off from a health and wellness standpoint than the majority of the population. 0 2211 Impact of Public Health Programming on LGBTQ Community MF: I have some ideas about this, but I just want to ask a basic question. What is the impact of a statewide health assessment? What is the impact of public health programming from a local LGBT community center?
 ; AS: Yeah. So every community deserves an LGBT center. That’s what CenterLink says, and that was a mantra we used at the beginning. And we need our local community-based LGBT centers because community-based organizations are the first line of defense. So it’s where you go when you need to build community. You’re new to an area and you want to meet people. It’s also where you often turn when you need a referral for a doctor. It’s an organization you trust to get information. And so as a trusted messenger to our community, we were a great organization to provide health promotion programs. 0 2402 Making the LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment Statewide MF: Could you talk a little bit about the collaborative nature -- like, how you developed that Needs Assessment across the state?
 ; AS: Yeah. So the way that we made it a statewide sample was that we went to the Department of Health, and we said, It would be much easier, and less time consuming, and frankly, less expensive, if we did this as one statewide project instead of six separate projects, where you’re working with six different agencies in each different community. So the model we did was that we got one state grant to do this on a statewide basis, and then we collaborated and funded LGBT community-based organizations across Pennsylvania to be partners in that project, and actually, we partnered with over 30 organizations in Pennsylvania, and funded them to help us with the data collection. 0 2483 Combining Bradbury-Sullivan and Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley MF: You talked a little bit about other public health programming, the public health -- the Needs Assessment. Can you talk a little bit about other programming, like your merging with Pride, and Pride programming that you put on?
 ; AS: Yeah. So Lehigh Valley Pride, as we call it, was previously known as Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley. And it was an all-volunteer organization since the early ’90s. And courageous and dedicated volunteers that really made Lehigh Valley Pride happen every year. In 2017, Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley merged with Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. So I facilitated this merger. And we worked for many months with the board of Pride to consider how this might work. 0 2618 Making Pride Accessible AS: We also prioritize access and inclusion for people with disabilities, by bringing sign language interpreters to the stages, reserving parking and seating in the front of the stages for older adults and people with disabilities, ADA restrooms, large print programs, to really try to make for a more inclusive festival. Because Pride is for everyone, and that’s really important to us. I think that there were some skeptics over how it would work at the Jewish Community Center, but it really has worked pretty well to have a large festival. We also increased the faith programs at Pride by bringing them onsite. 0 2711 Arts and Cultural Programming MF: In addition to Pride programming, you have arts and cultural programming, and you have gallery programming. But you --
 ; AS: Yeah. I’ll talk a little bit about the galleries. So I talked about the library earlier, but our art galleries, for me, have been so exciting and important over the years. Really, the only queer art space in the Lehigh Valley, where that’s its mission, is to exhibit and celebrate LGBTQ artists. And we’ve balanced between local artists and not-so-local artists. And we’ve brought some exhibits that are museum quality. Mariette Pathy Allen, who is a major photojournalist, who has documented trans communities for decades, kicked off her newest book of photographs of trans people in Southeast Asia from our center with an exhibit here. 0 2840 Reacting to the Trump Presidency MF: You mentioned Trump, through this art gallery exhibit. What was it like to be a community center executive director during that presidential campaign and that presidency?
 ; AS: Well, you know, we’re a nonpartisan organization, so as all nonpartisan organizations, we don’t engage directly in electoral politics. We don’t tell people who to vote for. However, the day after Trump was elected, the morning after, when we all woke up to that news, we knew that it was going to be very challenging for our community, not because a Republican was elected president over a Democrat, but because a person who made such challenging comments about diverse communities, LGBTQ people, people of color, Muslims, transgender people in particular, there was a lot of very strong words and rhetoric that was spewn throughout the campaign. And so we wanted to make it clear to our community that we were a safe space for everyone to come and be, but that we would also resist when needed. 0 2966 Litigation Against Donald Trump AS: And of course, once Trump issued rules that were going to directly harm LGBTQ people, we took a different approach, which is, we actually filed lawsuits to block three Trump administration rules that would have caused direct harm to LGBTQ people. The first one was the denial of care rule, where Trump’s Health and Human Service Department issued a rule, a final rule, that would have invited discrimination from health care providers by saying that health care providers could, essentially, deny care to an LGBTQ person if it violated their moral and religious beliefs. In fact, the rule was so problematic, it didn’t even require the health care professional to notify their employer that they were doing so. It didn’t require a warm handoff to a different provider. It didn’t require a referral to a different provider. It didn’t require anything. It was such a harmful rule, designed specifically in a way that would have harmed people living with HIV and transgender people, as well as people who may need abortion care in the future. So we were very concerned about this rule. And in coalition with some other LGBT organizations and a couple doctors, we were a plaintiff in a lawsuit led by Lambda Legal, and were able to block the rule from going into effect. 0 3202 Navigating COVID-19 MF: There’s another big thing happening during the Trump administration, which is COVID-19. 
 ; AS: Yeah.
 ; MF: So here you have these three lawsuits, but you also have the global pandemic. How were you navigating in that time?
 ; AS: Well, nobody, including me, could have predicted the pandemic that has now been ongoing for -- we’ve just entered the third year (laughs) of the ongoing pandemic. That’s, certainly in my lifetime, unprecedented. At the start of the pandemic, like every other LGBT center, like every other nonprofit, it was just about navigating uncertainty. It was about, we don’t know what’s to come, but we have to adapt quickly. So in an effort to keep our community safe as well as our staff, we announced that staff would be working from home. We were shutting down our building. 0 3405 Making COVID-19 Data Inclusive AS: They were all reasonable changes given the uncertainty. In addition to what we were doing directly for our community in terms of programs, and in terms of what we were doing to manage staff transition to a virtual office, we were also directly engaged in advocacy from the very beginning. In March 2020, the CDC, under the Trump administration, put out a directive requiring all states to collect demographic data with regard to race, ethnicity, age, and gender. They did not include sexual orientation or gender identity. In April 2020, we sent -- we organized with the National LGBT Cancer Network, and 26 organizations joined us -- a letter to then-Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, asking that Pennsylvania be the first state to mandate collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data for COVID infection, mortality, and hospitalization. One month later to the day, we were able to get Pennsylvania to collect COVID-19 infection data. 0 3564 Lehigh Valley's First Virtual Pride Festival AS: But really, it was a journey of health activism through that time, as well. And in terms of our programs, I mean, we had to continuously pivot. So I didn’t want to be canceling in-person programs too far out, because we kept being told, Oh, it’s just a couple more weeks. Oh, it’s just a couple more months. So we had to make decisions continuously. And moving Lehigh Valley Pride to a virtual Pride for the first time in its history was a heart-wrenching decision, but it would not have been possible to have an in-person Pride in 2020. So we ended up with a televised Pride festival on RCN, a star-studded event. Celebrities that participated included Michelle Visage, Carson Kressley, RuPaul Drag Racers like Silky Nutmeg Ganache, Jujubee. We had Peter Paige from Queer as Folk. We had Theo Germaine from The Politician. We had Holly Near, you know, iconic musician Holly Near. We had a whole bunch of really amazing folks. 0 3625 Pivoting to Virtual Programming AS: And we continued to pivot. We produced a virtual queer novel miniseries on our Facebook that ran as Facebook Live events, where we had, instead of in-person author talks, we had author talks on Facebook Live. We tried to curate content for our community to keep our community connected through a period of quarantine and uncertainty. And we started delivering healthy food packages to the youth program participants that we were serving, because they couldn’t come here, so we brought stuff there. As a resource to our community, we actually developed a subpage on our website for LGBT-specific COVID-19 information. We wrote guidances for the city of Allentown, county of Erie, Montgomery County, and the state of Pennsylvania about safer sex during the pandemic. 0 3716 Work as a Publisher/Author/Editor MF: I would say also during this time, you were moving into publishing. And I know this is, sort of, adjacent to the community center, but you’re publishing on public health, editing collections. You have another book coming out soon. Could you talk a little bit about how that work as an author, as an editor, is connected to your work with the center, or just a little bit about your publication?
 ; AS: Yeah. So after we did our first Needs Assessment in 2015, I became very passionate about LGBTQ barriers to care and access to care. When it comes to accessing, the unmet dream of health equity, defined by the US government, is the attainment of the highest quality of health for all people. That’s the definition from Healthy People 2020. LGBTQ people don’t have that. So I actually went and enrolled in a graduate certificate program at George Washington University in LGBT health policy and practice. 0 4028 Role in Continuing Scholarship MF: I can’t wait to see that book. I just want to say that. And it’s recorded. I can’t wait to buy that. Beyond publishing those two, curating those two collections, one of which will be out soon, is Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center participating in other kinds of publications, research publications, or --
 ; AS: Yeah. So something that’s, kind of, unique to Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center is our work to make contributions to the literature more broadly. So we actually conduct original research. We’re so lucky to have a data and evaluation department. We present the results of our programs at state and national conferences, for example, American Public Health Association, Society for Public Health Educators. That’s just two examples. And we have also worked to try to publish some of the results from our Needs Assessment, or programmatic results from our archive, or from some of our health programs, in either peer-reviewed or other academic journals. That really allows us to demonstrate the role that Bradbury-Sullivan Center plays, and more broadly, the role that LGBT community centers play in all communities, because the work that we do here is not so dissimilar from other communities. And so our contribution to the literature, I think, has been really important. 0 4185 Work on Legislation Banning Conversion Therapy
 ; MF: You mentioned the bans on conversion therapy, and I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how that worked in Bethlehem, in Allentown, and Easton. Can you just describe that a bit more, what that process was like once you had the legislation drafted?
 ; AS: So National Center for Lesbian Rights drafted the legislation, and shared it with local elected officials in our community. We built a strong coalition, though. So our role was that we were doing public education and awareness in support of ending conversion therapy in our communities. So for example, we partnered with KidsPeace, which is a mental health hospital here in the Lehigh Valley, who shared in public meetings that their operating rules don’t allow conversion therapy for their clinicians. The director of the Allentown Health Bureau spoke out, saying that she had talked to local pediatricians, who have confirmed that they have seen the harms of conversion therapy in our community from their patients. So we mobilized our community, is really the role that we played, as grassroots organizing. And we were able to see these three laws passed very quickly in each municipality. 0 4369 Starting the Archival Collection MF: Well, I want to ask a question about the archives, because we haven’t talked about that yet, and you really, from the beginning, were focusing also on archival collection when you were envisioning the center and when it was opening. So could I ask about that?
 ; AS: Yeah. 
 ; MF: Why did you (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) --
 ; AS: It was one of the first programs of the center, actually. So very early on, I approached Tina Hertel, the library director of Muhlenberg College, and we set up a meeting with her, and with Susan Falciani Maldonado, special collections archivist. And the meeting was really -- we had some stuff already. There was stuff in Liz and Trish’s basement. I had some stuff in my house. And we didn’t want to be holding onto it. And we also knew that there was a lot of stuff in the community. We looked at similar archives in central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. But something that was really important to me was community ownership. So our agreement with Muhlenberg is the only one we’re aware of in the country where an LGBT center maintains ownership of the archival materials, and it’s professionally housed and preserved at a university library. And Muhlenberg was willing to do that with us. And it’s been an incredible partnership. 0 4554 Exceeding Goals for the Center MF: The center does so much educational programming, training, arts and culture, galleries, reading groups, film series, archival collection, public health. You’re involved in lawsuits when needed to protect our community. Was that part of the original vision that we started with today? Did you think, when you were starting --
 ; AS: We have far exceeded the original vision. I mean, the original vision was getting a physical space. We said we were going to revolutionize the programs and services available to the LGBT community. That’s language we used in 2014. I think we have absolutely done that. And that does not mean that there’s not more that’s needed. Absolutely. There is always more we can do for our community. Our current director of development, Matt Easterwood, likes to say, “More money, more mission.” So as Bradbury-Sullivan Center continues to grow, more can be done for the community at large. But, you know, part of my decision to move on from Bradbury-Sullivan Center is because I feel like sometimes I can be clouded by my original vision. And I think leadership changes are good over time. And there’s an opportunity for new ideas, for new leadership that comes with different expertise, different backgrounds, different passions. And actually, I think that’s good for organizations over time. We have absolutely grown past my wildest dreams. 0 4710 People Important to the Formation of the Center MF: Well, we’re right about at the end. You ended with this lovely statement about, you know, it will continue with new leadership and wonderful people that are still here. And it leads me to, maybe, a final question or two. Do you want to talk about the people that have really made this organization into this incredible support for our community?
 ; AS: Yeah. Why don’t you pause for a minute and give me a minute to think about that?
 ; (break in video)
 ; AS: Throughout the journey of opening the center, there’s been so many people who have been part of that journey, and there’s no way I could possibly name every single person. But I do want to share some names of folks that were critical to the start, the opening, and the growth of the center over time. So from the very beginning, Liz Bradbury and Patricia Sullivan, and Liz Kleintop, original board members of Pennsylvania Diversity Network, at the time, that really were willing to go with me on this journey. 0 MovingImage Adrian Shanker recounts the inception of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the work it does to continue to serve the LGBTQ+ community in the Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania as a whole.
 ; INTERVIEW WITH ADRIAN SHANKER MARCH 4, 2022 MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here with Adrian Shanker to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This year, our project has funding from ACLS. And Adrian and I are meeting at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center on March 4, 2022. First, I just want to say thank you so much for being here today. ADRIAN SHANKER: Thanks for doing this. MF: And I'm just going to ask quick consent questions, and then we'll jump into the interview. So do you consent to this interview today? AS: I do. MF: Do you consent to having this interview transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online? AS: I do. MF: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, like short films, articles, websites? AS: I do. MF: Okay. And I just want to remind you that you will have 30 days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview, decide if you want to redact any material, or if you want to pull the interview from the collection. Do you understand that, that you have time? AS: Yes. MF: Okay. Great. So last time we did an interview, we really talked a lot about previous organizations that you've been a part of. But today, we're really going to talk about the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. So I want to start with this question. How did you decide to start the center? AS: Yeah. Well, after I'd been leading Equality Pennsylvania as the board president, which was a volunteer position, for at that point three years, and I was on the board for four years. And it was a time in Equality Pennsylvania where my role as the board president was still -- it was a pretty small staff, so it was a pretty significant role, and one that required a lot of statewide travel. And I knew that I wanted to do LGBTQ work full time. And I had been, you know, driving around Pennsylvania for Equality PA, and kept coming back to the Lehigh Valley feeling like, how come I had to keep driving elsewhere to access the basic cultural programs that I really wanted for my own life? You know, they just weren't happening here on a regular enough level, or they were not easy to find when they did happen. And so the desire was to open an LGBT community center for the Lehigh Valley. And I knew that I had the skills and the background to do it. But what I wasn't sure of is if other people in the community felt that it was needed. So the process to start the center started with some visioning, and some private community meetings with key individuals or potential stakeholder groups. And then it was launched publicly at the gala for Pennsylvania Diversity Network in 2014, in June 2014. Pennsylvania Diversity Network was the predecessor organization to Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. And basically, Pennsylvania Diversity Network, the plan was for it to restructure into the center, with me as the executive director, and to move forward with a plan to open a physical space in the Lehigh Valley for LGBTQ people that would be a cultural hub, and a resource space, for our community. MF: Could you talk a little bit more about Pennsylvania Diversity Network, what they were doing before you got involved in visioning the center? AS: Yeah. So Pennsylvania Diversity Network was founded by Liz Bradbury and Patricia Sullivan, and it was pretty much an all-volunteer effort. Liz drew a small stipend, but it was really an all-volunteer effort. As a regional advocacy organization for LGBTQ people. It operated out of their home. And as a result, it wasn't an open-to-the-public community space, and there was really a need for that community space. And Liz and Trish and I, and others, had conversations about the need for a physical center for our community. I grew up going to an LGBT center in White Plains, New York. After my parents were divorced, I remember, when I was a kid, my mom took me and my brother to -- the LOFT LGBT Center had a gay parents with kids meetup in the '90s. Later, there was an LGBT youth center, also in White Plains, New York, called Center Lane, that I went to in high school. So I knew the value of an LGBT center. And I was, kind of, surprised that we didn't have one. And in my travels across Pennsylvania, I saw how important they were in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, for example, for the LGBT communities there. And a short-lived center had opened in Wilkes-Barre, and it didn't last very long. But when that center opened, it was, like, Oh, if they can do this in Wilkes-Barre with a much smaller LGBT community, we can do this in Allentown, without question. So it started with visiting some of the other centers, getting some ideas, talking to stakeholders, meeting with individuals, some potential funders, some community leaders, both LGBT and from the broader community, to get a sense of what might be possible. We also met with elected officials to try to get a sense of what kind of support there would be from the government, potentially, for a new community center in the Lehigh Valley. And by the time that we were ready to launch publicly, we used the annual gala for Pennsylvania Diversity Network, which was the LGBT Community Leadership Awards. And at that time, it happened in June every year. And it was about 180 attendees. And it was at Allentown Symphony Hall in the Rodale Room. And so we had told people, "there's going to be a very special announcement, and you're going to want to be here for this announcement". And at that announcement, we announced that the city of Allentown was going to sell us a building for one dollar that we could renovate. We had a design team already assembled of pro bono architects and engineers who were pledging their services to help us get the building ready. And we pitched to the community what the vision was. And it was very clear that we needed to raise a minimum of $75,000 from individuals in three months, so that we could demonstrate that the community was behind us. By the end of that three-month period, we had raised over $115,000. The average donor gave $400. So people did make stretch gifts -- what I mean by that are gifts beyond what they might normally donate in a year -- because they really did share the passion and the vision for having an LGBT community center. And from there, then, we started having conversations with corporations. And there was actually seven local-ish corporations who, together, provided additional funds needed to help us get into a physical space. Those corporations were Jerner & ; Palmer law firm in Philadelphia ; Gross McGinley law firm here in Allentown ; Capital Blue Cross, our health insurance company located in Allentown ; the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce ; OraSure. I may be missing one. It will come back to me. Oh, and ESSA Bank & ; Trust Foundation, as well. So those local funders gave us the corporate funding to be able to balance that. I left my last job in September 2014 to do this work full time. We had raised enough money for me to come on board full time. And it really was going to require full-time fundraising to be able to get into a physical space and build up an organization. I had been working in marketing while I was leading Equality Pennsylvania. I worked in marketing for a local LGBT-owned business called Wolper Information Services, and they were based in Easton. And actually, the owner at the time, Susan Wolper, let me continue working out of their space. She donated office space, basically, to start the center. So I continued working out of that building in Easton until we had acquired a space, which was about a year and a half. But from the moment that I started doing the work full time, the focus was fundraising and really trying to get into a building. That building we had been offered for a dollar from the city was on 11th and Turner. The exact address was 1021 West Turner Street. And it was a long-vacant building. It was a former, like, dairy building? And it had been in very poor condition. It was owned by the Allentown Redevelopment Authority. And we were able to work with Barry Isett & ; Associates, an engineering firm, who actually donated the cost of a Phase I Environmental Assessment. The assessment confirmed that there was over 1500 square feet of asbestos, and as a result, the construction cost was going to be much higher than we had anticipated, much, much higher. We already knew the building needed a lot of work, but now there was going to be major environmental remediation. And so we made a decision to walk away from that building, and instead, we found a real estate agent, Rob Ritter, a local Weichert real estate agent, who is part of the LGBT community. And he helped us to look for other properties. We looked at a whole bunch of properties together. And finally, we found 522 West Maple Street. We bought this building on September 30, 2015, so only about a year and a quarter after announcing publicly to the community, and only a year after I was doing this work full time. We were able to acquire this building. And that acquisition is complicated for a nonprofit, any nonprofit, to acquire property. It's more complicated for a brand-new nonprofit, essentially. We really only had one year of finances behind us, even though we had restructured from Pennsylvania Diversity Network. The budget at Pennsylvania Diversity Network was about $22,000 a year. So we really only had one year of financials that included staff to show to banks. And we were turned down initially by traditional banks. And we ended up getting a mortgage through People First Federal Credit Union. And they took a risk on us as a small nonprofit. We had a very compelling business plan and were able to make a strong case for how we'd be able to pay off the mortgage, and not only provide essential services to the community, but what our funding would look like. So, yeah, September 30, we closed on the building. The building had been for sale for about $369,000, I believe. And we bought it for $340,000. It's 13,000 square feet. And it needed a good amount of work. Not the kind of work that would require major construction. It needed some aesthetic improvements, and it needed a little bit of repairs. So we were able to manage those repairs, and we had volunteers assist with aesthetic support, repainting, removing the carpet from the floors, scraping the glue off the floors that was underneath the carpet, that kind of stuff. And we had 3100 volunteer hours from more than 300 volunteers over a six-month period before we opened to the public on April 9, 2016. For our grand opening, we had more than four hundred people in attendance. We had remarks from the lieutenant governor at the time, Mike Stack ; the CEO of CenterLink, the association of LGBT centers, Denise Spivak. She flew in to speak at the event. It was a moment for our entire community to celebrate. And really, every donor who gave any amount of money, five dollars to five thousand dollars, felt like they were part of it. Every volunteer who participated in some aspect knew that they were part of it. You know? So it was really, the community came together to support and open an LGBT community center. At the same time, though, we were also building up what our programs would look like. So if we go back a little bit, right after I started, in addition to raising money for the building, we also had to start doing programs, because you can't only fundraise, right? So the first grant that we received was a very small grant from CenterLink to do a program called My 2024, where we had a community visioning session about people's hopes, fears, and dreams about the next 10 years, after winning marriage equality nationally through the Obergefell v. Hodges decision. After winning marriage equality nationally, what did the Lehigh Valley LGBT community want to see for the next 10 years of the LGBT movement? We also then received a grant from the Women's 5K Classic. These were the only two grants we received in 2014, actually, our first two. And the Women's 5K Classic provided a grant to have us host a women's health fair, and start some education around gynecologic cancer screenings. And that was our first health grant. And shortly after we did that, we were able to work with the Pennsylvania Department of Health with the support of one of my mentors, Dr. Scout, who at the time worked at CenterLink. Currently, today, he leads the National LGBT Cancer Network. And he facilitated an introduction for me with the Pennsylvania Department of Health's Division of Tobacco Prevention and Control, and provided technical assistance, as well, to me, to teach me how to work with government funders. And we were able to get funding to create an LGBT Health Needs Assessment, that we did as a pilot project in 2015 and '16. In '15, it was in the Lehigh Valley and central Pennsylvania. And then in 2016, it was expanded to four other regions in Pennsylvania, southwest PA, southeast PA, northeast PA, and, I believe, Philadelphia. And then after that, it actually became a biannual needs assessment. But that grant was very significant for us. At the time that we got it, it really allowed us to build up our credibility, and also, it gave us the funding we needed to really get off the ground. After we saw the data, though, that came back, I knew, and frankly, so did the Department of Health, that more work would be needed. And they awarded us other grants to do tobacco prevention and control. I mean, we received some significant funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, first through the Needs Assessment, and then to start doing health promotion around tobacco prevention and control. And those grants really allowed us to start building as an organization at the same time as we were physically trying to get into a space, and once we got into the space, to start planning what our programs would look like. The time period in between purchasing the building and opening was so exciting. I mean, we had so many volunteers here. The volunteers were so passionate. And really, it was the entire community coming together. We had churches and synagogues doing volunteer groups. We had corporations, like Air Products and Olympus, coming to do volunteer painting together. And we had individuals who were just coming and building community while they were volunteering. And Liz Bradbury actually led a lot of the volunteer activities, almost all of them. She oversaw the volunteers, really, as we were getting into the space, while most of my time was focused on continuing to fundraise, and making decisions about what the building would look like, and how we would pay for the building to look like that. So dealing with supplies, trying to get some pro bono support. For example, Habitat for Humanity Lehigh Valley came and retiled the floors in two of our bathrooms. Home Depot sent employees over to retile the floors in our front vestibule and our elevator, and donated all the supplies needed to do that project. So part of it was figuring out, like, what we were going to need, because we were really trying to not spend too much money to get open. I'm sorry. I need to pause again. TIERSA CURRY: I'm good. AS: Okay. So, yeah. I mean, as we were preparing to open, it was just so much exciting momentum here at the building. And our grand opening, in addition to remarks from dignitaries, it was just a momentous occasion. It was a rainy Saturday. I believe it was a Saturday. It was definitely on the weekend. And we had four hundred people show up. Everyone was really excited. We had a short VIP part for our founding donors, the people who gave five hundred or higher in that initial event that we hosted back in June 2014, right before the grand opening. And we had initially, right from day one, we said, founding donors will get the first view. And they came in a little bit before. We also had a volunteer recognition event that week for all the volunteers who helped us get the building ready, and that was a really exciting night, as well. You know, and from there, after the grand opening, it really moved very fast. So from that moment on, it was pretty nonstop. At the grand opening, we actually announced 10 programs that we'd be starting right away. And it wasn't long before there was many more. I think none of us quite predicted how much momentum there would be. And it was a constant balancing act between saying yes to everything that the community needed, and saying no, because we didn't have the resources to do everything at once. So we started with our LGBTQ library, and we started offering HIV testing, and we had a bereavement group. And we had partnered with other nonprofits. Like, Turning Point of Lehigh Valley was one of our first rental partners. Lehigh Valley Humanists was also one of our first rental partners. And so we had this space, and it was really exciting. And we wanted to start utilizing it as best as we could. And really, throughout 2016, that continued. But something changed in the world in June 2016, which was two years after we announced our founding, which was the Pulse massacre. And so, you know, on the morning of Pulse, we all got the news just like everyone else did around the world. And we knew that we needed to respond, because we knew that our community needed us to respond. But in all of the work that we put into opening the building, we really hadn't thought about security. And the Pulse massacre let us know that we needed to add security to the building, and we needed to do it pretty quickly. So we actually went to Air Products and PPL, and between the two companies, they gave us $16,000 of emergency grants to pay for security that we needed right away. And that was a challenging conversation, really. It was, we just hadn't thought about it. And for good reason. We hadn't had to have thought about it. But the Pulse massacre really reminded us that we needed to be thinking about that. At the same time, we needed to be thinking about our community's needs, and we organized, within just a couple hours, a march from Candida's to Stonewall. Hundreds of people showed up. And we marched. The police chief, at the time, joined us. Government officials, Republicans and Democrats. Congressman Charlie Dent was there as a Republican leader. We had many Democrats, as well. The owner of Candida's, Candida Affa, joined us for the march. We started at Candida's for some opening remarks, and then we marched over from her bar, which was on 12th and Chew, over to Hamilton Street, and then we marched down Hamilton Street to 10th Street, and then we turned to go on 10th Street over to the Stonewall. And in front of the Stonewall, people gathered on the steps of the Stonewall, hundreds of people. And we stood strong and resolved that love was stronger than hate. Our community would not keep from dancing. We would continue to do the work that was needed. We also, as a community in the Lehigh Valley, even though we were very new as an organization, raised about five thousand dollars to send down to the Orlando LGBT Center to support their urgent needs. And the next year, on the Pulse anniversary, we sent some additional money down to support the Pulse memorial. We've really rarely done fundraising for other communities, but that was a moment where it felt very needed, and our community wanted to do that. They really wanted to give as a Lehigh Valley LGBT community voice. Later in 2016, that's really -- we really started to grow pretty quickly in 2016 and in 2017, and we were able to bring on more staff. Really, to get us through the grand opening, it was a very lean team here at the center, and we started to grow. We started to have more and more employees. And that trend has continued, certainly through today, where our growth has been pretty unprecedented. But our programs continue to evolve. So in February 2017, we opened Project Silk, our LGBTQ youth program in partnership with Valley Youth House, through a grant. It was a quarter million dollar grant we received with Valley Youth House to start this program as a recreational-based safe space program for LGBTQ youth, specifically queer youth of color, and that it would be HIV-prevention focused. So the program started in February 2017, but we got the grant in the end of 2016 to be able to get started. And that was a really big win for our organization, to be able to get that kind of funding pretty early on. Our health programs really had been the strongest-funded part of our organization, and then when we received the youth program, that added to it. Also, our library and our art galleries were doing very well, engaging the community. We partnered with Lehigh University to be able to offer community reading groups. We were able to bring in a professional curator, Deborah Rabinsky, who curated most of our exhibits in our galleries, and was really able to help us to develop the gallery. We, at some point, launched the Reel Queer Film Series to be able to provide free screenings of art house, independent,and documentary films that celebrate LGBTQ lives. And as we continued to grow, more was possible. You know, more became possible. One former employee who was really pivotal to that growth was Oliver Reilly, who goes by Ollie. And Ollie was the first development staff person here. And it's very hard for a new nonprofit to hire a development staff person, because it's a big amount of money to commit to, and you're really relying on that person's ability to raise the money, so it's a little scary. But I knew, as a fundraising professional myself, I knew how necessary it was for our growth. And when we brought Ollie in, fundraising really continued to grow beyond what it was before when it was just me doing the fundraising. And by the way, I should mention that from day one, we've had interns, volunteers. Some of them have helped with fundraising. We've also had staff members with various roles in fundraising, as well. But Ollie was the first full-time development employee, other than me. And that was pivotal, in terms of our growth as an organization. From there, I actually think that the community really started taking us seriously after we bought the building. That was the moment where people really saw us as -- we went from being a dream to being a reality for a lot of people. Including me. But I think that people that weren't willing to invest early on, by making donations, including large ones, to a startup, once we had the building, they were really willing to be part of it. MF: Can you go back a minute to -- I mean, we're still, kind of, in those first years. I mean? , you talk about corporate support, governmental support. Even though you didn't go with the one dollar building, you had an offer out there from the city of Allentown. How does that happen in Pennsylvania or in the Lehigh Valley, where you and others involved in making the center able to motivate and activate wide support, from corporate support, governmental support, and then, of course, volunteer community support? AS: I mean, we had to make a strong and compelling case for support, every direction we went. When we bought this building, we had to go appeal to Lehigh County to get property tax exemption, and we had to make the case that Bradbury-Sullivan Center was going to relieve the government of specific burdens in the types of services we would provide here. When we talked to the city of Allentown's Redevelopment Authority earlier about receiving a one dollar Redevelopment Authority building, we had to make the case that having an LGBT center would not only serve the people in our community, but that it would beautify the neighborhood, it would provide economic benefit back to the community, and it would serve the entire community's cultural needs, as well. And that's what we've done. Even though we didn't take that one dollar building, we have done that here in what was a vacant building. And this building, I didn't talk about what it was. But historically, it was a warehouse. It was, at one point, a guns and ammo place, to my knowledge. The last thing it was before it was vacant for two years before we bought it was, the second floor was a law firm, the first floor was an architect office, and the third floor was the Lehigh County Drug and Alcohol building. And so it wasn't conducive to one organization taking over the whole building. We had to do some work to make that, kind of, seamless. And it really felt like three different organizations, just the way the building was structured. And so we had to change that around a little bit and make it feel like one space, one community center. And, you know, the support that we started receiving, we received because we asked for it. We made a compelling case for support. With corporate support, we would engage employees of those corporations and ask for their help to make the case to the company. We would talk about what we would be able to accomplish from cultural and economic lenses. So what would be our economic benefit back to the Lehigh Valley, and what would be the cultural benefit for the people who live here? MF: You talked about doing a community visioning, getting people together to envision what the center would be. And I'm just curious what some of those visions were that community members shared, and how that mapped out. AS: That wasn't specific to the center, actually. It was just about, really, what the Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ community wanted from the LGBT movement for the next ten years. And that was back in October 2014, so looking 2014 to 2024. And it was right after we won marriage equality nationally at the Supreme Court. So some of the things people talked about were, you know, a final end to the AIDS epidemic. You know, that with how many years had gone past, that that needed to be reprioritized. They talked about winning nondiscrimination protection, so that LGBTQ people didn't fear discrimination from landlords or employers based on who they are. People talked about creating more opportunities for parents of LGBT kids, and for LGBTQ parents in general. People talked about, you know, navigating family building as an LGBTQ family, or as a couple, or even as an individual. They talked about a variety of things. And some people did talk about the need for a community space. But really, we weren't thinking local as much as we were thinking from a national lens. We did, however, at Lehigh Valley Pride in 2015, we did some informal surveying to get people's ideas about what a center might be. It wasn't a scientific survey the way that our LGBT Health Needs Assessment is, where it's professionally analyzed, and it goes through an IRB process, like university researchers would do. This was more just for our own programmatic knowledge, so that we could start to build the programs that our community would respond to. MF: What did people write down? What were they interested in for the center, and how did that influence your development of programming? AS: It was clear that people wanted arts and culture programs. Some of the words that community members use are not necessarily the words that funders use to describe what is sometimes a similar thing. So people would talk about social programs, or fun ways to connect with community, and we talk about that today as community building and cultural programs. But that's really what we're talking about. People talked about a place for support groups. They talked about a film festival or film screenings. There was a variety of ideas. And not every idea was something that was able to be operationalized. Even seven and a half years later, we haven't been able to with everything. And needs change over time, as well. But we did really think about some of those initial thoughts that we heard, and to try to operationalize many of them. MF: I want to ask a little bit more about the public health programming, because you had that first big grant for the Health Needs Assessment. I'm curious. What did you uncover in that assessment in the first year? How has that shifted over the years that you've done it? AS: So we learned right from the beginning with the first LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment that LGBTQ people in the Lehigh Valley experienced health disparities through all aspects of their lives, except for one, which was access to health insurance. But in every other area of our lives, we were faring a little bit worse off from a health and wellness standpoint than the majority of the population. And in some health areas, significantly worse off. And health insurance is often the primary indicator of one's health, but for the LGBT community, it wasn't the primary indicator. We had greater access to health insurance, and worsened health outcomes, lower screening rates. And ultimately, what that came down to is people having negative reactions from healthcare providers, many people not having a primary care provider at all, and only really getting care when it was absolutely necessary. You know, going to the emergency room when something really serious is happening. So we learned that there was specific disparities, especially around tobacco, cancer, HIV. So we started doing work in those areas, health promotion work. And we were able to go back to the Department of Health to get some funding that was able to really let us hire more staff, or at that point, really, hire staff, and to start these health promotion programs in the community. And what those programs looked like at the beginning -- we were learning as we were going. There was no roadmap, really, for us. We had great funding partners that taught us a lot, and that also took some chances with us, let us explore what might work for our community. And we created some great programs. We went into schools and did tobacco prevention workshops. We did presentations at LGBTQ churches. We stickered people at gay bars with stickers that said, "LGBT Smoke Free." We actually paid Pride festivals across eastern Pennsylvania to go smoke free. By 2018, we had 10 Pride festivals in Pennsylvania that had committed to be smoke free, with really only a couple years of that work. By 2019, it was 14 Pride festivals. So our work really continued to grow, and especially the health promotion work really took off. We had some other grants around cancer prevention that let us continue some of that work around anal cancer, around breast cancer, cervical cancer, to let us continue some of that, as well, and to grow it. In 2018, when we conducted our Needs Assessment in 2018 -- which was the first time we did the assessment statewide, as opposed to separate assessments in six different regions of the state. The results -- we did a data tour where we went out around the state to present the data to the community. And one of the people who came to the Pittsburgh presentation was from the Network of the National Library of Medicine. And she came up to me afterwards and said, "This data is really impressive. We have some funding that you should apply for." And we did. And we were able to get -- one of our most prestigious funding sources has been the Network of the National Library of Medicine. And they have continued to be a funder to this day, to fund some of our really incredible health promotion work. They've funded work around training health providers. They've funded work around cancer screenings, flu vaccines. So we've been able to explore a lot, to the point where today, you know, our health programs manager has a doctorate in public health, which would have seemed unfathomable to us, certainly in 2014, and even in 2016 and 2018, to be able to bring on staff with credentials like that to lead our programs. I mean, we've really built up, as an organization, our credibility, not only for the funders but for job applicants, as well. MF: I have some ideas about this, but I just want to ask a basic question. What is the impact of a statewide health assessment? What is the impact of public health programming from a local LGBT community center? AS: Yeah. So every community deserves an LGBT center. That's what CenterLink says, and that was a mantra we used at the beginning. And we need our local community-based LGBT centers because community-based organizations are the first line of defense. So it's where you go when you need to build community. You're new to an area and you want to meet people. It's also where you often turn when you need a referral for a doctor. It's an organization you trust to get information. And so as a trusted messenger to our community, we were a great organization to provide health promotion programs. The Needs Assessment -- one of our early funders, United Way Greater Lehigh Valley -- actually, they weren't somebody who funded us early on, but they were an organization that we were trying to get their funding. And Marci Lesko, who was the vice president of the United Way, used to tell me, "Without the data, the chatta don't matta." And she said it just like that. And so we went out to get the data. You know, we needed local data to make the case for what the challenges affecting our community were. Health is broad. So health is not just about your visit to your doctor. It's also about a person experiencing social isolation and loneliness. It's about barriers to care. It's about a variety of things. So yes, it's about cancer screenings, and it's about behavioral risks. But it's also about how we care for each other as a community. So the Needs Assessment really has given us a kind of guiding force to our work, to our programmatic development, and it's actually been utilized for every grant we've applied for, almost every single grant here at the center, including arts programs grants, to make the case for what our community needs. It's hard data. It's legitimate data. It's data that's professionally analyzed. And we have a very large sample size. The data stands up. We're able to utilize those data to achieve results. It's actually probably the most consequential program that we do-- (Video interrupted) AS: So, you know, we were talking about public health. And one of the things that, really, Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center has worked to create, the Pennsylvania LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment is a biannual measurement tool of health disparities and barriers to care. It's become one of the most consequential things that we do here, possibly the most consequential thing, because it's the largest state-level LGBTQ health data in the US in any state. And it's actually been cited as a major data source by researchers, by hospitals. It's used by hospitals for programmatic improvements. Other states have even looked at it as a model for what they might do in their state. And so it's something I'm really proud of having created here, and having really grown. And it has supported every other program at the center. MF: Could you talk a little bit about the collaborative nature -- like, how you developed that Needs Assessment across the state? AS: Yeah. So the way that we made it a statewide sample was that we went to the Department of Health, and we said, It would be much easier, and less time consuming, and frankly, less expensive, if we did this as one statewide project instead of six separate projects, where you're working with six different agencies in each different community. So the model we did was that we got one state grant to do this on a statewide basis, and then we collaborated and funded LGBT community-based organizations across Pennsylvania to be partners in that project, and actually, we partnered with over 30 organizations in Pennsylvania, and funded them to help us with the data collection. We then share the data back with them. So it's a collaborative project. It's one where we all feel a sense of ownership in it. All the other centers are named in the report. And they have access to the data, as well, including the local data for their region. And I think that's one of the reasons it's been so successful, is because we all work together in Pennsylvania to achieve this unified goal. MF: You talked a little bit about other public health programming, the public health -- the Needs Assessment. Can you talk a little bit about other programming, like your merging with Pride, and Pride programming that you put on? AS: Yeah. So Lehigh Valley Pride, as we call it, was previously known as Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley. And it was an all-volunteer organization since the early '90s. And courageous and dedicated volunteers that really made Lehigh Valley Pride happen every year. In 2017, Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley merged with Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. So I facilitated this merger. And we worked for many months with the board of Pride to consider how this might work. And ultimately, it was mutually agreed upon that we would merge together, and we would take over the planning of the festival going forward. That merger was important, because for an event of this size to continue to grow, it really needed professional staff support. And that's what we were able to do, dedicate a full-time employee to the production of Lehigh Valley Pride, as opposed to relying only on volunteers, which is challenging, because volunteers change frequently year to year. And this gives the event more stability. Also, we've been able to grow the event. The first year after the Pride festival merged with us was a bit of a comedy of errors, in the sense that four days before the event, there was a flood at the Pride venue, the longtime Pride venue. It was to be the 25th anniversary, and we knew that the festival really needed to happen, but the entire park flooded. And we were told by the city that we could not have the event there. And so with four days to go, we redesigned the entire festival, moved it over to the grounds of the Jewish Community Center, where Pride has continued to be today, in Allentown. And put on an amazing festival. The event continued to grow year by year. We added a second stage. We added music performers. We've added the opportunity to have an artist promenade. In 2021, we even added a festival mural. We also prioritize access and inclusion for people with disabilities, by bringing sign language interpreters to the stages, reserving parking and seating in the front of the stages for older adults and people with disabilities, ADA restrooms, large print programs, to really try to make for a more inclusive festival. Because Pride is for everyone, and that's really important to us. I think that there were some skeptics over how it would work at the Jewish Community Center, but it really has worked pretty well to have a large festival. We also increased the faith programs at Pride by bringing them onsite. Because previous to it, when it was at Cedar Beach Park, there wasn't a good location where it could happen onsite. And by moving it to the Jewish Community Center, we're able to use the indoor space in the morning. So we actually brought together an interfaith Pride service that kicks off the day at 10:30. The festival starts at 12. And that has been a great addition to the festival, as well. So really proud of the growth of Lehigh Valley Pride since it merged with us. I should say that the merger itself meant merging two nonprofits different ways of operating. Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley was a membership organization. Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center is not. So we actually had to have a membership meeting of all the Pride members, who were notified of the vote to merge. We went through a process to do that. MF: In addition to Pride programming, you have arts and cultural programming, and you have gallery programming. But you -- AS: Yeah. I'll talk a little bit about the galleries. So I talked about the library earlier, but our art galleries, for me, have been so exciting and important over the years. Really, the only queer art space in the Lehigh Valley, where that's its mission, is to exhibit and celebrate LGBTQ artists. And we've balanced between local artists and not-so-local artists. And we've brought some exhibits that are museum quality. Mariette Pathy Allen, who is a major photojournalist, who has documented trans communities for decades, kicked off her newest book of photographs of trans people in Southeast Asia from our center with an exhibit here. We've had incredible, incredible exhibits over the years. And it's brought the community together. We've had group art shows. We had one show, for example, Art Against Trump's Misogyny. It was called Nasty Women: Art Against Trump's Misogyny, where artists made artwork responding to Trump calling Hillary Clinton a nasty woman. We also have had exhibits that celebrated Elton John's final tour, which kicked off two blocks from our community center in downtown Allentown at the PPL Center. At the same time, we were having an exhibit here in our galleries of LGBTQ artists that made artwork utilizing Elton John lyrics. And it was called To Sir Elton, With Love. You know, Elton John is unquestionably one of the most high-impact LGBTQ musicians of the last century, and when he was kicking off his final tour in Allentown, we knew that we wanted to give artists in our community a chance to honor what they loved about Elton John, as well. So many different exhibits have happened here in our galleries, and it's been really incredible. MF: You mentioned Trump, through this art gallery exhibit. What was it like to be a community center executive director during that presidential campaign and that presidency? AS: Well, you know, we're a nonpartisan organization, so as all nonpartisan organizations, we don't engage directly in electoral politics. We don't tell people who to vote for. However, the day after Trump was elected, the morning after, when we all woke up to that news, we knew that it was going to be very challenging for our community, not because a Republican was elected president over a Democrat, but because a person who made such challenging comments about diverse communities, LGBTQ people, people of color, Muslims, transgender people in particular, there was a lot of very strong words and rhetoric that was spewn throughout the campaign. And so we wanted to make it clear to our community that we were a safe space for everyone to come and be, but that we would also resist when needed. So that April, April 2017, we hosted an exhibit called The Queer Art of Resistance, LGBTQ artists making art as resistance to Trump's anti-LGBTQ agenda. The next year, we hosted Nasty Women: Art Against Trump's Misogyny. So we gave artists a chance to use the artistic freedom and create a work of art that could be exhibited, that could be part of the resistance. After Charlottesville, we cosponsored a rally in downtown Allentown against the hate that was spewn in Charlottesville. And we were very clear that hate has no home here in the Lehigh Valley, and LGBTQ people stand with other vulnerable and marginalized communities, who were really feeling attacked by the former president. And of course, once Trump issued rules that were going to directly harm LGBTQ people, we took a different approach, which is, we actually filed lawsuits to block three Trump administration rules that would have caused direct harm to LGBTQ people. The first one was the denial of care rule, where Trump's Health and Human Service Department issued a rule, a final rule, that would have invited discrimination from health care providers by saying that health care providers could, essentially, deny care to an LGBTQ person if it violated their moral and religious beliefs. In fact, the rule was so problematic, it didn't even require the health care professional to notify their employer that they were doing so. It didn't require a warm handoff to a different provider. It didn't require a referral to a different provider. It didn't require anything. It was such a harmful rule, designed specifically in a way that would have harmed people living with HIV and transgender people, as well as people who may need abortion care in the future. So we were very concerned about this rule. And in coalition with some other LGBT organizations and a couple doctors, we were a plaintiff in a lawsuit led by Lambda Legal, and were able to block the rule from going into effect. We then filed another lawsuit, again with pro bono counsel from Lambda Legal -- pro bono counsel from Lambda Legal is consistent with all three of the cases. And in the second case, the Trump administration's HHS promulgated a rule that would have removed Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which is the section that provides for nondiscrimination in health care, through both insurance and health care providers. And it mandates nondiscrimination. And the removal of the nondiscrimination language specific to our community would really put LGBTQ+ people at risk. So we also filed a suit to block the removal of 1557 from going into effect, and again, we were successful. And then at the very end of the Trump administration, the former president, kind of, went off on a different tangent, and decided he wanted to ban diversity training for federal contractors and grantees. And so we filed suit, again with Lambda Legal as pro bono counsel, to block what we considered to be a racist and sexist ban on diversity training. As an organization that provides diversity training to organizations that receive federal funds, it would have had a direct impact on our budget and our ability to provide trainings to school districts, for example, possibly to state government agencies, certainly to some corporations and nonprofits. Anyone receiving federal funds would not have been able to receive diversity training. And there were specific words you weren't allowed to say in trainings. So we were able to successfully block that rule from also going into effect. I'm really proud that throughout the Trump administration, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center stood up and stood strong to stand up for our community and to block these harmful rules from going into effect. And we wouldn't have been able to do it without pro bono counsel at Lambda Legal. Also, it was a lot of work to be a plaintiff in these cases. But we were part of history in protecting our community from some of the direct harm that the administration tried to inflict. MF: There's another big thing happening during the Trump administration, which is COVID-19. AS: Yeah. MF: So here you have these three lawsuits, but you also have the global pandemic. How were you navigating in that time? AS: Well, nobody, including me, could have predicted the pandemic that has now been ongoing for -- we've just entered the third year [laughs] of the ongoing pandemic. That's, certainly in my lifetime, unprecedented. At the start of the pandemic, like every other LGBT center, like every other nonprofit, it was just about navigating uncertainty. It was about, we don't know what's to come, but we have to adapt quickly. So in an effort to keep our community safe as well as our staff, we announced that staff would be working from home. We were shutting down our building. It was a few days before the governor made this decision for the whole state in March 2020. At the time, we had 10 staff. And so we thought it would be for nine weeks. The governor, his shutdown was, I believe, for four or five weeks. Our shutdown, which was before the governor did that, was nine weeks. Obviously, it lasted a little longer [laughs] than that. But at the time, we were doing the best we could with the information we had. Right? And it was certainly a scary time. We had to very quickly pivot to new technology. We pivoted almost all programs to virtual within a matter of two weeks. We were able to maintain almost all staff positions. We did end up receiving a paycheck protection loan, a PPP loan, that allowed us to maintain staffing for a longer period of time. But we had a lot of technology expenses right away to be able to pivot to virtual programs. And these were unbudgeted, because the pandemic really came about pretty quickly, at least in the scope of how nonprofits budget out a year in advance. It wasn't something that we would have known to plan for the previous November, you know, to plan for, Oh, we need enterprise Zoom licenses, and we need to change -- we needed to get DocuSign for our entire organization so that we could sign invoices and grant contracts. And we needed to have Slack, so that we could do interoffice communication. And it was both learning how to be a virtual office and learning how to support our community and care for our community. At the beginning of the pandemic, we called most of our donors, just to check in and ask how they were during the time of uncertainty. We weren't asking them for money at that time. We also had to call our funders, and say, We have to change the grant that we said that we would do, because we can't do any in-person outreach right now, or we can't do this thing in person. We need to shift how we're doing this. And luckily, every one of our funders stood by us and said, We understand. It's unprecedented times. Just let us know what changes need to be made. And we made them all. They were all reasonable changes given the uncertainty. In addition to what we were doing directly for our community in terms of programs, and in terms of what we were doing to manage staff transition to a virtual office, we were also directly engaged in advocacy from the very beginning. In March 2020, the CDC, under the Trump administration, put out a directive requiring all states to collect demographic data with regard to race, ethnicity, age, and gender. They did not include sexual orientation or gender identity. In April 2020, we sent -- we organized with the National LGBT Cancer Network, and 26 organizations joined us -- a letter to then-Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, asking that Pennsylvania be the first state to mandate collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data for COVID infection, mortality, and hospitalization. One month later to the day, we were able to get Pennsylvania to collect COVID-19 infection data. And then we continued advocacy. And the journey of health advocacy throughout the pandemic for our organization was that every six weeks, it felt like we were starting from scratch. Every six weeks, there was a totally new process that didn't exist six weeks ago. And somehow, LGBT people were left out again. So we had to start over again when it came to the contact tracing process, to get LGBT demographic data into Sara Alert, which is used for contact tracing, and into the COVID Alert App Pennsylvania. And we then had to train all the contact tracers. We were able to train all of Pennsylvania Department of Health, Erie County Department of Health, Philadelphia Department of Health, and Allentown Health Bureau's contact tracers on how to ask LGBTQ questions. We ended up working on the vaccine distribution plan and provided public comment, signed on by many other LGBT organizations across the state, to prioritize people living with HIV in Phase 1A, the early days of the COVID vaccination schedule. In fact, our public comment was accepted in January, at a really good time, because we were able to ensure that people living with HIV could get their vaccines in that 1A period, right when vaccines were being made available to non-health care workers. But really, it was a journey of health activism through that time, as well. And in terms of our programs, I mean, we had to continuously pivot. So I didn't want to be canceling in-person programs too far out, because we kept being told, Oh, it's just a couple more weeks. Oh, it's just a couple more months. So we had to make decisions continuously. And moving Lehigh Valley Pride to a virtual Pride for the first time in its history was a heart-wrenching decision, but it would not have been possible to have an in-person Pride in 2020. So we ended up with a televised Pride festival on RCN, a star-studded event. Celebrities that participated included Michelle Visage, Carson Kressley, RuPaul Drag Racers like Silky Nutmeg Ganache, Jujubee. We had Peter Paige from Queer as Folk. We had Theo Germaine from The Politician. We had Holly Near, you know, iconic musician Holly Near. We had a whole bunch of really amazing folks. We had professional athletes, like Kurtis Gabriel. We had a really tremendous virtual Pride festival. But it wasn't the same as in-person Pride. So it was as good as it could have possibly been for our community, but it was not the same as an in-person Pride festival. And we continued to pivot. We produced a virtual queer novel miniseries on our Facebook that ran as Facebook Live events, where we had, instead of in-person author talks, we had author talks on Facebook Live. We tried to curate content for our community to keep our community connected through a period of quarantine and uncertainty. And we started delivering healthy food packages to the youth program participants that we were serving, because they couldn't come here, so we brought stuff there. As a resource to our community, we actually developed a subpage on our website for LGBT-specific COVID-19 information. We wrote guidances for the city of Allentown, county of Erie, Montgomery County, and the state of Pennsylvania about safer sex during the pandemic. These were published guidances by our governments, and that was really important. We continuously did work throughout the pandemic to ensure that LGBTQ people had the information to make risk-aware decisions, that they had the access to community through virtual means, and that our staff had jobs to continue to do the essential work for our community. (break in video) AS: Good? Okay. MF: I would say also during this time, you were moving into publishing. And I know this is, sort of, adjacent to the community center, but you're publishing on public health, editing collections. You have another book coming out soon. Could you talk a little bit about how that work as an author, as an editor, is connected to your work with the center, or just a little bit about your publication? AS: Yeah. So after we did our first Needs Assessment in 2015, I became very passionate about LGBTQ barriers to care and access to care. When it comes to accessing, the unmet dream of health equity, defined by the US government, is the attainment of the highest quality of health for all people. That's the definition from Healthy People 2020. LGBTQ people don't have that. So I actually went and enrolled in a graduate certificate program at George Washington University in LGBT health policy and practice. And that program really was very helpful in getting me to think more about the role that our center could play as a community-based organization. But also during that time, I struggled to find any published works written by LGBTQ people that told stories in our own voices about the health care experiences that we had. There was writing by researchers, and writing by health care providers, but there wasn't really writing by actual LGBTQ people telling our own stories. Around the same time, I had a negative experience with a local dermatologist. I went in for a skin cancer screening, a baseline screening, and at every step of the way, I just felt that the care that was being provided wasn't care to patients like me. And I didn't go back for the follow up that the dermatologist recommended. And it took me about a month, but I mustered up the courage and made an appointment with a new dermatologist in Bucks County. It was about an hour away in New Hope. And I received the care that I needed there. But that was a really big transitional moment, as well, that even as a full-time advocate and activist for LGBTQ people, I could even have a negative experience with a doctor. And so I ended up collecting other people's stories. I talked to some friends and some colleagues who had other challenging experiences accessing the care that their bodies need. And I ended up compiling a book, which -- I like to say curating a book. It's an edited anthology called Bodies and Barriers: Queer Activists on Health. And it collects the stories of 26 queer and trans people from around the world, telling our stories about the health care challenges that we've experienced. And the book was published March 2020, right at the start of the pandemic. But I was able to do some prelaunch events in January, which I was glad to be able to do. My last event, right before the pandemic shut everything down, was the Lehigh Valley TEDxLehighRiver, where they had a local authors expo, and I was able to be there and talk to some Lehigh Valley folks. But the book actually was launched at the Creating Change Conference in Dallas, Texas, in January 2020. And I did book events in DC, and San Francisco, and Oakland, and a big event here in the Bethlehem Area Public Library. But then the pandemic hit and changed the course of what a book launch was going to look like. The book, though, is also something that continues to evolve, in terms of how we think about improving care. So it's been a book that health care providers have been able to read to understand patient needs. It's been a book that has been cited by researchers, to be able to think about some of the broader societal shifts that are needed in terms of public health and access to care. And it's been a book that's been utilized by LGBTQ community members to maybe consider how to speak up to their doctors and ask for the care that their bodies need. So it's something I'm really proud of. The book has done quite well, actually, and I have another book called Crisis and Care: Queer Activist Responses to a Global Pandemic, that is coming out in June 2022, that's about how LGBTQ people responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. It's not about COVID-19 as a virus. It's not about how the government responded, or lack thereof. It's not about Dr. Fauci. It's not about Admiral Levine. It's about how queer people responded to a crisis with care, how we cared for our community in a moment of crisis, and what we can learn from this pandemic to move forward in our world. And I do outline how Bradbury-Sullivan Center led the way as a health advocate in Pennsylvania during the first year of the pandemic. MF: I can't wait to see that book. I just want to say that. And it's recorded. I can't wait to buy that. Beyond publishing those two, curating those two collections, one of which will be out soon, is Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center participating in other kinds of publications, research publications, or -- AS: Yeah. So something that's, kind of, unique to Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center is our work to make contributions to the literature more broadly. So we actually conduct original research. We're so lucky to have a data and evaluation department. We present the results of our programs at state and national conferences, for example, American Public Health Association, Society for Public Health Educators. That's just two examples. And we have also worked to try to publish some of the results from our Needs Assessment, or programmatic results from our archive, or from some of our health programs, in either peer-reviewed or other academic journals. That really allows us to demonstrate the role that Bradbury-Sullivan Center plays, and more broadly, the role that LGBT community centers play in all communities, because the work that we do here is not so dissimilar from other communities. And so our contribution to the literature, I think, has been really important. And from a nonacademic standpoint, we've also been fairly active in media advocacy, to generate op-eds and letters to the editor on key issues that our community really needs to be concerned about, from ending the harmful practice of conversion therapy -- and our organization has led that. After Trump took office, actually, when it was looking like the Trump administration may even publicly fund conversion therapy, because Tom Price, his first HHS secretary, Betsy DeVos, his education secretary, and Mike Pence, his vice president, all publicly supported conversion therapy. We quickly worked with the National Center for Lesbian Rights to draft legislation that we were able to encourage the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Reading to adopt. And that ended the legal practice of conversion therapy by health care professionals against minors here in these three cities. You know, but basically, we will generate op-eds on issues like conversion therapy or nondiscrimination, or other issues, as well. Our team here has constantly -- I've encouraged staff members to consider their CV, to submit proposals to conferences, to consider writing to get published, because it helps them, but it also really helps the organization be the leader that we know we are. MF: You mentioned the bans on conversion therapy, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how that worked in Bethlehem, in Allentown, and Easton. Can you just describe that a bit more, what that process was like once you had the legislation drafted? AS: So National Center for Lesbian Rights drafted the legislation, and shared it with local elected officials in our community. We built a strong coalition, though. So our role was that we were doing public education and awareness in support of ending conversion therapy in our communities. So for example, we partnered with KidsPeace, which is a mental health hospital here in the Lehigh Valley, who shared in public meetings that their operating rules don't allow conversion therapy for their clinicians. The director of the Allentown Health Bureau spoke out, saying that she had talked to local pediatricians, who have confirmed that they have seen the harms of conversion therapy in our community from their patients. So we mobilized our community, is really the role that we played, as grassroots organizing. And we were able to see these three laws passed very quickly in each municipality. MF: Did they happen simultaneously in each municipality? AS: No. It started with Allentown, and then Reading, and then Bethlehem, I believe. It was definitely Allentown first. MF: Yeah, Bethlehem was a little slow. AS: Well, Bethlehem happened quickly. It was our timeline. We're limited in terms of our resources, so we started in Allentown, and then we either went to Bethlehem or Reading next, and then the third one. And the Reading ordinance we did in partnership with the Reading LGBT community center. MF: That's a lot happening, COVID, (laughs) suing an administration, publishing books, working on the bans against conversion therapy. Was there anything else happening in that time period (laughs) that you could load onto your plate? AS: The reality is that there's always been so much happening. We are a fast-growing, rapidly-growing, growth-minded organization, and we have been since day one. And the result of that is that we are able to always do more for our community than we could the previous year. The other result of that is that there's a lot going on. We've built a complex organization here, in the sense that we're running a community archive, but we're also doing public health programs. We're running youth programs and also running supportive services for adults in our community. We have professional art galleries, and we're also trying to figure out a lending library system. So there's a lot going on in our organization. We're running a huge Pride festival. All of these things are happening, kind of, throughout the year at the same time. And that's why it's been so important that we've been able to create a really amazing team here. MF: Well, I want to ask a question about the archives, because we haven't talked about that yet, and you really, from the beginning, were focusing also on archival collection when you were envisioning the center and when it was opening. So could I ask about that? AS: Yeah. MF: Why did you [overlapping dialogue ; inaudible] -- AS: It was one of the first programs of the center, actually. So very early on, I approached Tina Hertel, the library director of Muhlenberg College, and we set up a meeting with her, and with Susan Falciani Maldonado, special collections archivist. And the meeting was really -- we had some stuff already. There was stuff in Liz and Trish's basement. I had some stuff in my house. And we didn't want to be holding onto it. And we also knew that there was a lot of stuff in the community. We looked at similar archives in central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. But something that was really important to me was community ownership. So our agreement with Muhlenberg is the only one we're aware of in the country where an LGBT center maintains ownership of the archival materials, and it's professionally housed and preserved at a university library. And Muhlenberg was willing to do that with us. And it's been an incredible partnership. But it started with, we had very specific things. We had all the Gaydar magazines. Liz had the records from the voter referendum that tried to repeal nondiscrimination in Allentown. I had a whole bunch of stuff from my time with Equality PA. We had some random things. But we knew that we also needed to start a collection and then let it grow, and that's really what's happened. And the archive today has, you know, oral history collection. It has a document collection. When our gay bars closed, when Candida's and Diamonz closed, we were able to get memorabilia. When Stonewall closed, we got memorabilia, and we also did a project called the Stonewall Memories Project, where people could submit their memories about their time at Stonewall. Memory collection as a form of archival work is really important. But, you know, I'm not an archivist, just like I'm not a health care provider. And so my role was really to think creatively about how we can best support our community today and also in the future. And one historian that we were so lucky to bring here to Bradbury-Sullivan to do a book talk, actually, in our library, was Hugh Ryan, who wrote When Brooklyn Was Queer. And in that book, Hugh Ryan says, "Without a past, we don't have a future." And I think that's why local community-based archives are so important. It gives us access to our community's past, so that way, we can collectively consider what the future needs of our community are. MF: The center does so much educational programming, training, arts and culture, galleries, reading groups, film series, archival collection, public health. You're involved in lawsuits when needed to protect our community. Was that part of the original vision that we started with today? Did you think, when you were starting -- AS: We have far exceeded the original vision. I mean, the original vision was getting a physical space. We said we were going to revolutionize the programs and services available to the LGBT community. That's language we used in 2014. I think we have absolutely done that. And that does not mean that there's not more that's needed. Absolutely. There is always more we can do for our community. Our current director of development, Matt Easterwood, likes to say, "More money, more mission." So as Bradbury-Sullivan Center continues to grow, more can be done for the community at large. But, you know, part of my decision to move on from Bradbury-Sullivan Center is because I feel like sometimes I can be clouded by my original vision. And I think leadership changes are good over time. And there's an opportunity for new ideas, for new leadership that comes with different expertise, different backgrounds, different passions. And actually, I think that's good for organizations over time. We have absolutely grown past my wildest dreams. I didn't say at the beginning, but before starting the center, when I was in my first year at Muhlenberg College as a student, I remember asking if there was an LGBT center, and there wasn't. And I was really wanting it. I was looking for ways to access community, and I couldn't find it. And we have that now. So opening the center was really a dream fulfilled, a dream realized, and I think not just for me, but for a collective community. And now it's time for new leadership to chart the next part of that journey. And I'm really excited to continue to see the organization thrive. I also know that we have an amazing team here of staff members, board members, community members, volunteers, program participants, people who are just so dedicated to seeing this organization continue to thrive, that I feel good about leaving, because I feel like the organization is in good hands. MF: Well, we're right about at the end. You ended with this lovely statement about, you know, it will continue with new leadership and wonderful people that are still here. And it leads me to, maybe, a final question or two. Do you want to talk about the people that have really made this organization into this incredible support for our community? AS: Yeah. Why don't you pause for a minute and give me a minute to think about that? AS: Throughout the journey of opening the center, there's been so many people who have been part of that journey, and there's no way I could possibly name every single person. But I do want to share some names of folks that were critical to the start, the opening, and the growth of the center over time. So from the very beginning, Liz Bradbury and Patricia Sullivan, and Liz Kleintop, original board members of Pennsylvania Diversity Network, at the time, that really were willing to go with me on this journey. We had a community center creation committee that also included people like Basilio Bonilla, and Patrick Fligge, and Kari Kirchgessner, now Kari Alvaro. We had volunteers like Don Kohn, who was our design team chair, and brought together a design team of pro bono folks willing to work with us to try to get into that original building. Robert Sandoval was an architect who did all of the architectural work pro bono for that first building that we ended up not taking. Rob Ritter. Rob Ritter was our realtor who helped us to get into this space. We had pro bono lawyers at the beginning, like Tim Brennan and Mike Recchiuti, who helped with the real estate transaction and the zoning needed for us to get into the space. Hundreds of volunteers who -- I cannot name all the volunteers. But I would say we had specific volunteer groups from IBEW Local 375, to Air Products and Olympus, to Habitat for Humanity and Home Depot. I mean, really all corners, right? Churches and synagogues. So many groups came together. We had a coven who came, and also we have humanists, and people of all religions and none that were helping us to get into this space. Over time, though, in this organization, as we continued to grow, yeah, there's absolutely been some really pivotal folks. Judy Ochs was the director of the Division of Tobacco Prevention and Control, and she really took us under her wing and championed us, and gave us the infrastructure that we have today. Dr. Scout of the National LGBT Cancer Network taught me so much that let us work with government funders. Other community center partners like Denise Spivak at CenterLink, who has been with, really, since day one. One of the first calls I made was to her, saying I wanted to start the center. Chris Bartlett in Philadelphia at the William Way LGBT Center, who called me right after he heard that we were opening, and gave me some incredible advice right from day one. Louie Marvin, who was at the Central Pennsylvania LGBT Center at the time, was also super supportive. And then, you know, as we continued to grow, folks like Rob Hopkins and Shawn Bausher, who were with Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley, were instrumental not only in supporting the start of the center, but then in having Pride merge in with the center. The two of them, as well as Mark Stanziola, who was very supportive as well. Rob and Shawn, though, were really the leaders of Pride who were really pushing for the merger to happen. And they really made that happen. Some of our early board members -- Barb Baus. Barb Baus was an incredible leader in this organization at a time when we were just getting into the building. And then Liz Kleintop was board chair after her. And as the organization continued to grow, so many more people got involved. We have so many current staff, board members, community members. And there are some highlights of visitors, special visitors, too, to the center. Governor Wolf signed a bill into law here in our first year. Former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has visited our building. Admiral Rachel Levine. Senator Casey came and took a tour of our building. Former Congressman Charlie Dent. You know, we've had a lot of wonderful visitors and guests over time. And that's been part of, also, building credibility in our community. People are really seeing that what we were doing was really important here. We've hosted public hearings here for the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, for example. We had a town hall here with the former Pennsylvania Secretary of Aging, Teresa Osborne. There's been some just incredible, incredible moments over the years here at the center. MF: We're at the end, but is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you just think, Mary, we've got to talk about this, I really wanted to address this today? AS: I think I'm all set. MF: Okay. I just want to say at the end of this interview that I think everyone here is wishing you well in California, and you are beloved by so many of us. And I know you won't be a stranger. I'm so glad you did this interview today. Thank you very much. AS: Thank you. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
Duration
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01:24:43
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Adrian Shanker, Part 2, March 4, 2022
Description
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Adrian Shanker recounts the inception of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the work it does to continue to serve the LGBTQ+ community in the Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania as a whole.
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LGBT-30
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2022-03-04
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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9e9dd8136998d8358647841d48a4350b
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: COVID-19
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Alanna Berger and Blaise Liffick
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_07.xml
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5.4 July 28, 2020 Alanna Berger and Blaise Liffick, July 28, 2020 (audio only) PH40_07 01:32:29 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- COVID-19 (Disease) Alanna Berger and Blaise Liffick Liz Bradbury audio/avi BergerAlanna_20200728_FullAudio-Video.avi 1.0:|2243(5) 0 https://youtu.be/ZlP_cAVyt9Y YouTube audio 0 Interview Introductions BLAISE LIFFICK: B-L-A-I-S-E L-I-F- “F,” as in “Frank,” I-C-K.
 ; LIZ BRADBURY: Alanna, could you say your name once again, because I forgot to turn on the other backup audio recording? So, say that again and do that, so it’s on there.
 ; ALANNA BERGER: All right. Alanna A-L-A-N-N-A Berger B-E-R-G-E-R.
 ; LB: Great, and can you please share your birth dates?
 ; AB: 7-20-54.
 ; BL: 3-30-53. 0 104 Connections to LGBTQ+ Community LB: Okay. And how do you identify within the greater LGBTA community?
 ; AB: Allies.
 ; BL: Definitely.
 ; LB: Okay. And so, you don’t identify as LGBT part of the community, other than allies, so that’s great. And I want to say, since we’re talking about this -- because I’ve had other people who are part of the extended family of our community. So, explain why you are part of this community and why I see you as part of this community and your support of the community that you’ve done? I can see you’re wearing your t-shirts, so go ahead and mention that. (laughter) 0 250 Background on Silent Witness / Peacekeeping in Harrisburg
 ; LB: Could you also just briefly explain what Silent Witness did? Because that was such an important part, and somebody will look at this and they may not know that stuff.
 ; AB: Right. With Silent Witness Peacekeepers, we had originally gotten involved with the Silent Witnesses from the MCC Church in Harrisburg. And Westboro Baptist Church was coming to town and they needed help and Blaise and I ended up getting involved. We went through their training and it was at the showing of “Jim in Bold” at Penn State -- or at William Penn Museum, in Harrisburg. And it was such an amazing experience to be involved in that. [...] 0 670 Current Lives
 ; LB: I really appreciate it. So, one of the things we usually start out with is -- let me find my startup questions. Uh-oh, one, two, three. Here it is. Okay. So, you just recently moved, didn’t you? To a new place?
 ; AB: Yes
 ; BL: Yes.
 ; LB: Are you hating that or loving it?
 ; AB: Well, we’re --
 ; LB: Or something in between?
 ; BL: Mostly loving.
 ; LB: Good, good.
 ; AB: Yeah, it’s a brand-new house and so, we’re working out some of the kinks, but it’s in between two of our kids. 0 801 Communication in the COVID Era
 ; LB: Okay. Well, dogs matter because the animals really matter. Certainly true and I’ve talked to -- this is my fifteenth COVID interview and I did ten HIV/AIDS interviews for people who lived through the AIDS epidemic too. This was all crammed into this short amount of time, but the people have been vastly different, in terms of the people I’ve been talking to and I’ve just been talking to somebody who’s really alone, who really doesn’t even have a dog. So, it’s an interesting thing to have some people who have large numbers of people in their house and other people -- how different that is for them. So, are you communicating with your grandkids and your family and stuff online? Are you doing Zoom stuff with them or -- 0 1035 Passing the Time LB: Yeah, good. So, let me see here. Yeah, some of this stuff is -- now, you’re probably too existential for this. You are really thinking about the questions instead of people going “ahhh”. So, like I just talked to somebody who was 22, they just graduated, and they were so cavalier about everything. And this is a trans kid who just graduated from Moravian and is going into graduate school at Lehigh and had to leave Moravian at the end and, you know, went -- but their parents don’t support them. So, they couldn’t go home. So, they had to go into -- this is the interesting story. They had to go with a friend to her house, with her parents, in Massachusetts and this young person has been there for five [00:18:00] months with these people. [...] 0 1159 Dr. Rachel Levine So, what do you think about Rachel Levine? We want to talk to everybody about that, because we love Rachel Levine. 
 ; BL: You know, we love Rachel. She’s just terrific. And we’ve known her for quite some time.
 ; AB: Yeah, we met her -- because I was going back in my mind when I saw the question. We met her at a GSA summit. Do you remember those? That Louie Marvin had started. 0 1465 Dr. Levine as a Role Model/Hero BL: Well, the other thing I’d like to say about Doctor Levine is what a great role model she’s been for our daughter, Ashley. 
 ; LB: Oh, great.
 ; BL: You know, Ashley went -- her story has evolved over the last decade or so and I know that she has viewed Doctor Levine as her role model. And a really good one. And I know Ashley has greatly benefited from that a lot. 0 1586 Biggest Concern about the COVID Pandemic LB: [...] Yeah, I take a lot of time trying to explain that to people when I’m training, that this is just one of the worst things you can do. And in fact, I’ve had young trans people say that their names are even more important than the pronouns, it’s really the name is what I’ve had several people say. So, what’s your biggest concern about the pandemic? 0 1995 Making Health & ; Safety Decisions / Keeping Busy LB: [...] So, you’re staying in or are you going to the grocery store or are you just ordering stuff or what’s the deal?
 ; AB: We started off just ordering stuff online and then, you know, we started going to the six a.m. senior hour.
 ; LB: I understand that, yes.
 ; AB: Around here, it’s been fairly good, in terms of the stores we go to, people are wearing masks, they have the plastic up in front of everybody. And so, that helps with the confidence level. 0 2416 Other Frustrations with the COVID Pandemic LB: [...] Okay. I just want to say that I say this is my -- I’ve interviewed twenty-four people and every single one has said that their biggest annoyance and biggest anger is that people aren’t wearing masks and they’re not taking this seriously. Everyone has said that. So, universally, among the progressive people of the world, we all are just pissed off. Like, we had to go to a doctor’s appointment and every person we passed on the street -- because we hardly ever go out, we’ve only been out a couple of times. I realized that person’s wearing a mask, that person’s not wearing one, that’s all she said about every single person. It’s our thing. But what other kinds of frustrations or [00:41:00] fears -- but frustrations I think would be what you would say. And there’s been some small frustrations, I think, too. 0 2892 Virtual Learning
 ; BL: I had to do the second half of the last semester online. And it was tricky. And I know the students found it difficult. You know, this was not a format that most of them wanted and many of them found challenging. And particularly students with any kind of issues in terms of how they learn, et cetera. It’s extremely challenging. And boy, I’m so glad I got to retire at the end of the semester, but I feel terrible for my colleagues who I know are so frustrated about, you know, what they are being forced to do. And, I know that [00:49:00] my colleagues in your field, for instance, how in the world do you teach woodworking if you can’t be in a woodworking lab? 
 ; LB: Yeah, it can’t be done. 0 3152 Knowing Individuals with COVID LB: [...] So, that’s a terrible story about Ashley and had you known other people that have had it or have been --
 ; AB: Friends. The daughter of one of our friends was in New York. She was a chaplain and she came down with COVID and she was really sick for about a month.
 ; BL: But recovered, she totally recovered. 0 3422 Re-evaluating Educational Choices for Children AB: You know, and if [00:57:00] somebody lives in Montana, one hundred miles away from the nearest case of COVID, have at it. Open your school and go for it. In an area where, you know, you haven’t flattened the curve yet or it’s still kind of -- you know, I think it’s a big risk. My daughter’s school district has decided to start with online, virtual classrooms. And then reevaluate it every month.
 ; LB: That’s wise. 0 3557 Thoughts on the Black Lives Matter Movement LB: Sure, yeah. It’s a Legionnaires’ kind of thing. It could be. So, do you want to say anything about Black Lives Matter? Because I’m asking everybody about that. You know, we can’t talk about COVID without talking about that and without talking about politics because it’s the deal. 
 ; BL: It is one of the frustrations that we can’t be out on the street with them.
 ; LB: No kidding, no kidding. 0 4040 Importance of Fighting for Intersectionalities AB: Well, the other thing too is the intellectual level. While everybody in the country is up in arms about Black Lives Matter, the whole idea of intersectionality comes into play. Because while everybody’s yelling about this, Trump is taking away healthcare for LGBT people. You know, here’s where the news is focused, so, let’s take away these rights from LGBT people and put more kids in cages. And so, that whole divide and conquer thing. 
 ; BL: And misdirection. He’s good at that. 0 4434 Motivations for Documenting Oral Histories / Remarks for Future Viewers LB: Yeah, all right. So, one more thing that I hope that -- this archive project is really fascinating and we’re having a wonderful time with Muhlenberg [01:14:00] and Lehigh University working on this too. So, they’ve done a bunch of older LGBT people talking about all this stuff that happened. I often thought that all the stuff we did to pass all our ordinances nobody would know about that. And I’ve been talking about that a lot. And they transcribe it and it’s really terrific and it’s all searchable and you can get it in all the papers that we say, like, “Why are you doing this stuff?” And now, it’s all in the archives and all digitalized and, you know, all the Valley Gay Presses that I made, one of the things that happened was, I was talking to Kristen Leipert, who I’m actually working with now on these things that I’m doing, like last year. 0 5101 Closing Remarks
 ; LB: Good for you. Well, that’s a terrific note to end on. Thank you so much for saying that. Thank you so much for talking to me. You’ve been very inspirational. 
 ; BL: Thanks for asking us in.
 ; AB: Yeah, it’s amazing.
 ; BL: We’re very honored.
 ; AB: Yes, very honored and it’s wonderful seeing you again.
 ; LB: It’s great to see you too. I will give Trish a hug. I’m going to turn off the recorder now. Oh, whoops. Wait, oh no. 0 Sound Blaise Liffick and Alanna Berger talk about how the current COVID19 pandemic is affecting them. They talk about their recent move to be nearer to their adult children, Blaise’s retirement from teaching college, and how the end of the semester was remote learning. They discussed their many years of commitment to civil rights and the support of the LGBT community through the Silent Witness programs. They talked about the LGBT people in their family and how COVID-19 has affected their work and health from having the virus. Alanna Berger 2020-07-28 BLAISE LIFFICK: B-L-A-I-S-E L-I-F "F," as in "Frank," I-C-K. LIZ BRADBURY: Alanna, could you say your name once again, because I forgot to turn on the other backup audio recording? So, say that again and do that, so it's on there. ALANNA BERGER: All right. Alanna A-L-A-N-N-A Berger B-E-R-G-E-R. LB: Great, and can you please share your birth dates? AB: 7-20-54. BL: 3-30-53. LB: Okay. And you're in what town? AB: We are in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. LB: Okay. So, this is the consent portion. Do you consent to this interview today? AB: Absolutely. BL: Yes. LB: Okay. And do you consent to having this interview be transcribed, digitalized and made publicly available online, in searchable format? BL: Yes. AB: Yes. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT archive using your interview for educational purposes and other -- in other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations and other formats we may not even know about yet? BL: Yes. AB: Yes. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview, identify any parts you would like to delete and or withdraw from your interview and withdraw your interview from the project? AB: Yes. BL: Yes. LB: Great, can you tell me what your ZIP Code is? AB: 17055. LB: Now, they also want to know, even though you've already given your date of birth, what your ages are. It says -- AB: I'm sixty-six. BL: I'm sixty-seven. LB: Okay. And how do you identify within the greater LGBTA community? AB: Allies. BL: Definitely. LB: Okay. And so, you don't identify as LGBT part of the community, other than allies, so that's great. And I want to say, since we're talking about this -- because I've had other people who are part of the extended family of our community. So, explain why you are part of this community and why I see you as part of this community and your support of the community that you've done? I can see you're wearing your t-shirts, so go ahead and mention that. (laughter) AB: Well, as I was growing up, I've always known gays and lesbians. My father had a gay cousin. When I went away to school at the university of Maryland, as part of the women's center, I think it was half straight women, half lesbians. We had gay friends on campus. So, I've always known people, but it wasn't until the -- we got involved in with the Silent Witness in Harrisburg, that we really became advocates. And at that point, we became part of the Silent Witness and we changed it to Silent Witness Peacekeepers Alliance. But we also got involved with Advocacy, which is where we met you. Especially in the Freedom to Marry movement. And so, we felt it was really important for straight people to stand up and deal with homophobia, just like it's important for white people to stand up and deal with racism. And so, that's been part of our journey. It became a spiritual path in some respects with Silent Witnesses. And over the course of time, you know, we used to say, "Oh, well, we're straight, our kids are straight." You know, and now we have a daughter who identifies as bisexual and a daughter who is transgender. And we also have a daughter whose gender expression is more male. So, we've learned so much about the community. I now have a nephew who came out a few months ago. So, you know, and Blaise has a niece who came out. I mean, so -- LB: Yeah, you're in the thick of it. AB: Now, yeah -- BL: We have a lot of connections. LB: Could you also just briefly explain what Silent Witness did? Because that was such an important part, and somebody will look at this and they may not know that stuff. AB: Right. With Silent Witness Peacekeepers, we had originally gotten involved with the Silent Witnesses from the MCC Church in Harrisburg. And Westboro Baptist Church was coming to town and they needed help and Blaise and I ended up getting involved. We went through their training and it was at the showing of "Jim in Bold" at Penn State -- or at William Penn Museum, in Harrisburg. And it was such an amazing experience to be involved in that. And they kept asking us to help until we ended up helping in 2005 with a Pride Festival in Harrisburg and it was one of the worst days of my life to see such a large group of forty -- fifty protestors. And it was so awful, I had nightmares. And we decided we wanted to do something more than just stand there with signs. And so, we kind of went back to the drawing board and worked with the original Silent Witnesses. We came up with the strategy of upholding the rainbow umbrellas. And, you know, Blaise had the -- BL: Safety vests. AB: -- safety vests. And we changed the strategy of the counter-protestors to actively escorting people past the protestors. And that strategy was so effective. Within a couple years, people would say, "I never saw the protestors. Where were they?" Even though, when you look at the pictures, you can see their great, big signs behind our umbrellas. You know, it was still, you know, something that really made people feel safe. Just a couple weeks ago, I was on a Zoom call and somebody said, "Oh, and you have to know Alanna Berger. She created this group that back at Lehigh Valley Pride, when the protestors walked into the festival, she was there. And I felt safe." You know, this is so many years later and we still hear that. BL: Yeah, but our main job, of course, is to stand between the street preachers at LGBT events and prevent any kind of confrontations from happening, that would spoil the event. And, you know, we try actively to keep any kind of confrontation from happening, so that there aren't any arrests and that everybody has their right of free speech. And everybody can enjoy themselves at the festival. LB: I'm so glad you did that and it was an education for me as well and I think one of the things I really found out about it was, the biggest danger was not really -- the scary, bad people were bad, and the LGBT people, for the most part, could move through that, because we're used to it. But the straight people that were our allies wanted to confront the anti-people and the anti-people, we knew, had made a living from suing people who had physically confronted them. They would taunt them into a physical confrontation. And I think, you know, I've been -- this Reading Pride Festival which just happened, which I don't really know how that worked, but that was the first time I haven't been at any one of the Pride Festivals in Lehigh Valley or Reading Pride. I didn't even watch it. So, I forgot that it was on. But I've been at all the main Pride Festivals and the anti-presence dwindled out. And I think it was because of you. I think it really was effective to just quietly ignore them that it was really -- BL: We like to think that. LB: Well, I think it really -- BL: We're happy to take credit for some of that. LB: I will be happy to give you credit for that, because I absolutely think that the last thing these folks wanted was for people to ignore them. BL: Well, it was also important to us to be a symbol to the LGBT community. To stand up for them and to actually stand in front of these protestors and make it clear that we aren't going to accept what they had to say either, you know? Just because we were silent, didn't mean that we weren't sending an important message. LB: That's really good. BL: And that message was being LGBT is okay, you know? LB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. BL: And we were going to protect their rights as much or even more vociferously than we would the street preachers for their right and free speech and expression of religion. And that was one of the reasons we chose rainbow umbrellas to be a really large symbol. You know, something people can see from a distance and know that people are standing up for them. AB: Yeah, at the very beginning, we recruited straight people to help us because we felt members of the LGBT community should be able to enjoy the festival. They needed to be inside the festival and so, we've recruited straight people. I remember at one point I was giving a presentation to Common Roads Kids, prior to the Harrisburg Pride. And they asked me how I could do this work. And I said, "Well, I'm straight. What these guys say means nothing to me." I said, "If they were attacking Jews, I might feel differently." And then right after that, the Westboro Baptist Church started going after the Jewish community. And suddenly it was like, "Oh no." You know, so I think that's why I know it's important work, you know? LB: Yeah. AB: When I think about the Holocaust and it's like, "Well, they came for the gays first and then they came for the Jews." So, for me, I could not stand idly by in the blood of my neighbor. And I thought it was really important that we all have to stand up for each other and let us do the heavy work, while you all be in the festival and learn and network and, you know, see who all is there. We got all these resources together for the community, let us deal with the street preachers. LB: Yeah, well, you did a great job. Thank you very much for doing that. AB: You bet. LB: I really appreciate it. So, one of the things we usually start out with is -- let me find my startup questions. Uh-oh, one, two, three. Here it is. Okay. So, you just recently moved, didn't you? To a new place? AB: Yes BL: Yes. LB: Are you hating that or loving it? AB: Well, we're -- LB: Or something in between? BL: Mostly loving. LB: Good, good. AB: Yeah, it's a brand-new house and so, we're working out some of the kinks, but it's in between two of our kids. LB: Oh, well that's good. AB: And two of our kids with grandchildren. So, it was really wonderful at first, before COVID. Because we were getting to spend so much time with the grandkids. And, you know, so, that part's been really fun. Since COVID, we went through a period of isolation because my son-in-law had to go back to work. And my daughter's working from home. And they were afraid that -- you know, they didn't want to infect us. And Blaise's son is also working from home and -- but his boys spend time with their mom and his son didn't trust that they wouldn't do something. So, we haven't really been able to see them either. Yeah, the house is great. I mean, we've got all this extra time now to fix it up. BL: And one of the reasons we moved up here is I retired. And so, getting closer to the grandkids was a priority. We also wanted more of a townhouse situation, so there wasn't any yard to take care of. And they were building some new stuff, fairly near where our grandkids are, our kids and our grandkids. And so, that was the major emphasis. But we really like this area. LB: Oh, good. BL: It's worked out well for us in a lot of different ways. LB: Good. So, it's just you two in the place? BL: Yes. LB: Because I -- BL: Us and our dog, Brighid. LB: Okay. Well, dogs matter because the animals really matter. Certainly true and I've talked to -- this is my fifteenth COVID interview and I did ten HIV/AIDS interviews for people who lived through the AIDS epidemic too. This was all crammed into this short amount of time, but the people have been vastly different, in terms of the people I've been talking to and I've just been talking to somebody who's really alone, who really doesn't even have a dog. So, it's an interesting thing to have some people who have large numbers of people in their house and other people -- how different that is for them. So, are you communicating with your grandkids and your family and stuff online? Are you doing Zoom stuff with them or -- BL: Oh, yeah. AB: Yeah, we had a situation after the kids went to virtual learning -- after the grandkids went to virtual learning. I was Skyping with the grandsons, trying to help them with their homework, because mom was still -- you know, she was still working. And their dad wasn't home, so I would Skype, so that they could share their screens and I could see what they were looking at and I would help with their homework. And that was frustrating, but also fun. You know, because at one point, you know, I would say something to one of the boys and he'd say, "Yeah, I could do this faster, but I really like being on the phone with you." But one day, he just -- he was sitting there and then he just started staring out the window and tears were just rolling down his face. And he said, "I hate COVID. I may never see you again." And I started crying and Blaise started crying. And I called my daughter and I said, "You know, we've been isolated alone, separately, how do you feel about us coming over?" And so, we started going over, wearing masks and all that kind of stuff, for a while. And then we just kind of -- you know, things have improved in Cumberland County. So, I go over several times a week now, to see them. But yeah, that was -- we were having some Zoom chats with our kids. And then some other political things happened and we -- the kids don't agree with each other and so, we've kind of cut those down to just smaller -- because we have six kids. He had three, I had two and then we adopted Ashley. And so, you know, it's a large group of kids. And we just do them individually now. BL: But we also get together weekly with a group of friends. LB: Oh, that's great. BL: We have actually started doing that in person, once a month. And we've been doing that for, what? Two years? AB: Two years. BL: And then when this hit, we decided, "You know what? While, we're not going to do what we used to do once a month, we're going to get together on a weekly basis and just check in with everybody. Make sure everybody's okay and, you know, if there's anybody in need, we'll find a way to help." And we've continued that now. The group has dwindled own to just a core few. But I still feel it's important to have that face-to-face contact, if not, person-to-person. While talking to people on the phone is nice, seeing them is just better. LB: It is. BL: And it's been important for me to be able to see people and keep in touch with them that way. LB: Yeah, good. So, let me see here. Yeah, some of this stuff is -- now, you're probably too existential for this. You are really thinking about the questions instead of people going "ahhh". So, like I just talked to somebody who was 22, they just graduated, and they were so cavalier about everything. And this is a trans kid who just graduated from Moravian and is going into graduate school at Lehigh and had to leave Moravian at the end and, you know, went -- but their parents don't support them. So, they couldn't go home. So, they had to go into -- this is the interesting story. They had to go with a friend to her house, with her parents, in Massachusetts and this young person has been there for five months with these people. And I said, "Well, are they there now?" I was talking to him and he goes, "Well, they went on vacation and she had to go back to school." I said, "You're alone in the parents' house? Where are you?" And he said, "It's Hampton, Massachusetts. It's in the middle of the woods." I said, "Well, do you go out for walks?" He said, "No, there's bears." (laughter) And then I said, "What are you doing inside?" and he said, "You know, I'm doing this stuff." And he was so calm about everything. I thought, "Okay." And this is a tough situation, you know, in a lot of ways. He goes, "Well, my cat is here." You know, so, he was just -- I thought, "This is a person." You know, I guess maybe it's a little bit of the effect of being 22 and thinking, "I've got my whole life to forget about this." BL: Well, yeah, they're pretty resilient at that age. LB: Yeah, yeah. And for those of us who are old, we're thinking, like, "Am I ever going to stop being angry?" And I was just talking to a good friend, just the last person I spoke to, and she said, "I'm angry all the time. I was never like that before. I was pissed off all the time." So, I said, "Yeah, it's going to be hard to stop doing that, if we can ever stop doing that." So, you're not working. So, you don't have to be worrying about being laid off and that's a good thing. You have family around. So, what do you think about Rachel Levine? We want to talk to everybody about that, because we love Rachel Levine. BL: You know, we love Rachel. She's just terrific. And we've known her for quite some time. AB: Yeah, we met her -- because I was going back in my mind when I saw the question. We met her at a GSA summit. Do you remember those? That Louie Marvin had started. LB: Yeah, yeah. AB: And we met Doctor Levine and we were so blown away by her presentation. We went up afterwards, you know, stood there looking like groupies. And got her contact information. And she has been such a powerful resource, even way back when. You know, because Blaise had done the Safe Zone training. And would get trans kids and needed advice. I used her as a resource for the class I taught at Lebanon Valley College. And when I saw that she was appointed by Governor Wolf, I was like, "Oh, the best person ever." LB: Yeah, I know. I know, lucky. AB: And, you know, with COVID, I watch the news -- the broadcasts of Doctor Levine and Governor Wolf, just to see her. Because she is so calm. She is just grace under fire. And I am just -- wow. We would not be where we are today in Pennsylvania, if it wouldn't be for her. BL: I wish there was somebody nationally who had her depth of understanding and compassion. Doctor Fauci is great, but he doesn't get to say much anymore and -- LB: Right, well, that's the thing. BL: We really need that. The country really needs that. And so, I think Doctor Levine has been just tremendously helpful to this state and has done an extremely important service for us. Aside from all that, I think she's just a wonderful person all the way around. And I find her completely trustworthy. Just in anything that I've heard her say or read that she's said, that I question. And it's not that I will take everything she says as gospel, but, you know, it's pretty close to it. LB: Well, I think certainly we're in the position where, you know, we don't know anything about -- this is an illness that -- I just read an article in the New York Times that said it'll be, you know, thirty years before we really understand everything about this. But the thing you can count on from her is she's not making this stuff up. She's not just saying this stuff for political clout or this would sound good or Governor Wolf is telling her to say it, you know? BL: Yeah, well, politics doesn't have anything to do with it for her. LB: Right. BL: It's just science. AB: Exactly. BL: And, you know, thank God she's as brilliant as she is. You know, she understands this stuff and can present it to us in a way that is easy to understand. And it's such a shame what's happened to her in terms of the bully online, the trolls, as it were, that just won't get past their prejudice to listen to the science. LB: Right, it's true. AB: Yeah, but the fact that, you know, when she was first appointed, I thought, "Oh my gosh, you know, a trans woman." BL: Yeah, it was a brilliant appointment on the part of the governor. LB: Yes, it was very, very smart. And, you know, how terrific that there was someone with the kind of credentials that she had and the kind of extraordinary presence and calm. I mean, this is the person who, for the most part, is not really bothered by this crap that she has to endure. The worst thing about it is not that it's happening to her, it's that for the transgender population and for our particular transgender young people who are seeing it happen to her. And it scares them because they think, "If this could happen to her, then it could happen to me." And I think I've said to our other employees -- we have now, 14 employees at the center, and I've said, "One of the things we have to emphasize is that heroes have to take crap. They always do. You know, people who are major civil rights leaders, they don't just coast through. They always have crap and one of the reasons we admire them is because they can put up with -- if it was easy, everybody would do it, you know? We wouldn't get to admire those people. BL: Well, the other thing I'd like to say about Doctor Levine is what a great role model she's been for our daughter, Ashley. LB: Oh, great. BL: You know, Ashley went -- her story has evolved over the last decade or so and I know that she has viewed Doctor Levine as her role model. And a really good one. And I know Ashley has greatly benefited from that a lot. LB: Well, that's good. That's great to hear. (Inaudible). AB: Even when you talk about heroes, you know, at one point, the street preachers would focus on us, you know, and I was a faithless Jew and Blaise was Professor Yuck and Reverend Reprobate and, you know, they would focus on us and leave everybody else alone. And so, I think that might be part of the hero's role is to take some of that crap. BL: Be the lightning rod. LB: That's a good point. AB: I hate to see it happen to Rachel, though, because of what you said. With other, trans kids being afraid. Ashley has gone through a lot of trauma recently because of the trans people who were murdered. You know, I think there was three within a two-week period. LB: Yeah, it was horrible. AB: And that was just as traumatic for her as well. So, trans kids, the whole thing with dead naming is one of the reasons why we ended up adopting her, was because she was afraid that she would be buried under a marker that had her dead name on it. So, you know, it was one of the reasons, but it's one thing that when they dead name somebody, that just is so frustrating. Yeah. LB: Yeah, I take a lot of time trying to explain that to people when I'm training, that this is just one of the worst things you can do. And in fact, I've had young trans people say that their names are even more important than the pronouns, it's really the name is what I've had several people say. So, what's your biggest concern about the pandemic? BL: Well, mine generally is how many idiots there are out there who don't take this seriously and are going to keep it going as a consequence. And that it's already -- you know, if they had just paid attention in the early month, the first month when this was coming out and done the right thing then, we'd be done with it by now and schools could open this fall safely. And instead, we're taking a crapshoot with our kids' lives. You know, I understand the economics of having the schools closed and yet, the economics don't mean a damn thing to me if what we're trading is people's lives. And so, the fact that this is going to continue for probably at least another six months, if not a year, because these people would not pay attention and would not listen to the experts, would completely denigrate the science, is just really angering. And just drives me crazy. AB: Yeah, and I think that's one thing that maybe because of the work we did with Silent Witness Peacekeepers and the amount of research we put into the idea of, you know, civil liberties and freedom of speech and all that sort of thing, that it's not what people think it is. Yes, we have civil rights, but we also have civic responsibility. And people are completely ignoring that aspect of it. Like you said, in the New York Times, there was a great article on the cult of selfishness. LB: Right, I saw that, yeah. AB: And how people are just all about themselves. They're narcissistic that, you know, they feel that wearing a mask is their right or not wearing a mask. BL: That's oppression for Pete's sake! AB: Yeah, the oppression is just -- BL: You know, it makes no sense. And it disturbs me the number of people who are like that. LB: Yeah, that's true. AB: Yeah, the number of people I've taken off my Facebook list. LB: I know, it's just very depressing, isn't it? BL: Yeah. AB: Yeah. LB: It's so hard. AB: I've dropped friends who had idiots commenting on their Facebook posts because I don't want to see it on Facebook right now. It's just more than I can stand watching that. But I think also for me and bringing this back to the LGBT community, the fact that, for instance, all the Pride Festivals have been cancelled or postponed, you know, I think back to the early days. I think it was, like, 2006, there was some problems at Harrisburg Pride, the organization was falling apart. And one of the things Blaise said was, "We have to make sure the Pride Festival keeps going, because if we don't, the street preachers are going to take credit for it." LB: (laughs) AB: And it was -- BL: So, we ended up getting involved in the organization as well. AB: Yeah, I became vice president. LB: Oh my gosh. AB: And that's what I'm thinking this summer, that the protestors and the street preachers are going to claim victory, that it's God's wrath that all these Pride Festivals had to be cancelled. And it's not true and that upsets me, and I know how important it is for the community to be at a Pride Festival. You know, all these many years that we've gone to a Pride Festival and, you know, there are people who go to every Pride Festival, every weekend. I mean, they just travel around the country going to Pride Festivals and it's so important. A safe place for them to be and they are missing out this year. I can't wait for the virtual one from you guys. LB: Yeah, it's going to be on TV even, too. So, we don't have to worry about -- and frankly, it's already made, or it's put together for the most part. We're adding things into it. I'm not involved with that. But, you know, I've done my part of it. But we don't have to worry about the kind of depressing tech issues that could happen. Which is devastating in, I think, a lot of ways. And of course, I'm not that great at pop culture, because I'm kind of isolated, but there are actually people I know that are going to be at the -- you know, that are older people. Suzanne Westenhoefer, great, you know, we couldn't afford to have her otherwise. Holly Near is going to be at our thing. AB: I know. LB: But then all of our kids, they have no idea who either of these people are. But then they have this whole set of people that they know and RuPaul people and stuff. And it really is quite an exciting thing. It was also about twenty-five percent of our budget that we make from that. Well, we're doing okay with it. AB: Okay. So, let's put down donations to the Bradbury/Sullivan Center... LB: Oh, no, it's that and the gala and we had to postpone the gala to the spring. We hope that we can have it then. But, yeah, that was a big thing. And, you know, we employ 14 people. So, it's scary for Adrian to have all these wonderful people that have jobs and then think, "Okay. If you screw this up, Adrian, I can't eat." And that doesn't apply as much to me because I'm pretty much part-time. Well, I am part-time and, you know, I don't make that much money. But it's a lot of pressure, and plus, he's doing a lot of national stuff. You know, we've been on the lawsuits against Trump and stuff like that, for trans health and it's been a big deal. So, you're staying in or are you going to the grocery store or are you just ordering stuff or what's the deal? AB: We started off just ordering stuff online and then, you know, we started going to the six a.m. senior hour. LB: I understand that, yes. AB: Around here, it's been fairly good, in terms of the stores we go to, people are wearing masks, they have the plastic up in front of everybody. And so, that helps with the confidence level. BL: We've been slowly, you know, going out, just a little bit more. We're not eating out ; we don't go to bars anyway and that sort of thing. But grocery store and an occasional short trip of some sort to, you know, our local hobby store so that we can keep busy. LB: I know what you mean, yeah. BL: But we really have limited our excursions, severely. LB: Yeah, that's what you have to do. And so, what are your hobbies? AB: Blaise picked up -- BL: I've been doing woodworking. LB: You are? Because, you know, I'm a bigtime woodworker. BL: What's that? LB: I taught woodworking and furniture design in college? BL: Oh, did you really? LB: Yeah, I have a degree and a master's degree in woodworking. BL: Oh my gosh, well, now we know who to call. LB: I got every tool. BL: I'm just doing real amateur stuff. I'm hand carving wands and, like, wizard staffs. LB: Sure, I understand. BL: I've started trying to do figural carvings, but I'm such a novice at it, they're not very good. So, it's going to take a lot of practice. Of course, I got a lot of time now. So, that was the idea, you know, that this would be something to fill some time. AB: Yeah, and I knit. And so, I've been knitting up a storm in my spare time. And I've still actually -- I'm a Healing Touch Certified Practitioner. And I've still been able to see my clients virtually and doing distance healing. I have apprentices who are still -- you know, we just do Zoom. And I've still been able to do some of that, which was only part-time to begin with. But it seems to be keeping busy. There are many days where it's like I realize I've just spent two hours scrolling through Facebook. LB: I know, it's hard to not do it. And you keep wanting to find something good. You want to find something that's -- BL: Yeah, if only. LB: It's so hard. AB: So, we've started watching movies, our old favorites, you know? And the tragic thing is, as we're watching them, there's usually something that is poignant in a way that it hadn't been before. Like, we were watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? And I had forgotten about the scene with the Ku Klux Klan. You know, so, this is, like, post-Black Lives Matter, you know? LB: Yeah. AB: And it's like, "Oh." LB: No kidding, yeah. AB: Or we were watching The Princess Bride and Fezzik asks the Man in Black, "Why do you wear a mask?" "Well, I find it rather comfortable, I think we'll all be wearing them some day." LB: Oh, geez. Oh, man. AB: Okay, there's a quote. LB: No kidding. AB: So, there's something, you know -- really re-watch Xena, the whole scene and it was like, "Oh my gosh." You know, fighting warlords and it was like, "Yeah, that's what I feel like so often." LB: I know, yeah. AB: What would Xena do? LB: Yeah, we like -- AB: Get her chakram and cut their head off, you know? LB: No kidding. We like to watch British mysteries. So, we watch all the BBC stuff. BL: Yeah, we're into that. AB: That's next. LB: But here's the problem with that, and I have maintained that this is the case, there's one or two tiny exceptions, but if there's a queer character, they're going to die. They're going to be the person that gets killed or they're going to be the murderer. Almost always. And, you know, there's, like, one episode of Father Brown where that doesn't happen. I mean, I'm talking, we've seen everything for, you know, way back to the old -- it absolutely happens. AB: Well, and that was part of my class. Yeah, I mean, we talked about that in part of my class about how that was always the case, up until recently and even now, it's mostly lesbians getting killed off in shows. And, yeah, so, that part is also -- it's like the ensign fodder on Star Trek, you know? LB: Yeah, right. Ensign fodder, that's great. Now, we were watching Death in Paradise, which is actually a fun show to watch, and it's got a lot of people of color, and you know, it's beautiful and everybody seems pretty happy and it's all about Caribbean Islands and stuff. And it's pretty light-duty. It's not really -- there's not a lot of graphic violence in it. But we were watching it and then there was a character and I thought, "Well, he's gay, so, he's going to be the killer." Because the person was already dead. And then the main character comes in, and he's the detective and he says the person's name and he says, "Is not the killer." And it's that guy and he's the gay guy. They said he's not the killer and then he says, "But you're not really him and you are the killer." And I'm like, "Oh, the gay guy's the killer." I mean, I had hope and then it was gone. It was just gone. There is a few shows that have -- there is one that has -- the Ms. Fisher series has a lesbian character in it through the whole time and it's supposed to be at the time of World War I, so, it's interesting. But her girlfriend gets murdered and she's accused of being the killer. Often that's the other thing is that they're accused of being the killer. Once in a while they get off, but it's horrible. It's just horrible. It always happens. And we still watch them because we love that genre. But it's very tough. And you run out of stuff. Particularly if you binge it. You watch a whole bunch of this stuff. Star Trek: Voyager, we do like that. So, let's see, what else can I ask you here? We said that, we said that. So, you're staying in. Okay. I just want to say that I say this is my -- I've interviewed twenty-four people and every single one has said that their biggest annoyance and biggest anger is that people aren't wearing masks and they're not taking this seriously. Everyone has said that. So, universally, among the progressive people of the world, we all are just pissed off. Like, we had to go to a doctor's appointment and every person we passed on the street -- because we hardly ever go out, we've only been out a couple of times. I realized that person's wearing a mask, that person's not wearing one, that's all she said about every single person. It's our thing. But what other kinds of frustrations or fears -- but frustrations I think would be what you would say. And there's been some small frustrations, I think, too. BL: Yeah, I don't feel as active. And I know I could go out for a walk and of course the heat's been keeping us in lately. And I really should go out for a walk and I think what's keeping me from doing it is that first fear is that, "Who am I going to run into?" LB: It's true. BL: And, you know, am I actually going to be safe doing it? And intellectually, I know I am. But mentally, you know, I've gotten to the point now, where I'm afraid of people. You know, it's not logical. It's purely an emotional response, but you know, I've become very much a homebody. And that does worry me a little bit because my mother was agoraphobic and from the time she was younger than me, she rarely went out of the house. And I don't want to be that. You know, I don't want to fall into that trap, because it's important for our health that that doesn't happen, and we get out and do things. And so, I know I'm not moving enough. I hope it doesn't become such a habit because of this, that it becomes a lifelong habit from here on out. But frankly, I'm nervous of going out. LB: Me too. AB: Yeah, and I think I mentioned earlier about Ashley having COVID. LB: Yeah, so, let's talk about that. AB: And the frustration especially that she's feeling. Because she has expectations of the -- BL: Health providers. AB: -- health providers, that they are not meeting. And then she was originally sent to the E.R. because she's on estrogen because she's transgender and the doctor was as concerned about COVID as she was about a blood clot in her lungs, pulmonary embolism. And when they decided it was COVID based on -- you know, they ruled out the blood clots and they decided it was COVID, she was sent home because it wasn't that severe. And it took a couple of weeks for her to actually start feeling better, but now she's starting to show signs of having had a stroke and cannot get adequate help, cannot get her doctor to listen to her, to understand what she's going through. And I think there's a frustration that, you know, the healthcare system is so overwhelmed that how do they give individualized attention, when they're suddenly confronted with so many cases. And they don't know what to do about it. And you have somebody who has other conditions. They talk about other things like, "Okay, if you have high blood pressure and diabetes or some kind of lung compromised or all these other kinds of things." But who's looking at transgender people with COVID and what are their unique, you know, situations. And so, that's one of my biggest frustrations is that we've been able to stay healthy. I have gone into a couple of doctor's appointments. They were extremely cautious. They were specialists, you know? So, they weren't overwhelmed. They weren't part of the frontline. We cancelled dentist appointments because that's probably where Ashley got it. Her endodontist walked into the room without a mask on and so, that's probably where she got it. So, we did end up cancelling our dentist appointments. But we're okay there. That wasn't an emergency. But the frustration with the medical system, I think that's why I go to Doctor Levine, because I can trust her. I know what's going on. You know, too bad she can't be my doctor. LB: No kidding, yeah. AB: My conviction is, are we going to be able to trust medical professionals going forward? You know, assuming that they don't all die from COVID. That's kind of huge. Especially since we're transitioning to Medicare and that sort of thing. LB: No kidding. Yeah, we went to the doctor yesterday and it was the skin doctor. So, it was a specialist kind of situation. We both went because we both had stuff. We had to go, and we went into the waiting room and all the chairs were just piled up in the corner. There were no chairs and it was an odd look, you know? It was a thing that, you know, if we get past this, we'll never see that again. It was so bizarre. And the people were great, and we felt really safe, because they know how to clean things, you know? They're good at that. But it is true that Trish just had to go to the dentist, but the dentist was literally with a mask and a plastic thing and, you know, she looked like she could have wrapped her whole body with -- and Trish said, "You will not be scared if you have to go to the dentist. I've never seen anything so remote control as the people." So, yeah, that's the thing, because when you see somebody without a mask, it makes you agoraphobic. I can understand that. I have that feeling too. Like Adrian said, "Well, maybe we can open in September." And all I was thinking was, "I'm not going. I'm not going." I said, "I'm not going unless you can guarantee me that I'm not going to get it. I'm not doing it." And I do trainings to hundreds of people. And they were asking me to do one in September and I said, "Only if you can guarantee that a high-risk person could not be in any risk at all." Well, they can't do that. So, you know, I said, "I'll do a Zoom." It's actually easier to do these interviews. The only thing that's weird about it, and you may or may not have done this, that you have no idea whether there's anyone out there. I did a training of, like, two hundred people and I said, "Well, I hope -- and I got done at the end of 90 minutes and I said, "I hope it's actually still working and the power just hasn't gone off and I'm just talking to myself." But, you know, anyway. BL: I had to do the second half of the last semester online. And it was tricky. And I know the students found it difficult. You know, this was not a format that most of them wanted and many of them found challenging. And particularly students with any kind of issues in terms of how they learn, et cetera. It's extremely challenging. And boy, I'm so glad I got to retire at the end of the semester, but I feel terrible for my colleagues who I know are so frustrated about, you know, what they are being forced to do. And, I know that my colleagues in your field, for instance, how in the world do you teach woodworking if you can't be in a woodworking lab? LB: Yeah, it can't be done. BL: I know they're just trying their damnedest to figure out how to make it a worthwhile learning experience and they're just really frustrated. You know, my field, computer science, yeah, we can get away with it, for the most part. There are some things that I found really hard to present because it's such a non-dynamic medium. And in terms of the tools we have available right now. Now, I know that's going to change. You know, next year, there is going to be a lot of development for new products that will make teaching online easier and they're going to be good. So, that the next time, it won't be so awful. But boy, it has forever changed the face of education. Particularly at the university level -- college and university level. And this is going to have a huge impact on how that whole field works from now on. LB: It's pretty interesting, I've talked to a number of college professors, I think three so far, in this group, and they're all really different. Because some of them were already doing distanced learning classes and they were pretty set up for it and one of them I'm about to interview on Thursday, right from the minute it happened had to rewrite every single thing she did. Everything she did was discussion classes and there was all this presentation by the students and everything and she said, "I don't know how to do this. I don't even know how to use the tools." So, I know she pulled it off, but she's at East Stroudsburg. And she's going to be moving right into the semester right away and it's very hard. So, yeah, what a tricky thing to do. And then you didn't even have to walk at the graduation. You just waved. BL: Yeah, yeah. AB: Yeah, well, Blaise is a computer scientist. So, you know, already, he's technologically savvy, but, you know -- BL: That doesn't mean it was easy. LB: No kidding. AB: So, I feel bad for people who don't have a background in computer science. LB: Sure, well, anybody who has to rewrite a class in the middle of the class -- people don't understand how hard it is to get these things in place. I taught woodworking at State University of New York for the first part of my career and a different life. And it couldn't be done. You would have just shut it down. There's no way that you could -- it's like you can't take this stuff home to do as homework either. So, now, ceramics people gave people clay and told them to take it home and that happened at Cedar Crest apparently, that they just said, "Here's a whole bunch of clay, make stuff." What a strange thing to do, really, because that doesn't really work. You know, you can't really do it that way. So, it's sort of a fake thing. So, that's a terrible story about Ashley and had you known other people that have had it or have been -- AB: Friends. The daughter of one of our friends was in New York. She was a chaplain and she came down with COVID and she was really sick for about a month. BL: But recovered, she totally recovered. AB: Seems to be recovered and another friend who had moved to New York also recovered. She was really sick for about two months, was not hospitalized, but just took a very long time to recover. But also, you know, so, we haven't really known anybody personally who died from it. One of his daughters works in a nursing facility in Baltimore -- outside of Baltimore and she's been really lucky. One employee tested positive, but showed no symptoms. And nobody in their facility had COVID, at least as of right now. So, that was, you know, pretty lucky. And my nephew works in Country Meadows with people in the dementia unit. LB: Oh, golly. AB: He said, you know, as much as he complains about having to wear a mask and shield and all the protective gear, he said, "We still don't have a case." LB: Wow. AB: So, we've been probably among the lucky ones in regard to that. LB: There's a facility in Allentown -- outside of Allentown. It's something Gardens, I think. And Steve Ziminsky was telling me that his former roommate is there now, and he has a pretty serious heart condition, so he can't do very much. Not very old, he's in his 60s. And they had one hundred people who tested positive. BL: Oh my. LB: And it's not a very big facility, including him. Including this guy. And I don't know how many deaths they had. I don't think they were telling. But one hundred people and a lot of them were a significant numbers of care workers too. So, that's a lot of stuff. So -- BL: That's a very high-density situation. AB: Right. LB: Yeah, and -- BL: You know, once it gets introduced, it's going to spread like crazy. LB: Sure. Well, I have a friend who is a pediatrician and she actually had it and was very, very sick, but she said that, you know, the parents have said, "Well, do you think it's okay for my kid to go to daycare?" And she said, "Has your kid ever gone to daycare and not gotten sick from something that -- you know, they're going to get it. They're going to get it." And so, I just read an article in the New York Times today that said -- and I don't know if I believe this, but that younger kids don't seem to be as likely to get it. Particularly children under five. And it's even possibly because when they cough and sneeze, when they're around other five-year-olds, they don't spew out as much as we do when we sneeze, as big as adults do. It seems unrealistic to me. It seems like an unrealistic thing. There's some other factors that have to do with receptors in little children's bodies that aren't as big, I guess, and they're not as likely to latch onto viruses. But it's not like kids don't get the flu. So, I don't know what that's about. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Go ahead. AB: And looking at the data, you know, because they keep pointing to data from Germany and, I don't know, Sweden and Israel and, you know, it's like, "Oh, they had no problem." They also didn't have the same number of cases that we have. Israel did have problems opening with COVID and the kids. And I think it's -- yeah, they may not be getting COVID, but whether or not they spread it, whether they can carry it home is another thing that we don't know. LB: Right, we don't know. That's really the thing. AB: You know, and if somebody lives in Montana, one hundred miles away from the nearest case of COVID, have at it. Open your school and go for it. In an area where, you know, you haven't flattened the curve yet or it's still kind of -- you know, I think it's a big risk. My daughter's school district has decided to start with online, virtual classrooms. And then reevaluate it every month. LB: That's wise. AB: His son's youngest is going to be going to school, but he has learning disabilities. And those are the kids they're bringing back and they're going to -- BL: In a hybrid. AB: In a hybrid system. I think two days a week, appropriately distanced and all that kind of stuff, to see how they do. Because they're the ones who are really suffering from the virtual classroom. So, yeah, I don't know, it's kind of -- you know, do I want to risk my grandkids for an experiment? LB: No kidding. Yeah, you know, I was talking to Steve Ziminksy, he was a school -- he was a music teacher in Allentown School District for many, many years. And he was telling me about things that I hadn't thought of and one of them is that a lot of Allentown schools are not air conditioned. So, what they do is, if it's really hot, they take the kids that are in the hottest rooms and they put them all down in one big, air-conditioned room, like the auditorium. Well, that's not an option. And he said, "How are they going to do that? What are they going to do when it's ninety degrees on September, you know, fifteenth?" Well, tough luck kids. Some of you get to be in air conditioning. AB: That could have been factored into my daughter's school situation because they don't have air conditioning in their elementary schools. That could have been a factor in their decision not to bring the kids back. But air conditioning is still -- LB: Yeah, if you don't have filters. AB: If the air conditioning works, that could spread it through the whole school. LB: Sure, yeah. It's a Legionnaires' kind of thing. It could be. So, do you want to say anything about Black Lives Matter? Because I'm asking everybody about that. You know, we can't talk about COVID without talking about that and without talking about politics because it's the deal. BL: It is one of the frustrations that we can't be out on the street with them. LB: No kidding, no kidding. BL: I mean, it's driving me nuts that I can't go downtown and help. Alanna and I and I'm sure you as well, since we were teenagers have been fighting for equal rights. It's frustrating, first of all, that we still have to do it. But, you know, after fifty years. But still, that's our first instinct is to go out and, you know, hold signs ourselves and protest. You know, there's no question in my mind that this can be a watershed moment. Whether it's going to be a positive one or a negative one is yet to be seen. I think the current administration is doing everything they can possibly do to make this as bad as it can possibly get. They are taking the exact wrong approach and clearly making things worse, rather than any attempt to make them better. You know, it is so easy to demonstrate that black folks and others of color are so oppressed, and they have been for four hundred years. And while the oppression is somewhat subtler these days, it's still there. And we have got to get past that, or we will never reach the potential that this country could reach. AB: You know, I actually lived in North Carolina when I was younger, and it was a really difficult time. My father was invited to join the Ku Klux Klan. And they apparently didn't realize he was Jewish. We had black maids and watching that and participating in that oppression. You know, the signs that said, "Colored only," or "Whites only." You know, growing up with that was painful. And then, you know, coming back to the north -- because we were damn Yankees down there, but then coming back to the north and the race riots in the high school where I was at, you know, in the seventies. And then, you know, fast forward to -- it was about the same time we started the Freedom to Marry work. We also got involved in anti-racism work. And so, that was around 2004. I know the people we were doing it with just didn't understand the anti-racism. "I'm not racist" kind of thing. And I had worked and collectively owned and operated an anti-profit community restaurant, a Kosher restaurant, in the seventies. And it was like, that went off for me. We were anti-profit. We weren't non-profit. We were against the machinery that made money on food. You know, that made such outrageous profits on food. And so, for me, suddenly that made sense to me. And it's like, to be anti-racist means you are against the system. And it took me even longer to figure out what those systems were. And as an individual, they are so hard to deconstruct. You know, there's nothing I can do as an individual about the property taxes that cause people of color to be isolated in poor school districts. And so, understanding that and explaining that to people -- and that's what actually has caused the civil war in our own family is that some of them -- "But I'm not racist." It's like, "That's not the point." And trying to explain that to people who don't want to hear it, you know? "Well, how can you tell me that I've benefited from white privilege? I have no money, you know, I have all these problems. How can you say I benefited from white privilege?" "Well, let me walk you through some of the exercises." Because we have done a lot of work and it's so distressing to be fifty years from Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior and say, "Oh my gosh, you know, we are no farther, except that so many people are paying attention now." LB: It's true. AB: Almost every company that I do online business with has sent me emails, outlining specifically what they are doing to educate their employees. They're donating to the right organizations, they are setting up, you know -- BL: Well, they're strengthening their policies. AB: Yeah, but they're also setting up opportunities for young people of color, so that they can, you know, be mentored and get skills and things like that. So, beyond the protests, I feel like there is hope that this time, we're going to make it work. And the continuing protests hopefully will hold people's feet to the fire. So, it's -- BL: It's all we can hope for. AB: Yeah, we can't let our guard down. LB: No, that's for sure. BL: But it's real frustrating that we can't be more actively involved. LB: No kidding. And we had this thing in Allentown, I don't know if you know that whole thing that happened in Allentown where the person was arrested for being sick and then kneeling on his head. And, you know, it happened five blocks from this window that I'm looking at and I couldn't go to it. And Adrian was there. He actually was there at midnight and he texted me and he said, "This is happening." And I know he did that because he wanted to know if I wanted to come over. I mean, I was just down the street and I said to Trish -- and then they had another protest the next night. And I said, "I think we should go to this." And the look on her face, because she's very, very at risk. And she's worried about me. And I had very severe lung issues when I was a teenager, so, I don't know, you know, whether that would affect me or not. I've been breathing wood dust my entire life too. So, I don't know, but she's really, really at risk and she has lupus and a lung disease and all sorts of stuff. So, I really deliberated and then I looked at the pictures. I could see the thing that was happening. It was live. And I could see these kids and they were chanting and yelling without masks on. Not a lot of them, but a couple of them. And I thought, "I can't do it. I can't do it." BL: You know, it's -- LB: All I have to do is be right next to somebody who's shouting out and I understand that passion. I understand why they want to chant and yell and stuff like that. But -- BL: Yeah, really want to be there. It's tearing us apart that we can't participate. LB: I understand it. I understand. Wow, it's very tough. And -- AB: Well, the other thing too is the intellectual level. While everybody in the country is up in arms about Black Lives Matter, the whole idea of intersectionality comes into play. Because while everybody's yelling about this, Trump is taking away healthcare for LGBT people. You know, here's where the news is focused, so, let's take away these rights from LGBT people and put more kids in cages. And so, that whole divide and conquer thing. BL: And misdirection. He's good at that. AB: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I'm hopefully more than anything. That's where I have hope is that we are going to actually start doing things. And if we can get a lot of these old white men out of office, you know, and I hate to say -- I don't want to limit it to Republicans, because I'm not sure the old, white Democrats are doing much better. Their hearts are in the right place, but they don't have the fire. But that whole notion of this patriarchal, you know, daddy thing. That daddy knows best and he's punishing the kids and, you know, mom has to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and, you know, that is -- we got to stop that somehow. And, you know, I'm kind of on the fence with AOC. You know, her recent preaching was just brilliant. LB: It was brilliant. It was totally brilliant. And Trish was playing it and she goes, "Sit down and listen to this." And I said, "Okay. That was brilliant." And every single person that I know that listened to it said, "Okay. That was brilliant." And, you know, even the criticism didn't make any sense, you know? BL: Right. AB: Right. LB: Well, she shouldn't be talking out. And that's the biggest danger I think, is when we have people that say, in sort of the guise of, "Well, you have to be able to -- I mean, everybody needs to be calm and self-care and stuff like that, but don't push self-care so far that you're not doing anything, you know? That you're not speaking out and that you just accept this. That you accept things and that things happen for a reason." Yeah, because there's racists. Well, we're going to change it, you know? They happen for a reason that's stupid. So, let's fix that reason. But it's very tough. I think it's very tough right now for people like us too, because we're -- BL: It also seems like we're at a period of history where a lot of confluences are coming together. And I do have a little bit of hope that, in fact, this is going to bleed over into the election and beyond. And have enough momentum to actually carry us forward, rather than backwards. I'm not entirely optimistic about it, but I've got that sort of hidden hope that, you know, there's going to be such a backlash from all of this nonsense, that we are in fact going to make progress this time. But, you know, we've kind of felt that way before. You know, when we got us out of Vietnam we thought, "Oh yeah, you know, we're going to beat the, you know, industrial complex." AB: The military industrial complex. BL: The military industrial complex. AB: We got Nixon impeached, yes. LB: I know, it's like this. BL: Yeah, and that we're going to start taking care of people. Well, didn't quite happen, did it? So, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic in that respect. I do have kind of good feelings about this next election that we are in fact going to be able to make some massive changes. But boy, do we got to get out -- LB: Yeah, I tell you, the thing that is most positive for me was seeing that a lot of the Black Lives Matters protests and the people who were protesting within this, it's very energy-charged and a lot of them were young people. And the young people vote is what brought us to Obama. And which did not bring us to Hillary Clinton because there wasn't that college student vote. And right now, college students are really pissed off. And they need to understand that it doesn't have to be this way and even their college loan things and stuff and the plans that -- it is true that the plans -- the Biden campaign has some very good steps that are probably from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, for paying off student loans and stuff. Which these young people have to recognize is this has to be done, and it's not even that much money. I mean, really, in the grand scheme of things, it helps them to be able to have more disposable income, which kind of takes care of taxes and stuff. And it ends up balancing it out. So, that -- BL: My two big agenda items are that and the universal healthcare. LB: That's true. BL: If we don't get universal healthcare passed, we are just never going to get anywhere. I really think that the whole medical system is a disaster. You know, it started when they started deregulating it and allowing it to make profit, et cetera. And it's real easy to show all the other countries that have universal healthcare, how much better their societies are. How much better protection everybody has. LB: And the direct relationship of COVID's proliferation, because people didn't have healthcare and because they were sick, they couldn't take days off and you know how that continued to happen. Yeah. BL: Well, anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we're going to have a big year. LB: I hope so. I hope so as well. BL: God help us if we don't. LB: Yeah, all right. So, one more thing that I hope that -- this archive project is really fascinating and we're having a wonderful time with Muhlenberg and Lehigh University working on this too. So, they've done a bunch of older LGBT people talking about all this stuff that happened. I often thought that all the stuff we did to pass all our ordinances nobody would know about that. And I've been talking about that a lot. And they transcribe it and it's really terrific and it's all searchable and you can get it in all the papers that we say, like, "Why are you doing this stuff?" And now, it's all in the archives and all digitalized and, you know, all the Valley Gay Presses that I made, one of the things that happened was, I was talking to Kristen Leipert, who I'm actually working with now on these things that I'm doing, like last year. And I was talking about the LGBT March on Washington in 1993. And I said, "Well, Trish and I went together to that and we've been together for several years. About six years by the time we went to that." And then I said, "We both were at the 1987 march, but we weren't together there." And Kristen goes, "Yeah, I know." And I said, "How do you know that?" And she said, "Because I read all the papers as I digitalized them, and I read all the stories and I know everything about your life. (laughter) Great, somebody does. So, she said that she knows everything. And then she'll says things like, "I found this video of the first Pride Festival. Who can you identify in the thing?" So, I'd watch the whole two-and-a-half-hour thing and I said, "Well, there's me way in the back." Because they only did the front. They only videotaped the front and I named a lot of people that were there and stuff. And it was very interesting to see, you know, I think all those people look the same as they do now, even though it was, you know, twenty-seven years ago and I'm the same. I still have those pants, you know, that kind of stuff. (laughter) Which always happens to me. I actually said, like, "Is that me? Oh yeah, I remember those pants." (laughter) But the whole thing has been very terrific and one of the things I hope and one of the reasons for this is to collect information from people who are talking about what's happening now, so people in the future can look back at this and say, "These are real people and how this was affecting them." And we don't have that for the flu epidemic of 1918, when my grandmother died. My grandmother died of the flu in 1918. So, what do you want to say to people thirty years from now or forty years from now or fifty years? BL: I hope life is better. LB: Just a soundbite. A soundbite. AB: Yeah, you know, a young person called me about the Defund the Police Movement and, you know, she had a questionnaire and we walked through the questionnaire and I talked about how I've been doing this work for 50 years and I really thought it would be solved by now. You know, when I was a teenager, I thought this would all be a thing of the past and it's not. And I go back and forth between anger and despair. And the one day I was talking to my grandson and he wanted to know about history. And so, you know, we were talking about history and he said, "Well, I'm really afraid the world's going to fall apart." He said, "This anti-racism work," he said, "I need to get involved in that." He's nine. "I need to get involved in that anti-racism work." He said, "I feel bad that I can't save the world." And it was like, "Oh my gosh, that's how I feel. And I said to him, "You know, I often feel like that, but what got me through was the idea of think globally, act locally. Change your own little part of the world." And, you know, I raised my kids to be, you know, anti-racist. And, you know, my daughter married a black man and our son married a Vietnamese refugee. We have a transgender daughter. And so, we've got this conglomeration of culture and ethnicity in our own little family. And so, they don't care about skin color and things like that. And we started Silent Witness Peacekeepers, you know? LB: Right. AB: And we created that in our own little part of the world, and we made such a difference. And so, if everybody does that, if everybody does their part, then maybe we will change the world. And that's what I told the young woman. I said, "I don't want to make any assumptions. You sound like you're young." I said, "We thought we were going to turn over this utopia to you guys and you still have to do the work. And you know, we're here to help. We can't be out there anymore marching, but we're more than willing to support you in the ways that we can." And so, if somebody is watching this thirty years from now and the world is a much better place, yay. BL: Yay. AB: If not, you know what? Ask -- BL: Sorry about that. AB: Yeah, because we're more than happy to, you know, listen when they complain and give them advice if they need it and do whatever we need to do. BL: Yeah, obviously, we've always felt it's incumbent on all of us to take positive steps toward a better future. And not just complain. But, you know, take an active role, as much as you can. You know, not everybody has to be out there on the street. But as much as you possibly can to support that movement forward. I hope to God it's better thirty years from now. And if it isn't, we're sorry. We're doing everything that we can think of to do. I'd like to think that the last three years or so in particular, have been an aberration that doesn't get repeated. Unfortunately, I also know from history and looking back thirty years in the past, what they did then that has continuing repercussions now, in a negative way. And I hope that the steps we're taking now lead to more positive than negative. And by the time thirty years from now -- you know, universal healthcare in particular, I think, if that hasn't become a reality, I just don't have any hope for the country at all. If they haven't done more to make reparations for the centuries of oppression of people of color, I don't have any hope for this country. AB: Or the indigenous people. BL: Yes, them as well. As a country, we have to own what it cost other people to make it what so many people think of as the greatest country in the world. Yeah, we're not the greatest in many, many ways. AB: No, right now we're the third world banana republic. LB: No kidding. BL: I think the ideals of the country are wonderful, you know, the phrase that all men are created equal is probably one of the greatest phrases ever written. And yet, even at the time it was written, they didn't mean it. LB: It wasn't true, yeah. BL: We have to mean it. And if another thirty years goes by and we haven't made great strides in meaning it in this country, then I'd say the experiment's a failure. But I'm hoping that's not going to be the case. Obviously, I'm trying to do whatever I can. And we all are, in this family for sure, trying to do what we can to live up to those ideals. And to make sure that nobody feels like they're on the outside. AB: And that's assuming we haven't fried the earth. LB: And then there's that. BL: Yeah. AB: Yeah, I remember being part of the first Earth Day. LB: Me too. AB: I was in high school. We formed the Clean Earth Association and we got permission to have an assembly. And, you know, we were out there educating in 1970. You know, and I started habits back then. Like turning off the water when I brushed my teeth. And every time I do that, I think I've been doing this since 1970. LB: Well, we're doing what we can do. We've got a history of doing what we can do. And we do have to recognize that, you know, if you look back to the 1950s, it's pretty much a sucky time. You know, the McCarthy Era and rampant Jim Crow and, you know, pre-Martin Luther King. And the beginnings of the Vietnam War and witch hunts and terrible government. And certainly, the incarceration of LGBT people. BL: Yeah, one of the things I've always said to Alanna is, particularly when we were working on the issue of same-sex marriage, was I'd like to keep Susan B. Anthony in mind. She worked her entire adult life, into her nineties, trying to get them the vote for women and it didn't happen in her lifetime. But it did happen. LB: Yeah, it's true. BL: And, you know, what's to say, you know -- I can't even think of the saying that I want to project at this point. But, you know, just because it's not going to be effective in our lifetime, doesn't mean we are free from the responsibility of trying to make it happen in our lifetime. LB: That's true. BL: And that's something that I've always lived by, that I've tried to pass on to my children and obviously we're trying to pass it on to our grandkids. AB: Yeah, the ethics of the fathers. You may not finish the work in your lifetime, but neither are you free to desist from it. BL: I knew she'd know the quote. LB: Good for you. Well, that's a terrific note to end on. Thank you so much for saying that. Thank you so much for talking to me. You've been very inspirational. BL: Thanks for asking us in. AB: Yeah, it's amazing. BL: We're very honored. AB: Yes, very honored and it's wonderful seeing you again. LB: It's great to see you too. I will give Trish a hug. I'm going to turn off the recorder now. Oh, whoops. Wait, oh no. BL: Don't tell me you didn't record it. LB: So, I just did this entire recording with forgetting to do the video of this. But I did do the audio. Thank goodness. I missed Blaise Liffick and the wonderful Alanna Berger. Both of them from Silent Witness talking about brilliant things. We have the entire audio recording. They will make the transcript from this. So, there will be a written transcript from this as well. Oh, does this suck big. I'm very, very sorry. Maybe I'll come back to you, because everything you said was brilliant. Maybe when you go, you'll go, "Oh, I forgot to say this thing." (laughter) BL: Anytime, Liz. LB: Oh, no, not anytime. This is so tough for you to do this. But you did a wonderful job and I really, really appreciate it. I can't believe I didn't do that. I even looked at the thing and said, "Is the thing on?" But the red light wasn't on. What a fool. Well, I've only done that -- this is the first time I've done that in all of these. But I did get the audio. But luckily, I said, "Oh, I don't have the audio on. Let me turn it on." So, that was good. I might have to come back and do you again. Maybe next week. BL: We could sit and read the transcript, how's that? LB: You could, maybe. Maybe do that. (laughter) No, that would be wrong. That wouldn't be good. Well, think about -- I think that the things that you said were brilliant and I did get all of the audio of it. And I'm so terribly sorry that I messed this up. BL: Oh, it's fine. LB: I can't believe it. AB: And you are recording now, right? LB: Yes, I'm recording both of the things now. So, say that thing that you said at the end of the statement that you said about -- AB: Oh, from the Pirke Avot the ethics of our fathers. You may not complete the work in your lifetime, but neither are you free to desist from it. LB: Well, that was brilliant. That was the gist of the entire interview, which is in the audio. Thank God I got the audio. I'm sweating because I've messed this up. So, anyways, well, I do have the audio, thank God. So, I do have the transcript for that, and I think that will work, because people will look at it and stuff. Thank you. And I actually think that we have a -- and I'm going to encourage them to do this, to be sure that you're on this. This is an ongoing grant through Lehigh University that they have been doing these oral histories. And they've done a number of people. It takes them a lot longer to do these things than it takes me to do it. They have a team. But they've done, I think, ten people and they're doing me now. And I said, "You can't do it all in ninety minutes, because I have a lot of things to say and I have another interview next Monday. But I think that they should talk to you particularly about the stuff you've done for Silent Witness and your lives too, because you've had such a significant life and I'm going to make them do this, since I screwed this up. So, they're going to get in touch with you in the next round of grant stuff. And I'll force Mary Foltz to do this. She's a wonderful interviewer. Much better than I, because I can't shut up and she'll let you actually talk. And I think that your life experience has been so significant and I think that's a very, very important thing for us to be able to include into the oral history, because your involvement with the LGBT community has been extraordinarily significant. Our Pride Festival and the -- and now, we're running it through the center. It's been twenty-seven festivals and the circumstances of the anti-LGBT and the anti-preachers that would come were getting worse and worse. To the point where it was one time we had a guy that set up next to our booth, while we were trying to get to sign and he just screamed through a megaphone the entire time of the entire festival. And it was impossible to actually engage people because of that. And that wouldn't have gone away. That was before when you started to do something. AB: Yeah, and that was something that -- you know, we did a lot of research on -- and we worked with the Harrisburg Police. The Harrisburg Police were great back then, as were Parks and Rec. Through so many of the lawsuits, they had great advice for us. And we also worked with Steve Glassman. We studied Supreme Court cases on freedom of speech. We followed, you know, who the street preachers were. And, you know, looked at their lawsuits. And so, we actually did a lot of work to get where we were. You know, for instance, we would take these packets of information with us and show them to the police beforehand, because we'd always meet with the police. And, you know, well, they're not allowed to interfere with this, because that was a Supreme Court case decision. And so, the police went, "Oh, really?" You know, so, those were the kinds of things that, you know, we were able to do. We were more than just a pretty umbrella. LB: Oh, no, I was there. I remember it and I remember a couple of Freedom to Marry things that were particularly hard when you weren't there or when you weren't there. Not Freedom -- not just Silent Witness, but you particularly weren't there. And sometimes the other Silent Witness people didn't quite know how to convince the police that the preacher with the megaphone standing behind us, doing the presentation, was not really supposed to be doing that. And how they were breaking the rules. BL: We have a particular knowledge set that is hard to pass on. LB: It's really important to be able to have that and to have the presence to convince people, you know, you're going to get in trouble if you do it the wrong way. AB: Yeah, but Doctor Blaise Liffick was able to get through to the police in ways that a lot of other people can't. LB: Yeah, thank you for doing that. AB: So, his thirty-nine years of teaching at the college level really came in handy. LB: Okay. Well, I'm going to stop this now, for real. AB: Okay. LB: And stop that, for heaven sakes. And I just wanted to say I'm going to stop the recording now. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. audio This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:32:28
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Alanna Berger and Blaise Liffick, July 28, 2020 (audio only)
Description
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Blaise Liffick and Alanna Berger talk about how the current COVID19 pandemic is affecting them. They talk about their recent move to be nearer to their adult children, Blaise’s retirement from teaching college, and how the end of the semester was remote learning. They discussed their many years of commitment to civil rights and the support of the LGBT community through the Silent Witness programs. They talked about the LGBT people in their family and how COVID-19 has affected their work and health from having the virus.
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PH40_07
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COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-
Date
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2020-07-28
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audio
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/36b2ed4510c2ee4a07a056352af6c1d3.png
f84ca255032e518e734fc49854a7ef55
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: COVID-19
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Anita Niles-Lee
OHMS Object
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_18.xml
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5.4 July 13, 2020 Anita Niles-Lee, July 13, 2020 PH40_18 01:05:51 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- COVID-19 (Disease) Anita Niles-Lee Liz Bradbury video/mpeg Niles-LeeAnita_20200713_video.mp4 1.0:|27(9)|50(8)|75(5)|112(14)|141(7)|170(6)|193(12)|216(8)|235(13)|258(17)|279(4)|298(3)|319(10)|338(2)|363(2)|382(9)|417(9)|438(8)|461(5)|484(7)|511(10)|532(15)|555(14)|576(9)|597(8)|624(4)|651(7)|678(4)|709(8)|736(13)|767(16)|800(3)|827(16)|846(5)|873(11)|898(16)|915(10)|938(5)|963(4)|986(4)|1003(10)|1026(2)|1053(7)|1076(13)|1099(10)|1118(14)|1141(2)|1160(15)|1189(14)|1208(10)|1235(7)|1258(4)|1287(9)|1312(6)|1335(6)|1356(15)|1379(12)|1400(7)|1423(7)|1446(6)|1473(13)|1496(12)|1519(7)|1544(2)|1573(3)|1584(5) 0 https://youtu.be/_yhV44hachA YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction LB: Wonderful. I am going to read you this stuff because we’re recording now. This says -- oh, I have to turn off my phone, I want to do that. And I want to pin -- what we call pinning the video. And so, I’m going to pin this. There. That means that when we talk it doesn’t keep jumping back to me. Just your picture, so your picture is really big. Terrific, you look terrific. Let’s see, I did that, I did that, and I did the audio and the video. With this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh and the greater Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury and I’m here with Anita Niles-Lee. 0 378 Husband losing job due to pandemic ANL: My husband and I have been basically strict quarantine since the second week in March. He lost his job, so that kind of made it easy to totally quarantine. He was working in New Jersey and his job is affiliated with the airline industry, which we all know how that is doing, so he was laid off pretty early in the process. 
 ; 0 453 Husband losing family members to Covid-19 ANL: My husband has lost three family members actually. He lost three elderly members, one thought she had a cold. And it was within the second week, I think, that the virus broke out in New York. 0 512 Going out only for chores during the pandemic/Concerns about daughter's susceptibility to contracted Covid-19 ANL: We go out, we try to go out once a week very early in the morning just to chores. We never go out on weekends, weekends are -- we just lock down on the weekends. So, that’s pretty much been it. I’ve only seen my daughter once since -- my daughter who lives in Nazareth, we’ve only seen each other once since it started 0 695 Children's experiences with racism/Experiences during the pandemic ANL: I have Justin, who’s in LA doing very well. He actually went to one of the Black Lives Matter protests because he’s hard to keep down. And he’s active out there, but safe. They quarantine, they have a quarantine group, and those are the only people they’ve seen. He’s doing well. And as you know, my children are half-Chinese, so we have a lot of that going on too. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Has it been an issue?
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 ; ANL: My daughter in Florida was called the N-word by someone in a car who rolled his window down, yelled at her, and that happened. 0 892 Communicating with family/Daughter's work during the pandemic ANL: [...] My daughter in Florida every day. We FaceTime at least once or twice a day. She has three kids. The oldest is five, the youngest are twins, they’re two and a half. So, she’s kind of going crazy with that. And she actually taught my oldest granddaughter how to call me. 0 1042 Concerns during the pandemic/Communicating with son/Adapting to life during the pandemic ANL: Well, I have to be honest, with the pandemic and what’s happening with the transgender community and their rights being taken away and Black Lives Matter, it’s just -- and the Asian whatever he calls it, I can’t even remember, I’m overwhelmed. And some days I wonder if we’re ever going to get out of it. 0 1187 President Donald Trump's anti-Asian Covid rhetoric/Concerns of rhetoric effecting husband ANL: And as soon as we were going to drive down, he started with the Asian stuff. And I said to Dan, I’m not comfortable with you driving back through the South by yourself. So, I’m kind of grounded now until something gives. 
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 ; LB: When you said he started with the Asian stuff, you’re talking about the president of the United States. 
 ; 0 1368 Son's work as a writer LB: When you’re talking about the LGBT community, and I know Justin has been very significant in that community, he’s a writer, and has done some very significant work. What’s he working on now? 
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 ; ANL: Actually the Hulu new show, Love, Victor, he’s working on the second season for that show. 0 1411 Thoughts on Dr. Rachel Levine/President Trump's handling of the pandemic ANL: I adore her. (laughs) I’m always on Facebook as everybody pretty well knows, and some of the comments I get about that poor Dr. Levine are horrible, horrible. And I give her one-thousand percent credit for getting up there and doing what she does every day. She’s amazing, she’s amazing. She’s a hero, I have to say.
 ; 0 1536 Gardening during the pandemic ANL: We started, I call it my pandemic garden. Dan and I are die hard city people, so this is the first time we’ve ever really gardened. And I’m enjoying it. It’s actually brought us together. 0 1983 Stepping down from running PFLAG ANL: It had died down for a very, very long time. Sporadically I would get people asking for information and help over the internet, but the last year, after I think it was around December, I started hearing about a lot of young people getting upset with all that was going on with all the politics. So, someone had started the PFLAG chapter again, we had one meeting in February, and then the pandemic hit. I mean, I withdrew because I had differences with that person. 0 2142 Assisting young LGBT people ANL: Actually my -- my most recent call from help was a lady down in Florida. Someone I know in Florida gave her my number, and her daughter just started their hormone, their HRT, and she’s having a very hard time with going out and going shopping, and trying to be supportive but being stuck, and how they can get their medicine, and so I did a little research down that end of the town. But other than that it’s been quiet. 0 2371 Frustrations during the pandemic ANL: Every day I open my eyes and turn on the news. It’s almost like do I really even want to know. Daniel and I have it down to we’ll watch maybe morning news until nine o’clock and then it’s done. No more until maybe three o’clock and then it’s off for dinner time. Because you can’t. It was constant pounding and pounding. We avoid it. 0 2486 Reconnecting with people through FaceTime ANL: (laughs) I guess connecting with friends. People that, you know, we all work, but I guess I’m on the internet a lot, and I’ve -- people I went to grammar school with we’ve connected because everyone is home. I guess that was kind of fun. 
 ; 0 2650 Estrangement from family members/Son's divorce ANL: Yeah. We’re estranged. The boys just -- it was -- there is always drama but when Justin and Adrian came out and someone asked me when they were getting married, is this a real wedding, how can this be a real -- I was like, done. I pretty much just said we just can’t talk anymore. 0 2747 Concerns over contracting Covid-19 ANL: [...] I was a heavy smoker for many, many years. I have COPD. [00:46:00] And my daughter’s husband left five weeks ago, and had I not had this terrible history of lung problems, I would have been on a plane. And I told her, if I come down there I can’t get sick. So, we’re just waiting until airlines figure something out. Because my husband, I won’t let him drive. 0 2933 Struggles with mental health during the pandemic ANL: [...] The depression, the depression for me was awful. And the anxiety. Every time I had to leave my house I would palpitate, I would sweat, it was horrible. I try not to leave now. 0 3016 Black Lives Matter protests during the pandemic/Stress over others not wearing masks LB: I know that you’ve seen this circumstance that happened here in Lehigh Valley with the police. 
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 ; ANL: Yes, yeah. 
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 ; LB: And I actually had an interview with someone at five o’clock, but I knew that she would want to go. She’s a younger person and she’s a person of color, and I knew that she would want to be at this thing. So, I said let’s do your thing tomorrow. And Adrian said, people should go out and our employees can go to join this march. 0 3216 Concerns over school/daycare openings LB: And if you have a -- when we are talking about opening schools and stuff, how can -- I have a friend who’s a pediatrician and she had people ask her, moms ask her, is it okay for my kid to go to daycare and she said, “Well, let me ask you this. When your kid goes to daycare, do they ever get a cold from anybody else at daycare, or the flu, or any other thing?” They get everything at daycare. 
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 ; ANL: Turbo germs. I call them turbo germs. 
 ; 0 3322 Concerns over government's mismanagement of the pandemic effecting marginalized communities/Frustrations over pandemic deniers ANL: I have -- maybe it’s because I’m a person of color, I believe this is like his own private genocide. This is their way of getting rid of brown people, Black people, poor people, they don’t care. It’s like clear it out, we’ll buy up the real estate. It sounds very harsh and I know it’s like -- but that’s how I feel.
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 ; LB: I totally understand. I understand exactly what you mean. 0 3455 Thoughts for the future ANL: That we weren’t crazy. We weren’t speaking hyperbolically. We were truth tellers. And it’s hard, I think, for people like us to understand people so full of hate and so full of anger. And it’s beyond me. And I always thought America pulled together. America was always the country, I’m sorry, that pulled together. (crying) And we’re not. 0 MovingImage Anita discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting her and her family ; how her family has experienced racism and the rise of racism during the pandemic ; keeping in touch with her family ; the Black Lives Matter movement ; stepping down from PFLAG ; and gardening. Anita Niles-Lee 2020-07-13 LIZ BRADBURY: And you can actually see a little red dot actually and that means it's recording. Now if you look at your picture, you can see where your head is in the recording. So, you're not looking in the middle. ANITA NILES-LEE: So I skootch? LB: A little bit, but it will look like you have a halo. Which I think is kind of cute. (laughter) I'm going to start my audio recording too, so that's good. There you go. So, we're recording. Now you really look -- ANL: Oh, I look like a painting. (laughs) LB: Wonderful. I am going to read you this stuff because we're recording now. This says -- oh, I have to turn off my phone, I want to do that. And I want to pin -- what we call pinning the video. And so, I'm going to pin this. There. That means that when we talk it doesn't keep jumping back to me. Just your picture, so your picture is really big. Terrific, you look terrific. Let's see, I did that, I did that, and I did the audio and the video. With this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh and the greater Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with Anita Niles-Lee. ANL: Niles-Lee, yes. LB: To talk about her experiences in the Lehigh Valley and also regarding the LGBT community during this time of the COVID pandemic, COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the LGBT Community Archive. Today is the 13th, Monday July 13, 2020, and thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start can you please state your full name and spell it for me. ANL: My name is Anita Niles-Lee. It's A-N, like Nancy, I-T-A, Niles, N-I-L-E-S, hyphen Lee, L-E-E. LB: And will you please share your birthdate. Now some people said they didn't want to give the year, I've been fine with it, doesn't matter either way. ANL: At this age I was born on May 12, 1959. (laughs) LB: You're a baby. Okay. What town are you in? ANL: I'm Reeders, Monroe County. LB: Reeders. ANL: Right, if you look on the map it's labeled Stroudsburg, but it's really Reeders. LB: You're in the Stroudsburg area. ANL: Yes. LB: Okay, great. This is the consent portion. Do you consent to this interview today? ANL: Yes, I do. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publically available online in searchable formats? ANL: Yes, I do. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, articles, and websites, presentations, and anything that we may not know of. ANL: Anything to help. LB: Great. So, yes is the answer to that. ANL: Absolutely yes. LB: And do you understand that you'll have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and to identify parts that you'd like to delete or change, or withdraw your interview from the project because you just don't think it's good enough. If you want to do that you can. ANL: Yes, I understand. LB: Great. And so, I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions that are demographic questions. One of the things we ask people is, we ask people about their sexual orientation and gender identity, and I'd like for you to just kind of fill in because you are an important part of the LGBT community, how that works for you. ANL: I am heterosexual. Is that what you want me to say? LB: And cis gender I think you are? Right? ANL: I am cis gender, yes. LB: But I think also you're really an integral part of the -- or have been an integral part of the LGBT community along with your family members, so do you want to say something about that? ANL: Well, when my son came out in the late nineties, my family, we were taken by surprise, I guess you could say, so he had given us a book, I don't remember the name of the book, but at the end of the book they mentioned PFLAG. So, my husband and I found the Allentown chapter of PFLAG at that time with Don and Melinda Kohn. And when we went there we were absolutely blown away by the support and the love that PFLAG offered. And we realized in our area, which isn't far from Lehigh Valley, but in Stroudsburg that's like light years away, we needed something in the area. So, we started PFLAG Monroe County back in I think it was '98 or '99. LB: Yeah, that was great that you did that. Thank you for doing that. ANL: Long time. (laughs) LB: I need to ask you what your zip code is. ANL: 18360. LB: Okay. And it does say what is your age on here, which I think you kind of identified by giving your -- but anyway. ANL: Sixty-one. (laughs) LB: And I've asked you already about how you identify within the community, which you've said. Here are some things -- and then there's a bunch of different questions on here, I've already sent you these questions, but I just really going to start it out, you know, you can talk about anything you want with regard to the COVID pandemic and how it's affecting you, and you don't have to talk about all the questions that I asked, but let's start out with just asking are you home, are you working or are you at home, or what's going on for you? ANL: My husband and I have been basically strict quarantine since the second week in March. He lost his job, so that kind of made it easy to totally quarantine. He was working in New Jersey and his job is affiliated with the airline industry, which we all know how that is doing, so he was laid off pretty early in the process. LB: I see. Yeah. I lost one of my pages of questions. ANL: Oh, take your time. LB: You probably have them there. But let's talk about -- oh for heaven's sakes. I can't even search for it on my -- do you have the questions there, the other questions? ANL: You know what, I have them on my phone if I can just get up and get my phone. LB: I have them on the phone. Never mind, I can look them up. I'll look on my phone and we'll just pray that it doesn't ring. Talk a little bit about before as we're doing this, let's talk about if you know anybody who's had the illness or -- ANL: My husband has lost three family members actually. He lost three elderly members, one thought she had a cold. And it was within the second week, I think, that the virus broke out in New York. And they brought her into the emergency room and never saw her again. And another in New Jersey was high risk and he managed -- he caught it. And he just lost another relative in Brooklyn last week, all in their 80s, all really, really frail. But nonetheless. LB: Here we go. I'm good now. How has that affected -- I mean, both of you are at home and you're not going out. Are you not going at all or you're just going out really carefully? What's the circumstances? ANL: We go out, we try to go out once a week very early in the morning just to chores. We never go out on weekends, weekends are -- we just lock down on the weekends. So, that's pretty much been it. I've only seen my daughter once since -- my daughter who lives in Nazareth, we've only seen each other once since it started. She went back to work last week and I'm terrified because she has a congenital heart disease and her going back to work if she catches this it will kill her. It's been really hairy. LB: What does she do? ANL: She works at one of the restaurants in the Valley. A rather well-known restaurant but they're not following precautions, so it's really scary. It's really scary. LB: I had hoped to interview a couple people, people you probably know who have had it themselves, and they're actually so affected by it, I mean, they're better, but the effect it had on them is so serious that they can't talk about it. ANL: I can't -- yeah, I can't imagine. And his first family member, because of the way it was they couldn't even have a funeral. It was just -- it's that bad. And I'm just astounded by my daughter tells me people are in restaurants without their masks, and laughing, and joking, and making fun of the workers. They grabbed a lady's hand and went, "Ha, ha, 'rona, 'rona." Yeah, it's bad. And I find it frightening, I find it very frightening. LB: That's terrible. It's so upsetting. I mean, you can't -- and so, does she have any recourse in situations like that? I guess if it's in a restaurant it's hard to require people to cover their mouths. ANL: Well, I think what the employees are thinking of doing is just reporting that they're not following guidelines. They don't know, but they're hoping maybe it can get them fined, or shut down, or just bring attention to the matter because when someone did complain to an owner he said, well, if you leave we'll take it as your resignation. I think the only recourse they have is to report it and hope that someone comes in and does something so they'll take it seriously. Yeah. LB: Yeah. And you have other -- do you have just two kids? ANL: I have Justin, who's in LA doing very well. He actually went to one of the Black Lives Matter protests because he's hard to keep down. And he's active out there, but safe. They quarantine, they have a quarantine group, and those are the only people they've seen. He's doing well. And as you know, my children are half-Chinese, so we have a lot of that going on too. LB: Has it been an issue? ANL: My daughter in Florida was called the N-word by someone in a car who rolled his window down, yelled at her, and that happened. My other daughter was coming out of a Target and got the ching-chong, you know, go back to China. Other lovely stuff is going on in the world these days. LB: Has that caused them to also not want to go out? Have they had job discrimination? ANL: My daughter in Florida has been in quarantine -- you're going to think I'm telling you a soap opera. Her and her husband separated during the pandemic. So, she's quarantined with the three babies, and Nana can't get down there. So, there's that. And my daughter in Nazareth her boyfriend won't let her go out by herself at night anymore. He just -- it's safer for her to stay at home. And Justin seems to be doing well. He's working, it hasn't really affected his work. He's just more upset with all the garbage that's going around right now. LB: So, it's just you and Daniel in your home? ANL: Yes, just us chickens. (laughs) LB: Now at least you're not alone. Can you imagine what that would be like to be since March? I mean, Trish and I have been together here completely sequestered since March, we've hardly been out at all. It's so tough. And to think about the -- ANL: That's why I guess Justin was really smart because before, like right at the beginning, he and three other friends decided that they would all quarantine. And once every Friday night they would go to each -- just so they weren't alone all this time. And when they started protesting, that person was left out of the group, quarantined for two weeks, got tested, and then they'd start again. They seem to have worked out a good system for themselves. LB: It's really entertaining and very positive to hear about smart people. ANL: (laughs) Really. LB: Are you talking to him, do you find that you're talking to your family more on the phone? Are you doing video communicating too? ANL: Yeah. My daughter in Florida every day. We FaceTime at least once or twice a day. She has three kids. The oldest is five, the youngest are twins, they're two and a half. So, she's kind of going crazy with that. And she actually taught my oldest granddaughter how to call me. My daughter works until three in the morning, so at seven o'clock the babies will call me, and I pretty much FaceTime babysit for a while in the morning just so she can rest. It's wild. It's so wild. LB: She's working a regular job? ANL: She's an ASL interpreter. She hasn't worked since the pandemic because she worked mostly in hospitals and she's afraid to bring it home. So, she does Zoom work, and she works at night doing video relay for the deaf. That's how she's surviving until I get down there and she can get back into the community. LB: Is she in St. Augustine? ANL: No, she's in Odessa. It's right outside Tampa. LB: Yeah, I know it, yeah. ANL: Yeah, they have a huge deaf community down there. LB: I know. ANL: And she loves her work, she doesn't want to give that up. LB: Is she deaf? ANL: No. LB: She got into that in college? ANL: Honestly she watched The Miracle Worker when she was ten, and that's all she ever wanted to do. It was phenomenal. She never forgot. LB: The one with Patty Duke? ANL: Absolutely, the old black and white one. I like old films. LB: Anne Bancroft is so hot in that. ANL: Isn't she? (laughs) I have always loved Patty Duke. LB: (inaudible) about lesbians in it that every lesbian heard. I think that's amazing. ANL: Mrs. Robinson, come on. LB: True. But in that movie she actually makes a comment about women going after younger women. And when I first saw that when I was a kid I went -- Anne Bancroft is so hot. What's your biggest concern about all this stuff then? What's been happening? ANL: Well, I have to be honest, with the pandemic and what's happening with the transgender community and their rights being taken away and Black Lives Matter, it's just -- and the Asian whatever he calls it, I can't even remember, I'm overwhelmed. And some days I wonder if we're ever going to get out of it. They hate. And I guess because I'm affected from so many different aspects. I just feel like I'm underwater sometimes. LB: Going back a little bit to communications, have you been communicating with Justin and stuff so you can see him, or mostly just on the phone? ANL: We text every day. We have a group text. At least once a day everybody will send a silly picture or just a stupid, something to make everyone laugh, and so we know we're all okay. We've been doing it since the start. And once a week we try to call. We've had four Facebook birthday parties. (laughs) And even down in Florida the kids had a parade of cars. Instead of a birthday party all their friends drove by in -- we're adapting, I guess. LB: They're too young to go to school, so at least you don't have to worry about that too much, about having to go to school. ANL: My five year old starts kindergarten. Yeah, well, her mom registered her for virtual school. Hopefully it's not one of the programs that DeSantis decided to cut. You can't win. LB: We have to worry about the way that Pennsylvania is, but it's so crazy in Florida. We go to Florida all the time. I said we're not going to be able to go to Florida for years. ANL: Yeah. I mean, we want to drive down because of her situation because I'm planning to stay there until the little one starts kindergarten because daycare is out of the question. And as soon as we were going to drive down, he started with the Asian stuff. And I said to Dan, I'm not comfortable with you driving back through the South by yourself. So, I'm kind of grounded now until something gives. LB: When you said he started with the Asian stuff, you're talking about the president of the United States. ANL: Yes, yes. LB: This Archive is possibly going to be viewed by people thirty year from now, and when we talk about this kind of stuff, we may not -- I know exactly what you mean. ANL: Saying that name leaves a bad taste. LB: I just read a thing saying don't say his name, forty-five is fine. But I think that people may not understand, and I'm really glad I'm talking to you about this because as a mom dealing with this from so many different angles and it's very serious. People aren't going to understand this unless we do these kind of archives for that history. ANL: It's true. I mean, a neighbor, she's like why don't you just drive? I'm like because my husband is a 61 year old Asian man who will be driving back probably at night through the South and no thank you. I just can't even imagine it. And we don't think like that. LB: I know. Well, it's terrible. It's a terrible situation. We have Asian people in our family too and we were asking -- one of them has been sick and has recovered, she's a young person, and so she really has a high level of antibodies, she's really safe, she can't get it, and she can't give it to anybody else, but she's Chinese, and I'm worried about her to send her into a store because I don't want her to have to deal with that kind of stuff. People need to start thinking about this stuff. ANL: I guess I'm different. I kind of raised my kids to be different because I grew up in Chinatown, New York in the seventies and I was the different person where I grew up. And I was the one that was bullied, and I was the one that was out-casted. I used to tell them, you're not going to sit in the back of anyone's bus. And as time went on I realized it's like, Anita, you kind of have to put your money where your mouth is. And my kids always had it in the back of their heads that we're different, we have to be careful. And I kind of knock on wood these days that they were raised that way. LB: Yeah. Well, you did a good job. ANL: Thank you. LB: When you're talking about the LGBT community, and I know Justin has been very significant in that community, he's a writer, and has done some very significant work. What's he working on now? ANL: Actually the Hulu new show, Love, Victor, he's working on the second season for that show. He's doing that now actually. He has a few movies in the works, things being transferred from play to movie. He's doing very well, god bless him. Can't complain. (laughs) LB: Well, we're lucky. I know one of the good thing about our community and being in the state of Pennsylvania is that we're in a state with a governor that is smart, and we also have a really terrific Secretary of Health. Want to talk about that? Talk about that. ANL: I adore her. (laughs) I'm always on Facebook as everybody pretty well knows, and some of the comments I get about that poor Dr. Levine are horrible, horrible. And I give her one-thousand percent credit for getting up there and doing what she does every day. She's amazing, she's amazing. She's a hero, I have to say. LB: She is. And we're lucky to be in a state where at least we have a governor and a Secretary of Health who says science things. ANL: Absolutely. Absolutely. I worry now that Mr. Trump is now trying to discredit Dr. Fauci. That has me concerned. I mean, when doctors say that patients are telling them they're lying, you're telling me I have it and I don't because it's -- have you ever? Never. LB: Can't imagine, I can't understand why. It's this whole thing of sort of wanting something, it's like a little kid that wants something to be a way, so they just won't listen to anything. ANL: I can't fathom it. And that he has a cult. I'm sorry, that's what I call them. There's no rhyme or reason. LB: Yeah. (laughs) I have questions on here that don't apply to you, they have to do with queer dating hook-up sites, probably you're not using those. ANL: No, I haven't used those. (laughs) LB: Let's talk about like what things have changed in your life? Things that have specifically changed in your life that are happening now, what stuff is -- in a way because Daniel is not working, you don't have to worry about him working, so there's that. ANL: Thank god. LB: But, I mean, if you've been in since March, Trish and I have been too really, it's interesting to imagine that we've done things that we would not have normally done. ANL: Yeah. LB: Have you done that? ANL: We started, I call it my pandemic garden. Dan and I are die hard city people, so this is the first time we've ever really gardened. And I'm enjoying it. It's actually brought us together. At the beginning we were almost ready to kill each other. It was just the closeness and I guess all the stress, and everything was just so horrible. And I just said, why don't we do a garden. And it's been healing. I found it healing. LB: It's a flower garden or a vegetable garden? ANL: A vegetable garden. And I even had potatoes in honor of you and Trish because I look at your pictures every year and I'm amazed. LB: I'm going to send you stuff to put in your garden. (inaudible) onions, which are perennials. I think yeah, this is the -- usually we go away and we don't get a chance -- because we're aware we have another person water it, but they're not weeding it, and he actually came and saw the garden and said, this is the best I've actually seen the garden. And I said, yep, because we're maniacally -- ANL: Pull weeds. (laughs) LB: What do you have in the garden? ANL: I have potatoes, and I'm growing garlic, and broccoli, and cauliflower, and squash, and you name it, I've got it out there. But we did kind of let the cucumbers get this big. We're learning. LB: Here is something you can plant. The next time you go to the grocery store, if you go to an organic, a place that has organic vegetables, get a celery, a full sized celery. Then cut the bottom off. Do you have celery in the garden? ANL: Actually I have celery in my refrigerator as we speak. LB: Well, cut the bottom off and take that bottom and put it in a little thing of water, not up real high, and grow some roots out of the bottom of the thing, you know where the bottom is -- ANL: Really? LB: Once those grow down and you've got a little bit of roots, you can put it in the garden, water it like a regular thing, and celery will grow out of it. We have celery in our garden now that is growing. ANL: That is phenomenal, I have to do that. LB: It's really terrific. If it's organic then it will grow more, but it should probably even work if it isn't organic, but it should be okay. And we have two plants that we started earlier and we actually had one other celery plant that came from Rodale, but it's been -- it's very successful. It's very easy to grow that. And you know how you can -- and then when it's time to eat it, and you can eat it when it's small too, you just cut the pieces off, you don't have to pull it out, so that it keeps -- ANL: Pull the whole thing, yeah. I've actually gotten into on Facebook, I found a group, Beneficial Weeds. I'm learning which weeds in my garden can be used as tea, and salves, and all this other -- it's pretty fascinating. LB: Purslane. ANL: Yes, I have tons of it. I actually had chamomile and I never knew it. LB: That's wonderful. Good for you, Anita, that's really a good thing. So, that's something you're doing that you normally wouldn't do. ANL: No, I never would have even fathomed it. I'm learning that we can make ourselves happy sometimes. And that's what we're doing. Dan and I have found new ways to connect now that there's no kids. LB: Are you growing green beans? ANL: No, we didn't do green beans. We're going to do them next year. But I am growing Chinese ginger. LB: That's a -- ginger is -- ANL: I love Chinese ginger. LB: Sure. ANL: I have a friend next year sending me seeds from Hong Kong. LB: Now you know that the thing we grow, we don't grow potatoes anymore, we grow sweet potatoes. So, that's what we really grow. ANL: How do you do that? It's not like regular potatoes, right? LB: There's two ways of doing it and we actually get a company sends us the little starter sweet potatoes and they're like roots and we plant those, we get about fifty of those and we plant those in the garden. But you can also do it just by getting an organic sweet potato from the store, especially one that might have sprouted a little bit, and then just do that thing that you do when you sort of put it in water with some toothpicks and stuff so that it sprouts up. Then if you plant the whole thing in the ground, it will begin to have leaves, and it will get roots, and it will grow the potato. ANL: Well, then I might have a sweet potato out there. We had one and I told him, I said, oh just plant it. But then I was reading and I said, it doesn't sound like we're going to get any but you can eat the leaves. LB: You can eat the leaves. They're called Kumara, yeah. ANL: I found a Chinese recipe for them. So, we're going to try them. LB: You can eat the leaves. They're like lettuce, it tastes like lettuce or spinach, sort of a halfway between lettuce and spinach. And they're so prolific, you can get so many leaves. But the thing about sweet potatoes is they're a very, very long season. So, if you planted it in the spring, when did you plant it about? ANL: I think I planted it in the beginning of May. LB: Well, if you leave it all the way, don't be tempted to dig it up until it starts to freeze. And then -- ANL: Really? LB: Yeah. Because they're a long season. And so, if you get Georgia Jets, which are the red ones, those are the fastest because they're called Jets. And you might have a hard time getting, but you absolutely can eat the leaves. And if you dig down and you really don't see anything, leave it there until next year. (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) itself next year. Another thing is if you take the vines and you bury the vines, they will get roots that will go down and make potatoes too. ANL: Now that's probably what he'll do because he loves doing stuff like that. Thank you for the tips. LB: Yeah, those are great though. That's our biggest crop. We get so many sweet potatoes that there are enough for the whole year. We'll give you the name of the place where we get the roots from. But you really can grow from it from sweet potatoes from the store. ANL: It's amazing. Well, I'll let you know what happens. Because I have that one growing. LB: I'm dying to know. That sounds terrific. You were running PFLAG for so long, are you not doing that as much now? What's the plan? What's the deal? ANL: It had died down for a very, very long time. Sporadically I would get people asking for information and help over the internet, but the last year, after I think it was around December, I started hearing about a lot of young people getting upset with all that was going on with all the politics. So, someone had started the PFLAG chapter again, we had one meeting in February, and then the pandemic hit. I mean, I withdrew because I had differences with that person. I didn't think that -- we had different ideas of ways of -- so, I decided that I would step down and we'll see what happens. Hopefully everything will go well. LB: If you get calls from people, particular families of transgender youth, we have now we're running at the Community Center twice a month, a virtual Zoom meetings for families of transgender kids. ANL: Right, that's where I always refer everyone, Bradbury-Sullivan Center is the place to go. LB: Feel free to send them directly to me if you think because -- although we have fourteen employees now, which is amazing. ANL: Wow. That's fantastic. LB: So, we have fourteen wonderful employees and they're wonderful, they're just incredible, and Adrian is wonderful. But a lot of times when people call, they have very time consuming jobs, and I still run the info line so that if people call and they need somebody to talk to and ask questions, they don't always have -- there's not always an opportunity for them to have the kind of information from -- some of our employees are new to the community so they can't refer -- like if (inaudible) or anybody who's LGBT in Stroudsburg, they don't even know what (inaudible) is, much less -- ANL: Yeah. No, I always refer everyone to you guys because I mean, up here it's sparse. And it tends to get sticky up here at times. So, I always, you guys are like number one on my, you're on my rapid dial. (laughs) LB: Do you know or has anybody contacted you or people who are being out during the pandemic that are finding that to be -- because some youth are having problems with it. ANL: Actually my -- my most recent call from help was a lady down in Florida. Someone I know in Florida gave her my number, and her daughter just started their hormone, their HRT, and she's having a very hard time with going out and going shopping, and trying to be supportive but being stuck, and how they can get their medicine, and so I did a little research down that end of the town. But other than that it's been quiet. It seems to be a lot of elderly people trying to accept. Because the kids seem to be doing wonderfully. At our PFLAG meeting, the one meeting we had, we had a lady from Lehighton bring her five year old transgender daughter. But the baby was hiding under the table the whole time, so insecure, and my heart, my heart. But I told her, I said try calling you guys, you might know other little ones that maybe they can do playdates. And so, hopefully she called. LB: Adrian was working on a process, a potential program, and you know we have to have funding for all these things to pay for anybody because we can't just have a program, we have to have funding, we have to have support, and really set it all up and stuff. But he was working on a program for LGBT families with kids. So, it could be that the kids are LGBT, little kids, so little kids, we're talking about little kids, zero to six, because kids are looking for playdates with other kids who are LGBT or families who are pro-LGBT. It could be two lesbians, it could be two gay men, who have kids, or it could be trans families that have kids, or it could be families that have little kids that are trans or who are -- ANL: Yeah, it seems like it would be beneficial because this lady was desperate. She has to homeschool because when she wants to wear a dress to school people make fun. The school wasn't cooperative with pronouns and things. And she said she's in a backwards area where there's nothing for her either. I'll contact her and find out if she talked to you guys yet. LB: Well, I can say that the most recent Supreme Court decision, the Bostock Decision, that's a pretty good decision for us. It's about employment, it's not about schools, but the precedent that it set was very significant. So, things are going to change with regard to that. ANL: Yeah, it just takes time. LB: It does, but when you have the law behind you, the school has to do the right thing. Right now they don't, but it's going to be that they're going to have to because of the Bostock decision. ANL: And those babies, those babies need it, they really do. LB: They do, they really do. It's absolutely true. I'm trying to get back to my questions. I lost them. There I go. So, what's the biggest frustration you're having? You're talking a lot about -- I understand the fears, we all have these, and I'm so glad that you've got the gardening thing going. But are you having day to day frustrations? ANL: Every day I open my eyes and turn on the news. It's almost like do I really even want to know. Daniel and I have it down to we'll watch maybe morning news until nine o'clock and then it's done. No more until maybe three o'clock and then it's off for dinner time. Because you can't. It was constant pounding and pounding. We avoid it. And it's frustrating that I feel we can't go to a lot of places now because the way things are, people aren't very friendly or very kind. I even told him when he lost his job, way at the beginning, before any of the nonsense, I was like for some reason I think maybe it's better. It's just it's frustrating that my daughter is by herself, I can't get down there to be with her. My son is in LA. He's got his support group but you know, family, to be there. And he can't come home to visit like he usually does. I haven't seen him since Christmas. And like I said, with my youngest working in the atmosphere she works in with a bad heart. It's tough. LB: It really is. It's really tough. What's the best thing you experienced? Besides the garden? Although the garden sounds really good. ANL: (laughs) I guess connecting with friends. People that, you know, we all work, but I guess I'm on the internet a lot, and I've -- people I went to grammar school with we've connected because everyone is home. I guess that was kind of fun. LB: People who have been contacting you and saying, just checking in to see if you're okay, that kind of stuff? ANL: Yes, like hey, is this the [Amy Sitsinbrino?] from Transfiguration in 1972? (laughs) And it's like yes, it's me. It's just been wild, it's been wild. So, I'm not missing going out. LB: That's because people are home and they're thinking oh, let me look up this person kind of deal. Is that what's happened? ANL: Or a memory just pops in your head and you're I wonder what's up with them. It's been a very strange kind of fun. LB: Now that you have this Zoom capability -- ANL: I know, my husband is never going to see me again. LB: You can see how really real it is. It's different than a little phone thing or something. It's really real time. You're really talking to the person like they're there almost. ANL: Yeah, well, we do this on FaceTime. I think FaceTime is pretty much the same thing. But nothing replaces a hug. LB: That's true. The big difference I think between Zoom and FaceTime, and I don't know FaceTime that well, but it's much easier on Zoom to have multiple people. ANL: Yeah, yeah. FaceTime when we do it for our little birthday parties, it takes a few shots before we get it the right way. LB: Yeah, yeah. So, think about how techy you're becoming now. ANL: I know. I have to say I impressed myself with this. LB: You did. You're brilliant. Thank God that we have this ability to do this, to communicate with people. ANL: Yeah, it makes you miss, like my mom and dad died like five and three years ago, respectively. And too bad, they just missed it, the ability to see all -- to have the grandkids and everything, the great grandkids. LB: Were they in New York? ANL: Yeah, they never left. LB: Do you have other family members in New York? ANL: Yeah. We're estranged. The boys just -- it was -- there is always drama but when Justin and Adrian came out and someone asked me when they were getting married, is this a real wedding, how can this be a real -- I was like, done. I pretty much just said we just can't talk anymore. LB: Are they married, Justin and Adrian? ANL: They were. Unfortunately Hollywood. That's what I say, Hollywood. Their divorce is in the process. Justin's found a new person. And Adrian's still my son. LB: He's a wonderful guy. They had been together a long time. ANL: Seventeen and they're thirty-seven, twenty years. They grew up together. But, you know, they're amicable. And I told Adrian, you'll always be my baby. Yeah, what are you doing to do. He's like Mommy, I'm so -- I'm like no, no, no sorry, it's life, it happens. We're okay. LB: It happens. ANL: Yeah, I can't -- he was my baby too, I can't. And Justin's okay with that. LB: Okay, well that's good. Good for him. How worried are you about you getting it? ANL: Terrified. I was a heavy smoker for many, many years. I have COPD. And my daughter's husband left five weeks ago, and had I not had this terrible history of lung problems, I would have been on a plane. And I told her, if I come down there I can't get sick. So, we're just waiting until airlines figure something out. Because my husband, I won't let him drive. LB: It's complicated. And it's not like you can take a bus or something. ANL: Simple little things. I mean, you know every three months I was on a plane back and forth and it's all stopped. I haven't seen them since Christmas and my heart breaks. LB: Such a complicated thing. And is Daniel at risk? He seems like a big strapping guy. ANL: No, he's pretty healthy. He has borderline diabetes, it's not full-fledged, but we still won't take chances. It's just not -- especially that his family is like -- yeah, it's kind of bowling them over so, no thank you, we'll stay home. LB: I don't mean to point this out, but I'm quite a bit older than you, but we're older and they're saying that people over 45 are at a much higher risk. ANL: Yeah, it's true, it's scary. And I know what it's like not to be able to breathe. I mean, if it's anything like that it's scary. And to have to go through it alone? LB: The second layer of it, that whole thing of getting it and then like I know somebody who had it and it was devastatingly hard for her, but she had family and she also has a lot of medical connections, like she has healthcare connections. If she hadn't had that, if she'd been -- in fact, I can think of three people who had it, had they been well they would have died, just no question that they would have died. ANL: Yeah, it's horrible. And I mean, not only is it hard for the person with it, but for the family. His cousins were totally locked out, they had no information until she passed away. LB: Was she in New York City? ANL: New York City during the first three weeks. LB: Oh no. ANL: When everything was berserk. And she thought it was a cold. They took her to the emergency room, the staff converged, and everyone had to leave, and that was it. They didn't know until she passed. LB: That's awful. Do you think this is like, and I know how it is for me, but in terms of mental health, I don't see how it can't affect people every day. ANL: Oh it does. The depression, the depression for me was awful. And the anxiety. Every time I had to leave my house I would palpitate, I would sweat, it was horrible. I try not to leave now. And like I said, Dan and I will go out at six, seven in the morning. And we went to I think it was Walmart and it was frightening. It was crowded, no masks, it was horrifying. There was a young woman there carrying a baby, no mask, no nothing, and I was horrified. And that was it, I told him after that. I stayed in bed for two days after that. And I kind of told him, I said I can't do that. But I have to be in open air. I'll go to the farmer's market, I'll go to the farm store, but Giant and -- no, I can't. It's horrifying. LB: You can't control the other people and they're the ones that are putting you at risk. I know that you've seen this circumstance that happened here in Lehigh Valley with the police. ANL: Yes, yeah. LB: And I actually had an interview with someone at five o'clock, but I knew that she would want to go. She's a younger person and she's a person of color, and I knew that she would want to be at this thing. So, I said let's do your thing tomorrow. And Adrian said, people should go out and our employees can go to join this march. But then he went on to say, if you're not at risk. And I look at the videos of the first march, which was on Saturday, late Saturday night, and most of the people, because these are Black Lives Matters marches and they wore the mask. I saw one person, but I also noticed that the police were not wearing masks. And some of them were, but most of them weren't. And some of the elected officials weren't wearing masks. And I also saw somebody who had their mask not covering their face. And I know these people are chanting and shouting. And I understand why, I understand exactly why, but I cannot be around a bunch of people who are chanting, and shouting, and screaming, even though I want to be, that's where my heart is. ANL: It's true. Justin stayed in for most of the protests. The first one he went to was the big one in LA for the Black Lives Matter at the Pride Black Lives Matter, he went to that one. And he showed pictures, they were like this. But they were all masked. And he went and got tested and all of them tested negative. So, I'm thinking maybe protesting is not as bad as indoors. LB: Well, if you're outside and everybody is wearing a mask. I think with a lot of those protests for Black Lives Matter protests, you can count on those people being very careful and not wanting, not getting close if they can avoid it, and I know these people didn't do it either. But you don't need a lot of people to infect a big group. You have one person can infect a lot of people and it doesn't matter if you're wearing a mask. ANL: And not only that, saying something isn't easy either because you always have to wonder what's going to happen if I say something to someone to wear a mask, are they going to try to punch me. LB: Yeah, no kidding. ANL: My stress just goes -- LB: I know. ANL: Because I hate, I couldn't stand being there watching this young mother have her baby, neither of them masked, in the middle of the store, I wanted to shake her. And you just have to like put your hands under here and go no, can't do it, can't do it these days. It's horrifying, I find it, because I'm a mom. LB: I know. ANL: And the baby, if you don't want to wear it, fine. The baby. LB: And even just the baby wearing the mask, it's other people. ANL: Yeah, breathing on him. LB: And if you have a -- when we are talking about opening schools and stuff, how can -- I have a friend who's a pediatrician and she had people ask her, moms ask her, is it okay for my kid to go to daycare and she said, "Well, let me ask you this. When your kid goes to daycare, do they ever get a cold from anybody else at daycare, or the flu, or any other thing?" They get everything at daycare. ANL: Turbo germs. I call them turbo germs. LB: Yeah, it's tough to put your life on hold but maybe you need to find something else to do for a year or two. ANL: Florida opened daycare on July 8. What they did down there is the daycares closed in March, but they were still charging. So, my daughter said, I'm not going to pay, she withdrew them. But a lot of parents had done that, they still held the slots. When school opened on July 8, the rule was that the children couldn't have backpacks and they had to be dropped at the door. The parents were not allowed into the school to see what precautions were being taken, to see how the children were being set up. My daughter was like, are they crazy. She's like I want to go in there and see what they're doing. But evidently throughout Florida the parents in daycare have no idea what's going on. LB: I just don't see how they can possibly -- if you've got one infected kid or a teacher that's infected, how they can keep that from happening to other people. ANL: Holidays, how are they going to go on holidays? I have -- maybe it's because I'm a person of color, I believe this is like his own private genocide. This is their way of getting rid of brown people, Black people, poor people, they don't care. It's like clear it out, we'll buy up the real estate. It sounds very harsh and I know it's like -- but that's how I feel. LB: I totally understand. I understand exactly what you mean. I've interviewed a lot of people and this is my third COVID interview, but I interview ten people about HIV/AIDS during the epidemic, and these were older guys, mostly men, three women and seven men, who lived through the AIDS epidemic. And they were talking about it in relation to COVID too. And I have to tell you Anita, that although you see people acting stupid, people that we really know are not acting stupid. I mean, these guys are not acting stupid, you and Daniel aren't acting stupid, your kids aren't acting foolishly, so there is an unfortunate segment of the population who's a bunch of carriers. ANL: And they don't believe it. And they don't believe it. I mean, if you go into your physician you're whole life, and they've always been amazing to you, and they tell you you have COVID, and you turn around and tell them they're lying, what mind games does he play on people? It's so beyond my capability to understand how these people are so enraptured by that. He's Jim Jones. LB: Yeah, it's really true. It's really frightening. Well, we're coming to the end of this. We've been talking for an hour almost. And I just want to, let's see if I've gotten all of these questions, I think we've covered everything here. I'm so excited about your garden, I can't wait to hear more about it. Do you have anything else you -- so think about this way, someday, someday in the future, somebody is going to look back on this way past perhaps our lives, because we don't have any information about what happened to people on a person to person circumstance with regard to the flu epidemic of 1918, which is comparable to this, where millions of people, millions, in the 50 million people died. And we didn't have any information about that and I think it's important for us to leave information behind to perhaps educate people about not making this kind of mistake in the future. Now, in the future, people may look at this and go, we have this vaccine, or they might go, yeah, half the population is gone now, or who knows. What do you want to tell those people, those people thirty, or forty, or fifty years from now who are people like your age or people your kids' ages, what do you think? ANL: That we weren't crazy. We weren't speaking hyperbolically. We were truth tellers. And it's hard, I think, for people like us to understand people so full of hate and so full of anger. And it's beyond me. And I always thought America pulled together. America was always the country, I'm sorry, that pulled together. (crying) And we're not. LB: But you know what? I think this is the problem, the pulling together requires people being present and right now the people who care the most about other people can't be present. Because I can't come and hug you. I can't come and hug and we can't, this group of people who is going to protest for Black Lives Matter. And the Black Lives Matter stuff has been great. I have to say the people who are speaking out about that have been very significant. But those people have to be really careful. Justin can't go and he won't go to every one of those things because it puts other people at risk. And he is a caring person. ANL: Yeah, it hurts. It hurts a lot. I do what I can but how much can we do? There's no -- I feel like we're screaming at the tops of our lungs and no one is listening. Yeah, and it does, it takes you to very dark places sometimes. And this isn't my America. There's a movie, it's an old one, I'm an old movie fanatic, White Cliffs of Dover. LB: What is it called? White Cliffs of Dover. Okay. ANL: White Cliffs of Dover. And at the end American troops are marching through England, we saved the day, and it leaves you feeling so happy. And it's like that's not us anymore. And it made me cry, it made me really cry for something we lost. LB: Yeah. But here's something I always say about WWII films, because that's a WWII film. ANL: Yeah, it sure is. LB: WWII films, there's two kinds of films, there are the films that they made during the war when they didn't know whether they were going to win. Like Since You Went Away with Claudette CoLBert is a great example of that. So, it's a real movie to encourage people to do the right thing. And then there's movies that were made after the war when they knew we were going to win. And they're a different kind of movie. It's a different kind of patriotism. But both of those things were made to make people more strong in regard to their patriotism. And the problem is that creative people, I mean, right now it's harder for them to make a movie about -- you know, we've only been dealing with this since March. ANL: Yeah. LB: If you look at like the flu epidemic of 1918, which I talk about a lot, my grandmother died in that flu epidemic, but in 1918 mostly young people got it. Mostly young people who were -- not kids, but people from twenty to forty years old. And that flu epidemic was -- it lasted for fifteen months and then it disappeared because it mutated and just disappeared. But one out of every three people in the world had that flu. And we're only into what, six months of this, so far. ANL: Yeah, we're still at the beginning. LB: And people want it to be over so bad. People feel that way about war too. They're like, we want the war to end right away, and they want it that -- they expect WWII, they were expecting that in both WWII, WWI, Civil War, that it would end in three months or four months, and it doesn't. And I do think that we have a chance for hope. We've got some amazing young people, we've got every person, every real scientist in the world is working on this epidemic. That's one of the things that people who lived through the AIDS epidemic that I just interviewed compared to this. Because the AIDS epidemic, it was years before anybody did anything. ANL: Yeah, that's so true. It's so true. LB: Even though we have somebody in the White House that is not very smart, and that's a generous thing to say. ANL: (laughs) That's very kind of you. LB: People all over the country and the majority of people, quite frankly, I think, who are aware that this is very, very serious. And it's shocking to see. It's the people who are out doing stupid things are the people who are stupid. The smart people are in their houses. And that's one of the problems I think too. ANL: Yeah, well, I firmly believe Darwin should just do his thing right now. LB: Yeah, except for there's collateral damage. ANL: Yeah, they talk to us too. That's the bad part. But anyway, hopefully soon we can go back to a new normal. LB: I hope so. Let's hope so. And I think we will actually. I hope that we'll learn from this, at least for a while. ANL: I don't think we can go through this again in our lifetimes. I think this is my full. I could not go through this again. LB: I really agree, but you think about people in WWI and then they had to do WWII. So, they had to do that in their own lifetimes. And they were in countries that were being attacked. There's a kitty. ANL: That's my baby. LB: There's another person in your house. That's a beautiful cat. What's your cat's name? ANL: Aslan. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. LB: There you go. ANL: He used to have a mane. LB: I am going to turn off the record button now. But thank you again so much for your involvement in this. It's been so great. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). 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Anita Niles-Lee, July 13, 2020
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Anita discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting her and her family; how her family has experienced racism and the rise of racism during the pandemic; keeping in touch with her family; the Black Lives Matter movement; stepping down from PFLAG; and gardening.
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COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-
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2020-07-13
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Stories of Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ Community Members (2022 - )
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Nadia Butler
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Aoife Ward
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5.4 May 7, 2022 Aoife Ward, May 7, 2022 LGBT-33 1:25:03 LVLGBT-2022 Stories of Lehigh Valley LGBTQ+ Community Members (2022 - ) Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository Support for the collection of this interview was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Aoife Ward Nadia Butler video/mp4 Aoife Ward Oral History Combined MOV File.mov 1.0:|25(6)|60(18)|81(11)|102(14)|127(13)|146(6)|171(8)|192(13)|213(6)|234(10)|255(11)|274(15)|297(6)|316(9)|335(16)|358(7)|381(14)|400(4)|421(4)|442(12)|463(7)|480(16)|499(6)|518(5)|543(12)|568(7)|589(9)|614(6)|637(13)|660(8)|679(7)|702(4)|721(8)|744(8)|765(7)|788(3)|809(13)|830(11)|853(7)|876(3)|895(6)|920(2)|943(14)|962(3)|985(4)|1008(3)|1031(4)|1054(10)|1073(10)|1098(4)|1117(15)|1140(10)|1163(4)|1182(8)|1203(7)|1226(12)|1247(15)|1266(12)|1289(5)|1312(7)|1331(13)|1350(7)|1373(6)|1394(5)|1415(15)|1438(8)|1457(6)|1476(4)|1497(8)|1518(11)|1543(4)|1566(5)|1591(3)|1614(3)|1639(2)|1662(16)|1687(12)|1708(6)|1731(8)|1750(2)|1775(5)|1798(2)|1813(9)|1838(7)|1877(3)|1878(2) 0 https://youtu.be/UOcm4IeVU4k YouTube video English 8 Interview Introductions NADIA BUTLER: And we are live. My name is Nadia Butler, and I am here today with Aoife Ward, to talk about her life and experiences and LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the ACLS. We are meeting on location today on May 7th, 2022. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? 
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 ; AOIFE WARD: Certainly it's Aoife Maeve Ward. It's spelled A-O-I-F-E. The middle name, Maeve, M-A-E-V-E, Ward, W-A-R-D.
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 ; NB: Will you please share your birthdate?
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 ; AW: It's October 11, 1976.
 ; 0 102 Childhood & ; Early Upbringing NB: To begin, would you start by telling us about the early years of your life? Could you describe your childhood for us, including where you were born?
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 ; AW: Sure, so I was born in a hospital in Brooklyn and raised in Long Island, New York. Both my parents were Irish immigrants. My father was an investment banker from Dublin originally. Trained as a veterinarian, but walked in, basically got a job on Wall Street one summer and came back and started his version of the American Dream. My mother was from a farming family outside of Dublin, outside of Wicklow. Seven sisters, her grandmother was an amazing woman who raised them all on her own on a small farm. And also fought in the Irish revolution. So, interesting family history. 0 359 Exploring Sexuality & ; Gender Identity AW: By the time I was out of high school, I had already kind of been secretly visiting the village and going downtown to Kelsey. And at a young age, trying to see where I would fit in on a gay scene if it would happen. No real boyfriends. Then I had worked through high school, so I ended up -- since I have a European citizenship as well as US citizenship, I had a year in Spain, which my father helped fund, which was an amazing privilege to have. Learn the Spanish language, learn the culture. And it was especially interesting because sexuality was a big deal in restoring my gender identity. But for the most part, they were kind of experiencing a revolution as their dictator Francisco Franco had finally passed. And they were allowed to become their own country really without a dictator. 0 504 Marriage & ; Trauma Healing AW: So that's pretty much the early part into my teens, I'm 45 years old. So I've had a lot of good life experiences, I think. I hope that answers your question. But I've always put it in the frame of, I've transitioned multiple lives at times in my life. I've transitioned out of the fear that there's always going to be violence and things around me. I still continue to do that. I ended up marrying a woman for about 12 years.
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 ; Working in a medical device corporation, playing in bands, owning a home, during the other American Dream, the heterosexual American Dream. And as a bisexual, I guess throughout my life, my gender identity was always on the back burner. Fitting in was always a priority. Feeling safe was always a priority that I couldn't tell people about. Cross dressing the whole time in private, afraid not knowing how people would take it or my family. 0 796 Time Spent with Mother NB: We will. One of the things you mentioned was your mother and it sounded like you were very close to her.
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 ; AW: Yes, yeah, definitely. She was definitely an incredible force in both me and my sister's life. Very intelligent, a lover of nature, having grown up on farm and animals. Also a fair amount of theatrical when she needed to be, a fair amount of sarcasm and humor. But she was living in a time in society where, she still couldn't have a credit card in the 80s. Her divorce was the biggest shame to bring on any family. Even from my grandmother, who had gone through similar things. 0 1032 Relationship with Religion NB: Something else you've mentioned a few times is kind of the place of faith in your childhood. Would you be willing to talk a little bit about what it was like for you to grow up as a young closeted transwoman during the 70s and 80s and how the Catholic Church and the kinds of impact it had on you and your sister?
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 ; AW: Yeah certainly. Well, yeah, it was an interesting time, there was so much going on with the AIDS crisis that even at 10 years old I was aware of it. Luckily my sister is a journalist. So even after getting out of la la land of Long Island, she was fiercely looking for information almost the same way she had to look for information in the home to see how to help ourselves. Total researcher. My sister just always 20 questions everything that's going on in your life and it's lovely though because you get to know it's out of the place of concern. But growing up in there and also being left in Ireland with an auntie and having my grandmother on my father's side, take me to 3 hour masses where it's hellfire and brimstone and God is coming down on the sexual. In the news, God is coming down the homosexuals. Transgender wasn't even really talked about, I didn't even know what transgender was until maybe eight years ago. So, the wording of things in the media did end the loss of my mother. 0 1261 Feelings on the AIDS Crisis / Finding Comunity AW: But then when I finally, without my mother, grew up trying to understand my femininity. It was a different time yet again when I was of age, the AIDS crisis was still the most terrifying thing and the thought of having a partner or possibly as a transfem from passing on the virus just I cut that out of my life because it was just so terrifying. 
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 ; Every boyfriend you're just like, oh I'm gonna test it again, it's just so much fear. And really, I was seeing a real separation of, after the death of a lot of great leaders, just the kind of the death of the social scene, the queer social scene, the closing of clubs. Obviously, a lot of clubs I couldn't go to, we're still going on, it was really more everyone, but those local spaces were gone down in New Brunswick. 0 1832 Journey to Transition / Finding Eastern PA Trans Equity NB: Yeah. So, can you talk for us a little bit about your transition and coming into your womanhood? Can you talk about -- was there a single event which was kind of a catalyst for that? Was it multiple things?
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 ; AW: Well, it had been coming up quite a bit. And leading up to my father's death about five years ago, I was already going through a divorce. I was facing a layoff from a good company. I was gonna be selling my house because of the divorce. And I was having major mental health stuff. My father had dementia for a number of years, and he was kind of, that voice, that internal voice sort of internalized homophobia, internalized transphobia. 
 ; 0 2394 Early Years of Transition NB: When it came to kind of starting the process of transition -- you've talked a lot about how Eastern PA a few years after starting transition became really important for you and your survival. In those early years, how did you go about accessing things like hormones, medical care, clothing when you were Ubering and living out of your car? Do you mind talking about that a little bit?
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 ; AW: Sure, yeah. Yeah, that was particularly rough because I did not have insurance for a good period of time. I had about a 5-month severance from Johnson and Johnson where I continued to have medical care. I was laid off around my birthday that year which is also around when my father died. A few months later in December, he died. So, my birthday is October, so I really started on my birthday, HRT at, it was called the Proud Health Center in Somerset, New Jersey which it really had been open only a little bit. But it was part of a family practice that was LGBTQ friendly from Robert Wood Johnson. 0 2725 Connections with Trans Women of Color in New Brunswick / Community Advocacy NB: You mentioned a community of Latina trans women in New Brunswick.
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 ; AW: Sure.
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 ; NB: Can you kind of talk about what they taught you and what you learned from that?
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 ; AW: Sure. Well, I actually forgot about the first trans woman I met in New Brunswick used to deliver my film from Epson film -- Fujifilm, sorry. And she was wonderful transfem, big lady, just really hysterical Latina woman, and we always cracked up about whatever is going on with my boyfriends, with whoever she was dating. But she would kind of clue me into what some of the girls that would come into the shop to get either passport photos or just a photo to send home or to a partner of how good they look. 0 3229 Becoming Comfortable in Trans Identity NB: What do you think it took for you to get to that place of being able to openly and freely discussing your identity, not just with other transfems and trans women, but just with people in generally.
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 ; AW: It's a really good question, I mean through all the previous stuff I was talking about with my mental health and stuff, that was certainly the most terrifying part, just the fear of violence, I think. Having a friend in that group, having younger people actually who I worked with, just being supportive, like it's cool. Like it being no big deal. Because still I think -- what I point out to a lot of people is that everybody has a bit of internalized transphobia, especially trans folks. At some point in your transition, there's just this overpowering fear that you're gonna destroy your life and because that's what society tells us. 0 3434 Relationship to the Lehigh Valley Community NB: Yeah. You mentioned feeling safe in the Lehigh Valley. Can you talk a little bit about what it was for you to kind of come into that sense of safety?
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 ; AW: Sure. It's honestly only been the past year. So, I've been here maybe 3 or 4 years but it's more really about the country's political environment, not so much about the Valley. But when you're in a new place, like when I was in Spain or all the moving I did throughout my childhood, every new place kind of comes with a whole new set of where am I, what is going on? Am I safe here? 0 3791 Spirituality NB: I'm curious, you mentioned at the start of the interview that Catholicism, was quite harmful for you in terms of growing up during the AIDS crisis. And seeing the Catholic church is kind of blatant homophobia. I'm curious as you've gotten older, have you ever returned to faith. Is it something that has become important to you?
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 ; AW: So, oddly enough, I mean I think a lot of children just understanding childhood development and stuff. My ex was actually once an art teacher, so we had a lot of discussions about that type of thing, and it's nice to watch and understand, like to see almost how I was learning and the things that my mom was doing more along those lines. Sorry, what was the question again? I have a really like -- I always have to kind of like think things through. 0 4116 Professional Work AW: I'm not sure. Well I guess it's interesting, you know the company I’m at now the enterprise resource group stuff they're doing – it’s like their first year doing it. So that's great to see companies still starting to embrace this, I'm probably their only trans employee. I would love in the work that I'm doing with them as they're starting out to get some better speakers into these businesses because we are a capitalist democracy. Business runs a lot of things including public opinion sometimes.
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 ; And the fact that, you really can't decide we're not going to do business with a whole group of people or something and the corporations understand this now. While the capitalist mindset is pretty cutthroat, can have a lot of ills in society, I think that seeing them starting to work towards the betterment of marginalized communities is just amazing. I want to see more of it, and I want to be a part of it. 0 4371 Impact of Music on Life NB: Something that's been recurring throughout our conversation I've noticed is the role of music and kind of creative endeavors in sustaining you. When do you think that started? 
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 ; AW: God, I mean, that's definitely at age five. My mother was great at encouraging that as well as my sister, and you know, in ways my father even would do magic tricks or whatever, whatever it took to just kind of get through the sad part and I think it is actually culturally an Irish trait like you just laugh through everything. 0 4525 Time in Spain NB: So we are nearing the end of our time. But on the note of culture, I wanted to circle back, and to ask you about your time in Spain?
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 ; AW: Sure, sure.
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 ; NB: And what that was like, what it was like for you as a young person to kind of be abroad as so much was happening in the 90s? 
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 ; AW: Sure, yeah, I mean, right out of high school and doing Spain was just the best experience of my life. A lot of family members like, why did you come back? [laughs] Which I thought was funny. I was like, cause I was just gonna be broke if I stayed out there. [laughs] They were still kind of bringing their economy back together at that time in Spain. 0 4778 Outlook on the Future NB: Are you optimistic about the future? 
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 ; AW: A little scared certainly. I just think that coming at least from the background of my grandmother and the revolution and civil war there -- she was in jail at 14 by the Irish. There's actually a book written about it by my uncle Thomas. But, to know that somebody can be that resilient to get through things like that, and then go on and continue to raise a family, is so inspiring, and just kind of fills your heart. 
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 ; At least for me with a connection to that, to knowing enough about myself that given the time and the need to protect members of my community in whatever, if I can, I'm always going to be doing that no matter what, no matter what. It's very easy when life is constantly pressuring you on all sides, especially in the new media landscape, to feel like the other shoe is gonna drop tomorrow. 0 4965 Closing Remarks NB: [laughs] We shall see indeed. So, we have about four minutes left. Is there anything you would like to add that we haven't touched on? 
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 ; AW: I've covered a lot. [laughs] Gosh, I mean, I don't really think so. I just love seeing my community grow and expand. I'm looking forward to seeing the ways that we all can continue to support each other and feel supported. But also, we've all been giving each other a lot of space, and we've needed it. Everyone is needed to heal right now. This isn't just trans people, this is the whole country. 0 MovingImage Aoife Ward describes her early upbringing, transition, finding transgender community in New Brunswick and the Lehigh Valley, and her outlook on the future. INTERVIEW WITH AOIFE WARD MAY 7, 2022 NADIA BUTLER: And we are live. My name is Nadia Butler, and I am here today with Aoife Ward, to talk about her life and experiences and LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from the ACLS. We are meeting on location today on May 7th, 2022. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? AOIFE WARD: Certainly it's Aoife Maeve Ward. It's spelled A-O-I-F-E. The middle name, Maeve, M-A-E-V-E, Ward, W-A-R-D. NB: Will you please share your birthdate? AW: It's October 11, 1976. NB: Do you consent to this interview today? AW: I do consent to this interview. NB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized and made publicly available online and searchable formats? AW: Absolutely. NB: Do you consent to the LGBT archive using your interview for educational purposes and other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? AW: Absolutely, yeah. NB: Do you understand that you will have 30 days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review the interview, identify any parts you would like to delete and or withdraw the interview from the project? AW: Yes I do. Excellent. Well then, let's start. AW: Okay. NB: To begin, would you start by telling us about the early years of your life? Could you describe your childhood for us, including where you were born? AW: Sure, so I was born in a hospital in Brooklyn and raised in Long Island, New York. Both my parents were Irish immigrants. My father was an investment banker from Dublin originally. Trained as a veterinarian, but walked in, basically got a job on Wall Street one summer and came back and started his version of the American Dream. My mother was from a farming family outside of Dublin, outside of Wicklow. Seven sisters, her grandmother was an amazing woman who raised them all on her own on a small farm. And also fought in the Irish revolution. So, interesting family history. My mother was a nurse in the U.S. And they raised me and my sister Margaret, who is eight years older in Long Island. My mother died later when I was nine. I knew I was transgender at about four years old. But unfortunately, there was a lengthy divorce, lot of abuse in the home, a lot of kind of, what do you call it? What was going on inside the home did not reflect the outward appearance of this perfect American family starting to live in their American Dream. So my only times to express my gender was when it was just me and my mom. And then when dad got home, that was all cut off or if my grandma caught me. So, my gender was expressed very much in my private time with my mother and my private time with myself. And there wasn't much time or availability to express my emotions and my needs in my home. Especially in Long Island in that -- those years because it would have been the early 80's. So, in '85, my mother finally died after a lengthy divorce, a lot happens in that time frame. A lot of people in and out of my home, lawyers, police, until we finally kind of got away from my father. Well when she died, my father ended up raising me and my sister for about a year, but she was at high school age, so she ended up kind of being kicked out of the house. And then he raised me as a single father, nannies and so forth, and you know, he had money, so he was able to do things, but he didn't really have time for a child or the patience. And again, so my gender identity was completely suppressed. In later life, around high school and middle school when I was finally outside of Catholic school systems, because I was being raised Irish Catholic, I got more time to think about and express my gender identity throughout high school, when my father remarried and that was, by then I was in Ridgewood, New Jersey. And that was good. Also a great deal of bullying and other things and trying to understand myself in that current landscape where homosexuality was so frowned upon. But it was still in the 80s and 90s, it was all on television, which I usually didn't have access to. Well, cable television, like MTV and whatnot, but you get a peek of what your life could be like at those ages, and you hope that you can express it one day. My father though, in a verbally abusive individual with me mainly, you know, threats of military school and that type of thing, was somewhat more understanding in the aspect of me needing to understand my culture, European culture, though not necessarily American culture. So, I did get chances to visit Ireland to stay with family and get away from him [laughs]. By the time I was out of high school, I had already kind of been secretly visiting the village and going downtown to Kelsey. And at a young age, trying to see where I would fit in on a gay scene if it would happen. No real boyfriends. Then I had worked through high school, so I ended up -- since I have a European citizenship as well as US citizenship, I had a year in Spain, which my father helped fund, which was an amazing privilege to have. Learn the Spanish language, learn the culture. And it was especially interesting because sexuality was a big deal in restoring my gender identity. But for the most part, they were kind of experiencing a revolution as their dictator Francisco Franco had finally passed. And they were allowed to become their own country really without a dictator. So, the youth and the people I met there were incredible, they were supportive. They understood me, questioning my gender identity, and did what they could. But still it was a very, I guess a boy mode lifestyle, because it is a very Catholic country as well. Finally, when I came back to the U.S., started trying to go to college down in Middlesex Community College next to Rutgers. And there like I met my first boyfriend, who was going to Rutgers, I met my musician friends, I started doing photography. My own storytelling, songwriting and being in bands kind of started and things were a little more accepting. Though again, access to any queer community, didn't really seem like it was possible. There was no places to go except coffee shops. The art scene was probably my best friend in terms of being accepted, but meeting people was difficult. So, I was primarily dating men for most of that part of my life, which became more and more difficult because of my femininity, my history of domestic violence, my lack of trust and a lot of psychological issues that I hadn't really had time to work out. So that's pretty much the early part into my teens, I'm 45 years old. So I've had a lot of good life experiences, I think. I hope that answers your question. But I've always put it in the frame of, I've transitioned multiple lives at times in my life. I've transitioned out of the fear that there's always going to be violence and things around me. I still continue to do that. I ended up marrying a woman for about 12 years. Working in a medical device corporation, playing in bands, owning a home, during the other American Dream, the heterosexual American Dream. And as a bisexual, I guess throughout my life, my gender identity was always on the back burner. Fitting in was always a priority. Feeling safe was always a priority that I couldn't tell people about. Cross dressing the whole time in private, afraid not knowing how people would take it or my family. Even though I had come out to my father as homosexual, that was a whole ordeal, but he was accepting. But would never have been accepting of transgender. Just because of how that was viewed in New York, was that we were all streetwalkers, that we were troublemakers. That we only brought pain and disgrace to a Catholic family, because their boy, had abandoned them and their faith. So, it's always in the back of your head along with the violence growing up. Well, anyway, in my marriage it was a good marriage for a time until symptoms of yeah, sorry. NB: So, what year did you get married in? AW: So I was married, my goodness, [laughs]. So this --I would have been around 32 at that point in time. So, the exact year is evading me right now. But that was in New Brunswick, I was in New Brunswick, New Jersey by that point in time. So, the marriage went well, but my sexuality was always never really allowed to be discussed. Because now I'm in a committed relationship, I've married my best friend basically. So anytime I would bring up that past, or queer concepts, or wanting to go do drag or -- it was always, no, just not, no. Even though a lot of my friends and our friend group had known me as the gay boy or the queer boy. So, toward the end of our relationship is when -- and it's something I talk about a lot, is mental health, because it's just so vital. Especially as a queer kid growing up, you don't get -- you get misdiagnosed, I was misdiagnosed my whole life. So not knowing that I had complex post-traumatic stress, that was exhibiting itself in different ways in taking on, and dropping addictions like alcoholism, or excessive drug use of whatever kind, was making it very difficult to operate on a daily basis, maintain my job, several attempts at rehab and things along those lines. Eventually I got the trauma diagnosis and that kind of set me on the right path. And did men's trauma outpatient groups about three times after several different psychiatric hospitalizations. Just because the symptoms are pulling you in multiple directions and you really -- you're never able to maintain a sense of inner stability, a sense of inner healing. Finally, through the men's trauma group, I was able to start my transition emotionally with a really good therapist. And there wasn't really a discussion about my gender at all. It was discussion about how I was dealing with my trauma symptoms and allowing myself to live as a person I want to. And that's kind of where the past five years of my journey have started. And we're all -- throughout that though, I've always had some level of activism going on in my life, usually attending things, reading the literature. But I mean we'll probably talk about that later. [laughs]. NB: We will. One of the things you mentioned was your mother and it sounded like you were very close to her. AW: Yes, yeah, definitely. She was definitely an incredible force in both me and my sister's life. Very intelligent, a lover of nature, having grown up on farm and animals. Also a fair amount of theatrical when she needed to be, a fair amount of sarcasm and humor. But she was living in a time in society where, she still couldn't have a credit card in the 80s. Her divorce was the biggest shame to bring on any family. Even from my grandmother, who had gone through similar things. During the divorce, , we were homeless for a minute together. She, me and my sister, and nobody would support us. All the food resources were cut off. But the things she had done to maintain the kind of illusion of wealth or whatever it was to get that American Dream were lavish parties for all the executives, croquet on the lawn like some magical fairytale in England or Ireland, that everyone seemed to want to be living in the late 70s, early 80's. And there was no time for kids, but the little time she had, she did spend with us. She did stuff in the garden, she made sure my diet was good, that I had laughter and fun, but at the same time she kind of had to whisk me in my sister way out of view after the adults needed to get together. Which was very Great Gatsbyesque in some way, but also wonderful to see her dressed up and entertaining and people playing cards or laughing. It was something I was lucky to witness but it was also on the other side of it, because once the parties would end it was violence. It was hiding down next to my Atari or TV, it was me standing between my parents trying to stop the blows, my sister pulling me away. So, the real legacy in the home was unfortunately one of violence, and even in adulthood with a remarriage, we could never discuss these things, oh well your parent loves you, but there's that history. I had to move on to forgiveness. Of all the things that happened to the home, but I don't think my sister ever will and I don't blame her. She was older, she knew what was going on, whereas I basically blocked out a lot. So that's why these things come up later in life, right? They come up when things are going good, you would think, but something's not matching and for me it was my gender identity. And honestly, I can say that once I did transition, I didn't have to take my psychiatric medications anymore. I mean everything started to match like overnight almost it felt like, that I can move forward and work on the things I needed to work on to be my truest self. The mother that I've always felt that I am even though it's two other people and it's not children. The support network that's a walking judgment free zone whatever it takes, to live as ourselves, it's just the most important thing to me.And I think my mother understood that, my sister knew she understood that, but it just wasn't the time for us as a queer kid wasn't for me at least. NB: Something else you've mentioned a few times is kind of the place of faith in your childhood. Would you be willing to talk a little bit about what it was like for you to grow up as a young closeted transwoman during the 70s and 80s and how the Catholic Church and the kinds of impact it had on you and your sister? AW: Yeah certainly. Well, yeah, it was an interesting time, there was so much going on with the AIDS crisis that even at 10 years old I was aware of it. Luckily my sister is a journalist. So even after getting out of la la land of Long Island, she was fiercely looking for information almost the same way she had to look for information in the home to see how to help ourselves. Total researcher. My sister just always 20 questions everything that's going on in your life and it's lovely though because you get to know it's out of the place of concern. But growing up in there and also being left in Ireland with an auntie and having my grandmother on my father's side, take me to 3 hour masses where it's hellfire and brimstone and God is coming down on the sexual. In the news, God is coming down the homosexuals. Transgender wasn't even really talked about, I didn't even know what transgender was until maybe eight years ago. So, the wording of things in the media did end the loss of my mother. Definitely it was scary because one, the way my remaining parent, my father was, there was no time to mourn. You're not allowed. No emotion, I'm uncomfortable with emotion was the finished reaction. Literally the day of her funeral, you're a big boy now all this type of things. And the only people who were there for that support were her sisters, and he immediately pushed them all away. So my sister was the last remaining one and he pushed her away. But the information that I did see on the news etc. and the conversations I could have with my sister were key for me to understand what was going on especially -- they had happened when I was too young, but the AIDS crisis protests you know where they lie down in the catholic church in New York City. And protesters dying basically in play on the floor and getting dragged out was definitely heavy in my mind. The fact that my sister's gay friends, because she was now in college, were dying left and right and their activism was going strong until the day they died a lot of them. And just being familiar with those stories like that my family history story of the kind of revolution stuff that my grandmother had to do definitely instilled in me a mindset for fighting for a liberation of queer identities. Which even though that wasn't really in the Catholic church in Ireland or Irish Catholic mentality in the U.S., it was definitely a part of our history and something that now, if you look at that country, it's very much they passed marriage equality before we did. All with the help of similar types of activism that have been taking place in here in the 80s and into the 90s. But then when I finally, without my mother, grew up trying to understand my femininity. It was a different time yet again when I was of age, the AIDS crisis was still the most terrifying thing and the thought of having a partner or possibly as a transfem from passing on the virus just I cut that out of my life because it was just so terrifying. Every boyfriend you're just like, oh I'm gonna test it again, it's just so much fear. And really, I was seeing a real separation of, after the death of a lot of great leaders, just the kind of the death of the social scene, the queer social scene, the closing of clubs. Obviously, a lot of clubs I couldn't go to, we're still going on, it was really more everyone, but those local spaces were gone down in New Brunswick. So, I threw myself into the music scene with very cute few queer personalities, but a few. So, it kind of just became its own mix of everyone and all cultures and all ideas that were supportive, which was its own joy, its own space that you made like you make a queer space your own. And finding that chosen family, if they're out there, there's always a challenge but it happens here and there. NB: So, it sounds like you were in New Brunswick involved in the music scene and at the same time, you were going into New York city on the weekends. Can you talk a little bit about kind of that period for us and its significance for your development and what it was like to be going into New York at that time, where you meeting other trans women or not really? AW: So yeah, that's always a tough one. As a transfem myself who was always in boy mode and also someone who having grown up with abuse and then the allure of New York was always there, was this big thing. But I always -- I guess I'm more -- I prefer the country or something or just small cities or college towns compared to the big city because of the way my trauma kind of expresses itself, like rejection, this sensitive dysphoria, things like that. And though I'm very capable of traveling at any rate in New York City and getting around safely, my earliest years were actually not hanging down there. They were hanging up in Harlem, going to see jazz early on with the girlfriends, getting to learn about that scene in small clubs there. But it also wasn't the safest time and a lot of parts lower than the 90s on Broadway streetwise. And then the train ride to go down to the village, you didn't really know anyone and you weren't really a New Yorker anymore because you're coming from New Jersey, so you're just an out-of-towner. So, what happens is you go into these clubs and if you don't immediately code switch to whatever is cool or whatever people are talking about, because I'm a little rock and roll girl, if I'm not into Madonna or this artist or whatever, I'm not necessarily going to fit in, not having set myself up in New York. Because the way that city works is like the cool things that happen is what everyone is following for the most part and they all know each other and they're all on the same scene. So emotionally it made it difficult. I was never really a fan especially with the AIDS crisis of the kind of hook up culture that goes along with being gay, a gay male. And so basically I would always kind of just kind of bring myself back to my New Brunswick area and see if I could find a group of friends. I had a boyfriend for a long period of time and I know one of the big events we went to was multiple marches were happening around the murder of Matthew Shepard, which is very critical time and kind of really opening up everyone's eyes again. Because it had been a bunch of years since the AIDS crisis was still going on really, but not in the same way as when all these people are dying, and nobody was helping. So those types of activities and other ways that I could get informed and get involved with the types of activity I do, but really my true activism didn't start to come back up until in my mid 30s when I wasn't really going to the city anymore except to see music concerts and things like that. I hope that answers your question. It was definitely an interesting time that I think it's easy to glorify the queer scene, but as a transgender it's never been all rainbows for me, and I've come to terms of that. We can't always fit in, we can't always like everybody, can't always feel safe everywhere. And in a big city there's that crushing pressure to be seen and when you don't have the money and the resources and the support around you -- the best place for me has always been the local pride center, which there was one in New Brunswick. But I guess I never had the wherewithal to talk it stop into the New York City ones, although I meet girls and people going out and stuff, but they always had their own things to do and I'd always have to get back and go work or something at a restaurant or photography or whatever I was doing. [laughs] NB: Can you talk a little bit about that LGBT Center in New Brunswick? AW: Sure. NB: How old were you when you discovered it? AW: So, I probably discovered that around 21. Yep, it was very small, and they had some great events here and there. But it always seemed like it was never able to kind of get out of the building, it's there for the support and that support community was important but people have to go about living their own lives. And really a lot of the activity then seemed to be going on more around college campuses like Rutgers had its own, which is specifically for Rutgers students, and so they're their own group of cultures. There's always kind of on the fringe, and your identity gets lost when you're in the mix with everybody else and you don't have those consistent queer friends or when you're dating, and there's no one quite like you because you're too rock and roll, you're not into what's cool. Cultural evolutions in this country especially around the queer scene there pretty fast, and people kind of raise themselves up with it which I applaud but a lot of people get lost in the mix too. We're seeing that I think today, as well as were way more insular and stuck in our online communities which are also good. But the in-person stuff is what I always grew up around, so I'm always gonna gravitate toward. But, I honestly can't say for most of that time I had many trans identifying friends. Didn't until it transitioned. And that's always been upsetting but it's been so great to get in and learn really what's going on, especially in the new age of it and see what people -- what I was doing my 20's is different, but what they're doing now is just exactly what I'm doing now. So about supporting younger people so that they have these spaces and that's my goal in the next couple of years to find those spaces and find those spaces to put people together. Because there's one thing I've known as a trans person is, going to shows or done drag on occasion, my body is the greatest revolution. That walking freely as myself is the main thing that I've always had in the back of my head. How wonderful it would be, and then to finally do that thing, to be yourself unashamedly, is just the biggest inspiration to watch other people doing that same path too. Yeah. [LAUGH] NB: Yeah. So, can you talk for us a little bit about your transition and coming into your womanhood? Can you talk about -- was there a single event which was kind of a catalyst for that? Was it multiple things? AW: Well, it had been coming up quite a bit. And leading up to my father's death about five years ago, I was already going through a divorce. I was facing a layoff from a good company. I was gonna be selling my house because of the divorce. And I was having major mental health stuff. My father had dementia for a number of years, and he was kind of, that voice, that internal voice sort of internalized homophobia, internalized transphobia. That voice that was kind of constantly beating me up. And it never really allowed me to mature into my womanhood because frankly, I don't think this is a person that likes women very much, as evidenced by their behaviors throughout my life. And pushing all the women in my family away. When my father died is when I finally started transitioning. And you could think about how an individual can have that much manipulative and psychological strength of somebody's identity. I think it's evidence pretty clearly that my transition, I only allowed myself to begin once he passed. I think that's a pretty common story I've learned from doing my trans support groups. Like often we put our lives on hold because we do love and care about the people, even our abusers. And we're taught that we're the burden when we have so much more to offer and we're not a burden. So that journey has been rough. Only recently starting to get better. I was homeless the first year of my transition driving Uber, so sleeping in my car, crashing on couches because I lost that job, and then lost my apartment that I had after selling the house. And Uber just is Jersey city, all New York City, even down to PA. Just,you can never catch up with a small car payment and everything else and tolls and bad tips and all that. It was fun though, because I got to kind of do the early awkward stages of my transition in my car and meet fun people in my own stomping ground and have good conversations. So, it was kind of an ideal job to be having with the money. Just, I couldn't keep afloat on it and my confidence, and my trauma symptoms were still really in this kind of hypervigilant state of like, I gotta run, I gotta run, I gotta run. And to top that off because of the divorce and my mental health, I was kind of losing all of my old friends, like they didn't know what to do with me. They couldn't help. They wouldn't talk to me. They knew I was going through stuff, but they weren't available on purpose. [laughs] So one trans male friend did help me get down here and at least have a place to stay. So, this is why I'm in this area, after that first year and eventually my car got repossessed. [laughs] So now I had nowhere to live which was my car. And so, I crashed in their place for a few months, tried to collect myself on my own. No money and finally, I was terrified of this whole area, I knew nothing about this area. I thought I was in the boondocks. I really didn't know because I didn't have a car, I couldn't see things, and nobody's wanting to support. But around those years is actually when I got involved with Eastern PA Trans Equity Project. They saved my ass. [laughs] One, I found a huge group of women like me and different from me from all walks of life. And I started to find the resources that I needed to give me kind of a boost in living as my full true self. One of oddly enough, the saving grace was just going back to bartending, that was my first job in the area. And even though there's a lot of passive aggression and microaggression as a transwoman behind the bar, you can control it. You can kind of keep that distance because you're responsible for people's liquor intake, and service, and whatnot. But that allowed me to get introduced to people in the community, and then COVID hit. And that was rough because then I had the feelings again which I've had throughout my life with no family, no future. The world's falling apart, all the PTSD symptoms coming up and I had some older friends start helping me a little financially here and there. Without them, I'd be on the street. So that was rough, and it still continues to be. All types of things and blockades get in your way financially. Unemployed for about a year after the bartending, and then bartending during COVID on and off as the restrictions were lifted and it's really affecting the industry. And then finally, most recently I got a decent job in my old field of medical devices. So, my life stability is a little better. But through all those years without Eastern PA Trans Equity Project-- I got food cards from them, I got assistance getting clothing from the Allentown Women's Center for my return to work through a referral from them, money towards my legal name change to make everything easier for me and living my life as myself. I had rent assistance for a period that was not even like eight months ago. And then of course I volunteered my time during the pandemic to provide support for other girls in the community. And that to me is the mutual support. Me having gone through some of these difficult experiences, all I can do is share some of the things I've learned about managing my mental health. And some of the attitudes I've learned to have to take, to keep kind of strong stance for myself, strong boundaries which are things I wasn't allowed to have growing up. I wasn't allowed to have any boundaries. And just relearning them in your 40's, and relearning about yourself and your body and going through -- sorry the word is evading me. Going through puberty again I meant to say, just all a flurry. A flurry of things to suddenly be learning when you're basically almost at midlife. [laughs] But you learn from other people when you share of yourself. And then you get to see them grow and you get to feel a sense of accomplishment for them in that you provided your strength and hope. And then they can see them themselves. Which I never had a mother to help me to do that. My sister hasn't lived in the country since I was 19. She lives in Ireland with her husband and kids. And if there's anything that starting my own journey of being a support member of our community has shown me it's our strength and resilience as a community, and the things that we go through. And to me those all happened in those small moments of togetherness when we come together. And I just want to provide those more and more as I get older and further along in my transition. I just want to be available for people in my community because sometimes we're the only people available for us most of the time. And that was also always clear in New York growing up, transgirls stuck to themselves. My bisexuality is always erased by my partners, you're not bi, you're gay. Then by my straight partner, You're not gay, you're hetero. It's small microaggressions that people don't realize that they're erasing your identity because they're living by theirs, and they want you to fit into it. They want you to fit into their box. But that's the beauty of breaking that with transition because you can make new goals for yourself and new norms for yourself that may only apply to you. [laughs] NB: When it came to kind of starting the process of transition -- you've talked a lot about how Eastern PA a few years after starting transition became really important for you and your survival. In those early years, how did you go about accessing things like hormones, medical care, clothing when you were Ubering and living out of your car? Do you mind talking about that a little bit? AW: Sure, yeah. Yeah, that was particularly rough because I did not have insurance for a good period of time. I had about a 5-month severance from Johnson and Johnson where I continued to have medical care. I was laid off around my birthday that year which is also around when my father died. A few months later in December, he died. So, my birthday is October, so I really started on my birthday, HRT at, it was called the Proud Health Center in Somerset, New Jersey which it really had been open only a little bit. But it was part of a family practice that was LGBTQ friendly from Robert Wood Johnson. And so, I started my hormones there and they were great but they didn't have a lot of time ; since it's expanded, it's a much better program. Also, because I was driving Uber, I could kind of drop in on meetings that Robert Wood Johnson was holding from some -- a great nurse over there. Yeah, I don't want to put their name on film, but they really kind of spearheaded getting, reaching out to the trans community because our care was so complicated. And in my early years, I had met a lot of trans people that were like, I can't even deal with hormones and this hospital's horrible. They're all awful, that was really my first experience was fear. Is these people are going to misgender me, they're going to not understand why I'm doing this. But the reality was a lot of what I was expecting would be needed at the time frame that I went in, wasn't a requirement. Maybe I think I needed my psychologist letter at some point, but really after a while, it was just the doctors were happy enough to be like, okay. So that was nice that it was changing, but all the other trans people I had met, that hadn't been the case. Their journey had been very difficult. So, in terms of accessing my hormones, I was able to continue even without insurance to pay full price. So, I just paid out of pocket. So that was a big challenge, right? And another reason my car got repo'd because I was not going without my spironolactone or hormones because my depression would just kind of come over me if I did. I met a good friend in the music scene who's also trans and nonbinary who's in her thirties. So -- they use they/them pronouns, their thirties. And we kind of helped support each other too, which was ideal for me. She needed a ride from her job that there was no bus route out of, and I would drive an hour from wherever I was and get her help. We had $5 to our name. We'd [laughs] buy some meat at Aldi together and cook it. Whatever it took, share spironolactone, that's pretty common story. I was really getting low on hormones and things when I finally came to this area. And eventually through the bartending I learned that I could get medical assistance around the time of COVID, continue to get my injectable estrogen. So that worked out and also that that you get like a six-month prescription. [laughs] Kind of helps too that I could kind of float through a year without it being too difficult. But luckily, I had been around the trans community in New Brunswick, mostly Latina trans community since I speak Spanish. And I had learned a lot about what they went through for the feminizing aspects, a lot of this harm they do themselves. And so that was my greatest fear. So having understanding of biology in the medical background, I refused to kind of do this almost approaching self-harm things to myself. Thankfully, I didn't have to resort to that, but I would have easily unfortunately, and I know girls who do. I do everything to help them not go down that path. But it's education, it's support. And this is what small nonprofits are doing in this country the same way that, empathetic, sympathetic churches have always been doing to this country on civil rights. We need our community and need each other to do that. We don't get those things online. I don't think, some may, but I don't think that's the case. NB: You mentioned a community of Latina trans women in New Brunswick. AW: Sure. NB: Can you kind of talk about what they taught you and what you learned from that? AW: Sure. Well, I actually forgot about the first trans woman I met in New Brunswick used to deliver my film from Epson film -- Fujifilm, sorry. And she was wonderful transfem, big lady, just really hysterical Latina woman, and we always cracked up about whatever is going on with my boyfriends, with whoever she was dating. But she would kind of clue me into what some of the girls that would come into the shop to get either passport photos or just a photo to send home or to a partner of how good they look. And so often just being in the community, I would get -- even at the local HIV like testing place. Which is around the corner from me right on George Street, New Brunswick I would meet girls there and just talk about what they're going through. And some of the unfortunate, negative side effects of like bad breast implants or injectable liquids of all different kinds, that's just like horror stories. And so, from those experiences, I always kind of try to carry forward like, anyway that will help that I can. It ended up at my corporate job being kind of doing that advocacy because in the past 20 years corporations are really picking up in their attempts to reach out to communities, like ours which are marginalized. And advocating within the organization, but also trying to support external groups like Eastern PA Trans Equity, etc. in getting the message out about our health care, about our lives. I'm glad they're doing that. Probably seen like the Love Has No Labels kind of campaign that brings out a lot of corporations. I hope it helps, but honestly often it doesn't, it's only our smaller groups, our insular groups that are doing really super grassroots stuff to just support each other. There was a Puerto Rican Action Board was a group there that I didn't actually end up getting involved with, but coworker at the time did. And kind of keep me apprised and I try to support when I can, but again, when you just kind of work in a living for your life, it's very difficult to get along those things unfortunately but you learn. NB: So, what has your advocacy looked like both in your current place of work and with Eastern PA Trans Equity Project. AW: So, I mean most of my advocacy is really through Eastern PA Trans Equity Project. In my previous positions was around the time of marriage equality. I had people coming in from PFLAG and doing like the How To Be An Ally 101 courses the PFLAG has. So, I would get speakers to come in and do Lunch and Learns, also have LGBTQ people speaking of our facilities, doing fundraising around the organization. Do you mean -- one of my favorites was a photo event will read it like different pride, rainbow flag colored backgrounds. And gave people signage to kind of show their support and hold up signs supporting LGBTQ people that was right before marriage equality. So, 5 or 6 years I was organizing that alongside doing my work. Fortunately, corporate setting, you're still running a business so you only get a few hours a day or a week. And you just really have to get it all done, but you're getting the money to get that out there. So, it's really just kind of like a quick production, get everyone excited about it, do something fun, get them involved and then it's back to business as usual. And usually unfortunately, this is kind of like an extracurricular thing, you're not really getting rated for it at your job. It's just you're doing it out of love. And so that would be in my career at least one of the things I'm proudest of doing. Then with Eastern PA in the past couple of years, that's been my main focus. So, I run the online Zoom trans support group. I set up a Discord server during the pandemic for members of our community trans identifying, as well as a separate space within it for non-binary individuals, because they may have more private things they don't want to discuss. And we're just trying still to get everyone there to be able to talk to each other to get the access and be able to discuss their medical needs, legal needs, beauty needs. Understanding how do I do my makeup, one of the hardest things because we haven't been raised or allowed to be raised as we want to be. And then we have to do it ourselves, but you have to have community around you to teach that. So all the personal things and the life things can happen in that private space, which has been wonderful. Hopefully in the next year we're going to have a lot more kind of public hangout events, board game parties, DJ parties, whatever. Which is something I'm hoping to start getting the funding for. Then Corrine Goodwin, who's the leader of the organization, she is the one organizing all of our larger events. So, all of the Trans Day of Visibility events, all of the Trans Day of Remembrance events, and [inaudible] events, fundraising events all throughout the state. I mean last Trans Day of Remembrance, I think she did four in a row, drove all over PA to do different events. I mean it's amazing. Little hard for me to do, I don't have a car, but I'd be right there with her. Also, you know the LGBTQ events locally, we do stands at those, we try to get people involved, get them to join the Lehigh Valley Renaissance. Which is our transfem and non-binary kind of social group that also meets once a month which Corrine runs, and I can run occasionally. But the main part of that really is for me, I try and do support since I'm still working on getting out of a long period of always on the edge of. [LAUGH]. homelessness again. So, the hope is in the next few years it's really gonna kind of get to where we can be out there and supporting each other and getting the word out. Because, I think if there's anything I've learned it's just I am meeting now at this point in my life, so many trans folks from all different walks of life. I love their stories ; I love the things that they've gone through. I love how unexpected, and talented, and compassionate so many of them are and how good we're at supporting each other and supporting the community that we can. And I think one of the bravest things, which Corrine is kind of pointed out for each of us, is just living out our day to day life sometimes. Even bartending was really showing up in a way for my community because so many people haven't met a trans person. And like that means somebody who can openly and freely talk, as like no, just leave me alone, has been nice. NB: What do you think it took for you to get to that place of being able to openly and freely discussing your identity, not just with other transfems and trans women, but just with people in generally. AW: It's a really good question, I mean through all the previous stuff I was talking about with my mental health and stuff, that was certainly the most terrifying part, just the fear of violence, I think. Having a friend in that group, having younger people actually who I worked with, just being supportive, like it's cool. Like it being no big deal. Because still I think -- what I point out to a lot of people is that everybody has a bit of internalized transphobia, especially trans folks. At some point in your transition, there's just this overpowering fear that you're gonna destroy your life and because that's what society tells us. But just that little bit of acceptance and a friend, currently I lost a very good friend, who was that friend who just show up and just bounce stuff off each other, take a trip somewhere. Both having difficult things going on in our lives and having that it took a long time to find anyone who's even willing to hang out with me. I'm usually the person alone if I go out somewhere because it's just, you're new to an area, you haven't really met people who want to spend time with you. That and you're terrified of how they will perceive you or that they'll notice the microaggressions that you receive on a daily basis. Which did happen a lot during the early years of my transition, particularly in this area. Until you start to meet this -- really, okay. Well, I didn't think I was safe here, but wow, I actually am. So it's those little steps in the right direction from the driving to this like -- you just kinda gotta reiteratedly do the thing. [laughs]. Until you're comfortable, but that was my process. Other people, I know they're just right in it, they're like, yeah, this is it. I'm like, wow, that's amazing, because for me, I would spend a lot of time really worrying about how this is affecting my mental health if it was a good thing. But always knowing that it was down the line because of the moments of gender euphoria and the moments of self care, or all the things you've always ever wanted about your femininity. And those who appreciate it, realizing that they truly appreciate you and they have questions, but they accept you. I love the communication of it. I'm a storyteller, I guess. So it makes sense that I would like to get involved and get into the nitty gritty with people who have questions for our community. About who we are, and what it took us to get individually where we are? NB: Yeah. You mentioned feeling safe in the Lehigh Valley. Can you talk a little bit about what it was for you to kind of come into that sense of safety? AW: Sure. It's honestly only been the past year. So, I've been here maybe 3 or 4 years but it's more really about the country's political environment, not so much about the Valley. But when you're in a new place, like when I was in Spain or all the moving I did throughout my childhood, every new place kind of comes with a whole new set of where am I, what is going on? Am I safe here? And I've certainly had that from of my other friends from marginalized communities. You go into a bar with them and then they're like, I am not feeling safe here and all of a sudden this was me. Where am I, like I am not safe here as an immediate reaction, because you've been in those situations before throughout your life. So originally, I did not feel safe here. The reason I do now is being out and proud and really not letting anyone get in my way with that, they certainly try wherever you go. I would guess externally I do have a bit of passing privilege, but usually when people hear my voice and stuff, I don't. And that's when the questions start to dig in and the stares, if there's somebody who is unsympathetic to me just being left alone to live my life. But finally in the past even five months as people are coming out of COVID, the events are starting to come back. The places that we can go are starting to come back. The Stonewall closed here toward the end of the pandemic. I'd never been there except for that closing. Which is upsetting, but I was finally starting to hear the stories from the community, about how sad it was that space was going. And I'm already learning and seeing queer community building the spaces up again, and I think it's a great opportunity for a lot of people to get in and start building those up. Because we need them, especially the trans community, a lot of the people that are on the server with me, they don't leave the house and I hate that for us, I hate it. That makes me feel like the kid I was stuck in my parents' basement and it breaks my heart, because it took years of therapy or me to go embrace that kid and be like, you're okay, you're safe. And what our community has always needed to do at some point our lives is embrace ourselves, embrace that hurt inner child that wasn't allowed to be who they are. It's who you are, why would anyone not allow that? It's just, I'll never understand. And so safety for me with the complex post-traumatic stress has come through those friendships I was talking about. Going through some of the experiences that were difficult, like with political rhetoric and pundits. And that stuff comes into your life when you work in a public setting, like a bar or restaurant, the attitudes, the MAGA hats. People with Nazi symbols on their clothing, literally walking into your restaurant and sitting down and having a meal, but I'm the problem. It takes a great deal of humor, somebody to turn to and be like, I don't know what's going on, let's get through this day, please. Which is fun in the food industry, because you have that ability to, to joke things off, otherwise you wouldn't be there. But also, for the PTSD part it's about learning to compartmentalize again. Which is so difficult when you're struggling with mental health. PTSD is about living in the past and not being able to live in the present. How do you get yourself back to right now and stand with pride. And I just have to pull from so many sources in my past, in my life, and the people I talked to and I know love me, which are very few it seems sometimes when you're in a new place, because they're far away. You have to pull from all those sources to make yourself hold your head high basically and get through it and not allowed allow yourself to go through your life [inaudible] basically. Which sometimes there'll be days, that's all that's gonna feel like. But you have to get back to being able to put the negative feelings in some regard on the shelf so that you can continue. But it's literally only something I think I had to completely relearn in the past couple years. Because when you're really suffering from serious trauma symptoms, you don't know where you are. You hit a point of frozen to collapse, to hyper vigilant, to frozen again, to collapse. And as you get your head out of that and you learn to do self care and what it takes for yourself. That's when you can come to that point. Yeah, that's what's worked for me at least [laughs] NB: I'm curious, you mentioned at the start of the interview that Catholicism, was quite harmful for you in terms of growing up during the AIDS crisis. And seeing the Catholic church is kind of blatant homophobia. I'm curious as you've gotten older, have you ever returned to faith. Is it something that has become important to you? AW: So, oddly enough, I mean I think a lot of children just understanding childhood development and stuff. My ex was actually once an art teacher, so we had a lot of discussions about that type of thing, and it's nice to watch and understand, like to see almost how I was learning and the things that my mom was doing more along those lines. Sorry, what was the question again? I have a really like -- I always have to kind of like think things through. NB: No that's okay, I'm just curious, do you feel at this point in your life that a sense of faith is something that -- AW: I see yeah, the faith questions. So, and losing my mother even in the Catholic church setting. And then going to Catholic school for the rest of my life, you certainly still rely on some of the allegories and stories behind the Catholic faith. And the concepts of loving God, but the god I was experiencing was hurtful. He took my mother away, right. The violence of my home hurtful, right. That's not the religion's fault. But certainly, the way I was not allowed to mourn and etc., made it very difficult for me to appreciate that there was a loving God. It just seemed like an angry guy to me. So, I did though bring up on the spirituality of feeling that my mother was always around me and watching for me. My grandmother when she died. And so only around the time I started getting my therapy and understanding through that and meditation and EMDR, which was some of the things that kind of help you surface the trauma and talk to it to settle some of the [shudders] that causes those bodily reactions. And around this time when I realized how visual I've always been in dreaming and in looking at my life. I actually started to embrace Celtic paganism. Which is stuff I had read up throughout my life on their mythology. The name Aoife, she was a warrior chieftainess, so that's why that's my chosen name now. And I felt a strong spiritual connection to the kind of pantheon of gods and goddesses as well as the natural connection to an agrarian lifestyle, to farming, to the cycles of the Earth, to nature. So, for me that's my I wouldn't call it religion, I'd call it just myself practice of faith, because it's only me who does it. I don't discuss it with anyone else. It's just helps me put the symbols and the imagery around me that helps me feel protected. That would be the best way to describe it. And that was something that even in my grandmother's Catholic faith. She had Roma or you know people of Roma descent come to the farm. And she would help them even though she was Catholic because they had to help each other in those areas. So, I don't see it too much different from the idea of the Christian faith for some reason. I do know though that the dogma of the Catholic faith is certainly what, yeah really kind of tore me up. Because it has no place for me as a queer person, it's just kind of is pushing away the things that are really needed for people to heal. Which is why I never felt comfortable because I was never allowed to heal. So, it's as much the society around it as it is the kind of dogma surrounding it. That said I would never be angry at somebody for being faithful. I think the Catholic faith is the only thing that got my grandmother through what she went through in the Irish Revolution and civil war and to her dying day so I respect it in that regard too. I see its power. I think that I wouldn't consider myself an atheist anymore. I'm scientifically minded, but definitely feeling more along the lines of Pagan these days. NB: Is there anything we haven't talked about that you would like to discuss? AW: I'm not sure. Well I guess it's interesting, you know the company I'm at now the enterprise resource group stuff they're doing -- it's like their first year doing it. So that's great to see companies still starting to embrace this, I'm probably their only trans employee. I would love in the work that I'm doing with them as they're starting out to get some better speakers into these businesses because we are a capitalist democracy. Business runs a lot of things including public opinion sometimes. And the fact that, you really can't decide we're not going to do business with a whole group of people or something and the corporations understand this now. While the capitalist mindset is pretty cutthroat, can have a lot of ills in society, I think that seeing them starting to work towards the betterment of marginalized communities is just amazing. I want to see more of it, and I want to be a part of it. But for me, I'm more honestly the kind of nonprofit route is where I hope to keep going with my future endeavors. And supporting how I can and get into the rallies and getting to the meetups and the show ups to just get out the message that we're regular people, like everyone else. That's really all I can stand for. NB: And so you would like eventually to leave your current role then and move into a nonprofit? AW: I would hope to at some point. I think I have some other things to do in the meantime in getting my life back together. Seems to have been a long couple of years. But I have some small, more creative projects in mind ; possibly getting back into another band. Music has been one of my avenues. I haven't talked about some of the music I did, but it's humorous. I did it just a wacky album a while back and then one I would like to do again is kind of cute. It was around the time of Don't Ask Don't Tell. I did a band where it was basically [inaudible] up the military with jokes about military jargon and a lot of people in the military understands. There's kind of like a very gay undertone, some of the stuff. Other groups of men together or groups of women together that anyone on a sports team could probably tell you too. But it was just a cute thing that I used to do as a kind of protest thing around the time of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. So hopefully more little pop up art things like that. Like try and focus on my art, since my focus right now really is as much caring for others as it is caring for my creative spirit, honoring that legacy of family members have always kind of, some of them been creatives, and bringing a little bit of joy into what feels like a dark world. I hope to do that in a way that will work. And those connections are one of the connections in bands and stuff that a lot of people don't see, they feel are very insular, if you go to like a queer rock show or whatever. But people are starting to see it more and I know like 20 queer bands all of a sudden, whereas I feel like 10 years ago I would have known one. So those are the spaces where you can kind of feel like you're on the front line and do some fun things to kind of send out a message. Like we're here, we're not going anywhere, [laughs] and we're gonna sing very loud about it. And hopefully bring some of that energy into future protests, whatever it takes. And definitely just trying to up my activism level as well as my support level and hopefully that ends up in a nonprofit. NB: Something that's been recurring throughout our conversation I've noticed is the role of music and kind of creative endeavors in sustaining you. When do you think that started? AW: God, I mean, that's definitely at age five. My mother was great at encouraging that as well as my sister, and you know, in ways my father even would do magic tricks or whatever, whatever it took to just kind of get through the sad part and I think it is actually culturally an Irish trait like you just laugh through everything. I'm very thankful for that as well as the other members of like -- my mother's best friend and her husband were just always a source of laughter growing up. That was very lucky to have, even though I've had a lot of hard times, I'm immensely privileged and I know that. And so for me, one of the earliest things I did to mourn her was to focus on my creativity, focus on my love of nature, and express it to the best of my ability to bring humor and joy and intensity to other people's lives. I think it's just one of the most amazing mediums -- and always in the illage, right? The piano bars, drag shows. I just went to drag queen bingo for the first time here over Easton. Amazing! I won gummy sushi. I think it was on -- yeah. And so like those are the types of things that I think just bring people that momentary joy or like listen, I don't take myself so damn seriously. You know, all this stuff that's going on in the world. Yeah, it's serious, but we can give ourselves a moment to laugh together, to celebrate something together and to celebrate the strength of and resilience of our queer communities and what they can provide to the rest of culture, you know, in this country. Because that's what marginalized communities have always done. We've always given culture back to this country that seems to just be glossed over. Meanwhile, it's mostly what we look at on the television, on Netflix right. There's a great deal of history of arts and things that lead up to all the amazing things that are happening in the media, right? And I just want to be there to support it. NB: So we are nearing the end of our time. But on the note of culture, I wanted to circle back, and to ask you about your time in Spain? AW: Sure, sure. NB: And what that was like, what it was like for you as a young person to kind of be abroad as so much was happening in the 90s? AW: Sure, yeah, I mean, right out of high school and doing Spain was just the best experience of my life. A lot of family members like, why did you come back? [laughs] Which I thought was funny. I was like, cause I was just gonna be broke if I stayed out there. [laughs] They were still kind of bringing their economy back together at that time in Spain. But yeah, the culture, this history, the sense of community and family, the music scene. Jazz clubs, which I grew up seeing jazz in New York. Punk clubs, there was an anarchist club or bar in every city I went to. There's a lot more socialist and deeply entrenched kind of revolutionary spirit in a lot of Spain, considering what they went through with their dictator. Learning the language and the culture, I mean, I've been very lucky to get access to European cultures and Latino cultures throughout my life. And, just that loving to learn about life, and loving to learn about other people, and celebrate things together with them. Which, when I did come back to the states, it just seemed we're getting further and further apart from each other. Owning a home, nobody's going and visiting each other unless there's a downtown. All these things are evaporating. Instead of being a place like Spain, -- in Salamanca, Spain, North of Madrid is where I lived. They have seven massive renaissance era churches there, huge steeples. A strong appreciation for the contributions of all aspects of cultures there. And so, walking around the streets around that Spanish architecture and the food, and then having different kind of French roommate, two Italian roommates, I stayed away from all Americans. I made sure I made no American friends, which sounds selfish, but on the Irish passport it's like, I don't wanna speak any English, I'm here to speak Spanish. So, we all speak Spanish in our broken accents, it's pretty cute. [laughs] So, I learned a lot about myself, and my sexuality too. Because honestly, they were really finally free from the -- a lot of Americans may not get the kind of grip the Catholic church has had throughout Europe for so long. That it was interesting to be an environment where everybody was anti-Catholic, down to the humor. I mean, they respect to religion, but the humor is completely dissing. The Catholic faith, even though most of the parents would have been Catholic, but the church did not do kind things to their families. And that the Catholic church did not do kind things to my family either, and my grandmother and mother's generation. So, I think just getting to experience that, to see a society kind of moved along outside of the kind of structures of religion was amazing, right? And then, it's just so odd to me that now we're seeing this kind of attempt to claw that old way of thinking back. But seeing them both I think, has helped me kept from some perspective about, hopefully society goes along the path of embracing more diversity and more openness to other cultures into our own. But a lot to learn there definitely. NB: Are you optimistic about the future? AW: A little scared certainly. I just think that coming at least from the background of my grandmother and the revolution and civil war there -- she was in jail at 14 by the Irish. There's actually a book written about it by my uncle Thomas. But, to know that somebody can be that resilient to get through things like that, and then go on and continue to raise a family, is so inspiring, and just kind of fills your heart. At least for me with a connection to that, to knowing enough about myself that given the time and the need to protect members of my community in whatever, if I can, I'm always going to be doing that no matter what, no matter what. It's very easy when life is constantly pressuring you on all sides, especially in the new media landscape, to feel like the other shoe is gonna drop tomorrow. But the thing that always seems to happen when that shoe does drop, people don't back down, they stand up. And so it might be a long series of years with the current news of Roe versus Wade, and Supreme Court. But I think that these are the types of things that galvanized the right people to get up, and stand up, and make our voices heard. And then we're going to see a lot of that. And I've wanted that for this country, I really have. I think there is an American revolutionary spirit that has been lost. And a lot of other countries have been going through these periods of time. So, seeing those other countries having those historical perspectives and I can't forecast what's going to happen. But I can certainly sense that we have been for a long time now, and a lot of change, and that is the start of fighting for what we believe in, however we can. And I think hearts and minds are opening slowly. But, the negative voices are always the ones that get themselves arrested first, [laughs] right? And that speaks to the ability of our country to, in the right places, actually do the right thing when it comes down to protecting the standards of a civil society, a separation of church, and state, and so forth. I think there will always be negative forces clawing at the edges of that, to see what they can get in their favorite part. We shall see, I know where I'll be standing. NB: [laughs] We shall see indeed. So, we have about four minutes left. Is there anything you would like to add that we haven't touched on? AW: I've covered a lot. [LAUGH] Gosh, I mean, I don't really think so. I just love seeing my community grow and expand. I'm looking forward to seeing the ways that we all can continue to support each other and feel supported. But also, we've all been giving each other a lot of space, and we've needed it. Everyone is needed to heal right now. This isn't just trans people, this is the whole country. One of the main things I noticed part ending too, is just a boy, here's another group of people that are just falling apart, because everything they know is being challenged. And they're going to try and take that on. It's something they don't understand. That's the big thing that I had. Think people without a little historical perspective in the country, and without a little more of a kind of like, we gotta stand up for this, queers bash back. All that 1980s, 1990s powerful stuff. I hope I'll start to see that stuff coming back. I hope it's not needed though. There's way other better ways to get our message across. And I think those are the things that happen in our day to day lives when we support our friends, and we support each other. Everyone needed each other's support right now. But what we've been doing for so long is living in our little cocoons, and there's no room for anyone else's thoughts but your own in that space. So, I just hope that more of us learn that we can bring our thoughts out there, and help support and inspire each other by our actions, and sometimes just by being ourselves, which is an action enough itself. That's it, that's all I got. NB: That's it. AW: That's it. NB: That's it. AW: That's [laughs][snaps]. NB: You heard it here first ladies and gentlemen. AW: [laughs] NB: Well Aoife thank you so much -- AW: Thank you NB: -- for your time, and for sharing your story with us. It was really an honor. AW: Absolutely you too. Absolutely great interview skills. I love it. NB: Thank you. Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:25:03
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Aoife Ward, May 7, 2022
Description
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Aoife Ward describes her early upbringing, transition, finding transgender community in New Brunswick and the Lehigh Valley, and her outlook on the future.
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LGBT-33
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2022-05-07
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: COVID-19
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Ariel Torres
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_10.xml
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5.4 July 14, 2020 Ariel Torres, July 14, 2020 PH40_10 01:01:57 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- COVID-19 (Disease) Ariel Torres Liz Bradbury video/mpeg TorresAriel_20200714_video.mp4 1.0:|31(4)|52(7)|85(9)|130(11)|163(8)|194(5)|231(7)|260(14)|287(12)|320(15)|355(2)|386(13)|417(12)|446(2)|471(8)|508(4)|537(4)|570(13)|601(10)|630(14)|663(17)|698(8)|745(15)|780(9)|821(8)|868(2)|895(4)|942(13)|979(11)|1012(16)|1037(5)|1070(6)|1103(3)|1130(9)|1163(11)|1202(9)|1237(12)|1274(10)|1299(14)|1342(2)|1381(2)|1428(11)|1471(12)|1512(12)|1547(13)|1578(12)|1611(9)|1654(14)|1701(3)|1748(7)|1791(5)|1820(3)|1859(5)|1890(12)|1931(13)|1976(11)|2023(2)|2056(13)|2083(4)|2108(13)|2143(14)|2188(5) 0 https://youtu.be/3wvBkM5hPn4 YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction LB: - now -- wait, wait (laughter) one second. I’m not going to turn it off. I don’t want to get in trouble. He’ll be right back. (laughs) Oh, okay, bear with us, everyone. He’ll be right back here.
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 ; AT: I’m sorry. Look at that.
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 ; LB: Oh, that’s bling-y. That’s good. It’s beautiful. But you’re so much more handsome. I don’t want you to wear that one because I can’t -- you know it’s so hard to understand -- it’s hard to hear what people are saying when they’re wearing the mask because you can’t see their mouths. It’s really hard with Trish. You can’t wear the mask --
 ; 0 289 Working as the Pride programs manager at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center/Pride going virtual due to pandemic LB: And so, have you been working? Has your employer closed or laid you off? And I know the answer to that. So, want to talk about where you work and what you do?
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 ; AT: Yeah, so I work at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and I’m the Pride programs manager, which basically is a very, very, very condensed way of saying I run the festival. 0 364 Working part-time as drag queen Elektra Fearce St. James/Missing socialization due to pandemic LB: So, let’s talk a little bit about -- you have other parts of your life that also include the stuff that you do that has been really -- had a significant impact because you have another job, too.
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 ; AT: Yeah.
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 ; LB: And that’s really been -- have had a strong impact from COVID, so talk about that a little bit.
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 ; AT: Yeah, so, of course, by day, I run the Lehigh Valley Pride festival and by night, on some nights, I am Elektra Fearce St. James 0 545 Communicating with family through Facebook Messenger and Zoom LB: And so, are you socializing with people in other ways? I mean, are you using online stuff or video chats or phone or --
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 ; AT: Yeah, yeah, definitely. We’re using Facebook Messenger a lot. I have a group chat that goes on because we already did it kind of anyway, so I like to say I was a little bit trained for this before it kind of happened. 0 675 Spending time with family during the pandemic LB: And not only are you -- you have a lot of friends but you have a big family, don’t you?
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 ; AT: Yeah, my family is huge. My mother’s one of fifteen and my dad is one of seven. So, that’s twenty-two aunts and uncles. Not all of them are still living but -- and they each have plenty of children. So, I meet a new cousin every week. (laughter) 
 ; 0 756 Thoughts on Dr. Rachel Levine LB: Well, I was going to ask you about how you feel about seeing Rachel Levine, Dr. Rachel Levine, and how that is sort of a positive thing for all of us. Say a little bit more about that and our --
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 ; AT: Yeah.
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 ; LB: -- our own (inaudible)
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 ; AT: Definitely. It’s very empowering to see someone who can just -- I want to say it’s like breaking barriers, you know? 0 932 Discussion of how pandemic has affected life in general LB: So, do you think, I mean, it’s interesting that -- like, this is a question that I think people wrote before we were really in the thick of the pandemic. And really, in the grand scheme of things, we haven’t been in it that long. But this is saying how has it affected your life? And, I mean, I can’t think -- and for me and you, I don’t think -- I think it’s affected every moment of every day, you know?
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 ; AT: So, yeah, I think -- for someone to say that it hasn’t affected them, I feel like it’s -- I hate to say it but it’s somebody who’s living in denial. 0 1134 Gradually going back out to eat as Covid restrictions lessen/safely taking account of mental health and socializing with others LB: I think, so, this is asking, like, are you staying in and are you limiting going out? I mean, have you been going to the grocery store and have you been going out to eat or what do you think?
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 ; AT: I think -- so, my aunt loves the diners. I grew up with -- I always say my one aunt, she gave me a childhood because my dad was a homebody and my mom didn’t drive 0 1286 Performing drag during Covid restrictions LB: So, this says whatever queer activities have you been doing? And it’s funny that you and I do queer activities all day long every day, so --
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 ; AT: Right.
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 ; LB: -- it’s hard to find something that isn’t queer that we’re doing, so --
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 ; AT: Right, well, I mean, I did -- since we are in the green, I did perform this past Sunday at a very limited seating kind of place. I did have, like, a face shield on, so that was -- it was fun to do but it was still a little scary.
 ; 0 1464 Experience working from home LB: Now, he does something that’s drastically -- I think is very different from -- than you would normally do. But you’re getting up a lot earlier than you normally do.
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 ; AT: Yes, I am because I don’t --
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 ; LB: [All the time?]. (laughter) And also, there’s other reasons, too. Explain why that is. It’s not just because you’re home.
 ; 0 1697 Frustrations/concerns during pandemic LB: So, what’s the biggest frustration or fear you have or challenge that you’ve had during this time? I mean, are there -- that are just so frustrating for you?
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 ; AT: Honestly, other people who don’t take this seriously.
 ; 0 1780 Similarities between 1918 Spanish flu and Covid-19 pandemics LB: Yeah, (laughter) I’ve always -- I mean, I know I’ve told you before that in 1918, my grandmother died and she was thirty-two years old at the time. And my father was four and he, then, grew up without a mother and -- because in the flu epidemic of 1918, most people who got it were between the ages of twenty and forty and she was right in the middle of that time. 0 1975 Pandemic's affect on mental health LB: So, like, you always seem like such a normally even-keeled guy. (laughter) You think this is affecting your mental health?
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 ; AT: I feel like in the beginning it did because I was a little more -- I was on the worried side. 0 2100 Discussion of taking Covid risks responsibly/Taking into consideration health of others AT: And so, just something I want to draw home. If you want to take the risks, that’s fine. But just make sure you do it responsibly. Make sure you take every precaution possible.
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 ; LB: Yeah, and the likelihood of people -- I mean, it’s so easy to be frustrated at people who will say, “Well, I don’t care if I get sick.” And you’re saying, “Yeah, but you’re going to make other people sick.” 0 2215 Family who have contracted Covid-19 AT: I had a cousin who actually contracted COVID and an uncle. They’re not in the same home but my aunt -- they worked at a retirement home and my cousin does home care. And she’s one of the strongest people I know. 0 2405 Sharing positive experiences resulting from staying/working from home LB: So, what, of all the stuff that you’ve been doing, what’s the best thing that’s been happening? Is there anything -- like, some people will say, “I’m such an introvert, I really love this, I don’t have to talk to anybody.” (laughs)
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 ; AT: Well, okay, so I -- see, I do love going out but secretly, I do have a little bit of my father in me. I am a homebody. So, working from home, I think, has been great. 0 2498 Discussing anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers LB: It’s probably hard -- it’s hard to imagine how we can stop this -- I just read -- Trish just read a thing that said that if every person in the country wore a mask every single day for the next -- you know, three months, it would be gone. It’d be over.
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 ; AT: Eradicated.
 ; 0 2855 Discussion of computer security/Playing video games during the pandemic LB: It’s so funny because my sister even said some -- one of those things. Like, she said she thought that the -- and she never fussed up like this. And she said she thought the camera in her computer was watching her. And I said, “Well, is it on?” And she said, “No.” I said, “Well, come on! I mean, unless you’re downloading a bunch of really hacky programs that are -- you know, have you downloaded a lot of programs?” 0 2970 Family members who have contracted Covid-19/How the disease affected them differently LB: So, here’s the next question. Here’s the next question. Let’s see. And so, I’ve already asked you. You have people in your family that have had this.
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 ; AT: Yeah.
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 ; LB: And [your parents?] --
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 ; AT: And something I didn’t -- well, if you -- actually, something I can add, since that question just came up, my aunt and uncle, the ones who got it, who are married, my aunt tested positive but she was asymptomatic. And her husband ended up in the hospital for three days. 0 3146 Traveling to Florida during the pandemic LB: You went on a trip. You went to California-- or to Florida.
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 ; AT: I did go to Florida, yes.
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 ; LB: And what was that like? What’s it like in the airport?
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 ; AT: It was okay. I was a little nervous. I was under the assumption that the flights would be only flown at, like, certain capacity. That flight was entirely full.
 ; 0 3426 Discussing vaccinations LB: And what are we going to do? We can’t go there if -- and there’s no end in sight. It’s not going to end until there’s, like, a mandatory vaccination.
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 ; AT: Right.
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 ; LB: Because -- or until we can be vaccinated. You know, if we’re vaccinated, that means that then we don’t have to worry if they really have a successful vaccine. But it takes a while to get a good vaccine. 0 3465 Thoughts on Black Lives Matter/Attending protests during the pandemic LB: So, we’re coming to the end of this. So, let me ask you one more question, because we’re talking about -- I’m asking everybody about all the things that are happening now and a lot of other things are happening at the same time as COVID and we can’t really separate that. So, I want to talk to you about Black Lives Matter and see -- you want to talk a little bit about that and what’s happening in Allentown right now and what’s happening in the United States right now and if you want to say anything about that.
 ; 0 3678 Conclusion AT: Because I could go on for hours but this is the end of the interview, so we’re just going to leave it there.
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 ; LB: I’m thinking, yeah, you know, I would let you go on for hours but I know you have to do work. (laughs)
 ; 0 MovingImage Ariel talks about how the current COVID-19 pandemic is affecting him, his friends and his family, his work on the Pride Festival and other projects at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. He also talks about traveling, not being able to do his second job as a nationally known drag performer, his daily routine, and Black Lives Matter issues.
 ; Ariel Torres 2020-07-14 LIZ BRADBURY: -- now -- wait, wait (laughter) one second. I'm not going to turn it off. I don't want to get in trouble. He'll be right back. (laughs) Oh, okay, bear with us, everyone. He'll be right back here. AT: I'm sorry. Look at that. LB: Oh, that's bling-y. That's good. It's beautiful. But you're so much more handsome. I don't want you to wear that one because I can't -- you know it's so hard to understand -- it's hard to hear what people are saying when they're wearing the mask because you can't see their mouths. It's really hard with Trish. You can't wear the mask -- AT: [And it's just?] -- LB: -- you have to take the mask off. Okay, I -- AT: [You asked if -- promise?] to be at the beginning of the recording -- LB: Okay, okay. So, I want to be sure that we're pinned in here. I think you're pinned. Now you're good. Okay, and so, this is the deal. With this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LBGT Community Center at the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with Ariel Torres to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Lehigh Valley Community Archive. We are meeting on Zoom on July 14th, 2020. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, please state your full name and spell it for me. AT: My full name is Ariel Torres and it is spelled A-R-I-E-L T-O-R-R-E-S. LB: Will you please share your birth date? AT: I was born on May 2nd of 1985. LB: Okay, and you are in -- what town are you in? You're in Bethlehem? AT: I am in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. LB: Okay. This is the consent part. So, now, we say do you consent to this interview today? AT: Yes. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? AT: An enthusiastic yes! LB: (laughs) Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other things? AT: Si, which is yes in Spanish. LB: (laughs) Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview, identifying any parts you'd like to delete or withdraw the whole interview from the project if you choose? AT: Yes. LB: Okay. So, this is what we're -- so, now, here's a couple of things. These are some identity things. So, what's your zip code where you are? AT: I am 18018. LB: And what is your age? AT: (laughs) Do I really have to tell it? LB: You do not if you don't want to. AT: Well, I'm thirty-five -- LB: I can (inaudible) AT: -- thirty-five and proud. It's fine. LB: Thirty-five, okay. And how do you identify within the LGBT community in terms of sexual orientation, gender identity, and stuff like that? AT: I am a gay male. LB: Okay. Here are some things to think about. And so, you identify as cisgender, is that correct? AT: A cisgendered gay male, yeah -- LB: Okay. AT: -- who also does drag on the sides, so call me whatever you want with pronouns, just not late to dinner. LB: (laughs) All right. So, I have all these questions and I think I'm just going to throw these at you and you can talk as long as you want. You can say whatever you want. This is all about how COVID is affecting your life. And it is affecting your life -- and sort of affecting your life within the LGBT community and then in general. So, I know the answers to some of these but let's start out, so -- and this is also going to go into the archives so that people 30 years from now can look at this and go what was this like during this time? And then, they'll say -- AT: Yeah, they're going to say, rough, they had to do this on a computer. Oh, who does that? (laughter) Technology will be light years ahead of us by then. LB: No, I wonder how it will be. So, who is -- you're by yourself. Who's in your home with you? Do you have anybody else living with you? AT: Nope, I live alone. LB: Okay. And so, have you been working? Has your employer closed or laid you off? And I know the answer to that. So, want to talk about where you work and what you do? AT: Yeah, so I work at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and I'm the Pride programs manager, which basically is a very, very, very condensed way of saying I run the festival. But there are so many moving parts that go into running a festival when it comes to planning, organizing, you know, all of that good stuff. And due to COVID-19, unfortunately, we had to go virtual this year. So, it's like learning how to plan an entire festival in a virtual format. So, just when you think you have it down pat, COVID hits and it shakes up my life just as much as everybody else's but just in a different way, I'm sure. LB: So, this festival's been going on for about, what, this is the 27th or 28th one? AT: Since 199-- I want to say four. LB: Ninety-four. It's '94, it's '94. AT: Ninety-four. LB: Yeah. AT: So, twenty years will be 2024 and we're in 2020. So, it's about sixteen years, yeah. My math is wrong. LB: No, that is thirty years. AT: Thirty years, yeah. LB: Yes. AT: Sorry. (laughter) LB: And -- AT: That's right. I run the festival but I don't do accounting, I'm sorry. LB: (laughs) And so, but the center has only been doing this and our center has only been open for a while and you've done this, the festival since we took it over. And how long has that been? AT: This would have been our third in person festival that we were in charge of. So, now this is our third festival but the only difference is it's virtual now instead of in person. (laughs) And so -- LB: So, let's talk a little bit about -- you have other parts of your life that also include the stuff that you do that has been really -- had a significant impact because you have another job, too. AT: Yeah. LB: And that's really been -- have had a strong impact from COVID, so talk about that a little bit. AT: Yeah, so, of course, by day, I run the Lehigh Valley Pride festival and by night, on some nights, I am Elektra Fearce St. James. I perform as an entertainer here in the Lehigh Valley and I've been doing that for about 15 years now. So, it's been quite a while. And for everybody who's out there, in case you wanted to know what I look like, I'm turning on a virtual background for you. And there I am! LB: Oh, okay, oh! AT: Little bit of leg. Again, technology is not 20 years in the future but there is Elektra Fearce St. James. So, that's me on some nights, when there's a full moon. As you can see, I look like a wolf. LB: You look great in -- AT: But, yeah, it's been quite the experience. Drag is like a steady income for me. I perform really regularly, not only locally but I travel a lot, I go out of town. And with everything being shut down, it has given me a little bit of a financial strain. Thankfully, I do have my day job, which allows me to continue and, you know, still live a good life. But, you know, that extra money is just, like, not there like it used to be. But also, just being around people -- I'm a people person, that's why I love my position at the Center. I'm in a position within my community to help others to -- if I don't know the answers to certain questions, though I run the Pride festival, I've been with the organization as an administrative manager before. So, I've been in certain positions where it's very fulfilling. Pro-fo-homo is what some people call a professional homosexual person. So, it's just -- it's hard being at home, not being able to be at the bars, you know? I enjoy a good cocktail just like many other people, not that it's necessary to have a good time but I do enjoy them. So, just being around the atmosphere of my peers, locally, and just within the state of Pennsylvania and the tri-state area, it's been quite an adjustment to just not be around people who you're used to seeing, right? So, you start to realize who you miss during pandemics. (laughs) LB: Yeah. AT: Definitely. LB: Really do. And so, are you socializing with people in other ways? I mean, are you using online stuff or video chats or phone or -- AT: Yeah, yeah, definitely. We're using Facebook Messenger a lot. I have a group chat that goes on because we already did it kind of anyway, so I like to say I was a little bit trained for this before it kind of happened. But I have some really close friends. Some live in Florida that used to live here, so we have a group chat of about, like, I think eight or nine of us sometimes. I just jump on a call randomly throughout, like, any given day. So, that really helps. Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away during this pandemic. Not from COVID but -- and, you know, that was even hard. We couldn't have -- my family's very Catholic, so there's always the viewing for about two days and then you drive to the church and then you go to the burial. We had to just go to the burial. Like, it was like leaving from home, you get to the burial site. Everybody was socially distant and even that was a challenge. They wanted to put a cap on how many people could be there, so it's definitely strange times. But it's just so many different moving parts that make it -- and things that you didn't think about before that you wouldn't even give a second thought have not become part of our day to day. So, it really has affected me in that way. But, you know, things like Facebook Messenger, like I said, and Zoom calls. Like, we had to rally behind Zoom calls with -- I say the younger generation, you know? The cousins. We did family Zoom calls for a few weeks, just to, like, have mental health check-ins and make sure that the family was doing okay in case we had to be there for each other. That way, we could be mentally prepared and tell ourselves, okay, I have to leave my house. I have to go help this person with this. They're not doing really well right now. I have to go make -- do I have my mask? That's the worst thing. You drive halfway there and then you have to turn around and say, oh, my gosh I left -- LB: Yeah! AT: -- mask at home. LB: No! AT: Because the last thing I want to do is really go try to help somebody and who knows? Nowadays you could be asymptomatic and you don't even know from just checking your vitals. So, like, you have to be careful, you know? The little things before that we wouldn't worry about have just -- you know, starting to be second nature to us, so -- LB: And not only are you -- you have a lot of friends but you have a big family, don't you? AT: Yeah, my family is huge. My mother's one of fifteen and my dad is one of seven. So, that's twenty-two aunts and uncles. Not all of them are still living but -- and they each have plenty of children. So, I meet a new cousin every week. (laughter) LB: And you haven't been able to see any of them in person for a while. Maybe they come over and wave from -- you for far away or -- AT: Well, I do have -- two of my cousins, especially, we have already given each other the rundown, we know how to be in public spaces. They know where I work, especially because we were such advocates when it comes to health, especially health disparities within the LGBT community. So, we follow Dr. Rachel Levine, like, very closely, the instructions. So, we feel comfortable enough to be around each other even though we don't live in the same home because we might as well live in the same home with as much as we see each other. So, that's been a little bit of a saving grace with visits here and there, socially distant on the porch, you know? I have my hand sanitizer always by the door. I just ran out of Lysol, so nobody's allowed to come over until I get some more. (laughter) LB: I know! AT: That's where I am now. LB: Well, I was going to ask you about how you feel about seeing Rachel Levine, Dr. Rachel Levine, and how that is sort of a positive thing for all of us. Say a little bit more about that and our -- AT: Yeah. LB: -- our own (inaudible) AT: Definitely. It's very empowering to see someone who can just -- I want to say it's like breaking barriers, you know? It's, like, not really caring what other people think. I've been in the comments section. She's been treated so terribly and disrespected so much in the comments and it takes everything in me not to just, like, fall into the bait because it's a bait and those comment threads will just go on and on and on. But to just see somebody who is living their truth and is not worried about what anybody thinks and literally is put to the test of that every single day is just -- I think that she is an amazing person and I couldn't think of anybody better to lead us during a crisis like this. And I think she's doing the best job she can possibly do. So, if you see this, thank you. (laughter) Thank you, thank you, thank you. (laughs) LB: Well, we are all really grateful for her. I mean, we -- there's so much misinformation that's going on and lack of leadership, I think, in other areas, so it's wonderful to see her and the leaders we do have. So, this question is on my list. I didn't write this but are you spending any time on queer dating or hook-up apps and have you found queer community despite --- you know, additional queer community despite these restrictions? AT: Yeah, I definitely am no stranger to, you know, Grindr or any of the other social apps that are targeted for, you know, the hi and bye is what I call it. (laughs) A lot of people use it for a hi and bye. (laughter) So, I think I -- like, yes, I am still on them. I do, I use them for conversation but I find it very scary, though, some of the messages that I do get because, I mean, there are a lot of people out there who just don't take this pandemic into consideration. And, yeah, let's just say their message starters aren't always just about conversation and I think they should be safer. So, I just -- I've become familiar with the block button because, you know, you have to take care of yourself in a time like this and sending messages that kind of will lead to a hi and bye situation right from the jump just tells me how much you really do care about yourself. So, if you don't care that much about yourself, you're not really caring about what you're going to put me through, so I'd rather not meet. So, thank you and goodbye. You don't get the hi. You just get the goodbye. (laughter) LB: That's a good one. I haven't heard that before and really looked into that now. AT:Yeah. I just made it on the fly now because it's, like, how do I talk about this? (laughter) LB: The hi and bye? AT: Yeah. LB: You just made that up? AT: Hi -- yeah. LB: You're brilliant! AT: Yes, made it up right now, right off the top of my head. LB: My gosh! (laughs) So, do you think, I mean, it's interesting that -- like, this is a question that I think people wrote before we were really in the thick of the pandemic. And really, in the grand scheme of things, we haven't been in it that long. But this is saying how has it affected your life? And, I mean, I can't think -- and for me and you, I don't think -- I think it's affected every moment of every day, you know? AT: So, yeah, I think -- for someone to say that it hasn't affected them, I feel like it's -- I hate to say it but it's somebody who's living in denial. LB: Yeah. AT: You know? You have to think about this. This is very serious. It's very -- it should impact your life in many, many ways and if you're going around and your life hasn't been impacted that much and you're not an essential worker who's just annoyed with having to put on extra protections -- I mean, those people still have to go to work every day. So, thank you to them for being on the front lines, you know, the first responders, all of that. But how can it not affect you in every single aspect? Like I said, it's -- I've seen videos of people -- this is really bringing out, like, the worst nature in people, I feel, especially with social media being present and the videos that I see of anti-maskers and just people thinking that their civil liberties are being taken away. And this is something that you can spread to someone else without even trying, without even thinking about it, just by doing your day-to-day activities. So, you know, this isn't just you protecting yourself. It's protecting those who are more susceptible to this. So, people who are more in danger of losing their lives. So, like, I look at it, like, you know, just because they have great immune systems and they think that this is all a hoax and that they'll pull through even if they get it, it's, like, what does that say about how do you care about your community and what, like -- and I don't even like to go to my mother's house. Like, she gets upset with me and I'm, like, "Mom, we're in a pandemic. No, I'm not visiting you every day. Like, that's not -- I'm not doing that." LB: Yeah. AT: Because my mom is the type that, in a week -- it's too much time for her. She says, you know, "I may die sometime soon" and she does the whole Hispanic woman guilt thing on -- (laughter) and now that COVID's here, she can be, like, "It can take me at any moment. You never know." Because she's diabetic, so she has a compromised immune system, as well, and I'm, like, "Mom, stop." (laughs) "For all I know, like, I could inadvertently bring this to you and it's because I care that you haven't seen me." So, you have to make, like, the tough choices. And it's just it's -- I think it's brought out the ugly in a lot of people and for somebody to say that it hasn't affected them on some level is just asinine. LB: Well, it's really impossible to not affect somebody because, after all, just the fact that you can't go to the grocery store without having -- noticing that there's a specific effect -- it's affecting, you know, whether we can get certain things, buy certain things. It's affected whether we can get into the grocery store without a mask. I mean, you can't go in without a mask. So, if you're -- and if you do wear the mask and you take it off or you're not wearing it, people will yell at you and they have a right to yell at you because you're really putting them at risk. So, how could you pretend that that didn't have an effect on you? Would be impossible to not do it. AT: Yeah. LB: I think, so, this is asking, like, are you staying in and are you limiting going out? I mean, have you been going to the grocery store and have you been going out to eat or what do you think? AT: I think -- so, my aunt loves the diners. I grew up with -- I always say my one aunt, she gave me a childhood because my dad was a homebody and my mom didn't drive. But my aunt, she loved going to the diners, loved traveling out of town. So, I was, like, with, I'm very -- those are the two cousins that I'm very, very close with (inaudible) so I always say she gave me, like, a real fun childhood. And so, you know, I'm like that person that, like, will be sitting at a diner with my aunt at, like, nine p.m. at night, drinking coffee before bed. (laughter) Like, that's just, like -- yeah and it's not even just, like -- it's just the repetition of it, right, because we have that bond with each other and we've changed that. So, her coming here sometimes for coffee. Like, we'll visit each other but we haven't really gone -- I think we've been to one diner since we've been in the green. And they were very good about, you know, having your mask on when you came in, the server wore the mask at all times, and then when the food came, you could take your mask off, you can eat, and we made sure that we didn't make it a point to kind of hang out in there like we kind of do and have, like, five cups of coffee or four, you know? Like, we were in and out. But we kind of needed that just to get a little bit of normalcy. But I will say, like, it's definitely -- we've been, again, to one since this all happened. But we're definitely not in a rush. We have found other ways to, like, have our coffee together -- LB: Good. AT: -- in a safer way. And I think that's what more people should kind of pay attention to if -- you know, forget normalcy. Normalcy's gone, right? LB: Yeah. AT: What can you do to help others? And for your mental health, if you have to do things, what is the safest possible way that you can do them? So, that's -- I'm trying to lead by example, even, like I said, even when my mother wants me to come over. I'm going today but then she won't see me until, like, next week or maybe even two weeks after that because you just don't know, you know? LB: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was talking to somebody who sort of takes care of her eighty-eight-year-old -- you know, her parents who are in their eighties and they were, like, "You have to come over, you have to hug us." And she said, "Okay, you can't go out and I can never go out because I don't want to be the one that kills you." AT: Right. LB: Who wants to have that over their head for the rest of their lives? AT: I know I don't. LB: No kidding. So, this says whatever queer activities have you been doing? And it's funny that you and I do queer activities all day long every day, so -- AT: Right. LB: -- it's hard to find something that isn't queer that we're doing, so -- AT: Right, well, I mean, I did -- since we are in the green, I did perform this past Sunday at a very limited seating kind of place. I did have, like, a face shield on, so that was -- it was fun to do but it was still a little scary. LB: You bet. AT: Just because -- you can't ignore this just because things seem to have gotten better. LB: Yeah. AT: Just because something's a certain way doesn't necessarily -- it is that. Never take anything at face value, you know?LB: No, nothing. AT: Take -- LB: Where were you, where -- AT: I was in York, Pennsylvania. LB: Where? AT: York, Pennsylvania. LB: Oh, York. York, yeah. AT: Yeah. There was, like, some sort of, like, hookah lounge kind of show thing where they kind of wanted to try an LGBT night there. They had just opened, which I thought -- which was kind of what helped me say, like, okay, like, I'll do it. Secretly, I thought it would be canceled because of COVID and, of course, they didn't cancel. And I'm, like, well, now I'm in a pickle -- LB: Amazing! AT: -- and I have to go. But I will say that they just opened. I think they've been open one weekend and we were that Sunday and they made sure that they included an LGBT night from the start, which -- LB: That's cool. AT: -- I thought -- really nice of them. So, I kind of -- you know, I took my risk, I took my chance. I went out there, I was just safe as possible. I performed and I just wanted to show up and kind of let them know, like, you know, we're worth having. Like, we're not going to -- we understand you're running a business but we're worth having in your establishment, so thanks for thinking of us and thanks for giving us opportunities to perform and to work during this time, and in a safe place, because they were taking temperatures at the front door, as well, and people did have their masks. I mean, they were doing, like, their hookahs and stuff but, like, you know, for the most part, everyone had, like, their masks on and temperatures were checked at the door, metal detector, all that good stuff. So, they were really impressive. LB: Were there a lot of people there? AT: I want to say there was probably about twenty to twenty-five people there, so not too many. It wasn't like a normal, like, nightclub gig where I can come into contact with maybe, like, two hundred people in one night, especially being an entertainer. They had Lysol spray ready for the money as we were, like, collecting because money's very dirty to begin with -- LB: True. AT: -- you know? And, like, to tip you. So, you know, there was Lysol ready for, like, the money and stuff like that, hand sanitizer for right when you came offstage. Like, it was fun and I think people were just happy to have that tiny bit of normalcy with a little bit of extra intertwined with it to keep them safe. LB: And when was that? You did it yesterday or -- AT: Sunday. LB: Sunday. AT: Yeah. So, I drove after the show, late at night, and then I was up bright and early, eight a.m. on Monday to help get -- or, well, now, I shouldn't say help to get to work. LB: Yeah. AT: So, I [virtual arrive?]. LB: Now, he does something that's drastically -- I think is very different from -- than you would normally do. But you're getting up a lot earlier than you normally do. AT: Yes, I am because I don't -- LB: [All the time?]. (laughter) And also, there's other reasons, too. Explain why that is. It's not just because you're home. AT: Well, I mean, I feel like being home is a big part because, like, what could -- there's only so much you can do in your home. So, I hate to fall asleep on the couch. I like to ride the wave in my bed. So, I kind of lay down -- think at nine or ten o'clock at night. So, watch TV in bed. That way, if that sleepiness comes, I can ride it to the morning. LB: Right. AT: The center is usually open from ten to six but I really enjoy getting up earlier to -- having a little bit more of the day, just seeing -- I love the sun. I love -- I've been up to Rainbow Mountain a few times, socially distant, of course, to, like, sunbathe and, like, get in the pool and stuff like that. So, I like to at least have a little bit left of my day of daytime, because I don't know if you're anything like me. When the winter comes, it's, like, so depressing because we leave and it's dark outside when we leave work. LB: Yeah, know just what you mean. AT: Yeah. LB: I walk home and then I walk home in the dark. AT: Yeah. LB: [We keep doing that?], yeah. AT: You do. LB: And even if it's just five o'clock and I don't even -- I don't usually leave -- and if I leave at six o'clock, it's always dark. So, yeah, no question. AT: So, I love, yeah, I love the sun and I love -- and, like, I just -- I don't know. I just feel like I get more accomplished getting up earlier in the morning. (laughs) LB: Yeah. AT: So, I mean, if I had it my way, I'd continue. LB: I think one of the things that we've done in the past, I mean, our center does that for a lot of reasons, I think, when -- and I was -- I have to admit, have to confess, I was the one that made that happen because Adrian wanted to be nine to five and I said, "I'm not coming in before ten." AT: Yeah. LB: And actually, I think that that's turned out to be better because we're there until six, which covers a lot of our evening programs. So, we don't have to -- a lot of people don't have to do extra stuff. We often have an evening program that's done by six o'clock. And also, I know that this is true for Adrian although he probably curses this at some level, but he often likes to have -- he has a lot of meetings before he comes into work. Doesn't do that -- now it's all different but I'm liking leav-- you know, coming, doing stuff earlier in the day, too, I think. But I don't tend to do that as much when I'm at the Center. I actually want to have time before to do stuff. AT: Right. LB: So, you know, you can have a -- AT: Well, it did used to help sometimes, like, if I had to schedule, like, a checkup, like, a doctor's appointment or something -- LB: Sure. AT: -- scheduled at eight thirty and then still be able to get to work on time. Like, yeah, that was definitely a perk -- to having that. LB: And you can have -- like, I could have -- so, since I walk to work, it takes me a while to walk to work. Takes half an hour. Can take up to half an hour. So, you know, otherwise, I'd be leaving at eight thirty and instead, I leave at nine thirty, you know? But it does -- like, I can get up and I can get things done before work. And sometimes, I don't have the energy to do it after work. That's what -- AT: Yeah. LB: -- another thing, too. AT: And I think running indoor evening programs are -- right? It's, like, a really good thing to have, too -- LB: Yeah. AT: -- because it's, like, who wants to go home for two hours and then have to come back? LB: Oh, gosh, yeah, that would be horrible. AT: The show starts at seven or eight o'clock at night, so -- LB: Right, right, starting so early and then going all the way until eight o'clock. Now that's you're doing a 12-hour day. So, it's tough. (laughter) Well, it's worked out. I think it's worked out okay but I can see why everybody's changed their hours now that we have these much more flexible hours. There's sort of that core time and then we have the flexible hours. Think that's working well for people. AT: I think so. LB: So, what's the biggest frustration or fear you have or challenge that you've had during this time? I mean, are there -- that are just so frustrating for you? AT: Honestly, other people who don't take this seriously. LB: Yeah. AT: That's my big -- LB: Everyone has said that. AT: -- especially when it's family. Yeah, that's a -- LB: [Grandma?]. AT: Yeah. I do have a brother who -- I have two brothers but they're both, you know, there's no logic behind their statements. You can just tell that they have a lot of friends who think this is a hoax. So, like, you know, they don't do their own research and they don't understand things. So, of course, they're, like, "Yeah, no protesters get it but people at the beach do. This is all a conspiracy." And I'm, like, "Yeah, well, just God forbid one of, like, one of your daughters, one of my nieces or, like, my nephews, one of your kids gets sick with this or something and then you might be singing a different tune." And I don't wish that on anybody. LB: Right, but -- AT: But it's, like, what is it going to take for certain people to, like, just take this serious? This isn't about you anymore. It's not just about the economy. It's about someone's life. And you never know how you contracting this and you spreading this can affect someone else. So, just take it seriously. LB: Yeah. AT: You don't want to wear a mask? Stay at home. LB: Yeah, (laughter) I've always -- I mean, I know I've told you before that in 1918, my grandmother died and she was thirty-two years old at the time. And my father was four and he, then, grew up without a mother and -- because in the flu epidemic of 1918, most people who got it were between the ages of twenty and forty and she was right in the middle of that time. And people would say, well, you know, that's one hundred and two years ago. How does that affect you? And I said, "Well, you think it doesn't affect me to have had a father who didn't have a mother, you know? And who grew up -- his father immediately left to -- went to South America. He was raised by his grandparents, who were quite old. You know, and it affected every minute of his life. He didn't have a mom. And that would affect me. It ultimately affected me, too. In fact, and like people -- most of my friends had two grandmothers. I didn't. I had one. And I could have -- so, that would have certainly have been a possibility and gone through that various different -- the circumstances that one has when you have two grandmothers and you have a father who has [had parents?] -- he wasn't a bad dad but who knows? And I also think now, I'm really strongly believing that she was pregnant when she died because most pregnant women who -- when they -- if pregnant women in 1918 got it, seventy-two percent of them died. AT: Oh, wow. LB: Really affected pregnant women. And other people in her family didn't have it, so I think it's likely. She was the age to have had a kid and I think she was pregnant. So, now, I'm thinking, like, okay, I didn't have, my father didn't have brothers and sisters, so I didn't have cousins, you know? How that affects -- like, I don't have very many cousins. I only have three cousins in the world. You have a million cousins in the world. Literally a million. AT: I'm still meeting them. (laughter) LB: At this very minute you may have a -- AT: There might be one being born right now, I don't even know. LB: Could be happening right now. And that's another thing, too. I think people don't even think about what could be happening to children that were born if their mother or their father had had COVID, maybe asymptomatic. We don't have any idea how that will affect people, so, [all these?]. AT: And, you know, I think, you know, I like to say I think God. But, you know, whoever's in charge up there but -- LB: Yeah. AT: -- my friend who -- she works at St. Luke's. She just had a baby a few weeks ago but she works with COVID patients day in and day out and she did it during -- throughout her full pregnancy. And thankfully, she's, you know, she's never contracted it. She was tested all the time and she's been good. So, that was a blessing. But that's what your story reminds me of and it's, like, you know, regardless if it's 102 years ago or if it's, like, now, you know, family is family and, like, stuff that happens to your grandparents can affect you, [because?] shape or form is because, you know, what happens to them happens to their children and happens to their children's children, you know? Life is tough as it is. LB: Right. AT: Less people doesn't make that equation any easier, so I totally -- I understand what you're saying there. LB: So, like, you always seem like such a normally even-keeled guy. (laughter) You think this is affecting your mental health? AT: I feel like in the beginning it did because I was a little more -- I was on the worried side. But the more, like I said, the more people I had -- were able to talk to -- like, as you know, we had our staff meetings, like, every day. So, I had human interaction at least once a day for at least an hour. I had, you know, my family time on, like, the Zoom calls. I had my -- after everything started getting a little clear -- not in the beginning but as we started to move into, like, the yellow phase where we could be, you know, socially distant, twenty-five people or less, like, in a public space -- I wasn't going to public spaces but I made sure I had my Instacart deliver -- make sure I had my eggs and my bread, my coffee, and my aunt, you know, would come over every once in a while. We would have our coffee on my porch, you know? So, I think finding like-minded individuals who really do take this pandemic seriously, who you can -- and it is a risk. And I hate to say it like that -- who you wouldn't mind risking maybe spending a little bit of time for -- LB: Yes. AT: -- has really made a difference. I couldn't imagine me being somebody who has been -- I've been single for a very, very long time and I live alone. And, yes, I have family but had -- we not been taking those risks, I think if I would have been stuck in this house with just, like, work and a PlayStation, I think I would've went a little crazy. LB: Yeah. AT: I would've been a little stir crazy. I don't like to walk anywhere. You probably would have seen me walking all around the blocks, (laughs) just taking walks with a mask on because, yeah, people -- it's important, especially for those who live alone, like, people like me -- and you have to be safe and if you're going to take a risk, just know your facts, take your precautions. And it's possible to still live in this world but not if you're going to walk around and act like this is a hoax because it's definitely not. LB: Yeah. AT: And so, just something I want to draw home. If you want to take the risks, that's fine. But just make sure you do it responsibly. Make sure you take every precaution possible. LB: Yeah, and the likelihood of people -- I mean, it's so easy to be frustrated at people who will say, "Well, I don't care if I get sick." And you're saying, "Yeah, but you're going to make other people sick." AT: Yeah, and they don't get -- LB: Yeah. AT: That's usually where the [hoax?] line comes in. "Oh, well, I'll be fine if I get sick." Well, okay, what about people you're passing in the grocery store? LB: Right. AT: You know? What about that elderly individual that, you know, had to stand next to you in line and you were playing with your phone and you didn't pay any attention and you're standing, like, really close to them? And, like, what if you, like, sneeze on them or something? LB: Yeah. AT: And now they're dead, you know? Like, I think, like, people don't understand, they don't grasp that concept. Like, they're dead. Somebody can die. Like, this isn't just, like, a regular flu. Like, yes, I know there's flu shots and stuff like that but people are dying. LB: Yeah. AT: And just because it's happening in mass amounts, don't let the charts and the numbers desensitize you into -- caring for other human life, like, that should be your number one priority -- is not only protecting yourself but protecting those that you love and the people that are around you. And even those you don't know. LB: I know. AT: Sorry, I (inaudible) LB: And including -- if you get sick, too, I mean, you're going to seek out healthcare. So, now you're putting all those healthcare workers at risk. AT: Yes, absolutely. LB: And that's a terrible thing. You know, lots of healthcare workers have gotten sick. I know healthcare workers who have been sick. And horribly sick. Just horribly sick and devastatingly sick. It's terrible stuff. AT: I had a cousin who actually contracted COVID and an uncle. They're not in the same home but my aunt -- they worked at a retirement home and my cousin does home care. And she's one of the strongest people I know. Like, if there was anybody to, like -- that I would say could be in, like, a gunfight and take, like, two bullets and just probably, like, still, like, mess everybody up and then make it to the hospital and be okay, it'd be her, you know? And I hate to use that as an analogy but I just need you to understand, like, this -- LB: Yeah. AT: -- my cousin is -- she is a woman of very strong resolve and she's just a tough one. And I got text messages from her and then she was just scared to death. She thought she was going to die because that's how sick she felt. And, yes, it affects everybody differently but her body was, like -- her joints, like, her body, everything hurt. She had a fever, you know? She could -- it was tough. It was real tough. LB: She had -- AT: And then for me to see somebody that tough feel that way, so defeated. I'm, like, oh, my God! LB: Did she have somebody to take care of her? AT: Yeah, she had -- oh, well, she lives -- Her mom, like, her, her mom live in the same place and she has a 10-year-old son. So, mom took over the son and she stayed quarantined in her room and then she just -- she wasn't allowed out. Like, they might as well have put, like, caution tape up. Like, she was not coming out of that room unless she had to bathe or -- and she even went for walks just a little bit because she said just laying there, even though everything hurt, she didn't want to get complicit in just laying there and taking it, because that's the kind of person she is. So, she would go for a little walk every day, which she said really, really helped her but -- and then, you know, as soon as she was cleared with the timeframe -- her symptoms went away. She couldn't taste or smell anything. And she loves her food, so she was really upset about that, too. (laughter) But as soon as she was all clear, they did a thorough, thorough cleaning of, like, the room and thankfully, knock on wood, my aunt and her son never got it. LB: Wow! AT: They were tested and they came out clear. So, they did something right, you know? It's a shame that she had it but it could have just as easily turned into three people having it just because she does home care. LB: No kidding. AT: Yeah. LB: Yeah, I know whole households of people that got it and I also know that -- people who got it who could not have walked. They couldn't have walked. They could barely walk to the bathroom. They had to crawl to the bathroom. AT: Yeah, it hits everybody differently, you know? LB: Yeah, it does. And a lot of people who have died who were by themselves, you know, they couldn't care for themselves. It's not like they could get up and take aspirin or, you know, get up and -- AT: And then, they're saying that there are certain aspirins that you just can't take because it makes it worse. LB: Right, right. AT: Because her headaches -- she suffered through -- her headaches, she said, were the worst at night. Her head just felt, like, huge. It was just, like, constantly pounding, yeah. LB: Oh, that's awful, awful. So, are you scared about getting it? AT: Yes. LB: Yeah. AT: Absolutely. Everyone should be. LB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what, of all the stuff that you've been doing, what's the best thing that's been happening? Is there anything -- like, some people will say, "I'm such an introvert, I really love this, I don't have to talk to anybody." (laughs) AT: Well, okay, so I -- see, I do love going out but secretly, I do have a little bit of my father in me. I am a homebody. So, working from home, I think, has been great. So, that's a good distraction for eight hours of my day. I like video games. Some people don't. I enjoy them a lot. It's really easy to, like, get lost in a video game. You feel like you've been playing it for, like, an hour, an hour and a half, and then you look at the clock and it's, like, two in the morning and you have to be up at eight and you're, like, oh, my God! LB: Yeah. AT: And then you're, like, I started at seven o'clock. How did it become two a.m. already? But, yeah, playing some games that I have, just making just normal stuff that I wouldn't have the time for now, like, for myself to enjoy like I do, so -- LB: Ah! AT: -- rhinestoning costumes, you know? Like, masks. (laughs) Little (inaudible) LB: You rhinestoned that yourself? AT: No, but I could. LB: Okay. (laughs) AT: But I don't want to do this. I'd rather do a costume. LB: Yeah. AT: These are the hardest, because they're so small. LB: Oh, yeah! AT: They are very, very small. LB: Cool. AT: So, yeah, there's quite a few stones on there -- LB: [So, I know?] -- AT: -- but just -- LB: -- this is great. AT: But, yeah, you know, just working on costuming, learning new music for whenever we can open back up and not be -- LB: Right. AT: -- as scared of COVID, when we know more, when there's, you know, hopefully a vaccine that we can take for this. I know some people are skeptical and they're anti-vaxxers. But I don't know (inaudible) LB: It's probably hard -- it's hard to imagine how we can stop this -- I just read -- Trish just read a thing that said that if every person in the country wore a mask every single day for the next -- you know, three months, it would be gone. It'd be over. AT: Eradicated. LB: But people won't do that. We can't have [them?] do that. So, the only other way to do it is have almost all the people have vaccines and require the vaccines because, you know, we -- that's how we got rid of polio, that's how we got rid of smallpox, it's how we got rid of most measles. You never hear measles outbreaks anymore. AT: "How dare you ask me to inconvenience myself for three months with a mask, it just" -- LB: I know! AT: -- "it's civil liberties, for crying out loud!" LB: Yeah, like -- and, you know, I have a friend who said -- AT: That was sarcasm, in case nobody caught that in the interview. But I'm just, you know, (laughter) disclaimer. (laughter) LB: Good. One person said, like, "I can't wear a mask." He said, you know, "And that it's not fair that the government makes you wear masks." And she said, "You know, the government makes you wear clothes." AT: (laughs) Yeah. LB: It's, like, really, if you think about it. AT: Oh, yeah! LB: And, in fact, people probably wearing clothes in their house! (laughs) We wouldn't even think about not wearing clothes, even if nobody was going to see us. AT: Right. LB: You get up in the morning and you put on clothes and nobody even thinks about it! AT: And you know what? I thought of, you know, over in China, especially with -- like, you see -- like, I saw it a lot in movies and I had to kind of, like, look into it a little bit. But, you know, and I never realized that, like, in certain areas, the pollution is just so bad that people wear masks to begin with anyway over there. LB: Yeah, yeah. AT: You know what I mean? So, it's just you got to -- tough! Get used to it. You got to do it. LB: Yeah, it's -- AT: You know? LB: -- not that hard. AT: It's not just about you anymore. It's about us. LB: Not really hard. It is like one of the least not hard things you can do. I mean, it's not like saying to people, okay, everybody has to lose twenty pounds, (laughs) you know, or everybody has to, you know, go to college and finish it and pay for it themselves, you know? Nobody's saying that, you know? So, it's so amazing to me that people are so reticent about it. And part of it's political, too. AT: Of course. LB: You know? AT: My favorite are the people who say, "Well, you know, I read online that if I wear the mask, the C02 levels, [that just?] they're really bad for me." And I'm, like, "Okay, so what do you say to the doctors and the nurses who have to wear this sometimes for ten, twelve hour shifts?" LB: Yeah, yeah. AT: "They do this daily, sometimes for weeks at a time without a day off, especially without a day off now because people like you won't wear the mask. How do you think they feel?" LB: That's right, that's right. AT: Oh, gosh, and then they always say -- same people usually post, like, "Oh, I went -- my friend went to the doctor. My friend, like, John went to the doctor and they put their mask on and they put the little thing on and then their CO2 levels, like, skyrocketed and then, like, their blood pressure went up." And it's funny because it's the same exact story but the name always changes. It was John, it was Mary, (laughter) [Sue?]. But everything else is the same except for the name. And I'm, like, yeah, your friend, I'm sure. LB: Yeah, I got to tell you that Trish, we went to -- she had to have, like, a consultation with a specialist doctor today and she -- it was just a check thing and she'd had some tests and she had some lung stuff and they wanted to see how serious it was. And it turned out that it's pretty good. Everything is pretty good. But they wanted to check to be sure that she has enough oxygen in her blood because she's older and stuff like that. So, they make her -- you know, we're both wearing double masks because we're so paranoid. And the doctor was, too. He was wearing two masks. And they're very, very careful there, you know? They test you outside and you can't even get into the building. And then -- AT: The 10 minutes before, right? LB: Yeah, and they -- and, like, I didn't touch the doorknob. I had, like, a Kleenex that I opened the doorknob -- and then, we -- and I threw it away on the way out. And then, they make you wash your -- you know, put stuff on your hands and they take your temperature right away again. And then, they come in and they said -- we went into the room and then they said to Trish she had to walk up and down the hall, this was a test, with one of those things on her finger. She's seventy-five years old, you know, and they were concerned that the number -- meaning that her oxygen level in her blood would go down. They didn't say anything about the mask. And they said, "If it goes below eighty-eight, then we have to try a different thing." And so, she started out at ninety-seven, she's wearing the mask, she walks up and down for six minutes as fast as she can go. And it's at ninety-seven when she starts and when she's done it's at ninety-seven. And she's wearing the mask! (laughter) So, hello? AT: [So, take it to?] John, Mary, Sue, David, whoever your friend's name was (laughter) (inaudible) pasted that into. LB: Yeah. AT: Yeah. LB: So it didn't have anything -- it didn't influence that at all. So, I actually saw this happen. It didn't make her CO2 levels go up higher in her blood, it didn't do anything. And they were specifically testing for that, so -- AT: They're, like, "Oh, you're breathing it back in!" I'm, like, "Well, does your mask fill up like a balloon where the air stays in it? (laughter) Or does it actually escape through the sides? I'm asking for a friend. [That's why I'm here?]." LB: Have you been wearing a plastic bag over your head? (laughs) Stop wearing the -- you know, don't -- AT: [It's like I'm?] -- LB: -- [go to a cheap?] -- AT: -- I have a -- LB: -- plastic bag. (laughs) AT: I think it sounds good initially in some people's minds but then, like, they never replay it back. And it's, like, do you hear yourself -- AUTOMATED VOICE: It's three o'clock. AT: -- and hear what you're saying, like -- oh, it's three -- sorry, that was my computer. LB: That's okay, that's okay. AT: But -- LB: It's so funny because my sister even said some -- one of those things. Like, she said she thought that the -- and she never fussed up like this. And she said she thought the camera in her computer was watching her. And I said, "Well, is it on?" And she said, "No." I said, "Well, come on! I mean, unless you're downloading a bunch of really hacky programs that are -- you know, have you downloaded a lot of programs?" I said, "This is exactly the kind" -- and I said, "Plus, if you have downloaded" -- she said, "So, I'm going to put a piece of tape over it." I said, "Well, you won't be able to do the Zoom then." (laughs) Well -- AT: Yeah, well, I mean, I know some people, they take, like, a clip and they'll cover their camera and then -- LB: I know -- AT: -- when they're done, they'll take the clip out when they're ready to -- LB: I know that they'll do that but the only way that that can happen is that if you have a lot of mal-- like, hacked stuff in your computer. Well, you shouldn't be ignoring that because there's a lot of other stuff that they can get out of your computer that's more than just the picture of you. AT: Yeah. LB: Like, every one of -- you know, your -- all sorts of your accounts and stuff like that. And so, that -- it's kind of like saying, well, I'm going to lock the gate but I'm going to leave the front door open, you know? That kind of stuff, so -- AT: Well, mine turns green when it's on, so I -- LB: Yeah, mine's on, you know? I -- AT: -- can see when it's active. LB: Right. And, yeah, but anyway -- and I'm sure that there are even possibilities of malware that can turn the light off, because apparently they can -- but you have to be doing things that make that happen. AT: Right. LB: I think people who play a lot of games and they're downloading games and different stuff like that, there's a potential for that because you are often -- AT: [I'm off on?] the PlayStation. I'm not playing games on my -- LB: That's right. If they're doing it with their computer, it's different than -- what's your game that you've been playing that's your -- AT: It's very violent. I don't know if I want to tell you. LB: Okay, then don't tell. AT: It's Mortal Kombat. LB: Okay, yeah. AT: Yeah. LB: It's not -- I don't know. AT: It's a very violent game but I -- I don't know. LB: (laughs) Well -- AT: Next question. (laughter) LB: So, here's the next question. Here's the next question. Let's see. And so, I've already asked you. You have people in your family that have had this. AT: Yeah. LB: And [your parents?] -- AT: And something I didn't -- well, if you -- actually, something I can add, since that question just came up, my aunt and uncle, the ones who got it, who are married, my aunt tested positive but she was asymptomatic. And her husband ended up in the hospital for three days. LB: Oh, my gosh, yeah. AT: On a respirator. LB: Yeah. AT: And he's back home and he's okay now but it was touch and go for a minute. And, like I said, they both work in a retirement home, so -- I think he worked in the kitchen and she worked on the floors, like, helping patients. And she was home, fine, and they were, like, "Well, you got to get tested." She's, like, "No, no, no, I feel fine." And they were, like, "No, honey, it doesn't work that way." LB: No kidding! AT: "You could have it." And then she was, like, "Oh, oh, okay." They did the test and, boom, positive. LB: Especially if she's working in a care home. She could wipe out everybody there. AT: Yep. So, she stayed at home, she quarantined, now she's fine. They're both back to work and they're both a lot more careful. (laughs) LB: Well, I wonder if they have antibodies, you know? Some people say that people asymptomatic don't build up a lot of antibodies. But he might have and that could actually make him -- AT: Might have -- LB: -- safer. AT: My cousin, her doctor said that to her. But I hear, like, that's something that a lot of doctors are iffy about. Some will say it without hesitation and the other ones will just say, "Well, we don't know enough about this for that to be true or not yet." Or, you know, so I think it's just, like, a matter of opinion. But I would think, like, with anything, once your body fights something off, it's no stranger to it the second time around, you know? My friend has -- rents out -- Florida, like, of his home. And one of the people who stayed there had COVID and he tested positive. He had to quarantine but then when he came for his follow-up test, he tested positive again. LB: Oh, wow. AT: And the doctor told him it's, like, "What do you wear, like, what are you doing?" He wears -- like, this guy has a fitted hat, so he -- even at home, while he was sick, this guy had the fitted hat on and he's thinking, like, oh, this will help me sweat everything out. Well, he never washed the hat correctly afterwards so, like, all that, like, sweat and stuff, he was just re-infecting himself every day with, like, the sweat from his cap. So, it was weird, yeah. LB: Yeah. AT: And, you know, of course, me, I don't wear hats so I'm, like, why'd you have a hat in the house? Like, (laughter) are you that into fashion that you were sick, nobody was going to see you, and you've been -- like, you're so used to having a hat that you had to put it on, like, while you were home? Like, I don't know, it's weird. LB: Well, it sort of makes you wonder about the whole level of hygiene, too -- AT: Yeah, yeah. LB: -- happening while he was there. You went on a trip. You went to California-- or to Florida. AT: I did go to Florida, yes. LB: And what was that like? What's it like in the airport? AT: It was okay. I was a little nervous. I was under the assumption that the flights would be only flown at, like, certain capacity. That flight was entirely full. LB: Whoa! AT: The lady next to me was not wearing a mask and, at that time, it wasn't mandatory. LB: Oh, gracious. AT: So, the flight attendants could ask you to put your mask on but they weren't enforcers so they couldn't force you to wear your mask at that time because it wasn't like it is now, even though it should have been. LB: Yeah. AT: There should have been -- I think we could all agree that this should've been handled in a better way back in January and February. But, you know, it was a hoax. But anyway, I digress. So, it was scary to me because not only was the plane full, the person next to me didn't have a mask on, and she insisted that she talk to me almost the entire flight. LB: Oh, gosh, oh! AT: And, you know, I'm a nice person so I'm just, oh, my God, this lady's going to get me sick, you know? And then, my nerves were wrecked, so I knew that the luggage wouldn't come out right away. It never comes -- like, there's no way you beat -- like, your luggage beats you to the carousel when you get off a plane. No matter how long it takes to get off that plane, like, your luggage just takes -- it feels like it takes forever. So, I went outside when I got there, just to kind of, like, be away from everybody and to keep an eye on the train. And these two women came out and they asked for a lighter because they wanted to have a cigarette. And so, they started talking and she, the one lady, goes, "Oh, I'm so happy to be here." And I said, "Oh, do you have family here?" And she says, "No, I -- these roots are terrible. I came down here because this is one of the only places that, like, they're doing hair." She went down there -- she took a whole flight, full of people, to get her hair done. LB: Oh, my goodness. AT: And then, the other lady, who she doesn't know, says, "Oh, my gosh, same! Only I came for a pedi." LB: Oh, my gosh! AT: And -- LB: Oh, my -- AT: -- there I stand. And I'm, like, just, good for you. LB: Holy crap. AT: Good for you, you know? Yeah, so I got my luggage and I got in my rental car and I left. (laughs) LB: Oh my gosh. AT: Yeah. LB: (inaudible) AT: It was -- down there, I feel like it was very willy-nilly. People were acting like it wasn't a thing. LB: Yeah. AT: They had, like, outdoor seating and stuff like that but it's just so hot in Florida that they weren't -- and they had the set-up. Let's say they were dressed for the part but not everybody was onstage. LB: Okay, yeah. AT: You know? LB: Yeah. AT: Stores were open, people were still shopping in stores. Like, Burlington was open and, you know, like, all that stuff. LB: But they had fifteen thousand new cases yesterday in Florida. AT: In one day? LB: In one day. I saw the thing and I thought that was how many cases they had in the state now for everything, because they had had a pretty small number. Yeah, they had, like, four thousand, something like that. And I'm, like, wow, fifteen thousand. And then, it says for today. AT: Yeah. LB: Was one day! They have five hundred thousand cases. They have half a million cases in Florida and they're still acting like it's not -- you know, their governor and everything [is a?] -- AT: They opened the bars for, like, one weekend. I think the weekend after I left, they were reopening, like, bars and that lasted, like, one weekend because they -- LB: Yeah. AT: -- like, you know, cases -- LB: And it -- AT: -- just started running rampant and people are, like, "Oh, well it was only a week ago." And it's, like, yeah, well, these people had it two weeks ago. LB: Right. AT: Like, (inaudible) LB: The hospitals are full there. And then, the governor is saying they're not and the people who are the heads of the hospitals saying, "Yes, they are! We don't have any more beds!" Come on, you know? People are going to die from this. It's crazy. AT: How frustrating must it be to be a healthcare professional -- LB: Yeah. AT: -- in this field right now. And you give the hardcore facts and you give the numbers and you give the data but somebody at the top just spins it, you know? LB: Right. AT: Like, you do everything, like, and you know what you're supposed to be doing. You're very well educated. You know what this is doing to people. You know how to get in front of it by being safe, at least, and they turn it into this, like, just political thing just so that people can not worry about it so that they continue to shop and so our economy stays intact. Like, I just don't get it. LB: Well, it's not a very attractive thing to see the kinds of cases they're having in Florida. And I think in the long run, it's going to destroy -- I mean, we can't -- Trish and I are talking about not being able to go back there for years. AT: I know. LB: And what are we going to do? We can't go there if -- and there's no end in sight. It's not going to end until there's, like, a mandatory vaccination. LB: Right. AT: Because -- or until we can be vaccinated. You know, if we're vaccinated, that means that then we don't have to worry if they really have a successful vaccine. But it takes a while to get a good vaccine. Course, the flip side of that -- that every single epidemiologist in the world is working on this. So, it's not quite like AIDS where nobody worked at it at all for the first three years that it was even -- existed. So, we're coming to the end of this. So, let me ask you one more question, because we're talking about -- I'm asking everybody about all the things that are happening now and a lot of other things are happening at the same time as COVID and we can't really separate that. So, I want to talk to you about Black Lives Matter and see -- you want to talk a little bit about that and what's happening in Allentown right now and what's happening in the United States right now and if you want to say anything about that. AT: Yeah, I definitely -- I know, in Allentown, a friend of mine who I'm very, very proud of, Justin Parker, has been leading efforts and protests. I have been to -- I did go to one protest but because of social distancing, I've been trying to stay a little bit away. I feel like I've already taken, like, a lot of risks when it comes to seeing family and traveling and doing -- like, I just did that show. So, it's, like, I don't feel that it would be responsible of me to actually be there unless, like, I actually had to be there. But please make no mistake, I am in full support of this movement. I'm very, very proud of my friend. And I've had quite the entanglement with some friends' parents over this online, you know? Public battles with them, just trying to explain to them the simplicity of why -- while, although you believe all life matters to be true, that you saying this at this moment in time is wrong. LB: Yeah. AT: So, that's been, like, arguing with a wall. But I don't like to troll people too much because I feel like to change someone's mind sometimes is not the easiest thing. So, it needs to come in the right form. So, random people, I don't entangle myself with too much. But when it's somebody I care about and somebody that, like, was an influence in my life and I see them kind of going in that direction, I kind of feel a little more inclined to, like, speak up about it. LB: Yeah. AT: People are hardheaded, you know? And I think the more of us who just band together and make ourselves known that we stand in solidarity and we support the protests, even if we help behind the scenes with organizing and, like, even if you can't make the protest, dropping off some water, dropping off -- you know, donating to the right people to make sure that there are certain things -- I believe that one of them, they were able to raise some -- a little bit of money, enough to, like, even feed some of the kids with, like, pizza and stuff that was, like, there -- safely, of course, everybody wearing, like, the proper stuff. But -- LB: Sure. AT: -- there are so many ways to support the movement and I, for one, am one of them. So, I hope everyone wakes up and they realize that this is just as dangerous as a global pandemic. If not a -- LB: Yeah, it's true. AT: -- United States pandemic, especially -- as COVID is. It's just as dangerous, to me, because stupidity is contagious. LB: Yeah. AT: I'll just say it like that. I mean, it's the end of the interview at this point. Let's skip the pleasantries. But, yeah, to close, I am very, very proud of my friend and I am a supporter of Black Lives Matter and I think we need to take it just as seriously as COVID-19. And the sooner people band together and people can start agreeing on what needs to be done and being comfortable with uncomfortable conversations -- is the only way that we're going to see any progress in either front. LB: Yeah, yeah, okay. AT: Because I could go on for hours but this is the end of the interview, so we're just going to leave it there. LB: I'm thinking, yeah, you know, I would let you go on for hours but I know you have to do work. (laughs) AT: I do! (laughs) LB: Yeah, and I don't want to be the one who's making you not do that stuff. So, I'm going to turn this off. I want to just thank you very, very much for doing this. It's been terrific. You're so animated, you're fun, and I loved getting to spend an hour talking to you because I don't -- AT: Yeah. LB: -- get as much time to talk to you now -- AT: I know! LB: -- and not having meetings every day and stuff. So, it's so fun to see you. AT: [Good to see you too?]. LB: And I'm going to turn off the recording now. We'll talk -- END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:01:57
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Ariel Torres, July 14, 2020
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Ariel talks about how the current COVID-19 pandemic is affecting him, his friends and his family, his work on the Pride Festival and other projects at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. He also talks about traveling, not being able to do his second job as a nationally known drag performer, his daily routine, and Black Lives Matter issues.
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PH40_10
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COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-
Date
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2020-07-14
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/dde74c471b59298b12382643b19f2581.png
083a25c93fe4dcc562a3bcda83000ef7
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Title
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Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley
Description
An account of the resource
This collection began in 2019 with the initial goal of collecting ten oral histories from older adult LGBT people in the Lehigh Valley. Topics explored include the childhood experiences of LGBT people, experiences within educational and religious institutions, coming out stories, understanding of the gay liberation movement (1960-1980s), experience of the early years of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS activism (1980s-present), and experience with the fight for marriage equality. The project has been a collaborative effort among faculty and librarians from Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, Muhlenberg College, and members of the local community, under the direction of Dr. Mary Foltz, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and Co-Director of the South Side Initiative. <br /><br /><em> The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</em>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Mary Foltz
Interviewee
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Bob Wittman
OHMS Object
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Viewer)
https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LGBT-02.xml
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The Morning Call
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5.4 August 23, 2019 Bob Wittman, August 23, 2019 LGBT-02 01:37:42 LVLGBT Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg The Morning Call Le-Hi-Ho AIDS Bob Wittman Mary Foltz video/mov WittmanBob_20190823_video.mov 1.0:|25(2)|52(11)|71(9)|92(12)|115(3)|132(18)|163(12)|182(12)|199(12)|222(2)|239(14)|260(14)|279(13)|296(5)|315(7)|330(7)|353(3)|372(8)|389(12)|412(2)|431(10)|448(13)|465(17)|482(16)|501(5)|516(16)|533(17)|550(13)|567(16)|586(8)|605(9)|624(5)|641(6)|658(11)|679(2)|698(4)|715(15)|732(14)|749(11)|772(3)|787(15)|806(17)|823(17)|842(5)|861(13)|882(13)|901(15)|922(15)|945(9)|966(7)|991(3)|1010(13)|1033(3)|1054(6)|1077(11)|1098(9)|1113(11)|1132(7)|1151(3)|1170(2)|1189(10)|1212(19)|1231(8)|1254(7)|1273(6)|1294(13)|1313(6)|1332(11)|1351(8)|1372(14)|1393(2)|1414(7)|1435(18)|1450(10)|1473(11)|1492(5)|1511(11)|1528(10)|1551(2)|1570(9)|1591(5)|1610(8)|1629(10)|1648(9)|1665(5)|1682(13)|1697(6)|1716(15)|1737(6)|1752(8)|1771(4)|1788(11)|1807(6)|1818(14)|1837(17)|1860(8)|1877(16)|1896(5) 0 YouTube video < ; iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/USlSpmxUSIQ?rel=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"> ; < ; /iframe> ; 0 Interview Introduction MARY FOLTZ: -- when you’re ready to go.
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 ; CAROL MOELLER: Okay, ready. 
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 ; MF: My name is Mary Foltz. I’m here today with Bob Wittman to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We’re here in Bob and his partner Frank’s home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on August 8, 2019. [Carol Moeller?] is our videographer today. Bob, I just want to thank you so much for your willingness to talk to us today. I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself by just stating your full name and then spelling it for us. 
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 ; ROBERT HENRY WITTMAN JR.: My full name is Robert Henry Wittman Jr. My last name is -- confounds everybody, and I’ve spent my whole life correcting people and it is W-I-T-T-M-A-N. No relationship to the poet or the candy company.
 ; 0 81 Childhood / Family MF: Right. To start our conversation today, I’m going to ask you to share a little bit about your childhood. Could you describe the early years of your life for me today? 
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 ; RHW: Well, I was born in Allentown, grew up here. I really spent my whole life here. As a matter of fact, the only time I had not lived in Allentown is the two years I spent attending Syracuse University from which I graduated in 1975. Other than that, I’ve been here all -- my whole life. And I was born in Allentown Hospital. I grew up in the South Side of Allentown, and my jobs have always kept me here. I always thought maybe I’d escape and move to a place that might be very different from Allentown, that was always kind of an attraction to find that, maybe move to the big city, but jobs always took precedence -- that and my relationship. 0 377 Growing Up in Allentown MF: So I’m Mary Foltz. I’m back with Bob Wittman, and we’ve just been talking about his -- some of his childhood experiences. I’m going to ask Bob, could you tell us a little bit more about what it was like to grow up in Allentown? 
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 ; RHW: Very different than it’s like growing up in Allentown today I suspect. There were three big, interesting department stores downtown, there were multiple movie theaters, there was some live theater. We still have some good restaurants but it was a very different place. A little of the old business activities may be coming back with some of the new development but -- so it’s beginning perhaps to look a little bit like it did in the old days. 0 1002 Life in Syracuse / Introduction to Gay Freedom League RHW: I went to Syracuse, and I discovered even before I arrived in some of the materials that came to my house over the course of the summer, kind of pre-registration materials or pre-arrival materials, and there was list of campus organizations, There must have been a hundred of them, ski club and chess club, debating club, you name it. But there was also something called the Gay Freedom League. So that was really my first introduction to gay people -- not just the gay movement but gay people. Gay Freedom League 0 1739 Coming Out to Family MF: This is Mary Foltz, and I’m back with Bob Wittman. He has just finished discussing his experiences at Syracuse University. And so I wanted to ask a question that kind of goes back a little bit about when you described coming out to your parents. Could you say a little bit more about how they responded when they found out that you were gay and living with another gay man while you were attending Syracuse University?
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 ; RHW: Well, their reaction to me and their -- the way they dealt with me and responded to me being gay has definitely evolved. I think they were just as uninformed about it really as I was, less so clearly. So none of us really had any framework to discuss it or much context to put it in. I can remember saying things I would never say now, but I’d say things like, “Why don’t you just view this like I have a drug addiction and it is part of me and it’s something you have to deal with?” 0 2175 Working at The Morning Call RHW: Actually, my plan was never to return to Allentown. I was a journalist, it was the era of Watergate, all of that had unfolded really while I was in college. There was the Washington Post and the New York Times and that’s where every young kid graduating from college with a journalism degree wanted to end up. So I was eager to get out into the world, and I didn’t really think Allentown was going to be a good stepping-stone. I had worked at the Allentown Morning Call really since the time I was in high school. I got a job, a part-time job there. And when I was a college student, I discovered that the Morning Call had an opening in the news department for what, in those days, they used to call a copyboy The Morning Call 0 3131 LGBT Reporting from The Morning Call MF: This is Mary Foltz. I’m back with Bob Wittman, and he has just described for us meeting who would become his partner Frank at the Morning Call offices. And he has also just described how Frank really knew about Bob from a series of articles and knowing that Bob was publishing about an organization called Le-Hi-Ho. Bob, I’d like to ask you about your coverage as a reporter of LGBT organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. How did that come to be a focus of your journalism or how involved were you on reporting on LGBT issues at the Morning Call? 
 ; 
 ; RHW: Well, I was a general assignment reporter, which meant that I covered a lot of municipal governments. Oh, God, I received almost just everyday a different assignment to do a different thing. However, you could do or you could suggest -- editors encourage you to suggest special projects, special stories that you wanted to work on, something you’ve heard about in the community and thought important to give it some coverage. I was pretty closeted at this point at the Morning Call. Le-Hi-Ho ; The Morning Call 0 3726 Meeting Liz and Trish / Local LGBT Politics RHW: So for instance, the Allentown -- so a group of people had been interested, including some people early, early on in Le-Hi-Ho had been interested in adding equal protection language to the city’s human relations ordinance dealing with gay and lesbian people. But Allentown City Council was just always, always, always really, really intransigent, until a young woman arrived on the scene here in Lehigh Valley, by the name of Liz Bradbury and her partner Trish Sullivan. Liz was not a person who was going to sit back and let things take their course. She really wanted to take things in hand and push the envelope. Allentown Anti-discrimination Ordinance ; Gail Hoover ; Liz Bradbury ; Trish Sullivan 0 4127 Reporting on AIDS Crisis RHW: And actually, I was the guy doing a lot of the reporting of the city hall debate while all this was going on. But another episode that happened during that time was the AIDS crisis was breaking. I can remember picking Frank up in his apartment before we were living together on a Saturday morning, I think it was, and we were about to head off to make a day trip to Philadelphia. This was among the first months of my relationship with Frank. We weren’t even really calling, I’m pretty sure, that we were even lovers. AIDS ; Brian Foley ; The Morning Call 0 4553 Work with Le-Hi-Ho MF: This is Mary Foltz, and I’m back with Bob Wittman. He was just telling us a little bit about his work with the Morning Call and some of the pieces that he has written that were focused on the LGBT community in the valley. Bob, I think this is a good segue to talk about your work with organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. So perhaps you could tell me, how did you get involved with Le-Hi-Ho, and what were the aims and goals of Le-Hi-Ho when you were involved with that organization? 
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 ; RHW: When I graduated from college and came back to the Lehigh Valley, the -- if you wanted to experience gay life, I mean go look for gay life, you had basically two options: You could go to a gay bar, and there weren’t many of those, two or three, or you could go to Le-Hi-Ho. Le-Hi-Ho used to kind of bill itself or least many of us thought of it as the alternative to the bars. Clint Miller ; Le-Hi-Ho ; Mattachine Society ; National Gay and Lesbian Task Force ; Paul Kendall ; Paul Reeder ; Ron Seeds 0 5100 Other LGBT Organizations RHW: Actually, the two Pauls I just mentioned, Paul Kendall as he was retiring as a geology professor from Kutztown University, decided to give himself a retirement project, and he pretty much single-handedly with the backing of Le-Hi-Ho, organized and opened a gay community center at Eighth and Hamilton. The Bradbury-Sullivan Center is a latter-day version of that. Sadly, it’s not a descendant of it. The community center didn’t become the gay -- the Bradbury-Sullivan Center. But for a few, brief glorious years, the Lambda Center at Eighth and Hamilton Street flourished. I’m trying to think what other organizations were founded, and I’m struggling a little bit to do so, but I think there were a couple of others. AIDS Services Center ; AIDS Services Committee ; Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center ; Lambda Center ; PFLAG 0 MovingImage Bob Wittman describes his life growing up gay in Allentown, reporting at The Morning Call, and the LGBT community within the Lehigh Valley. MARY FOLTZ: -- when you're ready to go. CAROL MOELLER: Okay, ready. MF: My name is Mary Foltz. I'm here today with Bob Wittman to talk about his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. This project has funding from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We're here in Bob and his partner Frank's home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on August 8, 2019. [Carol Moeller?] is our videographer today. Bob, I just want to thank you so much for your willingness to talk to us today. I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself by just stating your full name and then spelling it for us. ROBERT HENRY WITTMAN JR.: My full name is Robert Henry Wittman Jr. My last name is -- confounds everybody, and I've spent my whole life correcting people and it is W-I-T-T-M-A-N. No relationship to the poet or the candy company. MF: (laughs) Could you please share your birthdate with us? RHW:I was born on May 15th in the year 1953. MF:And prior to beginning this interview, you and I sat down, you read through a consent form, do you consent to this interview today? RHW:Yes, I absolutely do. MF:Right. To start our conversation today, I'm going to ask you to share a little bit about your childhood. Could you describe the early years of your life for me today? RHW:Well, I was born in Allentown, grew up here. I really spent my whole life here. As a matter of fact, the only time I had not lived in Allentown is the two years I spent attending Syracuse University from which I graduated in 1975. Other than that, I've been here all -- my whole life. And I was born in Allentown Hospital. I grew up in the South Side of Allentown, and my jobs have always kept me here. I always thought maybe I'd escape and move to a place that might be very different from Allentown, that was always kind of an attraction to find that, maybe move to the big city, but jobs always took precedence -- that and my relationship. But I had a very good childhood. You asked about my childhood ; I had a wonderful childhood. It was a pretty normal childhood. I was part of the great, big baby boom generation. My parents bought an almost brand-new house on the South Side of Allentown that was built right after World War II. My parents were the World War II generation. They moved into a neighborhood with people exactly like them, all working-class moms and dads with young children. There must have been about twenty of us who were all around the same age, and my backyard was their backyard and vice versa. We just ran from property to property on the South Side of -- on the North side of South Mountain. So we had connection to the woods and the South side Reservoir, Waldheim Park, eventually Mack Pool when they built it. So these were some of my landmarks of childhood. My family's somewhat small. I have no siblings, my father had none, my mother had two, so the immediate family was pretty small, but we were very, very close growing up. And I attribute whatever happiness I've found in life to the fact that I had a very, very strong family. You know particularly, these days, and the life I've led since, I've met people who didn't come from that kind of background. In fact, it seems it's hard to find people who have a childhood they can look back on and say, "Wow, it was really a good time." So I've really come to appreciate as an adult actually how really blessed I was. I had an aunt and uncle who had a summer home, a second home at Lake Wallenpaupack in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and it was just a wonderful place to spend time, and I spent my whole childhood conniving ways to get there. My aunt was very generous with allowing me to be a guest frequently. She gave me a week every summer that was Bob's week to come to the lake and be with my cousins and enjoy the lake. But to tell you the truth, every carload that was or every car that was going from the Lehigh Valley to Lake Wallenpaupack, I was always hoping I might get a call, "Hey, does Bobby want to go along?" because that was a place I really did a lot of growing up. There were sailboats and water -- motorboats and waterskiing, and it was just really a terrific background I have. CM: Okay, can we pause please? Sorry, I just have to check real quick. (inaudible) There's nothing going from the audio. MF: Oh, I see. CM: The mic to the... That's what was bothering me before. It wasn't quite right. But we can make up the audio you've done so far with the TASCAM mic or just the camera I think. MF: Yeah. CM:Not to worry. MF: Okay. CM: Much better. MF: Okay. CM: Okay. MF: All right. CM: Okay. MF:So I'm Mary Foltz. I'm back with Bob Wittman, and we've just been talking about his -- some of his childhood experiences. I'm going to ask Bob, could you tell us a little bit more about what it was like to grow up in Allentown? RHW:Very different than it's like growing up in Allentown today I suspect. There were three big, interesting department stores downtown, there were multiple movie theaters, there was some live theater. We still have some good restaurants but it was a very different place. A little of the old business activities may be coming back with some of the new development but -- so it's beginning perhaps to look a little bit like it did in the old days. But anybody from my generation can remember things like Hess's department store on a sale day when people hundreds deep were waiting in front of the front doors when the store opened in the morning. I lived on the South Side of Allentown sort of distant from the downtown but as a young boy, I learned to ride the city's public buses, the transit system. It was nothing at all for me to hop on a bus and run into town on the middle of the day and catch a movie or meet friends and just run around the department stores, getting into not too much trouble but really using that as almost a playground too. I still dream about it. I know some people who have maybe come later and they're a little impatient with some of us who can't get over the Hess's days. I confess, I still dream about it, you know it was really a marvelous, marvelous place. We've been talking about a childhood growing up, and I guess I'm making it sound quite idyllic. And in its background and in its foundation, it certainly was, but I was a young man who was trying to grow up and trying to develop. And so there were also a lot of challenges that were in the foreground during my experience. One was the fact that, actually, I wasn't a very good student, and this was a terrible problem for me. I was surrounded by bright people. My cousins, I have mentioned earlier from the Lake Wallenpaupack, were my best friends, and they were very, very good in school, all straight-A students both of them, and I wasn't. I was going to be the first person in my family to go to college, and some of my grades by the time I got to high school suggested that that might not work out that way. On top of that, there was the Vietnam War, which began when I was a little, little boy, and I can remember asking my father at some point, "Dad, am I ever going to have to get sent over there?" And he said, "Oh, this will be over long before you're of draft age." Well guess what, it wasn't. Although by the time I did reach draft age, truthfully, they weren't drafting many American boys anymore. They pretty much wound down the draft, and the next year, I got a very low draft number. But I didn't know that growing up and so a couple of things were working to really disturb my sense of well-being, and they were all interrelated. I mean there was Vietnam and kind of a consequence of not having good grades and not going to college was maybe going to Vietnam. So I felt I had to get good grades, so I would not have to go to Vietnam. So those two were definitely related to one another. And then increasingly, it dawned on me that I was different in another way as well. I didn't really know what that was at the time. I thought I was the only person in the world who felt the way I did. And it's hard to imagine that you could feel so lonely and isolated given the world that we have today. But it was a very difficult thing for me to deal with, with being gay. I mean actually, I like the idea of being gay. I just found that the world had no idea what I was feeling, and there was no context for it. I mean it simply was not in the paper ; it wasn't discussed. You might pick up a reference to gay people, to homos, to fags, that kind of thing in street conversation and family conversation but certainly not in any positive context. There were no role models. There was no media buzz about it ; there was just nothing. So it was my own feelings about friends I had and why wasn't I growing up and developing attraction for girls when they started to. So the growing up was a mixture of these very good times and when I felt I had good, strong support and then also wondering what would happen if some of these other things didn't work out. Like little Bobby didn't grow up to want a family and a wife and children. What if little Bobby didn't grow up and wasn't able to go to college, what would he do then? So those were some of the challenges I faced growing up. The fact is, in time, they all worked themselves out pretty much. I didn't have the good grades to get into a good college, but what I did was I marshalled my brain resources, and I enrolled in the community college, Lehigh Carbon Community College. I spent two years there, I got an associate's degree, and I grew up enough academically that I was prepared to go on to a big, four-year college. I had a really good experience at "L-Tri-C", as we call it here in the Lehigh Valley, Lehigh Carbon Community College, LCCC. I got good grades ; I made the dean's list. I joined an academic trip to the Soviet Union only a year or two after it opened up -- was opened up by Richard Nixon's -- President Nixon's trip there. I really had a good experience. I might also say during all this period of time at the community college, I also had a girlfriend, a very nice young woman I met through a mutual friend who's my age. I actually stole her, and we had a good time dating during the years of my -- kind of the final months of high school and my -- the first two years of college while I was at the community college. She was a student at Moravian College, so we were basically two home living -- still-at-home-living college students, so we shared that in common, and I think really enjoyed each other's company. I will confess, it took me months to kiss her for the first time. I think she knew that that signaled something. However, once I did kiss her, I kissed her a lot, and I found I enjoyed it. But I also found I really liked her brother who was a year or two younger. And after we separated to go to on with our education -- me after two years at the community college. I graduated from there, and I transferred my credits to Syracuse University from which I graduated in 1975 with degrees in journalism and political science. My girlfriend also had decided for her own reasons to transfer from Moravian, and she went on to Susquehanna University. In her case, I think it was mostly she wanted the experience of not being a home student, a student living at home and so she talked her parents into the transfer, so we're both transferring at the same time. After I was in Syracuse just a few weeks, she got a -- I received a letter that -- from her that said, "You know since we're not going to be seeing each other for months at a time now while we're both away from school, I hope you think it's okay if we date other people." And truthfully, I was very happy that she's made that suggestion because I was ready to start dating men. I went to Syracuse, and I discovered even before I arrived in some of the materials that came to my house over the course of the summer, kind of pre-registration materials or pre-arrival materials, and there was list of campus organizations, There must have been a hundred of them, ski club and chess club, debating club, you name it. But there was also something called the Gay Freedom League. So that was really my first introduction to gay people -- not just the gay movement but gay people. So I was mighty intrigued about this, and after I got the letter from my girlfriend, I decided I wanted to try to reach this organization. You know this is pre-computer days, so you did everything by mail, and the different campus organizations maybe had offices. This one actually did, and it also had an office address. So I sent a letter to the Gay Freedom League from my dorm room, and it was answered by the postal system. The letter came back to my dorm room from somebody who was sort of helping to coordinate the Gay Freedom League. I don't know that it had any one leader. It seemed to me it had sort of a collection of people that haphazardly ran this organization. So the man asked me if I would like to get together and talk, and that's exactly what I wanted to do. I think he gave me his telephone number, and I nervously placed a phone call to him, and we set a date to meet on campus. I wish I could remember the guy's name, but he was about as different from me as you could imagine. I mean I have short hair now -- I had short hair back in college then -- he had hair down to his waist. I mean this was the age when there still were hippies, and he would've easily been classified as a hippie. He was quite out, and of course, I'm very nervous about this whole project I'm embarking on. I think we met at the campus coffee shop. And we sat across from each other in a room crowded with other people, and he started saying, "Well, and there's nothing wrong with being gay and if you're gay and" dat, da, ra, and he's very loud. I just felt like everybody in the room was looking at us. He discovered my discomfort and so we walked to an academic building, actually the school of music, which had a great, big auditorium. And you could almost always go in there and sit with your books and study and listen to students rehearsing on the organ or the piano upfront. So that's what we did, and that's where we had a really good talk. He also detected that he was quite different from me, and he said, "You know there's somebody new that has come in that is new to Syracuse also like you, and he's actually not a student. He works for the university, but he's just a year away from being a student. He's a year out of college himself, and he's gay. He's much more straightlaced, more like you. I think you'd enjoy knowing him." So sure enough, he followed through, even before I had a chance to react or anything, and before I know it, this guy is knocking on my dorm room door. I was a little surprised at the forcefulness of this guy's entrée to me, but nonetheless, I came to appreciate it. His name was David. He had just been hired after giving up in graduate school at that point. He had been going to Columbia and left New York City because actually he was gay, and he had been having trouble dealing with that and academia and so he decided to go jump-start his career. He had planned to go into like college development work and so he secured a job at Syracuse in the publications office. I guess his plan was he was going to take some graduate courses at Syracuse and so forth. It wasn't long before he enlisted me in a college project, a campus project, a school project to update, which they did every year, the campus handbook. I was still a student in my first year at the college, and now suddenly, I'm being offered the editorship of the college handbook. I've been doing some house cleaning here recently, and I came to discover I actually saved -- I didn't now, I threw them out a week ago, but I saved my pay stubs. I forgot I got a little stipend of about fourteen dollars a week for working on the college handbook. But one thing led to another. David and I became pretty close. The guy who introduced us turned out to be dead right. We did have a lot in common we discovered or at least in our outlook in life, in our hopes and dreams and that sort of thing. So he became really my first serious gay mentor. Along about this time, now mind you, I'm, uh, a freshman, junior -- how does it go? Freshman, junior, sophomore, senior, is that correct? So I was a sophomore I was in my third year of college, but my first year at Syracuse. That first year at Syracuse, I lived in a dorm with another roommate who, over the course of our months together, realized all of a sudden he was living with a gay man. He didn't quite know how he felt about that. I mean we've stayed in touch, and we're friends to this day, but at first, it was a little bit of a shock. And it happened around the end of the school season, and he said, "You know I think I'd rather find another roommate for next season." And truthfully, I was headed in that direction anyway, but very quickly, what developed is the acquaintance I've made, David suggested that the two of us can find an apartment together off campus. And that at that point appealed to me greatly, so we did that. It was quite fun, my first time doing this, it almost felt like a little gay couple finding an apartment and sign the lease and so forth. And so I came home from the summer looking forward to the coming year. My action really sent alarms to my family at home. They were a little surprised that I was mo-- well first of all, wanted to move out of the dorm, and secondly, that I was moving in with someone who was not really a student but an employee. My father amazingly, who was a well-connected guy, went to the trouble of doing some background checks on David and managed to find out that he was gay and presented this to me that he had found this out and asked me if I was. So that brought everything to the fore. I, over the summer, have been trying to think of ways to tell them, and in fact, I kind of gave him maybe a reason to look into his past because I had broached the idea to everybody, my parents and to David, to maybe make a visit to Allentown over the summer, you know, "Come visit, stay overnight." It never happened, and we never even had gotten close enough to even talking about a date. But in the meanwhile, my father made this discovery and decided -- you know, it seemed at the time that he didn't really want to be very nice about this. Nonetheless, what was he going to do? I was going back to school in a few weeks, the lease was already signed, this was going to be my friend. I assured him that he was a man of enormous decency. And I guess they gave me the benefit of the doubt, and the year unfolded as I intended it should. Eventually, they met David, they took him out to dinner, they... You know he made some lovely pictures of us in the backyard of the building we lived that still are around in frames on coffee tables at home. But what they really didn't realize, what David was giving me. David worked for the university, and it turns out, David worked for a gay man, and that gay man reported directly to the chancellor. So all of a sudden, I had this perfect opportunity to be around, seeing their homes, socialize with some really rather accomplished gay people. This wasn't the hippie that took me into the loft of the music school for a private chat. This wasn't a guy who walked me through the cemetery and wanted to make love to me, I guess, amidst the tombstones. This was a guy who, you know, met his friends for cocktails and brunch on Sunday mornings and sat there together with his friends. And they read the New York Times and talked about big things, big topics, big things in the news, big things going on, on campus, campus politics, campus business for that matter. So I wound up having a really interesting, unique, and I think a really beneficial time at Syracuse just because of the way that all worked out. So why don't we end it there? (break in video) MF: This is Mary Foltz, and I'm back with Bob Wittman. He has just finished discussing his experiences at Syracuse University. And so I wanted to ask a question that kind of goes back a little bit about when you described coming out to your parents. Could you say a little bit more about how they responded when they found out that you were gay and living with another gay man while you were attending Syracuse University? RHW:Well, their reaction to me and their -- the way they dealt with me and responded to me being gay has definitely evolved. I think they were just as uninformed about it really as I was, less so clearly. So none of us really had any framework to discuss it or much context to put it in. I can remember saying things I would never say now, but I'd say things like, "Why don't you just view this like I have a drug addiction and it is part of me and it's something you have to deal with?" I imagine I used that negative concept in trying to reach them, so that's why I say none of us really had the words, the language because it wasn't discussed. I mean nobody did. Families weren't talking about this in these day-- in those days. My father in many ways was my best friend, but he was a difficult man. He was a marine. He was a little insecure about his own fabric as a person, his own composition. Not the sexuality I don't think, although maybe sometimes my mother speculated about how confident he was. I always thought my mother was kind of the more sympathetic of the two but in a way I found I couldn't really discuss with her. It hurt her. It hurt her feelings, you know something -- she might likely cry. My father on the other hand would run sort of hot and cold on it. He could be my best friend about it or a real obstacle to me trying to deal with it. I mean, at one point, he'd say, "You know I was in the marines, and when I was in the marines, it seemed to me everybody in the navy was gay. Maybe you should join the navy." And other times, we'd talk about things, and he would let me get very candid, and he could be very sympathetic and then other times, it was just... I don't know, it was just something he couldn't deal with. He was quite proud of the family tree and family traditions. He became a bit of an amateur genealogist, and suddenly, the family tree stopped with his son, so it would seem, and so it did as a matter of fact but... With him it was -- it never really resolved itself to a place where I'd say I was comfortable with it and he was comfortable with it. When I was a young man, he developed cancer. He was a heavy, heavy smoker and so this was maybe not a surprise. He eventually died of lung cancer, but he had lymphoma in the mouth and that from cigarette smoking. So he was dead by the time he was fifty-nine, and I was probably, at that point, how old would I have been? I guess I was in my thirties. I had already met Frank, my partner. We haven't talked about yet today, but I think we probably will. But while we're on this story, suffice to say that Frank came into my life, and I met him through the newspaper. He became a work colleague of mine as well as my lover and partner and eventually my husband. And my father really liked Frank. My father loved history, and Frank's background is in history. He's a historian by academic training and by profession. All of the work he did for the newspaper we worked for, for the Morning Call, were feature articles about local history. So this gave my father always something to talk to Frank about, and he loved Frank for that. So Frank really helped break down, I guess, some of the mystery of what it was like to be gay. They did tell me after I introduced Frank to my parents that I came walking through the door -- walking in the backyard I guess it was with Frank at my side, and I was apparently just beaming. I don't think they quite fully understood until that moment that this was somebody I really cared about. He wasn't just a friend I wanted them to meet. So he really did help bring a lot of clarity to my relationship. My father passed on, sad that that was, and then it was just my mother and me. And gradually over the years, she became completely accepting of it. In 2013 when we decided, for a lot of practical reasons mostly, that it made sense for Frank and I to get married. We did, and we asked my mother to be our witness. We did it in New York City in the marriage license hall of the city clerk's office. And my mom bought us both carnations for our lapels, and we said the vows, and she was very excited to be a part of all that. So that's why I say it really did evolve. But this all began at Syracuse, and I didn't know where it was going to go when I left Syracuse and returned home after I graduated. Actually, my plan was never to return to Allentown. I was a journalist, it was the era of Watergate, all of that had unfolded really while I was in college. There was the Washington Post and the New York Times and that's where every young kid graduating from college with a journalism degree wanted to end up. So I was eager to get out into the world, and I didn't really think Allentown was going to be a good stepping-stone. I had worked at the Allentown Morning Call really since the time I was in high school. I got a job, a part-time job there. And when I was a college student, I discovered that the Morning Call had an opening in the news department for what, in those days, they used to call a copyboy. It was just really kind of an office boy. Before you had computers, you had real paper that stories were written on, on typewriters, and those pieces of paper had to be carried physically to an editor who edited. After he was done editing that piece of paper, it had to go upstairs to the composing room to be set into type so that paper had to move around, and copyboys provided that motion. Eventually, I used that copyboy position to become a summer intern who wrote stories, kind of acted like a reporter and... So by the time I went away to Syracuse, I actually had -- to work on a journalism degree, I actually had real-life experience going out and covering a municipal meeting, like maybe the Coplay Borough Council or Upper Saucon Township Zoning Board. I mean it these were tiny, little meetings in the meeting hall sometimes so rural, they were hard to find. But nonetheless, it was real journalism. You know the stuff got printed in the newspaper the next day. So, obviously, I had to quit the Call to go to Syracuse. I couldn't continue to work there part time at nights and on weekends and summertime when I had to be four hours away and then in central New York attending classes. But I left in good terms, and fortunately, they arranged a summer internship between my junior and senior years. And then after I graduated, they still didn't know if they had an opening for me. They said, "Come back and be a summer intern yet again, and we'll see what happens by the fall." Fortunately by the fall, they had an opening and sort of, in a way, the rest is history. I remained there for most of the rest of my career. I certainly didn't intend to. I thought I was just going back there briefly. For a few years, I'll work there. It was going to be a good job. As I was graduating from college, I applied to a lot of places, and after I was working for the Morning Call for about a year, I got a call from UPI, United Press International, the wire service. It's now out of business. I mean it's a good idea I didn't link my career to its vessel but um... So I thought I might not -- no, I didn't think I might. My goal was always to not stay at the Morning Call. Although I liked the place, it was my hometown newspaper, I'd made friends there, my plan always had been to move on. My friend David that I mentioned who was so much of a mentor to me in college, the man who worked for the university and with whom I later enjoyed an apartment the final year of my time at Syracuse wound up in California, eventually in San Francisco, exactly where a gay person wanted to be at that time. So for a long time, a few years anyway, I thought I was going to end up working for San -- in California working for a newspaper. I did a lot of job hunting out there. Being gay helped actually. As it turns out, David had made a really good friend of the man who was no less than publisher of the Sacramento Bee and a couple of other papers in like Fresno -- they're all named Bee -- and guess what, he was gay. So David arranged for me to have an interview with the publisher of the Sacramento Bee. In San Francisco -- no, not in San Francisco, that's where he lived. So he took me out to dinner, we had wine. I mean how -- who gets to have an opportunity like this? And I probably, had I continued to press him and press that opportunity, I probably could've wound up working in Sacramento later that year or the next. But in the meanwhile, I'd met Frank, and that really kind of put the brakes on stuff. Actually, it was Frank who recommended that I take the train to San Francisco to kind of what turned out to be that last trip I made job hunting and then when I had the dinner with C. K. McClatchy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee. He said, "You had gone by airplane so often, why don't you take the train?" and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. Unfortunately, I should've taken him along, then it would really have been a good experience. I did it alone. I had worked for the Morning Call after I graduated from college for about eight years before Frank arrived. And, um, his arrival was part of an effort that the publisher of the Morning Call, at the time, was making to really change and transform the newspaper. The Morning Call in those days was owned by a family. Now, it's owned by -- actually, I think it's owned by a hedge fund, but eventually it became owned by the Times-Mirror Corporation of California, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. And later, they sold, and it was purchased by the Chicago Tribune organization. But when I started there and when Frank joined the newspaper, it was still owned by a local family. They lived in the Parkway, they drove to work, they ate at the Pennsylvania restaurant, and it was a very folksy operation. The publisher, an older man, Donald Miller, Donald P. Miller, a real patriarch of both the newspaper, and his family had decided early on that his son would take over the news business, and the son was quite interested in doing so. He spent his academic career preparing for it, and his father fixed him up with some good training jobs at other places to sort of groom him to be publisher. And when Donald Miller got to be, I don't know, up in his sixties or seventy or something like that, he decided it was time for his son Eddie to take over and so he began giving more and more responsibility to Eddie. First, he gave him a position as executive editor, and eventually, he sort of said -- the publisher said he would step back and let his son Edward become -- the title he chose for himself -- editor and publisher. So it was during that period that Frank and a whole lot of other people were hired by the son. And he really wanted to transform the paper and make it something more than just a small, little, local, hometown newspaper. He wanted it to win awards, and he wanted it to have a top-notch staff, and he wanted it to have a national reputation. So he hired a lot of people including Frank. The problem was he spent a lot of money real quickly, and his father just didn't understand the program that the son was embarking on. And they had immediate and ongoing conflicts over the budget and over priorities and just how to run a newspaper. Eddie was not in an enviable position, that's for sure. I mean, his father (laughs) was an interesting man. I'm glad he wasn't my father even if he would've afforded me all the opportunities that Don Miller was able to afford his children. They didn't get along, and eventually Eddie quit. And as things were becoming unraveled, this sort of experiment of bringing in a whole lot of outsiders to beef up the paper and add some real editorial muscle to the staff was petering out. The young people he brought in, many of them said, "Wow, you know, this isn't going to work out in the long run, maybe we shouldn't be sticking around here as long as we thought." And so the Morning Call became during that period a real springboard for people to jump on for a year and jump out and go off to a place like maybe the Philadelphia Inquirer or the Washington Post, New York Times maybe, big-city newspapers. Those of us who watched this all come in and watched all these people leave, we gave the -- this crowd of newcomers who didn't stick around too long, gave them the epithet, the boat people. This was kind of a springboard off of what was happening in current events at the time. There were a whole lot of people trying to escape Cuba and were taking life rafts and leaky boats and unlicensed vessels just to be dumped near American shore, and they'd wade to shore and then... It was during the Carter administration, and they became known as the boat people. So we cynically called our colleagues the boat people who were sort of shipped in and came in and made a whole lot of noise and did some flashy things and then, boom, all of a sudden, they were gone. Well, Frank was one of the last people that Eddie hired before he came in one morning with a screwdriver and took his -- unscrewed the nameplate from his door and threw it on his father's desk and said, "I quit." Frank was actually hired not to be a reporter but to be a researcher. He came from a background of working in the state archive for the state of Missouri. He had trained for that in his -- in college. He had a degree in history and so he was good at looking at records and find his -- finding his way through piles of research. So he was going to be a researcher, and Ed Miller, the son of the publisher, eventually the publisher, had figured out he was going to put a team of people together that would be an investigative team. There was going to be kind of a permanent editor and so permanent copywriters. The reporters would move in and out as projects changed, and Frank would be a permanent researcher assigned to this unit. Well, it never got off the ground. Eddie quit right after Frank arrived, and suddenly, a whole bunch of new people were running the newsroom. And eventually, they came to Frank and said, "What do you do here?" By then, I guess I had met him. I was not one who liked necessarily the -- some of the drama that had attended -- you know, Ed Miller's attempts to transform the newsroom. Some of us who were there all along and hoping for these things felt a little bit left out. So some of it was personal, but some of it was just, wow, there's so much noise and so much coming and going, I just need to do my job, and I was focused in that way. So one day -- the story I like to tell -- I was sitting at my desk. I had some downtime. Another reporter was sitting literally on my desk, the corner of my desk, the two of us were talking. And suddenly, out of the periphery of my eye, I see this little guy walk across the newsroom carrying a great, big stack of books. And I said to Joyce, the other reporter, I said, "Now, who the hell is that?" And she said, "Well, that's Frank, that's Frank Whelan, you don't know Frank? He's been here about a month, Eddie hired him, he's going to be a researcher," and explained this whole thing. I said, "Well, I don't know. No, I haven't met him," and that was that. And I didn't want to meet him. But then one day, I'm sitting at my desk, early one morning just reading the paper waiting for the workday to begin in earnest, and I look up, and there's this guy, Frank, who's pointed out to me a few weeks before, standing in front of me. "Hello, I'm Frank Whelan, I work here at the Morning Call" and then he proceeds to say, "I see you've done some articles on an organization called Le-Hi-Ho. I would like to get to know some of those people." The way he said it, I knew exactly what he was saying, I'm gay. And I took a gulp, and I said, "Oh, you would? Let's go have some coffee." So we walked down to the company cafeteria, and we had coffee. We had dinner that night, and we kind of have been together ever since. There you go, a good place to end. (break in video) MF:This is Mary Foltz. I'm back with Bob Wittman, and he has just described for us meeting who would become his partner Frank at the Morning Call offices. And he has also just described how Frank really knew about Bob from a series of articles and knowing that Bob was publishing about an organization called Le-Hi-Ho. Bob, I'd like to ask you about your coverage as a reporter of LGBT organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. How did that come to be a focus of your journalism or how involved were you on reporting on LGBT issues at the Morning Call? RHW: Well, I was a general assignment reporter, which meant that I covered a lot of municipal governments. Oh, God, I received almost just everyday a different assignment to do a different thing. However, you could do or you could suggest -- editors encourage you to suggest special projects, special stories that you wanted to work on, something you've heard about in the community and thought important to give it some coverage. I was pretty closeted at this point at the Morning Call. I mentioned that Frank figured it out, but when I first started working there eight years before I met him, I was extremely nervous about it, about anybody finding out. I avoided the subjects and really tried to hide it. You know I'm human, and you want to be friends with people, and you don't want to keep everything away from everybody, at least I didn't, so I mean I did tell some of the reporters. There was another reporter, big, actually African American, utterly heterosexual, lover of women to the end of the day, I wound up being friends with and told him that I was gay. And it was John Clark who suggested, "Why don't we do a story on gay people in the Lehigh Valley?" And I guess my reaction was like, "Really, you mean there's more than one, there's more than me?" But I guess I knew that there were others.I knew about Le-Hi-Ho. I'd been to a few Le-Hi-Ho meetings. So we suggested it to the editors, and they said, "Yeah, go ahead, do it." You know, looking back on it, it was really poorly done compared to things that I did later, but this is what Frank found. I think it was probably like three to four stories. They were all very, very short. There was none of the kind of in-depth -- you know finding a person and creating a story of that person to tell a larger story. That's what we really should have done, but we didn't. It was kind of superficial reporting. Nonetheless, nonetheless, that is absolutely the first local reporting that was ever done on the gay community. There may have been references to homosexuals being arrested or even -- maybe even political activism in other communities in New York City, places like that, so these have been wire stories but a local story, no. One of the other reporters, an old guy, awfully nice guy, but he sort of heard this, what John and I were working on. In fact, he asked us and said, "So what are you two guys working on?" We told him, "We're working on a story on the local gay community." He kind of, hmm, sniffed and, "Well," he said, "I guess Allentown has always had its queers," and walked away, so... But that's the story Frank found. In subsequent years as gay people and the gay movement and then eventually AIDS became more and more a topic of people's conversations and more a topic of legislation, it therefore became more of a topic of local news. So, you know, a lot of that reporting fell to me just because one, two, three, four, who's available here today. But in time, as I came out more and more and editors understood that I was actually a resource on this subject, then it came to develop that I was actually assigned stories because I was gay. And I liked that. I mean, I was proud of that. The Morning Call, my editors were looking to me as somebody that they could trust, that here's somebody who understands the community. He's got some connections, he can get the interviews, he can get the information. So to that extent, I did wind up doing an awful lot of reporting especially on the gay community, on gay events and so forth. At the same time, I was being a little subversive. Reporters are not supposed to dabble in... Actually, reporters are not supposed to have private lives period. That's the way some editors and some editors that I worked for viewed the way things should be. I always had a little trouble with that. For one thing, I'm a restless guy and I'm impatient, and one of the reasons I got into the news business is because I wanted to change the world. And it was during the time of Watergate that I was going to college and so there was -- imbued throughout journalism was this idea that a good news story could effect change, so... But I wanted to take it a step further in terms of gay people. I just felt that they had been so underrepresented in the news in the past that I wanted to make sure that kind of the movement move forward. And if I could do anything as a journalist, I wasn't going to stand in the way. So I did a lot of things that my editors would have not approved of had they known. I just did it very quietly. I mean I was reporting on in some cases, but in other cases, I've befriended gay people, some people who wanted to be active. I mean some of these were Le-Hi-Ho. But that actually was not -- although it was the Lehigh Valley's first and really one of the nation's first and longest enduring gay organizations, it wasn't actually politically, politically active. I mean the very fact that it existed was political you might say. But it didn't try to get certain candidates elected and other candidates defeated. You know, it just didn't work in that way. The people who were involved in Le-Hi-Ho weren't involved in it because they were political people. However, other people came along later who did want to get involved in politics, who did want to see Allentown and the other local communities pass human rights ordinance that contained language about protections for gay people, equal treatment for gay people. And those people, of course, I wound up knowing as a newspaper reporter in part because they were people that we're reporting on and the things they wanted to do and accomplish, but at the same time, I gave assistance to. So I really blurred lines, but my bosses never really knew it, and the people that I was reporting on respected me more for it. So for that reason, I never thought it was a problem. Actually, I had a thirty year running debate with my editors about how involved a reporter could be. I always maintained that I could be as political as I wanted just so long everybody knew where I was coming from. So what difference does it make if Bob Wittman is a liberal Democrat reporting on a conservative Republican mayor for instance? As long as the conservative Republican mayor knows that Bob Wittman is a liberal Democrat, but he's going to give the Republican mayor a fair shot on everything he tells him, which I did. So to me it was -- I didn't really see myself as violating ethics policies in the way I behaved. I knew exactly how far I could push this and how far not to. And only a few times did I ever say, "Hmm, I probably went a little farther than I should, but hopefully, nobody will find out." So for instance, the Allentown -- so a group of people had been interested, including some people early, early on in Le-Hi-Ho had been interested in adding equal protection language to the city's human relations ordinance dealing with gay and lesbian people. But Allentown City Council was just always, always, always really, really intransigent, until a young woman arrived on the scene here in Lehigh Valley, by the name of Liz Bradbury and her partner Trish Sullivan. Liz was not a person who was going to sit back and let things take their course. She really wanted to take things in hand and push the envelope. Liz was a little naïve at first, but, boy, she was a quick learner, and I was one of her teachers. For instance, she thought it would just be an easy thing. It sounded logical to her. If you made a logical argument to logical people, they should see the logic and pass logical legislation. But Liz, this is emotional, it's not just logical. And so her idea that "Well, why don't we just go and propose this to city council in the right way, the proper way and in a becoming way?" and I said, "No, I think you need to do more. You need to get people on your side before you take that step, you know get the lawyers on your side, get the doctors on your side, get other organizations on your side, get neighborhood groups on your side." And you know what, she did that. She spent two years, three years, I don't know how many years doing exactly that. She published her own community newspaper for the gay community and right down the center of it on page one, was a growing list of organizations that supported Allentown -- the passage of Allentown -- of a human relations or human rights ordinance in Allentown. She's one step further. She enlisted an acquaintance, another woman, a lesbian to run for Allentown city council, and she won. She organized the, you know, local gay community, made sure people are registered to vote and got them to vote, made sure they voted on election day, and they elected Gail Hoover to be Allentown's first openly gay city councilwoman, city council person period. So now, they had at least one guaranteed vote on city council, so now it's a matter of persuading, what is it, six more I guess. Right now, Allentown City Council I think is completely Democrat, and I bet a human rights ordinance like this wouldn't have too much trouble passing. But in those days, the Democrats and the Republicans serving on city council were pretty even, evenly numbered. And even among the Democrats, these were pretty conservative people. But she began working on them kind of one by one, take -- meeting with them, going out for coffee, going out for breakfast, and that kind of thing. She finally got the council president. He's just passed away last week, David Howells, a former Allentown policeman. That's what his career was. Only in retirement did he get involved in politics. She convinced him. I thought it was a hard sell, but she convinced him. There's another guy in city council, David Bausch, never been married, always has a German exchange student living in the home, has a million-dollar, literally a million-dollar toy collection, antique collection in his house, rumored, always whispered about that "David Bausch must be gay." But believe it or not, he absolutely did not support the ordinance, so we knew that there was some uphill battles -- there was going to be opposition, there was going to be some support. So there are couple of key people right in the middle: One was a Republican by the name of Tom Burke, a bright guy, actually from Massachusetts, a retired Proctor & ; Gamble engineer whose big passion in life is golf. And that's really mostly what he cares about, but he does care about good government and good legislation. And he is one of these people that Liz was hoping everybody was, and that is somebody who could listen to a logical argument and make a logical conclusion and then embed that in legislation. So here's an instance when Frank and I probably stepped a little bit beyond the line of what we should've done as reporters. But we knew Tom was sort of sitting on the face on this issue. We invited him here to our house for a beer or coffee or something, kind of in the after-work time, time period. We sat outside on the back porch on a summer afternoon, and for a couple of hours talked Tom into voting, voting for it. I mean, he did leave here committed to doing it, and all during the open debate, nobody knew how Tom was going to vote until he voted. But in the end when it came time to vote, Tom voted yes. And it pushed it right over the edge. They only needed his vote, on more vote, he gave it, and there it happened. So it was pretty cool. You know that involves human or the human rights ordinance and kind of direct politics. And actually, I was the guy doing a lot of the reporting of the city hall debate while all this was going on. But another episode that happened during that time was the AIDS crisis was breaking. I can remember picking Frank up in his apartment before we were living together on a Saturday morning, I think it was, and we were about to head off to make a day trip to Philadelphia. This was among the first months of my relationship with Frank. We weren't even really calling, I'm pretty sure, that we were even lovers. We were just two men who worked together, and he was new to Pennsylvania, and I was enjoying taking -- spending weekends, taking him places and acting as tour guide. He got in the car that morning though all upset, and there's been a story in the New York Times about something they're calling a gay cancer. It's killing men in San Francisco and New York, and nobody has any idea why. So there was a wake-up call. But sometime later, you know, as we're watching this news unfold on two coasts, I got a call from an acquaintance, a gay man whom I knew slightly through like Le-Hi-Ho. And he said to me, "Would you be interested as a newspaper reporter doing an interview on a story with a local man who has AIDS?" Now you see, nobody knew that AIDS was anywhere but in New York and San Francisco. I'm sure people knew that there was evidence that it was elsewhere. But in people's minds, I'm pretty sure nobody thought it was really here or gave it much thought at all that it was something that the local community would be someday dealing with. But I, of course, was immediately interested in learning about this. I said, "Yeah, I'd love to." So it was arranged. They said, "The only condition is going to be that he wants to be anonymous," and I said, "Oh, it shouldn't be a problem. We do this a lot. The newspaper grants anonymity to people a lot when there's good reason and this is -- I'm pretty sure we can explain to editors that there's a good reason." In this case, the reason the man wanted to be anonymous is that he and his partner owned a sandwich shop on Hamilton Street, in the business district. And they were very worried because it was still a crazy, crazy time. Nobody knew, really knew what AIDS was. You know they... At this point, I don't think they even had the name HIV, had yet come into existence. They only knew there was this cluster of symptoms that people got, and they didn't know why. So there's an awful lot of fear. People may not realize it today, but I mean there were politicians, state legislators talking about maybe quarantine -- creating quarantine camps and the like the way they did for epidemics in previous centuries. So any rate, they owned a sandwich shop, their health care was all tied into their business that they had set up for themselves, and they really didn't want to upset any applecart. So that was their reason for wanting to be anonymous not really because they were timid or didn't want to be activists. They both turned out to be very much activists. So I agreed to the condition. I did the interview. My newspaper realized they had a good story and an important story, and they played it on the top of page one on the Sunday paper, which in those days, had a very, very impressive circulation. And it's the largest circulation of The Morning Call's newspapers on Sunday. I did the interview, I wrote the story, I turned it in. The young man that I interviewed for the story who had AIDS used -- chose his own made-up name, and that was Brad Edwards. So that's how it ran in the paper, Brad Edwards along with many follow-ups that came in days or not days but months and years later. I turned the story in ; my editor read it. I knew where it was running, but late in the game, my editor called me from across the room from his desk. I picked it up, and he said, "I don't mind that I don't know who your subject is that you interviewed, but I understand that you don't actually even know who Brad Edwards really is." He said, "I want you to know." He said, "You don't need to tell me, and we're certainly not going to publish it but I -- so I do want you to know who it is." So I said, "Well, okay," and I called up the subject. His name was Brian?, and I called up Brian. I didn't know who he was. I called up Brad (laughs) and said, "Brad, I'm afraid there's a problem. My editor thinks I need to know who you are. He doesn't need to know, we're not going to publish it." He said, "Well, you actually already know me. My name is Brian Foley," and of course immediately, I connected him with the sandwich shop and some of the other gay organizations that were beginning to blossom at that time. Brian became one of my very best friends. That's one of the only times in the news business that somebody became truly a personal friend, not just a good working acquaintance, somebody you'd bump into, maybe even go and have drinks with. I mean this was the guy that became my skiing partner, you know my -- or frequent dinner partner. One early or one weekend when there was snow falling and forecast of huge amounts, he came over with sleepers and spent a couple of days and just got snowed in with us. Just a wonderful, wonderful friendship developed out of that story completely unintended. (break in video) MF:This is Mary Foltz, and I'm back with Bob Wittman. He was just telling us a little bit about his work with the Morning Call and some of the pieces that he has written that were focused on the LGBT community in the valley. Bob, I think this is a good segue to talk about your work with organizations like Le-Hi-Ho. So perhaps you could tell me, how did you get involved with Le-Hi-Ho, and what were the aims and goals of Le-Hi-Ho when you were involved with that organization? RHW:When I graduated from college and came back to the Lehigh Valley, the -- if you wanted to experience gay life, I mean go look for gay life, you had basically two options: You could go to a gay bar, and there weren't many of those, two or three, or you could go to Le-Hi-Ho. Le-Hi-Ho used to kind of bill itself or least many of us thought of it as the alternative to the bars. Le-Hi-Ho, people who would say, "Well, what's Le-Hi-Ho?" Well, it's an alternative to the bars. It met once a month on a Sunday afternoon at the Unitarian Church then located in Fountain Hill at the end of a shady, tree-lined lane. I attended a few of the meetings after I graduated from college and I was living here alone and looking for that gay life, but I didn't find much that really attracted me. I'm trying to remember what some of the programs were that they had every week -- every month. When they had the Sunday afternoon event, there was usually a program speaker. The only one I do remember and remember myself being a little furious at even attending is -- was -- it was a kind of a macramé demonstration, how to do macramé. Everybody in those days were making macramé wall hangings and things like. Well, I couldn't have been -- could have cared less about macramé, and it seemed to me a rather stereotypical thing for a bunch of gay men to be doing on a Sunday afternoon and I just... Frankly, I didn't go back. The macramé event I think sealed it for me. Le-Hi-Ho was started by -- I think it had some greater purposes than macramé believe me. Ron Seeds, the guy who started it did so at the height of the Vietnam War. I was talking about it earlier how it affected me and my outlook on life growing up. Ron was looking at it really as a standpoint of a gay person, what do gay people do. So he really created Le-Hi-Ho to provide information -- what your options are if you're a gay person and you're about to be inducted into the United States Military, the US Army. By the time I became involved with Le-Hi-Ho, the war was pretty much over, and draft resistance was a thing of the past and so Le-Hi-Ho had kind of become just, I think, really largely a social organization. There was certainly no political aspect to it. They didn't bring in political speakers. There was no... Maybe they brought voting materials or I should say voter registration materials to meetings. They might have gone that far, but otherwise, it was not political at all. When Frank came to town, as I mentioned in our previous discussion a few minutes ago, he mentioned to me that he was interested in getting to meet some of those people. So I'm pretty sure we went to the following meeting the very next meeting that would've occurred that -- whatever month that was when he came out to me at work. And you know what, he discovered that it was kind of the same thing like I warned him. However, not long after that, we got a notice through the mail. Le-Hi-Ho put out a regular monthly newsletter, as I recall, and maybe even some meeting announcements in between times, I'm not sure. But at any rate, we heard about a speaker that Le-Hi-Ho was bringing to the Lehigh Valley an old activist, a female, a lesbian I think from The Mattachine Society days by the name of Barbara Gittings. They knew that this would be kind of a special, special event bringing in a speaker like this, so they secured a hall at Muhlenberg College instead of the hard-to-find Unitarian Church at the end of the tree-lined lane in Fountain Hill. And Frank and I attended, and to our surprise, to our amazement, it seemed like a whole new Le-Hi-Ho was taking over. The man who stood in front of the audience that day and introduced Barbara Gittings, introduced himself as the new president of Le-Hi-Ho, and he had identified himself as Clint Miller. He was standing there in a sharp, three-piece suit, and I was just completely blown away. Frank and I came back and said, "Wow, what a difference. You know, maybe this organization is really going somewhere." I'm not sure what would've happened next, but what did happen next is we bumped into Clint and of all places the ACME. And we all decided right then and there that we should be friends and so we did. And after that, Le-Hi-Ho and my friendship with Clint and some of the people that now were occupying Le-Hi-Ho kind of merged into just one. Le-Hi-Ho still didn't quite know what to do with itself, what it should be. Clint Miller and some other I'll mention... Clint is still alive, quite vigorously so, but two other people I'll mention who have passed away were Paul and Paul, Paul Kendall and Paul Reeder, two college professors near retirement age by the time we got to know them and then did retire. This and a couple of women, Susan Schellenberg and her partner eventually Catherine Ziel and a few other men, I could go on and on, but formed kind of a core of friendship and commitment to Le-Hi-Ho. As I started to say, we still didn't really do too much as an organization. We still didn't really get involved in politics, none of us. As a newspaper reporter, I was probably -- or I should say I was -- probably had more interest in politics than anybody but as a newspaper reporter, I was the one who was in the least position to be able to really act on getting -- pushing Le-Hi-Ho in the direction of politics, so. But, what -- one of the things it did do though is it left itself open and receptive to the aspirations of other people to create organizations and create community. So somebody came to us and wanted to form a local chapter of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Le-Hi-Ho decided that it would be a really great idea to help them. We didn't want to become the local chapter of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, but we figured the Lehigh Valley was plenty big enough to support Le-Hi-Ho and that group, and so why not? Actually, the two Pauls I just mentioned, Paul Kendall as he was retiring as a geology professor from Kutztown University, decided to give himself a retirement project, and he pretty much single-handedly with the backing of Le-Hi-Ho, organized and opened a gay community center at Eighth and Hamilton. The Bradbury-Sullivan Center is a latter-day version of that. Sadly, it's not a descendant of it. The community center didn't become the gay -- the Bradbury-Sullivan Center. But for a few, brief glorious years, the Lambda Center at Eighth and Hamilton Street flourished. I'm trying to think what other organizations were founded, and I'm struggling a little bit to do so, but I think there were a couple of others. I think PFLAG may have had a foot -- been given a boost up by Le-Hi-Ho, but certainly, the Lambda or the Lambda Center as the gay community center back in -- I guess this would have been the 1980s and early 1990s. One thing that the Lambda Center did give birth to and hence, Le-Hi-Ho also gave birth to was the AIDS Services Center. I'm not sure if that still exists as a freestanding entity. I think in its latest iterations, it sort of fell into the fold of Saint Luke's Hospital, which is a good thing. But it began right in the living room of the apartment where Frank and I lived. Frank was on the board of the Lambda Center. Although I was deeply interested in its activities, I felt as a newspaper reporter -- not that Frank wasn't a newspaper reporter -- but as a newspaper reporter reporting on the community, reporting on politics, reporting on gay affairs that maybe I shouldn't be on the board of the Lambda Center. But Frank didn't feel that restriction. He didn't really report on the gay community the way I did and so he served on the community center board from the time it was created. The community center only lasted a couple of years, and I'm about to tell you why and how it went out of business. Soon after or around the time that the Lambda Center was forming, so was AIDS becoming a real thing here. In fact, the story I mentioned a few minutes ago involving the anonymous Brad Edwards, who eventually emerged as Brian Foley, that happened exactly contemporaneous to the operation of the center. I can even remember when that -- the night that that story appeared, there was a big event at the center, and I can remember sitting in the midst of a big crowd of people, everybody looking at me and saying, "Who is it? Who is Brad Edwards really?" Because the story said Brad Edwards is a made-up name. And, of course, I didn't say. Brad Edwards, Brian Foley was not in the room that night. There were other nights he was in the room, that room, however, interestingly. So after AIDS, after the story about Brian and then there were some other examples of AIDS fronting the newspaper began starting to pay attention to it, began asking doctors if they have cases, and began reporting statistics to see if -- to see what -- to report on what was going on. And then a prominent young man by the name of David Rodale died. David was the son of Ardath and Bob Rodale of Rodale Press. He was a gay man who was interested in theater and might have had a wonderful career doing that, but AIDS caught up to him and killed him very early on in the epidemic. Of course, his parents were stricken, and his mother was approached by the Lambda Center about perhaps making a contribution, and she was kind of intrigued. She knew about her son, of course, that he was gay, she loved her son. At the same time, being gay killed him so, I think she viewed it and so it wasn't an easy sell. She finally did give some money. It wasn't a small amount either. It might have been like ten thousand dollars. For that organization, it was a ton. In fact, it was probably more money than anybody had ever given them. But she specified that the only thing she wanted it to be used for was AIDS. Well, Lambda Center already had kind of an AIDS committee. I think they called it the AIDS Services Committee. But now suddenly, the AIDS Services Committee had money. In fact, the AIDS Services Committee had more money than the rest of the Lambda Center, and it became the classic story of the tail wagging the dog. I mean, eventually, the people who were running the AIDS Services Center formed a revolt, literally said, "We've got the money, we've got the interest, we've got the crisis, we've got the agenda. We think we should take over the center." So they did, and not taking over the center but transforming the Lambda Center into the AIDS Services Center. We were quite upset about it, Frank and I personally, Le-Hi-Ho as an organization. We remember Lambda Center needing to move out of their space in a great big rush all in one evening. These other folks were playing for keeps, and they wanted the space, they wanted our stuff out of there. There were several hundred books that formed the library and several cartons of information that formed an archive that needed to go somewhere in a hurry. Frank and I had just bought this house. It was sitting here rather empty at that point, and was only a few blocks away from the Lambda Center. So all that stuff was rushed here in a few cars with not much thinking, and here the stuff remained for many, many years after. To tell you the truth, that is kind of the end of my gay activism when the Lambda Center disappeared and became the -- you know it's -- what was left of it became the AIDS Services Center. After that, Le-Hi-Ho just kind of settled into what-do-we-do-next frame of mind, and they never really answered that question. More and more, the events, our meetings turned out to be just really rather intimate, personal meetings, dinners at each other's homes. We'd discuss a little business, we'd make note of how much was in the checking account, and we would kind of lament that Eighth -- that Le-Hi-Ho's role had been usurped by the course of events. And that's the way it kind of just petered out over the years. Eventually, the money that was in the checking account was withdrawn, and I'm trying to remember where we gave it. We had a meeting. I'm pretty sure it was just dinner at somebody's house. We sat around over wine and said, "Well who should we give these several hundred dollars to?" We made a good choice at the time, and everything came to -- you know it just kind of drifted and drifted apart. So there's lots and lots and lots more I could talk about, about being gay and growing up in a very changing time. But I've enjoyed what we have talked about today, and I'm hoping it's -- people who stumble across this in years to come will find it interesting. MF:I know they will. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you today, but let me just have two final questions quickly. I'm just wondering if -- do you know any people in the region that you really think we should have a part at -- have -- invite to be a part of this project or to give an oral history rather? RHW:Well, I think you've already acquainted yourself with some of the people connected with the Bradbury-Sullivan Center. And so some of those people like Liz and Trish date back to some of the years I'm talking about and so they certainly would. Many of us are getting old, and memories are becoming sketchy, and our voices are beginning to crack and dissemble on us. But the Clint Miller I mentioned is still a guy. He's in his eighties, but he's still -- he's working, and he's out and about every day, and he might be able to share some memories. Ron Seeds and his partner are up in Connecticut now, so they're a little removed but are still around and kicking. And I think still have good memories, good enough to be doing what we're doing here today, so they would certainly, certainly be two. I wish that Paul and Paul were alive because they would be terrific to talk to, but they are -- but they both have passed away. I'm drawing a blank. MF:Well, those are great, great names for us to follow up on. And I think I'll go ahead and close our time together simply by saying, it has been such a pleasure to hear some of your stories today. I have learned a lot both about reportage in our region and also Le-Hi-Ho and certainly activist organizations here. But I also love the stories about your childhood and going to Syracuse University, so I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for being with us today. RHW:You're very welcome. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:37:43
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Bob Wittman, August 23, 2019
Description
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Bob Wittman describes his life growing up gay in Allentown, reporting at The Morning Call, and the LGBT community within the Lehigh Valley.
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LGBT-02
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2019-08-23
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: COVID-19
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Brian Jones
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_09.xml
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5.4 July 9, 2020 Brian Jones, July 9, 2020 PH40_09 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- ; COVID-19 (Disease) Brian Jones Liz Bradbury video/mpeg JonesBrian_20200709_FinalEdit_video.mp4 1.0:|31(14)|56(8)|91(8)|128(5)|163(15)|180(5)|199(5)|218(5)|241(5)|260(9)|281(9)|312(3)|331(15)|354(2)|393(9)|416(11)|437(4)|458(18)|565(5)|584(5)|601(16)|622(9)|649(8)|674(6)|701(8)|718(17)|751(12)|770(4)|805(14)|820(6)|845(18)|870(5)|895(15)|926(4)|957(7)|980(13)|1007(13)|1034(9)|1061(4)|1092(6)|1147(8)|1168(7)|1191(8)|1220(10)|1239(7)|1260(2)|1297(4)|1320(5)|1339(5)|1360(15)|1395(4)|1418(16)|1443(11)|1458(2)|1471(5)|1482(15)|1491(17)|1508(6)|1527(7)|1546(5)|1569(7)|1590(5)|1609(8)|1628(14)|1647(13)|1668(3)|1687(4)|1736(2)|1755(15)|1784(14)|1809(17)|1830(5)|1857(14)|1880(2)|1893(6)|1926(3)|1971(3)|2014(6)|2071(3)|2100(11)|2131(2)|2164(13)|2201(8)|2236(7)|2285(2)|2324(8)|2361(13)|2384(10)|2409(6)|2446(4)|2475(8)|2514(9)|2541(8)|2572(6)|2607(2)|2636(11)|2667(10)|2700(5)|2731(11)|2766(7)|2797(10)|2830(5)|2857(10)|2886(13)|2925(2)|2948(4)|2973(12)|3010(5)|3051(5) 0 https://youtu.be/6PlrM8a4hxg YouTube video English 48 Interview Introductions LB: Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do and I’m going to pin the video on you. So, that’s good, and so that every time I talk and I go “uh-huh” it doesn’t flash back to me because that would be bad. (laughter) So, now we’re on record, that’s good, and we’re on the audio, record, so that’s terrific. [...] 0 206 Connections to LGBTQ+ Community
 ; LB: And, okay, so now -- we have some demographic questions on this. So, what we do want to do is ask people how they identify themselves in the LGBT community. So, do you identify as a gay man or a trans person or a bi person or what do you think? Anything you want to say.
 ; BJ: I identify as a cisgendered gay man. 0 271 Work Life LB: So, we’re going to ask a bunch of questions. And frankly, I’ve got all these prompts. I sent you all of that information. I don’t have to ask you these things individually. And, in fact, I think it’s a little confusing. So, I think you should just talk about how you feel about it and what you think. So, like, you know, have you been -- it looks like you’re at work, so you’re working, so why don’t you talk a little bit about work? 0 454 Status of MCC Lehigh Valley During COVID
 ; LB: [Yes?] [inaudible] [I’ll say?]. So, in terms of this stuff -- oh, wait a minute. That’s not what I want to do. In terms of this stuff, what are you doing at -- because we sort of imagined these interviews as somebody looking at this 30 years from now and they’re saying what was it like during the COVID stuff? So, what are you doing there at the church? Is everything the virtual -- are people coming in at all?
 ; BJ: We --
 ; LB: Are you starting to see anybody there? 0 948 Virtual Worship Services / Changing Modalities LB: Yeah, so do you think that might continue after you’re vaccinated and not a danger, perhaps, maybe, you know?
 ; BJ: I hope so. I’m a firm believer that the model, [00:16:00] the church model that most churches have been following for the last one hundred years, this twentieth century model of how you do church, hasn’t been working for forty years. 0 1064 Connections to Individuals with COVID / Being an Essential Worker
 ; LB: Yeah. How ‘bout you pers-- well, okay, so let’s segue into this. I know a lot of people -- and this is not true for me but I know a lot of people who don’t know anybody that was sick from coronavirus-19. Have there been people -- and I don’t want you to HIPAA them, you know? But I would guess that because the community in the church has a lot of outreach and personal relationships that there have been people who --
 ; BJ: There have been. I personally have lost three people in my family -- 0 1398 Communicating with Family & ; Friends
 ; LB: Yeah. So, do you have other people in your family that you have to sort of help to take care of or is it not that kind of circumstance?
 ; BJ: No, it’s not really that. Everybody is pretty much in clusters, so, you know, my mom and my stepfather and my sister and her kids, they all live in the same house. And, you know, my brother and his family are altogether. And my grandmother who lives with my other cousin. [...] 0 1702 Finding Queer Community During the COVID Era / Finding Ways to Pass the Time LB: Yeah. So, we have all these questions on this list about, you know, like, do you -- are you still finding queer community and stuff. Again, you’re not having any trouble with that. You’re always around all that. 
 ; BJ: [laughs] No, I’m not -- but I see it. I can see it in the people who walk through the door, partially because the queer community, for so many of our folks, is their family.
 ; LB: Right. 0 1894 Working During the COVID Pandemic LB: Do you find, like, right now, there -- I think the world is also divided into two sets of people and it’s people who are working way less and then working actually more.
 ; BJ: Yeah. 0 1987 Switching Things Up / Facing Discrimination
 ; LB: (inaudible) (laughter) absolutely. And so, (coughs) and wait a minute, let me cough a little bit here. (laughter) So, do you think that, I mean, you’re talking about how this has affected you and how -- you’re talking about content that you’re doing and doing more outreach to people. What could you describe as, like, the one thing that’s totally different that you’re doing before that turns out that it works pretty well? I mean, you’re talking a lot about outreach but you were already kind of doing that at MCC through Zoom or whatever you were using as a visual platform. What do you think about that? 0 2121 Getting Zoombombed
 ; BJ: [...] But it seems to be working. I mean, we got our first Zoom bomb last week on bible study. So, somebody knows about it. (laughs)
 ; LB: So, tell about that because people -- 0 2474 COVID's Effect on Mental Health LB: And that’s definitely the case. So, yeah. So, for you, personally, you think this is a -- and you’re sort of expressing this, that this is influencing your mental health, I would guess. It’s certainly doing mine.
 ; BJ: Oh, absolutely. You know, when this first started -- I’m a fairly even-keeled person. I’m well put together, I’ve -- you know, everybody has their issues but I can deal with a lot of stuff. [...] 0 2824 Dr. Rachel Levine / Politics LB: And I think -- now, one of -- things we’re lucky about in our community and in our Lehigh [00:51:00] Valley and also in the whole state of Pennsylvania is we have a wonderful secretary of health in my opinion. And it’s been positive and I think it’s been positive for -- have you felt that way? I mean, to have Dr. Rachel Levine speaking as a trans woman but also speaking as the incredible voice of science and reason.
 ; BJ: Yeah, for me it has been -- Dr. Levine has been just a voice of reason and of competence.
 ; 0 3141 Black Lives Matter Movement LB: Okay, great. Well, I do want to talk about Black Lives Matter and I’d love to hear what you want to talk about because I think in the world, in the United States today, we’ve got political issues, we’ve got this terrible pandemic, and we also have some very significant race issues that people need to be talking about. And so, what do you want to say about that? I mean, people may not know that 30 years from now and they may not understand that, so let’s talk about that.
 ; 0 3783 Intersectionality of Being Black & ; Gay in the Lehigh Valley BJ: I had not been that angry before. Like, I remember saying to Goudy that -- Goudy is the pastor at MCC Lehigh Valley. And I remember saying to them, “I can’t do this right now. I can’t be here right now because I’m about to pop.” (laughs)
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 0 4259 Finding Hope LB: I appreciate that. So, I guess that we’re at the end here and, you know, if you want to go on, that’s -- or I’ll give you some more time to say whatever you want to say. But I did want to ask you, you know, sort of in the end thing: what’s the thing, you know, what’s giving you hope, what kind of hope and strength are you getting from anything now that we just talked about all the annoying people that -- [laughter] [calling you?] up with their they’re desperately hav-- I have to feel good because -- so, I’m going to talk to Brian, so -- [laughter] 
 ; 0 4573 Allen High School GSA / 2000 Pride Festival LB: That’s great. Well, I, you know, I think of you as a very young person because I knew you when you were so young. [laughter] And did you go to Allen High School? You went to Allen High School.
 ; BJ: I did, I did. 0 5215 Importance of Visibility & ; Community
 ; BJ: -- and open. You take the lumps that you’re going to get and you just keep on moving. I mean, it’s -- and I would ask you a question. Do you know, do you and Trish understand -- I know you do ; it’s just philosophical -- but I really think that what y’all do, what we do, what people like Steve Libby do, you know, what we do is life and death.
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; BJ: Literal life and death.
 ; LB: I do know that’s true. 0 5434 MCC Lehigh Valley / Faith Community
 ; LB: Oh, you’ve done a great job at MCC. You know, I’m still recommending people to go to MCC. People will call me up and they’ll say -- and they’ve done this for years, because I’ve been answering the info line for twenty-two years. People call up and they’ll say, “I want to meet more people in the community.” Or, “I want a support group.” Now, we have support groups sort of now but not for just -- and I say, “You really need a support group or you just need to meet more queer people? [laughter] [Like?], meet other lesbians, for example.” And I’ll say, “You know, how do you feel about church?” “Yeah, I don’t have any problem with that.” “Okay, well, why don’t you go to MCC?” “Because they have to be nice to you there. It’s [work?]. (laughter) And they’ll shake your hand and then you can sit in the back.” And also, it’s every week. So, it’s not like, well, if I don’t have the nerve to do it this week -- 0 5737 Making Connections in the LGBTQ+ Community BJ: I would love to get your perspective on this. Even before COVID, had you been getting a sense that the LGBT community had -- I’ve kind of been getting the sense that the LGBT community had been coming -- disjointed. Not disjointed but -- that’s not the word I want to use. Disconnected. So, long-time institutions within our area closed over the last couple years. So, in cases like Diamonz and, like, 12th Street, what was it called? The bar on Twelfth Street.
 ; LB: Candida’s. 0 6468 Closing Remarks LB: [...] So, anyway, we’ve gone over the time but I loved talking to you! (laughter) And I’m so grateful that you’ve done this and it’s been wonderful to walk down memory lane, back to twenty years ago when we were --
 ; BJ: Twenty years ago! 0 MovingImage Brian Jones talks about the current COVID19 is affecting him and his family, his work at Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley, how it is affecting LGBTQ people, Black Lives Matter issues, and what gives him hope Brian Jones 2020-07-09 LIZ BRADBURY: -- also, I'm recording on the computer and I can see that's going. I'm going to start the audio recording now, too, and that's good. So, I'm going to read you this stuff. This is the same stuff that I sent you in an email and it's -- oh, turn off my phone. (laughs) BRIAN JONES: [Well, my?] phone's on silent. LB: Okay, that's smart. I have to turn mine off because I'm still -- I don't like to turn it off until I get you, in case you have to call me. So, there you go. And I'm going to pin you. So, let's see, how do we do that pinning thing? Wait a minute. BJ: Think you -- LB: Yeah, that's what I'm going to do and I'm going to pin the video on you. So, that's good, and so that every time I talk and I go "uh-huh" it doesn't flash back to me because that would be bad. (laughter) So, now we're on record, that's good, and we're on the audio, record, so that's terrific. So, with this project, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. And, let's see, I did all the stuff I'm supposed to do. My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with Brian Jones to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley community during this time of the COVID pandemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archives. Our project was funded from the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium. We are meeting on Zoom and this date is Thursday, July 9th, 2020. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today, Brian. And to start, can I please ask you to state your full name and spell it for me? BJ: My name is Brian Jones, spelled B-R-I-A-N J-O-N-E-S. LB: Great. And what is your birth date? BJ: June 5th, 1984. LB: Okay, and I also want to ask you: so, you're in Bethlehem now, I can tell by the background. BJ: Mm-hmm, [that's?] (inaudible) LB: Is that correct. I'm just going to write that in. Okay, that's good, because we have to put that in the metadata. Okay, so now, this is the consent part. Do you consent to this interview today? BJ: I do, yes. LB: Okay, wait a minute. Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? BJ: Yes. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, archives, websites, presentations, and other formats? BJ: Yes. LB: Yes. Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript, which means delivery to you, to review your interview and identify parts you would like to delete or change or withdraw your whole interview? You think, oh, I hate this, I'm going to -- but please don't do that -- withdraw it from the project. BJ: I -- yes, I do. LB: Okay. BJ: Yeah. LB: And, okay, so now -- we have some demographic questions on this. So, what we do want to do is ask people how they identify themselves in the LGBT community. So, do you identify as a gay man or a trans person or a bi person or what do you think? Anything you want to say. BJ: I identify as a cisgendered gay man. LB: Okay. Okay, what's your ZIP code? BJ: My home ZIP code? LB: Well, yeah, where you live. BJ: Where I work? Oh, I never know that. LB: No, where you live. BJ: Oh, where I live -- LB: Where you -- BJ: -- 18052. LB: Okay. And how old are you? BJ: I'm thirty-six. LB: Okay, and I've known you a long time, Brian. BJ: Yeah, since I was at least fifteen. (laughs) LB: Yeah. How do you identify with the -- oh, I already asked you that. Okay. And so, in general, what -- so, I don't have to write that. Oh, I see why that's going -- this is my first COVID interview, so that's why I'm going slow here. BJ: Okay. LB: So, we're going to ask a bunch of questions. And frankly, I've got all these prompts. I sent you all of that information. I don't have to ask you these things individually. And, in fact, I think it's a little confusing. So, I think you should just talk about how you feel about it and what you think. So, like, you know, have you been -- it looks like you're at work, so you're working, so why don't you talk a little bit about work? BJ: Okay. Well, I work for Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley in Bethlehem. And it's a congregation that primarily serves the LGBT community here in the Lehigh Valley. And I think, like a lot of organizations, non-profits, everybody, (laughs) we're doing the best that we can with the situation. LB: Yeah. BJ: It has been very interesting, difficult, disconcerting when your job is about community, when your everything that you do revolves around a community of people gathering and being able to support each other through the gatherings, whether it be during a Sunday morning service or a program that's after -- throughout the week or whatever it might be. When that is what you do, primarily, when you lose that, your communal identity suffers and goes through changes. You as a professional who is responsible for helping to create community, you kind of go through a -- what's your purpose, what am I doing, how do I do this kind of thing? So, it has been, work has been quite interesting for me, personally, at MCC Lehigh Valley, trying to maintain the ship, trying to keep things moving and going, but also mourning the loss of that connectivity, of those things you look for, too, throughout the week. LB: Right. BJ: It has been very -- it's been more isolating for me than I thought it was going to be. At heart, I am extreme introvert. (laughs) So, I'm used to -- I'm very, very comfortable being alone. I'm very comfortable being in isolation. But this is a whole 'nother ball game. (laughs) LB: [Yes?] (inaudible) [I'll say?]. So, in terms of this stuff -- oh, wait a minute. That's not what I want to do. In terms of this stuff, what are you doing at -- because we sort of imagined these interviews as somebody looking at this 30 years from now and they're saying what was it like during the COVID stuff? So, what are you doing there at the church? Is everything the virtual -- are people coming in at all? BJ: We -- LB: Are you starting to see anybody there? BJ: We are -- so, when we were in the red phase and the yellow phase, we were primarily doing everything online. And we are still doing almost absolutely everything online. Our worship services, we actually added another service in the week that we do online, on a Thursday. And all of our educational stuff is online. Since we've moved into the green phase, we have opened up the worship service to an extremely limited number of people. So, we only allow twenty-five people into the space and they must maintain social distancing. They don't come in until fifteen minutes before the service begins and as soon as it's over, they are out the door. And they are spread out throughout the sanctuary. That is the only real time that we have numbers of people come into the space. LB: They're wearing masks and stuff? BJ: Yeah, they're all masked. So, they're only in one Sunday, one day a week, on Sundays. And, you know, we did all the measurements and stuff in the sanctuary and we pretty much came to the conclusion that to give six foot radius around a person or a couple or, you know, whatever it might be, we really can only fit, max, thirty people into this space. It's a large room but when you count in twelve feet around somebody, it's a completely different ballgame. So, we -- they're masked, they come in, they sit, they're assigned seats, so that we, you know, we put them, we put the people where they can maintain social distancing. They're not able to get up and just go do what -- you know, it's a massive cultural shift, specifically for this community, which -- you know, the LGBT community is a close community. When you get in your pockets, you become really close to people. LB: Sure. BJ: And it's quite interesting to watch everybody have -- people who look at each other as family having to maintain that distance. You know, and in the Christian church context of things and how we handle worship, I'm the worship director, the musical workshop director here. And it's weird, you know? Music and singing and whatnot is very important to the Christian experience and act of worship and they're not allowed to sing. So, it's very, very weird to have people in a sanctuary when you are -- I've been doing this since I was a kid. I mean, we've known each other since I was a teenager. LB: Right. BJ: And I was doing it before I met you and I think I met you when I was fifteen. LB: Yes. BJ: So, I've been doing this for a long time and I have never led worship in a sanctuary with people in a room where they weren't singing back at me. LB: Yeah. BJ: Or they weren't doing the liturgy or anything like that. So, they're prohibited from doing that. I'm the only person in the room, when we're singing, who's singing. LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: So, it's very interesting. It's a very weird experience. It's changed a lot and, you know, the process that we're trying to figure out right now is how do we maintain a sense of community with one another? And, you know, we're trying to get there, we're struggling, just like everybody else is. LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: You know? And the options for people in a church setting, the options for people have quadrupled because they're all at home. So, you can, if you want to watch a worship experience, you know, places that were -- you know, we don't like using the words competition but we're, you know, it's a reality. And places that were never competition for us before are now competition for us. So, we're dealing with all that stuff. LB: I don't know that people in the future will understand what you mean by that but you're talking about, like, there's television church things that people can watch. BJ: Yep, and there's television church, there's, like, professional televangelist kind of church stuff. But, at the same time, the church around the corner from us, you know, who was not online four months ago is online now. LB: [Yeah, that's a good point?] -- BJ: So, you know, every church that is still trying to maintain has all -- every church has become a broadcast church. So, you know, people and places and things you had never seen before, you now can see and you're dealing with that. So, the need to improve your content, the need to -- it's conversations we have never had before, the need to improve your content, improve your quality, to improve, you know, what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like are real conversations that we're having at the local church level -- LB: Right. BJ: -- you know, that megachurches would have. But at the local church level, when you have a congregation of maybe 100 people, you're not really having that conversation. But now, you are, so -- LB: Right, it's pretty interesting. It's a different thing. Of course, megachurches are now in that circumstance where they were broadcasting and then everybody's broadcasting -- BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: -- so I wonder if that's influencing them, too -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- some ways. BJ: Yeah. LB: It's a whole different story. BJ: But the other thing is that what it has done for us, though -- I mean, we've had our online presence for a while. LB: Right. BJ: We were well-positioned to make this change, to be able to facilitate this change, and to facilitate it at a level, a quality level that other churches our size really couldn't do and a lot of them still aren't able to do it. But we can do multiple cameras and, you know, all that different kind of -- so, we have that going for us. But what it has done -- you know, our focus had been so much on the Lehigh Valley but we now have people who are engaging with us and worshipping with us who are in Poland and who are in Germany and who are in Canada and who are -- you know, so we're getting people from all over the place who are engaging with MCC Lehigh Valley. LB: Yeah, so do you think that might continue after you're vaccinated and not a danger, perhaps, maybe, you know? BJ: I hope so. I'm a firm believer that the model, the church model that most churches have been following for the last one hundred years, this twentieth century model of how you do church, hasn't been working for forty years. LB: Sure. BJ: And it became this -- not to get political but it became this capitalist kind of numbers game and that's what the value was, and how many people you'd get through the door, not, you know, how -- that's what it became. And when it becomes about that, it actually stops becoming about people and it actually stops becoming about what you're supposed to be doing. So, I think what has happened with COVID is that it has peeled back layers of institutionalism and systems that are about power and things like that. It's pulled back those layers of things and it's exposed you for who you actually are and what you actually can do. And it's making you, as a -- it's making us, as a community and as -- the church as a universal -- have to really step back and reexamine how we do what we do. LB: Yeah. BJ: And I think for the better. I think for the better. LB: Yeah. How 'bout you pers-- well, okay, so let's segue into this. I know a lot of people -- and this is not true for me but I know a lot of people who don't know anybody that was sick from coronavirus-19. Have there been people -- and I don't want you to HIPAA them, you know? But I would guess that because the community in the church has a lot of outreach and personal relationships that there have been people who -- BJ: There have been. I personally have lost three people in my family -- LB: Really? BJ: -- to COVID, yeah. LB: Oh, my gosh. BJ: The realities for minority communities -- LB: Yeah. BJ: (inaudible) Black communities, you know, those numbers that were coming out from the Black community about the spread of COVID, they weren't false statistics. The Black community has been hit really hard by COVID. LB: Yeah. BJ: And I lost a cousin, Eddie. I lost another cousin, Jaime. And I lost another cousin, [Sheila?]. LB: Oh, my gosh. BJ: Yeah, it was -- it's been very -- it's been a hard few months, because, you know, I've never mourned this way before. And in part, because in my family I'm a spiritual leader. I'm not just one for MCC Lehigh Valley but I'm a patriarch in my family already. And so, when something happens, I respond to those things. If there's a funeral in the family, well, somebody's going to call me to provide some kind of -- either music or song or help lead the service or whatnot. So, you know, I've done, so far, at least 10 funerals that were COVID funerals. LB: Yeah. BJ: I generally, in a year, might do fourteen or fifteen funerals. I've already done seventeen funerals this year -- LB: Gosh. BJ: -- ten of which were COVID funerals, three of which were my family. LB: Oh, golly. BJ: And eight of those funerals, eight, maybe -- I've been keeping these numbers in my head. Nine of those funerals that I did were on Zoom. LB: Yeah. BJ: (laughs) So, you know, it's a whole 'nother -- the thing that I will say about what COVID has done to my family and me personally is that it has taken away the ability for family to be family when you absolutely need family to be family, you know, when you got to watch your grandmother cry at a funeral through a Zoom video, it's a little -- it's tough, you know? LB: Right. BJ: So, I personally have lost three people. I know -- and they were -- so, in my family altogether that I know of, eight people have had COVID. Three of them did not make it. The other five have made it, two of which are really -- they're on the other side of it but it really is a beast for them. A couple of them, my two cousins who were positive for it, they didn't even know they were positive for it. Like, they didn't even -- they had no symptoms whatsoever. And because they were all in the same house, they got tested and they were positive, but nothing. They never had a symptom, never had any issues, nothing. But my uncle and my other cousin really struggled through it. Really struggled through it. So, yeah. LB: So, are you, in your own household, are you by yourself in your household, do you have other people in your household? What's -- BJ: It's just me, my husband, and my dog. LB: Okay. (laughter) Okay. BJ: Yes. LB: So, the two of you -- does he have to work, too? because you have to go out -- BJ: Yeah, we're both essential employees. So, I'm essential by nature of the church work. But I can work -- I can satellite from home more often than I can't. He works in warehouse work. LB: Oh. BJ: So, he goes in every day. My husband is the hardest working guy I know. Goes in every single day. And he was working for another company in the Lehigh Valley that he actually was a higher-up in. He was in, like, a management level. And when COVID first hit, the company didn't seem to be taking it seriously. And, you know, they were starting to get cases in the warehouse but they weren't reporting them, they weren't telling the employees that they were getting the cases. But then, the employees all knew because they all know each other. So, they would all -- like, somebody would get test, would be tested positive. And, you know, they would send a Facebook message to folks, "Listen, I tested positive for this. I'm going to be gone for a while." But nobody in the higher-ups would say anything. So, he and his department, a person in his department, tested positive -- that he was running. So, it was his department of, like, six or seven people. This person tested positive, had been close to all of them, and called out -- the company did not tell them but they knew because the person told them. So, they all quarantined themselves and they -- only two of them went back. My husband decided he's not -- they're not taking it seriously. LB: Did you say that your husband tested positive or he was tested? BJ: He was tested and he was negative but he stayed in quarantine because the person who had contracted it -- so, you know, he decided he just -- he wasn't going back there. He wasn't staying there. So, he moved to another warehouse where he is not a higher-up anymore. He's just a grunt at this point. But, you know, this place where he's at now, they're taking everything seriously, they have all the PPE, they have all the cleaning, the sanitizing stations and all that different kind of stuff. So, yeah, so we have -- it's just us and, you know, we both realize that because we both have to go out for work, him more than me, you know, he realizes that he's exposed, even with all the protection that they can give. But we've developed a whole system at home on how to come into the house and how to, you know, sanitize yourself and, you know, before you come in and get your clothes off and all that different kind of stuff, so -- LB: Right, yeah. BJ: -- just become a way of the world, I guess. (laughs) LB: Right, it has. We hardly go out at all. But if we bring things in -- I mean, once in a while, I have to go to the Center, I have to -- we had to go to a doctor's appointment or something like that. We come in and we take off all our clothes, wash all our clothes. BJ: Yeah. LB: It's -- you have to do that and -- BJ: What we do, like, we try to order as much into the house as we possibly can and try to avoid going out any more than we absolutely have to. LB: Yeah. BJ: You know? LB: Yeah. So, do you have other people in your family that you have to sort of help to take care of or is it not that kind of circumstance? BJ: No, it's not really that. Everybody is pretty much in clusters, so, you know, my mom and my stepfather and my sister and her kids, they all live in the same house. And, you know, my brother and his family are altogether. And my grandmother who lives with my other cousin. And so, everybody is all together. The weird thing is that everybody, my mom, my sister, they're all essential employees. So, my mom works for -- she's a care worker and my sister is, also. And my brother is a warehouse worker at my grandmother's, where my cousin, she's a nurse. So, everybody, we're -- everybody's out. And we're not just out but they're out in places where they can very well be exposed, so -- LB: Golly, that's really -- BJ: Yeah. (laughs) LB: I guess you're the perfect first interview to have. (laughter) I was afraid, you know, people, like, "Well, yeah, I'm not really going out" and -- BJ: (laughs) No. LB: (laughs) So, are you using, like, video technology with your family, too, like other people? BJ: Not really. We've been doing -- we've been mostly text and phone. LB: Yeah. BJ: You know, if we see each other, you know, my mom will come over to the apart-- to where we live but won't come in. So, we'll, like, we'll sit out in our yard and just chat. Or my brother and his kids will come over and the kids'll just run around the yard and we'll all sit out and grill or whatever. But we're trying to, like, maintain those familial relationships but also -- you know, it's weird to not be able to give my mom a kiss. LB: I know. BJ: (laughs) It's so weird. I think that might be the hardest part of it. Like, there are two people in the world who I -- when I see them, I must absolutely embrace them. LB: Yeah. BJ: And it's my mom and my husband and it's been so, like, so weird to not be able to do that. LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: Yeah. LB: Yeah, I think, actually, if you can -- I think about people who are living alone -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- all the time and how must -- how that's just so hard. BJ: We, at MCC Lehigh Valley, one of the main reasons we decided that we had to at least open up the worship experience to a select -- a small number of people -- because there are so many people in the LGBT community who are, even in the best of times, isolated. LB: Yeah. BJ: And to be completely isolated from everything must be very difficult. I was talking to my guitar player here and -- single guy, lives alone, and I was asking him, you know, "How is this? How's it been?" He was, like, "It's been extremely hard." And he's someone with -- who does not have any emotional circumstances or anything like that and he's, like, "This is really hard on your mentality. It's really, really hard." So, I can't imagine. I really can't imagine going through it without anybody. LB: Yeah, I can't either. It's so hard. I mean, I have a sister who -- I taught her how to use Zoom so that I could talk to her. And I became aware, I said to my -- to Trish, "I have to talk to her more" because she's by herself and she's -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- so much older than I am, so she's really by herself. BJ: Yeah. LB: She does have friends where she is and she can go to their yard and stuff like that. But, yeah, it's tough. BJ: It's tough. LB: Yeah. BJ: It's tough. LB: Yeah. So, we have all these questions on this list about, you know, like, do you -- are you still finding queer community and stuff. Again, you're not having any trouble with that. You're always around all that. BJ: (laughs) No, I'm not -- but I see it. I can see it in the people who walk through the door, partially because the queer community, for so many of our folks, is their family. LB: Right. BJ: I mean, for so many of our folks. And I don't think we still -- I think we like to think, a lot of the times, be in this -- in 2020 that people are -- that things are somehow better than they were 20 or 30 years ago. And in many, many, many ways they are. They absolutely are. But people still lose their families, people still lose friends and, you know, all that different kind of stuff by affirming who they really are. And the need for the LGBT community to be community is still a primary need. It's still a primary need for us to be family for each other. So, that loss of not being able to go to Stonewall or not being able to go to, you know -- it's a big loss. LB: Yeah, right, right. BJ: It's a big loss. LB: Yeah. Yeah, it really is. So, are you doing anything that's -- besides, you know, your behavior is different, are you doing different things? You're thinking, like, let's start a new hobby because we can't go out and do these things. Seems like you've got a lot of stuff that you do, so I would guess that that's not something that you're doing, I don't know. BJ: I'm just getting better at trying to, well, trying to get better at the things I already know how to do. So, like the broadcasting -- creating content and broadcasting stuff and learning how to use all of those different softwares and things like that. I'm just trying to dig into that because I think it's going to be a vital part of where we go for the next couple years, you know? And so, that's what I'm doing. But I did, because we did just move to Whitehall and we have a little spot at our place that has a little garden nook. So, I decided, well, I got some time and let's get dirty. So, I started a little garden there. So, that's something new for me that I never did before. (laughs) LB: Do you find, like, right now, there -- I think the world is also divided into two sets of people and it's people who are working way less and then working actually more. BJ: Yeah. LB: You think you fall into either of those categories? BJ: I've been doing this at MCC for fifteen years now and I've worked really hard. LB: Yeah. BJ: I've never worked harder than I am working right now. LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: I've never put in as much time as I'm putting in now. I've always done more hours and more time than what I'm supposed to do in a week. But the need is so high right now and, like I said before, my work has been to keep the ship running and keep us online and keep the content coming and all the different kind of stuff. So, it's just from one service to the next service, it's just trying to produce the next thing and produce the next thing. I mean, we're literally producing right now what amounts to two-and-a-half hours of television. (laughs) LB: Yeah. BJ: And that doesn't sound like a lot but that's a lot. (laughs) That's a lot. You know, there are people whose full time job is just to do one hour of something. (laughs) LB: Sure, half hour. BJ: Yeah. LB: (inaudible) (laughter) absolutely. And so, (coughs) and wait a minute, let me cough a little bit here. (laughter) So, do you think that, I mean, you're talking about how this has affected you and how -- you're talking about content that you're doing and doing more outreach to people. What could you describe as, like, the one thing that's totally different that you're doing before that turns out that it works pretty well? I mean, you're talking a lot about outreach but you were already kind of doing that at MCC through Zoom or whatever you were using as a visual platform. What do you think about that? BJ: What is new that we're doing that is working well? LB: So, I'm, like -- so, like, at some point, you might be going, like, let's try to do it this way and it turns out, wow, that turned out to be great! (laughter) Let's do that! Let's do more of that! Because we're finding that at the Center. We're finding certain things that we didn't -- like, we didn't think we'd be able to do any arts and cultural things. It turns out that that's been huge. The book club has gone from, like, six people to fifteen people. BJ: Oh, wow. LB: So, we've added all these other, like, author reading events and we have a poetry club now and, you know, where people talk about reading poetry books because they've been very, very successful. It's turned out to be very successful to do that. We have so many things we can't fit them into all of our social media platforms -- BJ: Okay. LB: -- which is interesting. BJ: Oh, I wish there was more that we were doing in that way. I mean, we have shifted most of the things that we were already doing as far as people connecting to each other to Zoom or to online, our Sunday schools, our education -- all of that stuff is online. I think we're surprised that that's working, just by the -- like, our bible study stuff, just by the nature of what it is it kind of feels like it's better to be in the room to be able to do it. But it seems to be working. I mean, we got our first Zoom bomb last week on bible study. So, somebody knows about it. (laughs) LB: So, tell about that because people -- BJ: I was not part of it. I was not there. I got the email after the fact. But we got what a lot of minority communities are getting with these Zoom bombs. So, we got at least -- I think it was some -- I think [Gaudi?] said something like ten people -- LB: Wow! BJ: -- chimed into the Zoom and they were writing, on the screens, anti-LGBT sentiments. LB: (inaudible) and this is in bible study? BJ: This was during our bible study. LB: Oh, gracious. BJ: So, what happened was they closed the Zoom meeting down and then they started it up again and created a waiting room so that nobody could just come in. And, you know, we did a check in with everybody who was there to make sure that, you know, they were okay -- LB: Yeah. BJ: -- and spent some time decompressing from that and then went back to bible study. You know, again, this new reality, people have really figured out how to be shitty. (laughs) LB: No kidding. No kidding. And, you know, just to put this in context, because I appreciate you talking about this, but, I mean, this is the sanctuary. This is the church. This is where people are supposed to go and feel totally supported and accepted and safe. And then, somebody does this in the bible study, for heaven's sakes. I mean, it's like a joke, you know? Like, if it wasn't so horribly serious and terrible, it could be like this joke. Guess what happened in bible study today? (laughter) You know? BJ: You know, Liz, the thing that -- I have seen people act their absolute best during this. I've seen humanity at its, like, okay, okay, here we go. And then, I've seen, like, just absolute depth of evilness through all of this. LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: So, yeah, nothing really surprises me anymore. LB: Yeah. BJ: In fact, I -- this could be part of the conversation because I -- part of what I think COVID has done is also desensitized some of us to some of this stuff because there's such an onslaught of it that you just, oh, okay, just another day -- LB: [Crazy?] thing, yeah. BJ: Yeah. You know, a year ago, something like that had happened at MCC Lehigh Valley, the alarm bells would have gone off and, you know, all the wagons would have circled and all that. And right now, yeah, like, there was no -- there was, I think because so many of us are exhausted, (laughs) there was no, like, real -- there was a response, we dealt with it, we did what we had to do, we kept moving on. But normally, we would have, like, an outcry. LB: Yeah. BJ: And -- LB: So, did you think that that happened because you had posted the Zoom connection, the Zoom link in a public place and then people just got through it? Or -- BJ: I think so. LB: -- somebody that you send it out to actually leak it or somebody, like, in their household or something leak it? BJ: It could have been a bunch of things. You know, this happened -- when did we do -- we had Susan Wild -- LB: Oh, yeah, that was just last week. BJ: Just this past week. LB: Yeah. BJ: So, Susan Wild, congresswoman for this area, what I kind of think happened was we posted that and we sent that out to a bunch of places. LB: Yeah. BJ: And I believe that Susan Wild's offices sent that out, as well. So, I think that got our Zoom account out to a bunch of places. (laughs) LB: Got you on the radar. BJ: Yeah, got us on the radar of people. LB: All over the country, really -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- which is a very significant -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- yeah. BJ: And you never, I mean, people who like you are on your mailing list and the people who want to see you gone are on your mailing list, you know? LB: Right. BJ: So, everybody gets everything. So, it could have been a number of things. LB: Yeah. What a shock. I didn't even know that happened, you know? BJ: Yeah. LB: That's what I'm saying, because, like, you're right, if this had happened, like, two years ago, we would have been all coming out and doing (laughter) [if somebody had?] come into the church and done a -- well, I've done that! BJ: Yeah. LB: Trish and John are like -- "What is -- Liz and Trish doing in the church?" Said, "Well, you guys got, you know" -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- "got the anti-people out there," so we're there, you know? BJ: Yeah. LB: That's what we'll do. And now, we're, ah, what the heck, [it's happening?]. BJ: (laughs) Yeah, you know? LB: Gosh. I guess -- BJ: How things have changed, yeah. (laughs) LB: Yeah, there are times when -- and, I don't know, I guess we have to realize that this kind of discrimination happens to people all the time. And the older you are, the more you know -- [in this?] -- where it's happened. BJ: Yeah. LB: And that's definitely the case. So, yeah. So, for you, personally, you think this is a -- and you're sort of expressing this, that this is influencing your mental health, I would guess. It's certainly doing mine. BJ: Oh, absolutely. You know, when this first started -- I'm a fairly even-keeled person. I'm well put together, I've -- you know, everybody has their issues but I can deal with a lot of stuff. And I do not have a history of panic attacks or anxiety attacks or anything like that. When this first started for, like, the first month, I was not sleeping and part of it was -- I mean, every time I would try to doze off, I could feel my heart start racing and everything started, like -- and just anxiety to fall asleep because, like, if I fall asleep and I -- if I fall asleep, it's going to get me. (laughs) You know, it's that kind of thing. LB: Yeah. BJ: I'm going to wake up tomorrow and things are going to be completely different. The first couple months were really hard. The number of times having to hold my husband to sleep at night because he's, you know, breaking down, you know? And I had my breakdown, too, my crying fit, mostly wrapped around our families because we're very close to our families and not being able to go see them was really difficult, and worrying about them. It did very much wear on my mental health for a while. Now, I'm better. I think it's had time, the shock of it all has had time to settle in, and the reality that this is life for the time being has had time to settle in. The thing I think I'm struggling with right now that I'm trying to get under control for myself, just for my own personal day-to-day, is trying to get over being angry. because I don't know about you but -- LB: Oh, yeah, I'm furious. BJ: -- I am -- LB: I'm angry all the time, yeah. BJ: -- all the time. LB: Yeah. BJ: How in the hell did we get here? LB: Right. BJ: How did this happen and how do we have such ineptitude in our systems and things that should be dealing with this stuff and the anger of the ignorance of people. LB: Right. BJ: Of the lack of empathy and compassion. LB: Yeah. BJ: You know? This is a time capsule, right? So, the number of people who during this pandemic that have just decided that selfishness is the way to go. LB: Yeah, shocking. BJ: That not being concerned about the other person is good, that -- you know, and I work in the church community. And, you know, MCC Lehigh Valley is a very progressive, inclusive congregation. But I can tell you that from -- in the church world, church universal not MCC Lehigh Valley but just church universal, you know, you got some wing bats. (laughs) You got a lot of them who, for some reason, they can't deal with science, they can't deal with just the realities of how the world works because it's contrary to what a book says, which is not true in the first place but -- LB: Right. BJ: -- (laughs) but they've convinced themselves of that. So, you know, if the doctor is not a spokesperson for God so I'm not going to listen to what the doctor says, you know? Are you -- what? (laughs) LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: It's, like, what? LB: Yeah, what? Yeah. BJ: It's, like, what? LB: Yeah. BJ: So, you know, a lot of this, I firmly believe that a lot of this insanity that we're dealing with -- my grandmother used to tell me that church folk are the worst folk. (laughter) And I've worked and been in church all my life and I agree with her. So, a lot of what we're dealing with in this country, in this Christian country -- LB: Yeah. BJ: -- if we didn't have so many self-righteous religious folk, we might be in a better situation. (laughs) LB: Yeah. It's interesting in that people don't always understand the concept of faith -- so, faith doesn't mean you just believe in things that aren't true just because you want it to be that way. (laughter) You know? BJ: Yeah. LB: And I think -- now, one of -- things we're lucky about in our community and in our Lehigh Valley and also in the whole state of Pennsylvania is we have a wonderful secretary of health in my opinion. And it's been positive and I think it's been positive for -- have you felt that way? I mean, to have Dr. Rachel Levine speaking as a trans woman but also speaking as the incredible voice of science and reason. BJ: Yeah, for me it has been -- Dr. Levine has been just a voice of reason and of competence. LB: Yeah. BJ: And, for me, her being a trans woman is just icing on the cake for me. But I'm just happy that there is an adult in the room. (laughs) You know, I'm happy that our -- the governor has put someone in a position that knows what they're talking about and is not going to be bent by needing to be liked or needing to meet some political agenda or anything like that, is just going to tell you, from what they know, from their expertise, what is real and what is not. And Dr. Levine has been that in Pennsylvania. And thank God for her because, you know, looking at some of these other places, some of these other states who have just sheep (laughs) in leadership positions? LB: I think that's a generous way of describing -- BJ: Yeah. (laughs) So, you know, Dr. Levine has been just competence. That's all I'm looking for right now: somebody who is competent. LB: Yeah, I just read -- now this is a little bit of -- partisan, but I can say that the candidate who is running against the President of the United States had -- and there's a meme that says, "I will read you my positions on all of these issues." And the response at the bottom is, "You had me at 'I will read.'" (laughter) So, you know, I mean, there is something to be said for somebody who is a leader, whether it's Governor Wolf here in Pennsylvania or Dr. Rachel Levine who gets up and, you know, "Where are the kits?" We're looking to somebody who'd come forward and say, "Okay, calm down." BJ: Yeah. LB: "These are the situations. Yes, this is hard." And if you look at the history of -- you know, the recent history of the last two hundred years, when we have people who are in leadership and they can calm the people down, they can say, "We have to work hard" -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- "we have to work together." BJ: Yeah. LB: "And this is dangerous but we're going to deal with it." BJ: That's just -- LB: "And I'm in it with you." That's what we want! That's all we want! BJ: It's -- LB: And [we're going to take that?] from either side of the aisle but we're not getting that. BJ: It doesn't matter which side. No, I mean, the -- I was, when the pandemic first started, I would occasionally be going to MCC or from MCC. And where I was living before, I had to go by Bucky Boyle. And I would occasionally just go to Bucky Boyle and sit there and look at the river. And I remember, distinctly remember the day that former President Obama put out his support for Biden, for the candidate, that I pulled over and he came on live. LB: Yeah. BJ: And he just looked at the camera and started talking. And he was talking about the pandemic, he was talking about all this different stuff, and I distinctly remember my body changing. I distinctly remember my shoulders relaxing and my jaw stopped being tense and I'm, like, oh! LB: Yeah. BJ: This is what a leader actually sounds like. This is what somebody -- this is how you tell people, you know, this is going to suck but we can make it. This is how you do it. I'm, like, that's all we need -- I don't need to like you. (laughs) I just need you to tell me that we know what we're doing, you know? And we don't have that. We don't have that right now. LB: We're in the middle of a time, and we're coming to the end of this, but -- and, you know, we can go for a little bit longer. I actually have more time. It depends. But I know that you've got a lot of stuff to do. BJ: I got a little time, yeah. (laughs) LB: Okay, great. Well, I do want to talk about Black Lives Matter and I'd love to hear what you want to talk about because I think in the world, in the United States today, we've got political issues, we've got this terrible pandemic, and we also have some very significant race issues that people need to be talking about. And so, what do you want to say about that? I mean, people may not know that 30 years from now and they may not understand that, so let's talk about that. BJ: So, this brother, George Floyd, is executed in the streets -- and long execution. They -- not -- the people who murdered him didn't even have the decency to end his life quickly. LB: Yeah. BJ: He had enough time to use his few last breaths to call out to his mother, to call out to his dead mother. And when I saw that part of it -- the reality for a Black man in this country is it doesn't matter where you are class-wise. None of that matters. George Floyd could easily have been me, very easily, you know? And I don't know a Black person in this country who has not had a bad experience with law enforcement. I've had my share of them and most people who know me know my character and who I am and they would be surprised of how I personally have been treated by -- some of my experiences with the police. George Floyd is executed. We see it. We see the nonchalance of those who were involved in it, that this guy is just another number, is just, is -- this is -- you could see in that, this is something y'all do on a regular basis, isn't it? This is the way you treat people on a regular basis. And I think part of the reality that we're facing right now is that the reaction to the execution of George Floyd is not simply about George Floyd. This is not about one man. He just happens to be the light for the gasoline, a light that we've lit a few times before. But we -- let me be right back, because my computer's getting ready to die. I'm at four percent, so -- and I want to finish this thought. Give me one second. (laughs) LB: Okay. (pause) BJ: Okay, there we go. Oh. (laughs) So, what we're seeing right now is all of it. I mean, what you're seeing right now -- I've been Black all my life (laughs) and I have seen the Black community respond before. I've never seen anything like this. I've asked my grandmother, you know, "Has it been worse?" She's, "Yeah, it's been a lot worse." But she's never seen the Black community respond like this. And, you know, she lived through civil rights and Jim Crow and all that different kind of stuff. So, she's, like, "I've never seen the response on a community level." And I think part of it is COVID. LB: Yeah. BJ: Because we're all at home. LB: Right. BJ: So, we all have so much -- we have time to sit with this stuff and decide whether we're going to sit with it. LB: Right. BJ: And, you know, I think we are in a -- I think we have reached a turning point. And I do firmly believe that this system, this government, this way of living for the last 400 years of oppression and -- under oppression under white supremacy that very much still exists. I mean, very -- I mean, you can drive down Eighth Street in Allentown right now on the south side and there's a house over there that has a flag hanging out of it with swastikas on it. You can -- right now, you can drive over there and see that. This is a reality. But I think the reckoning has arrived. I don't think there's a way around this. If you don't do it now, it's going to be a bigger problem. If we don't fix this now, it will get fixed one way or the other. And, you know, I have never seen my community respond like this. I've never seen parts of the white community respond like this, all over the place, you know? Everybody knows that this is a real thing. LB: Right. BJ: Even those who pretend like it's not. LB: Yep. BJ: You ask them, okay, so, you talk about pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps and just getting over some things and -- because you did it. You were able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps in your life and do -- let me ask you this question. Would you want to still do everything you did through your life but be Black while doing it, knowing the reality of this country? LB: Yeah. BJ: And I don't think those folks would answer in the affirmative, "Yeah, I'd happily be Black and still try to do what I did." So, I think there is a reckoning coming, you know? I was talking to a friend of mine here at the church who is a woman of color. She's Asian, woman of color. And , you know, she said, "We all deal with discrimination. We all deal with the oppression of living in a country that's modeled off of white supremacy. We all deal with it." LB: Yeah. BJ: But she said, "You know, the one thing that all of us other minorities know" and that they have conversations about is at least they're not Black. (laughter) Because they know full well that it would be a heck of a lot harder (laughs) if they were Black. LB: Yeah. BJ: You know? And they deal with their own stuff. But I think there's a change coming. I am heartened by the response of people. I'm not surprised by the outrage of others. It's going to be what it's going to be but I firmly believe that if we don't deal with this now, if we just don't deal with the ugliness of who we actually are as a country now, it's going to get a heck of a lot worse. LB: Right, right, right. BJ: So, yeah, it's been rough. It's been -- you know, I had to take a week off shortly after the George Floyd incident happened because I hadn't -- you know, talking about being angry? LB: Yeah. BJ: I had not been that angry before. Like, I remember saying to Goudy that -- Goudy is the pastor at MCC Lehigh Valley. And I remember saying to them, "I can't do this right now. I can't be here right now because I'm about to pop." (laughs) LB: Yeah. BJ: And nobody here has ever seen me pop. So, like, I -- and the reality for -- I am -- here is the line that I walk. I am an openly Black -- well, openly Black, yeah. I'm openly Black. (laughs) I'm an openly gay Black man in the Lehigh Valley. LB: Right. BJ: The Lehigh Valley, it's a really good experiment of what supremacy looks like, (laughs) in real time action, you know? There is no Black community here. There are Black people. There's no Black community. And that's not by accident. You don't -- I still always wonder how we are 45 miles from Philadelphia, one of the densest populated cities in the country in relation to Black folk with a huge Black populations and how there are very few Black folks, respectively, in the Lehigh Valley. LB: Yeah. BJ: You know? Those lines of delineation are really, really strong in the Lehigh Valley, you know, where urban life ends and rural life begins, it is clear as day. It's, you know, and there's no passing through it. So, my experience is that I'm an openly gay Black man who works in a religious institution that is a predominantly white religious institution of people who belong to a minority group but also belong to the majority group who don't always understand how they benefit from their privilege simply because they belong to a minority group. LB: Right. BJ: But the difference is you can walk out of this place and be a white person and not be an LGBT person, you know what I'm saying? You can take those clothes off if you want to. LB: Yeah. BJ: I could walk through west end Allentown in a rainbow thong and streamers out of my hair and sparklers going off and just Pride-d out. And when they make the phone call, the phone call is going to be, "There's a Black guy walking down the street, causing a ruckus." LB: Right. BJ: I doesn't mat-- I could be as -- as I want to be. And that's the reality. That's the reality for so many people in this area. And it's a rough one to be in. So, I had to walk away from the church for a week or so, you know, trying to manage my own stuff. Also, this is going to be a little weird, but trying to manage my own stuff but also trying to -- how do I say this? The people that have been the hardest to deal with through this are not the -- your conservative -- LB: Right. BJ: I know where they're at. LB: Yeah. BJ: For me, it has been the white liberal progressives who have been the hardest to deal with with this because they don't understand you may be white, liberal progressive but you're still white and you still benefit -- LB: It's still racist. BJ: -- from the privilege, yeah. You still have all of that -- there's no way you don't. LB: It's racism. BJ: Yeah. LB: It's impossible not to be a -- BJ: Impossible. LB: -- racist in this country. BJ: It's impossible and -- LB: It's impossible for anybody to not be a racist, no matter -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- what their race is because we're -- BJ: It's hard. LB: -- constant-- there's so much societal racism. BJ: And it's systemic. LB: (inaudible) BJ: It's been written into our -- the core of who we are as a society to not trust each other and to not -- you know, in the back of our heads, it's always there. It's always there. You know, my biggest frustration, I think that first couple weeks after all of this happened was the number of people, the number of white folk who I had not talked to in maybe years who either texted me or called me to ask me if I'm okay and ask me what they can do -- and I'm, like, I know you mean well. LB: Yes. BJ: I know you mean well. But I'm not your personal Black man. Like, it's I'm not the guardian of the gates. If you really want to help, there are plenty of places where you -- don't reach out to me for me to tell -- to do the work to tell you how to do the work. LB: Right. BJ: Figure it out. (laughs) So, that was, like, my -- I said to a couple friends, said to my friend, [Cirie?], who is [Ciriya?] Lang, who is a professor over at Lehigh, "If one more person texts me, I'm going to lose my shit. I'm going to lose it." (laughs) They mean well but good Lord. (laughs) LB: Yeah. BJ: Oh! LB: Yeah. (laughs) And unfortunately, in real life, it's harder to unfriend people. BJ: Yeah. (laughs) LB: I just want to -- BJ: (laughs) You know, I do think -- I hate social media. I despise it. You know, I say all the time it's where the devil goes to cry. But the thing I do appreciate about it is that so many people have no filter when it comes to social media and they don't think that there are consequences to the things that they say or post or do. I am grateful for the number of people who have shown me who they are, you know? It's the same people who I can see on a -- or see in person who will smile in my face and tell me that they care or love me or whatever. And I gotcha. Okay. (laughs) Okay. You know, I'm grateful for that. (laughs) LB: Yeah. (laughs) But we're back to reality and -- BJ: Yeah. (laughs) LB: Yeah. Now what are you going to do? Yeah. BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: I appreciate that. So, I guess that we're at the end here and, you know, if you want to go on, that's -- or I'll give you some more time to say whatever you want to say. But I did want to ask you, you know, sort of in the end thing: what's the thing, you know, what's giving you hope, what kind of hope and strength are you getting from anything now that we just talked about all the annoying people that -- (laughter) [calling you?] up with their they're desperately hav-- I have to feel good because -- so, I'm going to talk to Brian, so -- (laughter) BJ: I think that what I -- I said it earlier. I have seen the best of people throughout this, too. Seen the worst but I've seen the best come out of people. I've seen a generation of younger kids who I am excited about, you know, this -- eighteen, nineteen-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, twenty-one-year-olds, these kids are, like -- LB: Yeah. BJ: -- they've got their stuff together. And they have talked out a bunch of stuff with one another that my generation has not, your generation has not, and they've been frank with each other. And they have the ability to not be -- they have the ability to see that the king has no clothes on, you know what I'm saying? They have this -- they know that the stuff that they've been taught, that they -- in school is crap. LB: Yeah. BJ: They know this. They do a bunch of their own work. So, that in and of itself has given me some hope. LB: Yeah. BJ: And, you know, I'm only in my late thirties at this point and I'm -- I think these kids could take over. (laughter) LB: Yeah. BJ: Yeah, I'm happy to just go, "Hey, you can -- go ahead. You guys do what you want to do." LB: Yes. BJ: So, that has given me hope. That's absolutely given me hope. LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: The closeness of my spouse has given me hope, as well. We've always been very close and always depended on each other and always supported each other throughout all different kind of stuff but I'm very lucky. I'm a very lucky man to have met the man that I can fully confide and leave stuff with, you know? And the line of work that we do, it's nice to have somebody in your corner who gets it, you know? Who gets it and who you can put stuff down with because people don't really comprehend how much we got to carry. And being able to have somebody who you can trust with you is nice. So, that gives me hope that I will actually be able to survive this (laughs) with some sense of completion, like I'm still put together. So, yeah. LB: Yeah. BJ: So, those two things, I don't know about -- I'm really excited about this new crop of kids. Really excited about it. LB: Right. Pretty great. It's a whole new world -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- and it's all through different -- in terms of how they deal with sexual orientation, gender identity, how they talk about things, how they understand things, how they write about things, how they talk about race and ethnic background and how they talk about everything, it's really very positive. BJ: How they reason with each other. LB: Yeah, it's very -- BJ: Like, it's not just, you know, it's not just "I'm right, you're wrong." But they take time and invest in conversation with one another, with people who they have very differing views on -- you know, unlike us, who sit on Facebook and, "Here's this article that I did not read and I think it" -- you know, (inaudible), you know? They're not like that. In fact, that's enough hope for me right there. (laughs) LB: That's great. Well, I, you know, I think of you as a very young person because I knew you when you were so young. (laughter) And did you go to Allen High School? You went to Allen High School. BJ: I did, I did. LB: Yeah. BJ: I went to Allen. LB: So, I'm remembering, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but you -- in the 2000 Pride festival, do you remember that? It was raining horrendously. BJ: Oh, that -- oh, my God, I remember that, yeah. (laughs) LB: You had that -- and you had a booth there because you -- BJ: I -- LB: -- talking about starting about starting a Gay-Straight Alliance, weren't you? At Allen High School? BJ: Yes! LB: Yeah. BJ: I -- LB: because I -- for the booth -- BJ: -- yeah, I wanted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at Allen. This was before -- LB: Rachel -- BJ: -- Rachel -- LB: -- Zane. BJ: -- yeah, Rachel Zane. Rachel was there but Rachel was working at the school at that time. LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: But I didn't know Rachel and -- because I literally just had this conversation with Rachel, like, a year ago when Goudy and I went to the Gay-Straight Alliance to do a presentation. And, you know, I said, "I tried to start a Gay-Straight Alliance back in, like, 2000, 2001." LB: It was 2000 -- BJ: Yeah, some -- LB: -- 2000. BJ: -- somewhere -- yeah, and got a bunch of pushback, so -- LB: Yeah, remember that. BJ: So, I had the booth, I had all different kind of stuff going on, and -- LB: It was the hurricane. It was -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- during a hurricane. BJ: Yeah, it was -- LB: And it rained horrendously, to the point where you didn't have a tent, so you're standing out there with a card table, which was mine, by the way, and I still have it. (laughter) And then, you ended up standing in our -- and I said we have to get this kid back over here, because you were in high school then. (laughter) And we come back over and we're just standing in the tent. It's just torrentially raining and people are just -- you know, and Governor Rendell, he was running for office and he was on the stage. There were still 800 people there. BJ: Yeah, while -- LB: But -- BJ: -- all the mud is getting deeper -- LB: -- right, the mud is -- like, sinking in the mud. BJ: (inaudible) LB: Crocs are just stuck in the mud in the middle of the field and -- BJ: That was back when we -- when Pride was in that -- LB: Yeah. BJ: -- baller area on the other side of -- LB: We were in the other side. BJ: -- [near Beech?], right? LB: Yeah. BJ: Yeah. LB: That was the last time I think we had it there and -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- Allison [Homm?] was the chair of Pride and she was trying to fix stuff. It might have been 2001. But we were -- she was, like, ordering people to bring hay in so that they could put it on the mud -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- because we couldn't get our cars out. BJ: Yeah. LB: And it was, yeah, so I -- BJ: It was (inaudible) LB: -- always -- and I said -- you know, people say, well, so-and-so started the first Gay-Straight Alliance. I said, "I thought Brian Jones did." But I do remember there was a lot of pushback. There was a lot of pushback -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- for the principal. We couldn't even -- BJ: I remember I -- so, this was back in 2000. Remember Borders books? And -- LB: Yeah, yeah. BJ: -- Borders bookstore? Well, they have a LGBT section in Borders books and I'm -- my little gay self, I went into Borders books, went to the gay section and found a guide to being a LGBT person. (laughter) And I start all this different kind of stuff. And I pulled out this guide and I opened it up and looked at, you know, there was a section in there that said, "How to start a Gay-Straight Alliance." LB: Yeah. BJ: I went, okay, I can find that. I can find an advisor ; I can find a room. I've always been a person who can galvanize people and get -- you know, it's what I've always done. So, I got a teacher who was able to give me a room. I got -- and all the bylaws for the school said to start a group -- was that you needed an advisor, you needed a room, and the group had to be open to anybody. LB: Right. BJ: It couldn't be exclusive. So, I went to start it and next thing I know, I'm talking to a school counselor. Then the school counselor wants me to talk to the vice principal and then the vice principal wants me to talk to the principal. And the principal wants me to talk to the superintendent. And this went on for months. For months. And I remember calling you -- LB: Yeah. BJ: -- and contact with you and -- LB: Mr. Ziminsky was the guy who told me to talk to you. BJ: Yeah. Steve Ziminsky or Steve Libby? LB: Yeah, Steve Ziminsky. BJ: Okay -- LB: Because he (inaudible) BJ: -- that makes sense. LB: -- [was?] the music teacher. BJ: Yeah. LB: Now, there's this guy, he's a great musician and he's a kid and he's doing this great job and you need to work with him. And so, "We'll do that. [Call us?]." BJ: And we tried. LB: Yeah. BJ: I mean, that went on for almost -- I want to say almost six months of getting the runaround. And then, by that time, I was -- so, by the time 2001 came around, I was becoming a senior in high school, getting ready for going to school, trying to finish my senior year, and I'm, like, ah! I, you know, (laughs) so I kind of just let it go. LB: And I'm actually going to be interviewing Ian Wagner, and he was the one, with Rachel Zane, who actually made it go. But even after they finally got that to go, I remember this so clear because they called us in for this. They would have the announcement that the Gay-Straight Alliance was going to meet. And the person who was reading the morning announcements would say the GSA. BJ: Yeah. LB: They wouldn't say gay. They wouldn't say the word. And so, everybody thought it was the Girls Scouts of America. (laughter) They just kept saying -- like, they have a Girl Scouts thing here? What the fuck is that, you know? BJ: Like, the -- Ian was able -- I don't -- I think I know Ian -- LB: Yeah, he's on (inaudible) BJ: I think we've met each other. I think I know him. But he -- they were able to get that started -- I think it was, like, the year after I left. LB: I think it was the year after. But the thing about it was that Rachel was committed to starting it. BJ: Yeah. LB: So, if you can have a teacher who is -- in effect, it's the teacher that's doing it and the -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- kids are doing it. And I know that's so because I was a college teacher and, you know, you can have a kid who -- like, we had a lot of different situations where kids would come to us and they'd say, "Well, I'm trying to get this thing to happen and I have this petition," something like that. And I would say to them, this happened at Liberty High School, and I said, "Let me talk to them. Let me just talk to the principal first." So, then I would threaten the principal (laughter) like, "You can't say no to this kid." BJ: Yeah. LB: "It's the law!" I did that to [Muller?], I did that to Moravian, too. BJ: Yeah. LB: And I screamed at the person who was the dean of students because they said that they had brought kids in telling them they had a Gay-Straight Alliance at Moravian and they didn't. BJ: And they didn't. LB: And then, the person says to me, "Well, he can start one." I said, "So, you're telling me that you want a freshman kid who is being harassed" -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- "publicly by their RA to start their own group after you told him, 'You should come here because there's a group'?" BJ: Yeah. LB: I mean, come on! BJ: Oh! LB: That's not okay! And every time they say, you know, "Well, it's up to the kids to do it" -- it is very hard for the kids to do it. BJ: Really hard! LB: You have to have -- BJ: It's fucking -- LB: -- yeah. BJ: I remember being -- LB: And you were so tenacious about it. I remember that so well. BJ: I was on -- I was one of the few out gay kids in that -- I mean, and Allen is a school, even then, of three thousand, four thousand -- LB: Yes, [in the thousands?]. BJ: -- kids. LB: Yeah. BJ: And I was one of maybe five or six kids in the whole school who were out. LB: Yeah. BJ: You know? And I felt like, I always have felt like, okay, this is a part of my responsibility -- LB: Exactly, yeah. BJ: -- as a, as who I, you know, who I am. So, I took on the responsibility. LB: Yeah, that's right. BJ: And the thing that they never said: they never said no. LB: Right, they just -- BJ: They never said no. LB: -- passed you on forever. BJ: Yeah. LB: "Well, we have to talk to the school board. We have to talk to the superintendent. Well, next month, we'll talk to the superintendent." BJ: Yeah. LB: "Next week, we'll have this. Let's, well" -- and then, all of a sudden, the facilitator doesn't want to do it anymore because -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- they've been threatened. BJ: Yeah. LB: And that happened at Pen Argyl High School, [Adrian?] -- and that was a lot later but Pen Argyl High School, they ended up -- ultimately, the superintendent made -- and the school, the counselor -- we actually talked directly to the legal counsel for the whole school district, who told them they have to let it go because it's against the law to say no. And the superintendent came to the kids, this is so fascinating. The superintendent comes to the kids, this is at Pen Argyl, and says to them, "You really, you're doing a great job. I support this one hundredpercent. And by the way, I'm a lesbian." Superintendent says that. And then she gets fired. BJ: Oh! LB: She gets -- so, what does that say to the kids? BJ: Oh! LB: I mean, here's this person who is that level and they come out in a perfectly normal thing, like, "I want you to know that it gets better, I'm a lesbian, I have a great relationship, don't worry about it, every -- you know, I support you." And then she gets fired. The superintendent gets fired. BJ: Well -- LB: And then the teachers see that and they think holy crap, I'm not going to be the advisor for this group. They're going to fire me if I do this. BJ: Well -- LB: It's -- that's how you keep people down, by doing that. BJ: -- but you also keep people up by being visible -- LB: Yeah, you do. BJ: -- and open. You take the lumps that you're going to get and you just keep on moving. I mean, it's -- and I would ask you a question. Do you know, do you and Trish understand -- I know you do ; it's just philosophical -- but I really think that what y'all do, what we do, what people like Steve Libby do, you know, what we do is life and death. LB: Yeah. BJ: Literal life and death. LB: I do know that's true. BJ: And, you know, we would not be having this conversation right now if -- and you don't know this, but if I had -- if people like you and Steve and Goudy hadn't walked into my life, I would be gone. LB: Yeah. Well, I mean -- and that goes for the people that helped me and everything like that, too, and that we've got this whole relationship. And it's what you're talking about, that family of LGBT people that -- and frankly, with regard to LGBT people, which is different than racial minorities -- racial minorities cannot hide their racial minority. But there's also the fact that most LGBT people don't have parents that are LGBT, so they don't really know -- and the one other group that's similar to that that I found when I do trainings and stuff is young people who have disabilities. And their parents don't always -- don't understand them because they don't have those disabilities. And the relationship -- I actually did a training one time. It was a whole bunch of kids that happened to show up to it that all had mental and physical disabilities. Mostly mental disabilities. And when I was talking about that aspect -- because, you know, you never had to go home and say to your parents, "Mom, Dad, I've got something to tell you. I'm Black." They probably knew. BJ: Yeah, they figured that out. (laughs) LB: But they probably figured it out. Now, it doesn't make it any easier because you're right -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- you're wearing a badge every minute that everybody can see and the ingrained racism of the United States is impossible to deny. But these kids, when I was saying it to these kids who had these disabilities, they were totally nodding their head. And I hadn't really thought about it and then I'm looking at them going, oh, yeah! They're in the same situation because Trish, who worked at a rehab hospital said, you know, "Kids who have -- they would get head injuries or something like that and it would change their demeanor or they'd be in a wheelchair, their families would just give them up." And that's what happens to us, that's -- you know, to LGBT kids. And so, it's our responsibility, as part of the LGBT community, the [adult?] community, to take care of the younger generation. It's our responsibility. If we're not going to do it, we can't count on their own parents to do it. BJ: Yeah, and -- LB: And in general, I think that's true for all kids. Kids can't always count on their parents to take care of them. Other people have to help them. BJ: Yeah. LB: It's a part of the deal. And so -- BJ: And that need for, that wagon circling thing, that need for -- that familial thing that we have all -- that so many of us have lost, places like your organization have been that. We've tried our best to do that. And -- LB: Oh, you've done a great job at MCC. You know, I'm still recommending people to go to MCC. People will call me up and they'll say -- and they've done this for years, because I've been answering the info line for twenty-two years. People call up and they'll say, "I want to meet more people in the community." Or, "I want a support group." Now, we have support groups sort of now but not for just -- and I say, "You really need a support group or you just need to meet more queer people? (laughter) [Like?], meet other lesbians, for example." And I'll say, "You know, how do you feel about church?" "Yeah, I don't have any problem with that." "Okay, well, why don't you go to MCC?" "Because they have to be nice to you there. It's [work?]. (laughter) And they'll shake your hand and then you can sit in the back." And also, it's every week. So, it's not like, well, if I don't have the nerve to do it this week -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- I can always think -- I can go -- BJ: There's going to be another one next week. LB: -- I can do another one next -- not like monthly or we're having a dance and then we're not -- BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: -- having another one till next year. Or the Pride festivals: one gig and then there's not another one until next year. And I said, "MCC." And I remember one time, somebody -- I won't tell you who it is but it's somebody you know in the church who said -- I was doing something at MCC when we were -- when you were at the soap -- or whatever that factory place was on Fourth Street, when you're on Sixth Street. And we were working on a project and something and (inaudible) and she was a board member. And she said, "Do you realize that you said that to me? (laughter) I called you for that reason? Like, I don't know anybody. Said, 'Why don't you go over to MCC?'" And she, like, you know, ended up with a whole career thing there. (laughter) And now she has a partner who she's married to and that was a long time ago. And I said, "I say that to a lot of people." (laughter) And I do because that -- and also, that people have, you know, spiritual violence to them all the time. BJ: Yeah. LB: And people who get a life from church can often have their church treat them like crap and that they need a church that really is going to support them. And I think that MCC -- I just referenced somebody. Somebody just called me. It was a therapist and the therapist said that the kid was very, very religious, from a very religious family, and they needed a religious community to support them. And I said, "Call Metropolitan." And she said, "I called this church. It was a United Church of Christ." Not yours but -- not the one there but in another part -- and the pastor who answered the phone said, "Yeah, the pastor that you really should talk to is the other guy and he's on vacation. I'm not the one." In other words, "I hate gay people." BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: You know, the other guy is tolerant of them, so -- and I said, "You don't need to call a church that is willing to allow queer people to be in the church. You need to call a church who's going to understand exactly what this kid is talking about." BJ: Yeah, and that is a big part of that -- see, it's an important context to have because there are a lot of churches in the area who are open and affirming, who are reconciling, who are -- and a lot of them get that as a badge of honor. LB: Yeah. BJ: That doesn't mean diddly-squat, you know? It doesn't mean -- LB: Oh, doesn't, no. BJ: -- doesn't mean a thing. There are those -- I got to give -- there are those who -- where that means something -- LB: Yeah. BJ: -- but they're fewer than, yeah, and fewer than you would think. LB: Yeah. BJ: And, you know, so many people in our community who have been raised in a faith tradition, who have been raised in a Christian tradition, who have never been told that they're loved by their Creator as they are. LB: Yeah! BJ: Is amazing to me and we see it -- I mean, you can see the visceral reaction of people when they hear that for the first time. LB: Right. BJ: And it changes their lives. And a lot of times -- we have this conversation often because a lot of times, we get people who come to the door who might come to the door one time. They might come to the door one time and they'll sit in the sanctuary and they will just cry through the whole thing. LB: Right. BJ: And we won't see them again. And what we had to come to terms with was all this person needed in their life was to be told that what they believe, how they believe they were created, is affirmed by the divine. (laughs) That's all they needed. And be okay with that. LB: And they're not the only one that thinks so. There's this whole church of people that -- BJ: Whole community. LB: Yeah. BJ: Whole community. LB: This church community looks just like my church community, so -- BJ: Yeah. And can I ask you a question? LB: Sure. BJ: I would love to get your perspective on this. Even before COVID, had you been getting a sense that the LGBT community had -- I've kind of been getting the sense that the LGBT community had been coming -- disjointed. Not disjointed but -- that's not the word I want to use. Disconnected. So, long-time institutions within our area closed over the last couple years. So, in cases like Diamonz and, like, 12th Street, what was it called? The bar on Twelfth Street. LB: Candida's. BJ: Candida's. LB: Candida's. Yeah, except I know why both of those places changed. They closed and it wasn't because they didn't have business or anything like that. It was -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- Candida was, you know, in her late 70s and she wanted to retire. And, quite frankly, the person who ran Diamonz had some issues that got -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- didn't have anything to do with -- well, I think, for me, I'm not seeing that because we just -- BJ: No? LB: -- got this -- I'm not seeing that because we had just started this community center and it's -- we've got 14 employees now. And, you know, when we started out, it was, like, me and Adrian and Trish and Adrienne saying, "Let's try to do this." And before that, we ran it out of our house for years and years and years. BJ: Yeah. LB: And so, actually, I'm seeing this enormous amount of work we're doing. So, I guess I see what you mean. I think that there is -- and it's interesting that I'm doing a lot of historical stuff because I just interviewed all of these guys about HIV/AIDS and a couple of women and -- in the eighties. And there was an LGBT community center on Hamilton Street in the eighties -- BJ: Wow. LB: -- that was called the Lambda Center. And then, because of AIDS, it became the AIDS Services Center -- BJ: Okay. LB: -- which was in Bethlehem. And that ran for a long time, into the nineties until -- and then, it was absorbed by St. Luke's. But what happened was that things with regard to AIDS changed because of actual ways to save people's lives and stuff like that. So, I've actually been looking at this, because I came to the Lehigh Valley in 1987, I've been looking at this continuum. And somebody in the community named Dixie White, I don't know if you know her, but she was a -- Dixie died a couple of -- BJ: Weeks ago. LB: -- weeks ago, a few weeks ago, and she was a major activist in the seventies and I knew her quite well. And she gave me a lot of her papers and stuff about stuff that she did in the '70s and what they tried to do in the seventies. And so, I mean, that's really -- we're really talking about, you know, more than forty years ago and this continuum. And those things wax and wane. BJ: Yeah. LB: And a lot of it has to do with people who age out, you know? They get to a certain point where they're saying, okay, [I can't -- this?] -- I have to say that for me and Trish, the fact that Adrian came along and said that he would run the Pride festival, and here's this guy in his thirties -- I mean, he wasn't even in his thirties. He was late twenty-something. I'm thinking thank God he's doing this because who else would do this the way that we're doing it? We're not getting paid, we're putting a huge amount of our own money into it for the most part, we're doing all of this work. It's constant work and we can't do this forever. BJ: Yeah. LB: And then, somebody comes along and says, "I'll do it." So, I think it's not unlike that circumstance that happens in schools frequently where there can be an enormously successful Gay-Straight Alliance because there's, like, two really active students and a facilitator that are so into it. When Adrian was at Muhlenberg College, the Gay-Straight Alliance had seven hundred members. BJ: Wow. LB: And when he left, there were forty-five members. And forty-five isn't anything to shake -- I mean, that's plenty. BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: So, when -- but, you know, you have somebody who's really dynamic and they figure out ways to do it. And it waxes and wanes and I think that that happens. I think that there is a feeling or there has been a feeling since the last presidential election of fear and despair, which is changing now. I think that people are saying we have to come together, we have to fight -- that sometimes people feel complacent after the continuation of marriage or, you know, after the legality of marriage equality and people are sort of thinking, okay, we've got this now. BJ: Yeah. LB: And then, you know, then all these other things happen. And so, we have to recognize that that -- and that happens, you know, that happened with -- in the civil rights movement where desegregation happens and the end of, for the most part, the end of Jim Crow laws and you have the really significant civil rights movement with Martin Luther King and all of those thing happen and then the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1965. And then, white people starting to think, oh, well, that -- Black people aren't discriminated against anymore. One of the things that -- what I was thinking about when you were talking about people being so aware of the Black Lives Matter movement and the terrible things, the George Floyd stuff, the Breonna Taylor, all of those different things is -- one of the things that's great about it is social media because people can whip out their phone and take a picture of it -- BJ: Yeah. LB: -- so that somebody can say, "Well, oh, that doesn't really happen." But, like, yes it does! Here it's happening and six people took a picture, watched this happening, and had a picture of, you know, peaceful Black Lives Matters protesters being beaten up by police in riot gear for no reason at all. BJ: Yeah. LB: And you can't look at that and go, well, that wasn't really happening. And that actually happened during the civil rights movement, too, where people were seeing on television, you know, peaceful people marching and then, you know, guys with dogs and, you know, police with dogs and with fire hoses really harming those people and saying, well, how can you justify that? This is real discrimination. And so, one of the good things now, I think, and it can be dangerous, but one of the good things now is that, I mean, we had a Supreme Court decision that was pretty significant. I was able to -- Trish is famous for watching the SCOTUS blog. She watches that blog and the minute the stuff comes off -- this happened with the American -- Care Act. The real information, I put it on the internet as fast as possible (laughter) because I want to break the news before anybody else. So, we have the opportunity to do that kind of information when before we had to rely solely on the news and they often get it wrong or they got it -- it was tainted or -- we know that news isn't always honest now. And there's -- you know, Fox News has been around with their fake news for years and years. But so was the Hearst company in the 1930s. BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: So, I mean, that's nothing new. But now we have an opportunity to share information. Some of it's wrong. Some of it's tainted. But we also have a way to share information with each other in terms of saying, okay, you cannot argue that this thing that happened to George Floyd is wrong. BJ: Yeah. LB: I mean, this happened. It was wrong. There is no justification for it. And you can turn back and say if you're trying to justify this, you are being -- or if you're trying to justify that transgender people shouldn't have healthcare, I don't want to be your friend anymore. You can't say you love me and then do this thing. BJ: Yeah. LB: And it is kind of -- it can be divisive and it can draw a line in the sand. But it also can make people aware that we can't just agree to disagree when it comes to inequality and racism and homophobia and transphobia. We can't just agree to disagree. That's not a legitimate thing to say. Only people of privilege will ever say that. BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: And so, I think that, you know, I've been doing this gig a long time. A really long time. I was running the Gay-Straight Alliance when I was in college and that was, oh, in the seventies. So, I see this. It's a roller coaster. And I think that people can be -- one's experience can be, oh, God, I can't get anybody to do anything and why is this happening? I have seen that happen, go, you know, like a roller coaster for so many years that I expect it to be a roller coaster. So, I think, you know, it's unrealistic, and I know you know this, it's unrealistic to think it's always going to just get better and better and better and better. BJ: Oh, yeah. LB: It never happens. BJ: Never works that way. Never works that way. LB: And, you know, look at the history of MCC. It's been around for thirty years, more than thirty years. BJ: Almost forty at this point. (laughs) LB: Forty? Yeah. BJ: Almost forty. LB: And the, right, and all the incredible things that have happened and the successes that's happened. And then, you know, parts that were hard and parts there's disagreement, it's the way human beings are. I mean, that's, it's, yeah, but look at how MCC has continued after all of this time, I think, and how many people have been positively supported and helped by MCC. It's extraordinary -- BJ: Yeah, it's -- LB: -- something to be really proud of. BJ: -- it's, you know, I -- that need for that community thing, that need for the ability to do this, right? (laughs) To do -- LB: Sure. BJ: -- you know, and I wonder, in the future, how much of this kind of stuff is going to be important, even more so in building local community and keeping the stories together, keeping the history together, and being able to have conversations with each other that other people can see and be a part of. LB: Right. BJ: You know? It's going to be very important. Very, very important. People are going to need to see folks who are in either a leadership position or just a part of the community engaging with each other and, you know, this is -- I think you're onto something here. (laughs) LB: Oh, definitely, and this was a grant that we got and it was some -- Adrian and some of the people from the archives wrote this grant and then they said, "Now you have to do it." (laughter) And I said to these guys -- and I have to tell you, Brian, that we've been working on these archived interviews for a while and Lehigh is doing some from some of the older people who are the LGBT people in the community. And it took them about a year and a half to do 10 interviews. Then Adrian came to me -- and they have a team, too -- and then he comes to me and he goes, "Well, here's the grant," and something and I said, "This is 30 interviews, (laughter) two months." BJ: Oh, my gosh! LB: I haven't even -- and I said, "And I don't even know how to use the Zoom yet!" (laughter) So, I said to him -- he said, "Can you get it done?" because it's parameters in the grant and I said, "Yeah, I can get it done." But for every -- but nobody else could do this because you got to know people to be able to do this and -- BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: -- so, anyway, it was -- been funny. But I did point out and I said there's a lot of paperwork with these things, too. We have to fill out forms and they have to be uploaded and stuff like that and it goes to the archives. So, I have to fill out forms to be sure that it's uploaded the right way. So, anyway, we've gone over the time but I loved talking to you! (laughter) And I'm so grateful that you've done this and it's been wonderful to walk down memory lane, back to twenty years ago when we were -- BJ: Twenty years ago! LB: -- getting really wet and -- (laughter) that was a classic -- I think that was a really classic -- BJ: That was, I -- that was horrible. (laughs) LB: It was horrible! BJ: That was still -- it was memorable, though. People still showed up. They still came out. LB: And the hilarious thing about it is I remember Steve Black saying this from the stage, he said, "We're so -- we're in this terrible situation where we're" -- the name of the hurricane was Alison, was Hurricane Alison. BJ: Yeah, yeah. LB: And we said, you know, the head of our -- the Pride festival was Alison. (laughter) She's our own hurricane. She's still around doing stuff, too. BJ: Yeah, yeah! LB: So, you know, I mean, I see posts from her every day and they're very, very progressive and interesting. BJ: Yeah. LB: So, anyway, it's been wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so much. They will send you this and I'm going to turn this off now, so -- BJ: Okay. LB: -- there -- END OF VIDEO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:48:57
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Title
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Brian Jones, July 9, 2020
Description
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Brian Jones talks about the current COVID19 is affecting him and his family, his work at Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley, how it is affecting LGBTQ people, Black Lives Matter issues, and what gives him hope
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PH40_09
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COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-;COVID-19 (Disease)
Date
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2020-07-09
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/3f475d72bc6fa2589e1cc6fd6b5eca5b.png
fe491dd4c1a1cefbae25c10e8a11542e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Charles Versaggi
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5.4 July 2, 2020 Charles Versaggi, July 2, 2020 PH40_01 01:29:39 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg COVID-19 LGBT Community Global Pandemic AIDS Charles Versaggi Liz Bradbury video/mpeg VersaggiCharles_20200702_video.mp4 1.0:|23(4)|44(14)|85(4)|116(10)|147(12)|184(13)|243(2)|280(11)|315(9)|356(9)|397(16)|434(5)|477(4)|512(7)|537(6)|558(15)|589(7)|626(12)|655(7)|694(10)|735(6)|764(14)|797(2)|834(11)|873(8)|904(9)|943(4)|970(7)|1005(9)|1036(11)|1061(8)|1092(9)|1121(12)|1146(15)|1181(2)|1228(18)|1263(16)|1292(12)|1325(4)|1352(3)|1377(5)|1414(6)|1451(6)|1492(6)|1515(4)|1554(6)|1589(5)|1634(7)|1679(6)|1724(9)|1763(2)|1812(5)|1847(10)|1872(2)|1905(9)|1940(3)|1959(5)|1988(17)|2019(9)|2056(7)|2081(5)|2120(2)|2157(14)|2200(11)|2233(5)|2266(9)|2303(16)|2338(11)|2379(13)|2418(9)|2463(10)|2498(6)|2545(15)|2588(2)|2631(11)|2670(8)|2717(10)|2758(6)|2799(2)|2846(8)|2885(15)|2920(9)|2947(12)|2986(7)|3019(15)|3060(2)|3099(4)|3136(3)|3165(15)|3196(5) 0 https://youtu.be/SacdOzw-xsY YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction 0 193 Initial awareness of HIV/AIDS / Volunteering for the hotline LB: So, in the midst of the current public health crisis we’re experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen-eighties and the nineteen-nineties. And let’s start out with just one question I’ve been asking everybody, and that is, when were you first aware of HIV/AIDS? Do you remember that moment?
 ; 
 ; CV: The trigger moment for me was I moved into this house -- I had been living in the Valley since nineteen seventy-six, but I moved into my house here in Old Allentown in the summer of eighty-five. And shortly thereafter, I joined a community center -- now defunct, unfortunately -- called the Lambda Center, which was right up the street on Eighth and Hamilton. 0 326 The Lambda Center fading out and the AIDS Services Center forming / People involved with the AIDS hotline / Volunteer training CV: Again, this would have been in the mid-eighties -- mid-eighty-five to eighty-six, eighty-seven -- time frame. And I may be a little off on this, but I believe that hotline is what morphed into the AIDS Services Center --
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- and all of those services. Now, there may be some debate about that -- but in this tired old memory of mine, there seemed -- 0 502 Experiencing people dying from AIDS LB: I talked to Bill Aull at Rainbow House --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- and he spoke very specifically about people dying -- he was a nurse there. But for some people they were saying, “Well there were people dying, but they weren’t really people I knew very well. And yet, we were aware of it,” or, “I’d see them and then they just” -- like Nan Kozul was saying, “There would be people, and then they’d just disappear, you know. We’d never see them again.” 0 642 The formation of FACT (Fighting AIDS Continuously Together) / The Summer Games CV: And the killer every year -- and this was also, as a side note, the beginning of two organizations -- one is FACT --
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- Fighting AIDS Continuously Together.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: And, through that, became the folks at the bars got involved with the summer games. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Right.
 ; 
 ; CV: And that also was an AIDS-related fundraising community activity.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: But as a part of the summer games, they would read the litany of the dead. Oh.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: I’m choked up just thinking about it, you know. It was just terrible. I mean it was good, but it was rough. It was rough. 0 701 Comparison of using condoms to wearing masks CV: The other interesting thing about it in those days was that, comparing it to now, you know, people didn’t debate whether putting the condom on for sex was, you know, their personal liberty or anything.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: You know, and now today masks are like, you know -- there’s a big political statement. Well, back then, either you or your partner, or both of you, wore condoms, or somebody was very likely to die. 0 825 Talking about his partner being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS / Dr. Rhodes CV: So anyhow, I mean, it became an era that was, you know, death and obits, and people we knew were dying off. And you would go to the bar and you would see people one week, and -- just like Nan said -- you know, next week they wouldn’t be there. And you know, what happened? And, you know, and then you read the paper two weeks later -- they’re dead. And that sort of brings me to my personal story -- is that shortly after -- let me see -- I bought the house in eighty-five, and got involved with the Lambda Center in eighty-five -- eighty-six is when I met my partner, Jim. And he was a specialty nurse -- a high-end nurse -- in the hospital. And we had a wonderful life together. And then he was working a lot of overtime, a lot of twelve-hour shifts, a lot of back-on-back shifts over weekends. And then he was losing his appetite -- and he was thin to begin with -- but he was losing some weight. And I said, “Hey, Jim, you know, it’s time. You have a conversation with your boss. You know, you’re working too hard. Blah blah. We don’t need the money, okay. I mean it’s not like we’re starving here. Okay? So we’ve got to ease up a little bit.” And then he got a rash, and he couldn’t get rid of this rash. And he went to the dermatologist. And along the road, he gets an HIV test. 0 1159 Visiting friends who were in the hospital LB: Yeah. So you were talking about care -- you took care of other people too?
 ; 
 ; CV: I can’t say I took care of other people --
 ; 
 ; LB: Were you there at the time?
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. But we would, you know, visit hospitals, you know. It was, you know, what you would do. You know, you’d get to go and visit a hospital. Usually you couldn’t gang up in there, because, you know, the patients -- typically by ten, they were bedridden in the hospital -- they would get tired very easily.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah. 0 1357 The Lambda Center and the AIDS Hotline CV: Well, yeah. And, again, I bring it back to the Lambda Center -- that AIDS hotline. And I was around people like the Brian Markses, the Carl Mancinos, the Larry Kleppingers, you know, all the [Chuck Woodberrys?] -- all the people who were -- 
 ; Candida -- people who were active and engaged and doing something about it.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yes. Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: You know, and people weren’t going to just sit in a corner crying about it, and, you know, lamenting. There was plenty of that to do.
 ; 
 ; LB: Sure.
 ; 
 ; CV: But, while there was that to do, there was other work to be done. And nobody else was doing it. I mean, even the medical profession -- you know, I have Dr. Rhodes, who was probably the dean of the infectious disease community at the time. 0 1462 Obtaining up-to-date information in the 1980s CV: I mean, we’re data rich.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: And disease management requires data to do it.
 ; 
 ; LB: That’s a really good point, because back then -- and certainly in the eighties -- at the dawn of computers, the internet 
 ; really hadn’t happened. So if you wanted to read something, you’d have to read it in a published thing -- in a brochure. You’d have to go to a conference, you’d have to call somebody up and say, “What’s new?” And --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- so that’s a vast difference, with regard to that epidemic --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- and the epidemic we’re dealing now. I mean, everybody, if they want to, can get up-to-date information. Some of it’s wrong, but that always happens. 0 1688 Attending funerals LB: So I’ve had people tell me that one of the things that people did -- there were so many funerals --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- and there were just funerals all the time. And could you talk a little bit about that whole aspect of it, and going to 
 ; funerals, and who would do the funerals? And also, people have told me that people planted trees to celebrate peoples’ lives. Do you remember that?
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually (laughs) -- there’s several things that kind of come into play here. But yes, there were a lot of funerals. 0 2150 Memorial trees in Lehigh Parkway LB: It’s a whole different situation. Do you remember that thing about the trees? Because I remember that, and --
 ; 
 ; CV: Oh, yes. And I didn’t know of others, but a good friend of mine -- Larry Miley, who used to live across the street -- he and his wife were very active with the Lenni Lenape Museum --
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh, yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- on the parkway. And Larry was a good friend of Jim and I, so -- they live right across the street. So he said, you know, “We would like to organize having a Native American ceremony” --
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- here. You know, a separate ceremony.” So we brought the family back down. 0 2303 Helping to start GLEE at Air Products / Having a supportive work environment LB: -- you were working at Air Products then. Was there an Air Product response?
 ; 
 ; CV: A very personal one. My boss at the time, you know, was very supportive. I said, you know, “The best time for visitors for Jim in the hospital was after three o’clock. So every day at three, I’m leaving at three o’clock. So, you know, we’re just going to have to figure this out.” No questions were asked, you know, “Go right ahead.” Obviously there was time off for grieving, and the funeral, and so forth. So the company was very, very supportive. This would have been right around the same time as GLEE starting at Air Products. 0 2576 Families discovering child was gay at their funerals LB: Great. Now there was a little bit of interference there, but you mean they’re still strained over the death? Or finding out that their son was gay?
 ; 
 ; CV: I think finding out. Because it’s the lack of closure.
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh, okay.
 ; 
 ; CV: When you’re given the opportunity to, you know, well, go through the conversation -- “Well, was it something we did? Did somebody make you gay?” You know. To solve those questions, and to get those out of your head -- you just don’t know. 0 2731 Practicing safe sex/prevention and protecting partners LB: And it was early in the epidemic, so there wasn’t any -- I mean, he wasn’t at a time when people were telling you what to do to keep from getting it.
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: You know, because it was --
 ; 
 ; CV: Well, that’s --
 ; 
 ; LB: -- that time.
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. That’s it, you know. Kind of like what we’re learning about COVID now, you know -- now we’re learning, “Oh, you could be asymptomatic and spreading it around all over the place.” Well, there, back in those days, you didn’t even know the disease existed. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Right.
 ; 
 ; CV: Therefore, having unprotected sex -- what was different today than yesterday. 0 2970 Healthcare experiences for AIDS patients LB: Well, so at the time that Jim was sick, and at the time that other people that you knew were sick from AIDS, what about healthcare? I mean did you see positive and negative things were happening in the hospital? Because we had somebody in our extended family who -- at the beginning of the epidemic -- who couldn’t -- like they wouldn’t even bring the tray into the room when he was in the hospital. So --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- this was a little bit later, when Jim was sick. But --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. 
 ; 
 ; LB: But --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. 
 ; 
 ; LB: -- [maybe it was a bit?] earlier.
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. He would have been in the hospital during the winter of nineteen-ninety. We took him in in February -- just a few days after my birthday, actually. 0 3209 Being on the board of FACT and fundraising LB: I can’t ever take mine off. When FACT really was formed and it started to do some very, very significant work in fundraising, were you involved with it?
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. Yeah. I was on their board -- I’ve lost track of how many years -- and probably went off the board and came back on the board, and was involved with doing my bit at the summer games too. And I think I was also on the committee that dispersed the -- I don’t know if they still do -- but we used to call them “contingency funds” -- 0 3572 Medications for AIDS compared to COVID / Reactions to COVID and wearing masks CV: And so I’m not really familiar -- I mean I’ve heard the stories about some meds being worse than others --
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- but we also know that everybody’s body handles meds differently.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: So, you know, it could be that this med worked miracles if you had certain conditions in place. And if you didn’t, or if your T cells were too far low, or not low enough, they may not trigger, you know -- just like with some of the people getting that overreaction of their immune system to COVID. I mean, it could be the same thing. I mean if you were at a certain point along the HIV spectrum, some of the meds might have been more contradictory than others, depending on your gene make-up and your disease progression. So, you know, a lot was learned over the decades about meds. And the good news is we have, you know, PrEP. Whether people would consider that a vaccine, per say, probably not, you know, which also makes you nervous about COVID. Well, if we’d been pouring money into the research around HIV for decades - 0 3906 Advocating for testing for HIV/AIDS and reluctance to get tested LB: Right. Right. Did you come in contact with people who were -- I mean, testing became more of an issue and more available -- and certainly more available now, with the rapid test. It’s so easy now, in comparison to the way it was. But, you know, how were people advocating testing at that time?
 ; 
 ; CV: Well, I mean, it was the basics. Well, you know, your partner, or if you’ve had unprotected sex with somebody who you don’t know, you know, you need to go get tested.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: And there was the usual reluctance, for two reasons -- number one, “Oh, they’re going to tell me I’m going to die. So why should I be in a hurry to go hear this news?” Number one, because there is no cure. 0 4058 Being out as a gay man LB: I mean there’s you and me and Trish, who every single person in the world knows, you know -- you ran for office as an openly gay man. (laughter) But not everybody’s like us. And --
 ; 
 ; CV: True. True. And, in some cases, thank God (laughs), you know. But, to be honest, you know, when I first came to the Valley, I wasn’t out, oddly -- I mean, believe it or not. And you have some personal experience with this, too, in that I used two names -- the Charlie, and the Chuck. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah. 0 4609 Lehigh Valley resources for AIDS / Medical community engaged with local LGBTQ community organizations LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). But the Lehigh Valley --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- and part of it was because that community center existed already, I think.
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: So there was --
 ; 
 ; CV: There was a community organization, and then quickly following it was FACT, and then the bar organizations as a fundraising machine --
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- for the summer games and other things. And then you had the beginnings of the AIDS Services Center -- 0 4842 Reflections for future viewers / Understanding diseases through science CV: Hmm. Well part of it is that, you know, there’s a whole bunch of messages now that are flooding through my mind.
 ; 
 ; LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). 
 ; 
 ; CV: (laughs) And some of it is tainted by our current situation. But at number one -- I mean, I’ll quote some of Tom Friedman, from yesterday’s New York Times -- you know, “Science. There’s this thing about science. So when you’re dealing with disease, diseases are a function of science. So if you want to understand the disease, you’ve got to understand the science behind it. And that doesn’t come from whatever the thirty year version of Facebook looks like, it doesn’t come from the thirty year version of Twitter, it doesn’t come from the thirty year any of those things. It’s going to come from the science organizations and the researchers who are leading this charge” -- 0 5033 Difference between AIDS and COVID LB: Okay. I’ll give you one more opportunity to comment on this, because when we talk about the difference between AIDS and COVID, one of the problems with the stigma of AIDS in the nineteen-eighties is that, governmentally, even the science world was not as desperate to deal with the disease and the cure for it, because it was affecting a minority group that they didn’t like very much. And that can happen in other circumstances as well. This is only affecting poor people in Africa. 
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: Or it’s only affecting poor people in the United States -- in the slums of the United States. 0 MovingImage Charlie Versaggi talks about the early days if the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the loss of his partner to AIDS, his work with the Lambda Community Center (formerly Le-Hi-Ho), the AIDS Services Center, and Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT). CHARLES VERSAGGI LIZ BRADBURY: There. So now we're recording. I have to read you these things. So, with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley's LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I am here with Charles Versaggi to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley -- oops, wait a minute. Hold on. Why did that happen? Oh well. There's a little background noise that's happening. I don't want that to work. But anyway. CHARLES VERSAGGI: I don't hear it on my side. LB: Yeah, well, okay. (laughter) It's weird, because I turned it off. Where was I? Let's see. To talk about his experiences during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT community archive. Today's date is July first, twenty-twenty, and we are meeting on Zoom. Now, you are in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Is that correct? CV: Correct. And it's July second. LB: Oh, it's July second. Uh oh. I said first in the last one. Oh well. So yes, it's July second -- let me correct that. And I have pinned you, I've turned off my phone, I said the date, I've said the place. We're good with that. Now thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name, and spell it for me? CV: Charles J. Versaggi, Junior -- Charles -- that's C-H-A-R-L-E-S. Last name is Versaggi -- V, as in Victor, E-R-S-A-G-G-I. LB: Great. Will you please share your birth date? CV: Can I just share my birth year? LB: Just your year? CV: Yeah. LB: Okay. CV: Nineteen fifty-one. LB: Okay. CV: That's just for security purposes. LB: That's fine. Do you consent to this interview today? This is the consent part. CV: Yes. LB: Okay. Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? CV: Yes. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT archive using your interview for educational purposes, in other formats including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? CV: Yes. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and identify parts you would like to delete and/or withdraw? You can withdraw the entire interview if you want to -- although that would make me sad. In fact, we could redo the whole thing if you wanted to, but -- CV: That would make me sad. (laughter) LB: That would. I don't think we'll have to do that. So, in the midst of the current public health crisis we're experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen-eighties and the nineteen-nineties. And let's start out with just one question I've been asking everybody, and that is, when were you first aware of HIV/AIDS? Do you remember that moment? CV: The trigger moment for me was I moved into this house -- I had been living in the Valley since nineteen seventy-six, but I moved into my house here in Old Allentown in the summer of eighty-five. And shortly thereafter, I joined a community center -- now defunct, unfortunately -- called the Lambda Center, which was right up the street on Eighth and Hamilton. LB: Yes. CV: And among the things I volunteered for there was the very early beginnings of the AIDS hotline. So I can pin the date that I got knowledgeable about AIDS to about nineteen eighty-five. LB: Yeah. CV: And the trigger was, you know, becoming involved in the Lambda Center, and becoming involved with the hotline as a result of it. LB: Yeah. What did the hotline do? CV: Well, I mean I'm not even sure how we advertised, now that I think about it, because we didn't have, you know, the venues we have now, in terms of social media. So we probably had posters out in the bars, which would have been the main way to communicate. LB: Yeah. CV: And I would go there one or two nights a week and answer phone calls. People would call in -- some with AIDS-related questions, and others with everything from a prank call to, you know, "What do you know about birth control?" You know, "I have a heroin addiction. What can I do about that?" You know -- there was a phone number you could call. So I mean it got everything, and some of it was actually AIDS-related. LB: Yeah. Did you get a lot of calls per night? CV: I think it varied. Some nights I just sat there and read my magazines, and other nights, you know, it was one call after another. It varied. Again, this would have been in the mid-eighties -- mid-eighty-five to eighty-six, eighty-seven -- time frame. And I may be a little off on this, but I believe that hotline is what morphed into the AIDS Services Center -- LB: Oh. CV: -- and all of those services. Now, there may be some debate about that -- but in this tired old memory of mine, there seemed -- LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) CV: -- the Lambda Center has faded out over time, and the AIDS Services Center got engaged. So there certainly was that transition -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and whether it was deliberate or just evolution, I don't know. But it -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- it was a precursor. LB: You know, I'm doing ten interviews -- we have a grant to do ten of these interviews, and you're the last one. CV: Yeah. LB: And so I've had a lot of people talking about the center, and I just talked to Rose Craig -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and a lot of people are talking about the center and how -- but you're the first person who mentioned the hotline, which I think is very -- CV: Oh, yeah? LB: -- important. Now, some of these people were a little bit later than eighty-five. CV: Yeah. LB: But who else was working on the hotline with you? CV: I believe Brian Marks -- LB: Okay. CV: -- was involved then. I don't know if Carl Mancino was or not. LB: Yeah. CV: I know he was involved in the center, but I can't remember if he was actually a volunteer. LB: Sure. CV: And we probably had a handful of others. But -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- names have escaped me over the years. And I do remember -- although I can't tell you who did it -- but I do remember going to one or two training sessions -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- that were by no means what we would currently think of today -- I mean today you would go through about a week's worth of material -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- to get ready for this. I mean we spent probably a couple hours -- because back in those days, I don't know if there was much more than a couple hour's worth of information for people to know. I mean it wasn't a medical discussion. This was really a discussion around, okay, "I don't know if my boyfriend has AIDS or not. How should I protect myself?" Or "I have AIDS. How should I protect my boyfriend?" And "What is defined by safe sex?" And those were the kinds of conversations. LB: Yeah. CV: So, you know, you didn't need a week's worth of material to answer those questions. But it started to be instilled -- at least in me -- which becomes important a little later on in this discussion -- you know, what safe sex was all about -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and how important, and how deadly, this disease was. LB: Right. That must have been really tough, because there weren't a lot of answers to some of those questions. CV: Absolutely not. In fact, the right questions hadn't even been formulated yet. So, I mean, it was early days. Very early days. LB: I mean, I've noticed that for some people, it is very hard for them to talk about people who are dying. CV: Yeah. LB: They have a very, very hard time mentioning it. I talked to Maria Rodale, and so she talked about her brother and other people. CV: Yeah. LB: I talked to Bill Aull at Rainbow House -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and he spoke very specifically about people dying -- he was a nurse there. But for some people they were saying, "Well there were people dying, but they weren't really people I knew very well. And yet, we were aware of it," or, "I'd see them and then they just" -- like Nan Kozul was saying, "There would be people, and then they'd just disappear, you know. We'd never see them again." CV: Yeah. LB: So talk about a little bit about that -- like in terms of -- CV: Well my experience -- it runs the whole gamut. There will be a personal part -- which I'll get to in a little bit --but in the beginning, I mean, it was almost sinful in that, you know, you would see somebody on the street and, "Oh, John lost some weight" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "uh oh. John must be sick." LB: Yeah. CV: And whether he lost weight for a diet or not, it didn't make any difference. If you looked like you were losing weight -- and, quite frankly, ninety-five percent of people, if they were losing weight, they were sick. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean that's just the way it was. And it was just like, you know, you were looking at death to be. And it was just you just knew, because back then, you know, there were no cocktail drugs. I mean, you know, you weren't going to slow it down. It was going to take it's course. And, you know, it was a one-way ticket -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and it was a very short runway. And then you would see them the next week, and then they could barely walk. I remember one dear friend of mine who passed away -- probably no older than age twenty-seven maybe at the oldest -- you know, walking his mother across Ninth Street to go to bingo one night. And this was a party boy. This was a boy who was out every night -- party, party, party, party. LB: Yeah. CV: And now his skinny little legs were walking with his mother, taking her to a bingo game. You know, what a one-eighty that was. LB: Yeah. CV: And, sure enough, you know, I was by his bedside, and helping him eat, and -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, those sorts of things. And it's interesting you brought up Nan, because, I mean, she's dealt with some of the death quite personally. And it actually was a dark era, quite honestly. I mean, death was a regular part of the conversation. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean, you know, you would look in the obits, and, "Oh, John died. Mark died. Fred's dead" -- you know. I mean it was a litany of saints. LB: Yeah. CV: And the killer every year -- and this was also, as a side note, the beginning of two organizations -- one is FACT -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- Fighting AIDS Continuously Together. LB: Yeah. CV: And, through that, became the folks at the bars got involved with the summer games. LB: Right. CV: And that also was an AIDS-related fundraising community activity. LB: Yeah. CV: But as a part of the summer games, they would read the litany of the dead. Oh. LB: Yeah. CV: I'm choked up just thinking about it, you know. It was just terrible. I mean it was good, but it was rough. It was rough. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, in the early years of that, everybody in that audience -- everybody who attended that -- knew the people who died. LB: Right. CV: And then, over time, newer, younger people came into the play, and fewer people knew all the names -- although they would have recognized some. But that's just the way life goes on. The other interesting thing about it in those days was that, comparing it to now, you know, people didn't debate whether putting the condom on for sex was, you know, their personal liberty or anything. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, and now today masks are like, you know -- there's a big political statement. Well, back then, either you or your partner, or both of you, wore condoms, or somebody was very likely to die. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean it wasn't like a debate about politics or anything. This was life and death. It was real simple. The equation was very, very straightforward. And I tell people, you know, half with a smirk on my face, "Consider that mask your face condom now." LB: Yeah. CV: "Just think of it that way. Now you want to go into having a sexual relationship with somebody without a condom? So are you going to go into public spaces where you're going to be around a lot of people without wearing your face condom? You know, get with it." LB: Yeah. CV: You know, I understand the politics and all that -- I understand. Got it. But this is health. This is a little different. LB: Right, right. CV: And again, as we all know, the mask isn't protecting you -- it's protecting other people. LB: Right. CV: So let's get with it. Anyway. My commercial on masks. LB: And I love asking everybody about the COVID response -- CV: Yes. LB: -- but go on and talk about this, because I think you know what you want to say. So go ahead. CV: Okay. So over time, you know, the disease took its own course. And I shouldn't just say this, but I'm speaking as a gay man -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- from the gay man's perspective. Parallel to the gay male experience -- I mean, there is the whole IV drug user population. So, I mean, they were going through the same crises that we were going through as gay men, but, you know, it was a parallel crisis. But I wasn't an IV drug user, so I can't bring you that perspective. I'm sure that was a whole different perspective. LB: Yeah. CV: So anyhow, I mean, it became an era that was, you know, death and obits, and people we knew were dying off. And you would go to the bar and you would see people one week, and -- just like Nan said -- you know, next week they wouldn't be there. And you know, what happened? And, you know, and then you read the paper two weeks later -- they're dead. And that sort of brings me to my personal story -- is that shortly after -- let me see -- I bought the house in eighty-five, and got involved with the Landis Center in eighty-five -- eighty-six is when I met my partner, Jim. And he was a specialty nurse -- a high-end nurse -- in the hospital. And we had a wonderful life together. And then he was working a lot of overtime, a lot of twelve-hour shifts, a lot of back-on-back shifts over weekends. And then he was losing his appetite -- and he was thin to begin with -- but he was losing some weight. And I said, "Hey, Jim, you know, it's time. You have a conversation with your boss. You know, you're working too hard. Blah blah. We don't need the money, okay. I mean it's not like we're starving here. Okay? So we've got to ease up a little bit." And then he got a rash, and he couldn't get rid of this rash. And he went to the dermatologist. And along the road, he gets an HIV test. LB: Yeah. CV: Through Dr. Rhodes, actually. He's still with us, and doing a fabulous job in the COVID arena -- Dr. Rhodes. And I can clearly remember -- it was just before Thanksgiving in nineteen-ninety, I came back, and the test was positive. Based on his T cell count, which was very, very low, they surmised that he got infected before he and I met, somewhere in his prior journeys. And Jim was very young. I mean at the time he was probably twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight. So that was around Thanksgiving and Christmas time -- in fact, there's pictures right above my head behind us here. And by July -- July ninth, actually -- coming up in a few days -- he passed away. It was obviously a very tragic point in my life. And people keep saying, "Well how come you're still alive?" LB: Yeah. CV: Because we lived together for -- if he was infected before he got to meet me -- we were together almost six years -- LB: Right. CV: -- you know, in the same bed, in the same room. So it wasn't like, you know, we were living across the street. And it goes back to this HIV training I had for that hotline. I mean I knew the consequences, and I knew what safe sex was about. And I just said, "Hey, you know, I'm talking to people once or twice a week on this hotline, Jim, you know. We're going to follow this process." Little did I know -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- that five and a half years later, I would be burying the guy. So, you know, it was tough for everybody. And many more probably than you realize have personal stories that go along with them. LB: Yeah. CV: Again, just like in COVID, you know. There's all these stories -- now one of the differences is that now your loved ones are in a nursing home or something -- you can't go see them. LB: Right. CV: Then, I was at his bedside when he died, I was at other people's bedsides, you know, up until the day before. LB: Right. CV: So, you know, there was a physical ability to get close, which kind of lent to the closure. You could have a proper funeral, and a viewing, and so forth. But there were similarities. I mean, the beginning, everybody said, "Eh, no big deal. A couple of dead monkeys," or whatever. You know, "No big deal." Next thing you know, people you knew were dropping like flies. LB: Yeah. CV: And same thing with COVID -- "Oh, it's going to go away." "Oh, it will fade away in the summer." Not so much. Not so much. So it's one of those things -- you have to learn to pay attention to these things. And science counts. And the medical profession, you know, knows more than a newspaper report, you know. (laughs) And they certainly know more than a blogger that, you know, is sitting there just inventing their strategy and perspective on science, you know. I'm a believer in credentials, you know. If you don't have the credentials and the experience, you know. And that goes back to our Dr. Rhodes, you know. I mean the guy has been in this business -- deep into this business -- since my meeting him in the AIDS timeframe, back in eighty-five, eighty-six. So when Dr. Rhodes says something, I believe him. LB: Yeah. And he's at Lehigh Valley Hospital? Or -- CV: Right, yeah. And he was one of I think the two experts that the congress woman from Bethlehem -- LB: Lisa Boscola? No, congresswoman -- CV: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, yeah. Boscola. LB: She's a state senator. CV: Yeah. She had referenced Luther Rhodes and some other gentleman in conversations that she was trying to get the Wolf Administration to adjust the openings and closings of businesses and so forth. LB: Yeah. CV: So they played a pretty important role in kind of defining what the disease looked like, and -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- what's safe and what's not safe. LB: Yeah. So you were talking about care -- you took care of other people too? CV: I can't say I took care of other people -- LB: Were you there at the time? CV: Yeah. But we would, you know, visit hospitals, you know. It was, you know, what you would do. You know, you'd get to go and visit a hospital. Usually you couldn't gang up in there, because, you know, the patients -- typically by ten, they were bedridden in the hospital -- they would get tired very easily. LB: Yeah. CV: And they were all skin and bones. And, you know, they were being poked left and right, and fed this and fed that, and this test and that test. But you could get, you know, maybe a half an hour or so -- bring something to read, listen to some music, or just sit there and read to them, you know, or bring them some snacks. Because their bodies were wasting away, they could eat a lot of junk food (laughs), because -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, that's not what was going to kill them, you know. If anything, it might put some weight on them. LB: Yeah. CV: But yeah. So, you know, we would share junk food, and, you know, tell some stories and read a book maybe together. LB: Yeah. I think one of the people I spoke to said that he felt that the loss of appetite was particularly near the end of the -- you know, I talk about the disease time going from nineteen eighty-five to nineteen ninety-three, and after ninety-three there was actual medication that people -- it didn't save everybody, but it could save people. There was hope. CV: Yeah. LB: And he was saying that if people were able to make it to nineteen ninety-three (laughs) -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- in some of the instances where it's just that they wasted away. So there was that, you know -- to take marijuana, or -- I knew somebody like who was a friend of mine who scored marijuana for her friend, because he was just not eating -- he was a young kid, and he was -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- just wasting away. And it was the only -- CV: Well part of the disease -- similar to COVID, in that, you know, it affects people in different ways. But one of the more common effects was digestive inflammation -- that, essentially, you just had diarrhea all the time. LB: Oh. CV: So even though you were eating, it didn't do much good, because it was coming out of you as fast as it was going in. And that also lead to severe dehydration. I mean, and then that taxes the organs. So when they get to that point, that's when they need to be on some kind of IV and hospitalized -- because, you know, the loss of appetite is one thing, but the inability to keep food in and process it and get the nourishment out of it is a whole other extension to that. So yeah. Using, you know, marijuana for beefing up the appetite -- that would work. But if your body had gotten to the point where it was no longer keeping food, then -- LB: Right. CV: -- you could have all the appetite you want, but you're not going to be able to outrun it. LB: Right. Yeah. You have a different perspective, it sounds like, than a lot of other people. For one thing, you were really here in nineteen eighty-five. Several of the people I've spoken to were talking about a little bit later -- or several years later -- because they seemed to be a little less aware. But you were really aware, right at the beginning of stuff. And so -- CV: I -- LB: Go ahead. CV: Well, yeah. And, again, I bring it back to the Lambda Center -- that AIDS hotline. And I was around people like the Brian Markses, the Carl Mancinos, the Larry Kleppingers, you know, all the [Chuck Woodberrys?] -- all the people who were -- Candida -- people who were active and engaged and doing something about it. LB: Yes. Yeah. CV: You know, and people weren't going to just sit in a corner crying about it, and, you know, lamenting. There was plenty of that to do. LB: Sure. CV: But, while there was that to do, there was other work to be done. And nobody else was doing it. I mean, even the medical profession -- you know, I have Dr. Rhodes, who was probably the dean of the infectious disease community at the time. And he'd probably tell you, you know, "Back then, I was learning," which, you know, everybody was. So, you know, the medical community -- I mean I'd have to lecture doctors. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean I'm not a med guy, okay? (laughs) I have some common sense, I can understand it, but I'm not a medical professional. But I would go into my personal physician -- my GP -- and, you know, he would say, "Well, doesn't safe sex cure it?" I said, "No," you know. And we look at it now, and you say, "Oh, well that was a stupid question." But, again, back then, we didn't even know the questions. We didn't even know -- LB: Right. CV: -- the questions to ask, much less have the answers. But, you know, the medical profession was really at a loss. And, again, they don't have the technologies that we have today -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- to keep us up to date, you know. LB: Right. CV: And all the newsletter and email, newsletters I get, and all the websites you can visit, and all the instantaneously updated statistics and trends and analyses -- I mean, we're data rich. LB: Yeah. CV: And disease management requires data to do it. LB: That's a really good point, because back then -- and certainly in the eighties -- at the dawn of computers, the internet really hadn't happened. So if you wanted to read something, you'd have to read it in a published thing -- in a brochure. You'd have to go to a conference, you'd have to call somebody up and say, "What's new?" And -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- so that's a vast difference, with regard to that epidemic -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and the epidemic we're dealing now. I mean, everybody, if they want to, can get up-to-date information. Some of it's wrong, but that always happens. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: Well that's an extraordinarily important point. CV: And let me just add something to that. And the blessing is that we have all that. LB: Yeah. CV: But there's a bit of a curse that goes with it, and that is those same venues can be also an outlet for all the wrong stuff -- either intentionally or otherwise. So you've got a lot of people who are preaching things about -- today, for example -- wearing masks. LB: Yeah. CV: They're not making medical statements. I mean they're making some perspective -- or, God forbid, off of some fake website some place that they never bothered to proof check and everything else, you know. So it taxes us, as consumers of information. Because not only do you have to be able to understand what's right -- you have to be smart enough to be able to filter out the nonsense. LB: Right. CV: So it doesn't make it easier that we have all this stuff. Now, at this juncture in time, it makes it a bit challenging, because you have to be smart enough to be able to sift through all this and use the right materials for the right purposes. LB: Yeah. CV: I interrupted you I think. LB: No, I don't want to interrupt you at all. I just want you to keep talking. So (laughter) (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) -- CV: Well, quick scan my notes, and see if -- yeah, we talked about that, and we talked about that. COVID, and medical profession -- oh. The fact that -- and I shouldn't smirk at this -- but the fact that, you know, going for your blood test back then was the equivalent of waiting for your death sentence. LB: Yeah. CV: Because, again, it was pre-cure. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean there was barely any remedies. I mean, you know, they tried to make you comfortable and keep your fluid and nutrition until you die, really. LB: Yeah. Yeah. CV: I mean and I remember, as soon as Jimmy said, you know, "I'm positive," you know, and he said, "You have to go get a test." And I'm thinking, "Oh my God," you know. And I mean I was still working, you know, and I'm like sitting by the phone at the office, like just not knowing, you know. And you just hold your breath. And then, again, similar to today, you could have a negative test, and then six months later have a positive test. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, so you had to go through that test death sentence expectation -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- every six months for years, until you finally figured out -- assuming you hadn't misbehaved -- that, you know, you were okay. And at least now when you get the death sentence -- I mean I know guys who have been living with HIV/AIDS for twenty, twenty-five years now. Twenty years. Yeah. So, I mean, it seems like their quality of life is pretty decent -- I mean they're still working, and, you know, to look at them, you wouldn't know -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- as opposed to twenty-five years ago -- if you looked them, you would definitely know. LB: So I've had people tell me that one of the things that people did -- there were so many funerals -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and there were just funerals all the time. And could you talk a little bit about that whole aspect of it, and going to funerals, and who would do the funerals? And also, people have told me that people planted trees to celebrate peoples' lives. Do you remember that? CV: Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually (laughs) -- there's several things that kind of come into play here. But yes, there were a lot of funerals. They were actually no different, really, than the funerals today, with one major exception. If you died of AIDS then, you were most likely a gay man. LB: Yeah. CV: And whether you were out to your family or not, you were now. LB: Yeah. CV: Whether they wanted to believe it or not, you were in a box, because you died of, at the time, a gay man's disease -- even though we know it's not. But at the time, that's what it was. So the pall over the whole funeral of a family who didn't know about their gay son's life is now -- we can't even talk about it -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- because they're in a box. LB: Yeah. CV: And now all these strange guys have showed up -- LB: Oh, yeah. CV: -- to pay their respects, all crying their eyes out. And, you know, the dynamic at that funeral is just one that I'd never experienced before in my life. And, again, it wasn't just one or two. I mean, and there were guys who were out to their families, and they had a healthy relationship and so forth. But I know other guys who one or two of the parents wouldn't come to the funeral, you know -- and/or siblings. It was truly mixed. So it just made the funerals -- they're complicated enough, emotionally -- but it wasn't even a layer. It was an exponential degree of complexity added to a funeral, from an emotional standpoint. It was just emotionally charged from head to toe. I mean I would go to those funerals and come back and fall asleep for the rest of the day. I was exhausted. I was exhausted. And, in my case, it was a very beautiful event -- I mean we managed to talk through a lot of stuff with the family ahead of time -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- a very religious family -- very religious. So, you know, "How could this be happening?" Et cetera, et cetera. But very loving. And, again, our friends did show up at the funeral, and everybody was welcomed, and there was no hassles, and -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- it went well. But I've seen others where it was an emotional disaster area. LB: Yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: I just talked to Scott Allen, and I talked to Bill Aull about this, and both of them were saying that, you know, some of the ministers and some of the priests were really supportive, and some of them really just wouldn't show up and do anything at all. And I know you have a relationship to that. CV: Yeah. It's sort of wild that the Catholic priest up in Jim's area did the funeral. I mean I don't think there's anything in the Catholic dogma that says a Catholic priest can't give a funeral to a dead gay person. LB: Right. CV: You know, they may have their personal perspective on it, but that's too bad. I mean that's not what canon law says. (laughs) Canon law says, you know, family's gathering, you know, blah, blah, blah. You're doing the funeral. And part of this is conjecture, I'll admit. But the Catholic church -- there's the diocesan component of the Catholic church, which is the one that most people are familiar with -- the big churches and so forth. And then there's the various orders -- like the Franciscan orders, or the Carmelite orders. And they will often have their own churches -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and can do their own thing there, all under the diocesan umbrella. So they can't break any rules under that umbrella -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- but their liturgies can tend to be a little more dynamic. LB: Yeah. CV: So I never thought of it back then, but, you know, had I chosen to do a funeral or a passage of life ceremony at one of the orders -- like the Franciscan over in Easton -- I would have probably had a lot more say in how it would have been done, and what would have gone -- I couldn't break any rules, but it would have been -- LB: Sure. CV: -- different. So yeah. And obviously the metropolitan community church, assuming it was alive and active back in those days, would have done a much different service than the more traditional churches would have. (coughs) And I'm not too familiar with the funeral services in some of the other churches. Most of the ones I went to were more secular. In the funeral parlor, and the minister comes and says a prayer, and is done with it. (coughs) LB: Yeah. But anyway, when you're talking about that, and you're saying that -- I know that that was very devastating to go -- I mean, funerals are devastating at the very (inaudible), and people are going to a funeral every month or every week. CV: Yeah. LB: It's for people you know, or people you're really close to. It's the kind of thing that, you know, you have one instance like that in your young life -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and it bothers you for years. You have twenty instances like that -- it's like war. CV: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well that's a good analogy. I mean it's like I got to live through not having to go to Vietnam -- because I was still in college -- but buried a whole lot of friends as a result of that. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, I hadn't thought of it this way, but it was almost like a trial run for, you know, ten years, twenty years later, fifteen years later to go through this, you know, and get to bury a whole bunch of other friends. LB: It's thirty-five years ago. CV: You're right. (laughter) Eighty-five was thirty five years ago? Thirty-five years? Wow. LB: I'm sorry, honey. (laughter) CV: Well at least I knew what day it was. (laughter) But, I mean, the good news is I knew what day it was. The bad news -- thirty-five years. LB: Yeah. CV: No wonder I don't have any hair. (laughter) No wonder. LB: No, I'm sorry. (laughter) CV: Well, whenever it was. (laughs) LB: You're not the only one who has said that. CV: Okay. (laughs) LB: Other people -- Scott said that today. He said, "Oh, you know, twenty years ago." I said, "Well, Scott, that's" (laughs) -- CV: Is this the Scott I know -- the organist? LB: T. Scott Allen. He's an Episcopal minister. CV: Oh, okay. No. All right. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). And the other guys were saying that too. You know, we were kids then. We were in our twenties and thirties when this was all happening. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: So yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: It's a whole different situation. Do you remember that thing about the trees? Because I remember that, and -- CV: Oh, yes. And I didn't know of others, but a good friend of mine -- Larry Miley, who used to live across the street -- he and his wife were very active with the Lenni Lenape Museum -- LB: Oh, yeah. CV: -- on the parkway. And Larry was a good friend of Jim and I, so -- they live right across the street. So he said, you know, "We would like to organize having a Native American ceremony" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- here. You know, a separate ceremony." So we brought the family back down. And the ceremony was very touching. Everybody wrote little paper notes, and you tied them up with a little ribbon. And then some of them were placed on the branches -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and some of them were buried with the roots. LB: Yeah. CV: And the ritual is that, you know, the roots will decompose the messages and send the messages up to the sky. And then the ones that are hanging in the tree, the winds will carry the messages into the heavens, and so forth. Yeah. And the chief did dances and so forth, and the tribe folks, you know, sang some songs. And we all participated in the songs, and, you know, the raising of the arms, and all that sort of thing. But it was sort of interesting -- I'm sitting back there, looking at this beautiful Polish, catholic family doing all these rituals, and I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, Lord, if their priest ever saw them now." (laughter) So that's the one I know of, personally. And we also did it for when Larry's wife -- Miley's wife -- passed away from cancer. But I didn't know that there were others. But I guess there are, because, I mean, we have trees in our parkway, and trees in the parks here in Allentown that are there for different peoples' memory. And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, there were fundraisers to put trees in for people. LB: There were a few places along the Little Lehigh, down off of Martin Luther King Boulevard. CV: Okay. LB: And apparently several of those -- and one of the things about that was that people who were -- and I don't like to use the word "closeted" in this, but they were concerned about the stigma, and they really didn't want to make a public statement about it. So they just planted the tree. They didn't put a sign, they didn't put a memorial -- CV: Oh. LB: -- plaque, they didn't have a headstone any place. It was that thing. CV: Yeah. LB: I thought that was an interesting thing. But not too many people are familiar with it, so I guess that was -- other people in my mind have -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- you were working at Air Products then. Was there an Air Product response? CV: A very personal one. My boss at the time, you know, was very supportive. I said, you know, "The best time for visitors for Jim in the hospital was after three o'clock. So every day at three, I'm leaving at three o'clock. So, you know, we're just going to have to figure this out." No questions were asked, you know, "Go right ahead." Obviously there was time off for grieving, and the funeral, and so forth. So the company was very, very supportive. This would have been right around the same time as GLEE starting at Air Products. LB: Oh. CV: Jimmy died in ninety-one, and I think GLEE was starting in ninety-one, right? I mean, it was right in that same time window. LB: But tell us was GLEE is, because I know, but people seeing this might not. So go ahead. CV: Oh, GLEE was the Air Products' Gay and Lesbian Empowered Employees. G-L-E-E. I think it has a new name now. I've a bit lost track. LB: Spectrum, or something. CV: Okay. Right. Probably to include all the alphabet soup that we've -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- acquired over time. But that's a good thing. So yeah. So GLEE was our gay and lesbian employee organization. And I was one of the founding members. So it, again, was supportive too. But the company directly -- I mean I was out in the company anyway, and my boss, you know -- I mean people had been to my house for parties -- my staff and my bosses had been to the house here for parties, and Jim was here, and, you know, people who walked around would have discovered on their own, and made whatever conclusions -- that there's only one bedroom and one bed. So you can draw your own conclusions, and, you know. LB: Yeah. CV: I think that was certainly pre-rainbow flag in front of the house days. I'm sure of that. Although not by much. Not by much, (laughs) actually. Yeah. Those flags have been out there quite a bit. But yeah. So how did we get onto that? (laughs) Oh, it was work supportive. So yes. And my coworkers, my secretary at the time, you know, were all, you know -- half of them in tears -- because they all met the guy. So they knew who he was, you know. And they knew they saw us together and in action. So, I mean, it wasn't "Some other guy" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- which is, if you remember -- every time I get a stage to talk on, you know, I always -- especially back in the earlier days -- you know, give the preaching about being out. LB: Right. CV: Because the more out people are, and the more people -- non-gay and lesbian and transgender people -- get to see who they are -- and, "Oh, they're my neighbor, my friends, my daughters, father, my whatever, my dentist, my lawyer," you know. And once they begin to make that personal connection, it's not just "Some horrible gay guy who pissed off God and now he's dead. See, you deserve it" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know. I mean that conversation stops, because they know the guy, and they know that wasn't the case. LB: Yeah. CV: And people always ask me, "How come you're still yelling about being out?" I said, "Because not enough of them are yet." LB: Yeah. CV: But we're a lot better off now than we were for sure. I mean back in eighty-five, we were only about, what, ten years off of the first Stonewall riot. LB: Yeah. CV: Was it seventy-six? LB: It was sixty-nine. CV: Sixty-nine. Okay. So a little bit longer than that. Yeah, I'm not doing too good on years. LB: That's okay. It's not your job. (laughter) CV: Yeah, you're the editor in chief. (laughs) So yeah. I mean it was still early days, and being out was not, you know, a common thing at all, much less to have to be forced out at your funeral. That's just deadly (inaudible). I don't know if some families have recovered yet. LB: Yeah. CV: Now, I know some are still strained over that. Oh, how are we doing? LB: Great. Now there was a little bit of interference there, but you mean they're still strained over the death? Or finding out that their son was gay? CV: I think finding out. Because it's the lack of closure. LB: Oh, okay. CV: When you're given the opportunity to, you know, well, go through the conversation -- "Well, was it something we did? Did somebody make you gay?" You know. To solve those questions, and to get those out of your head -- you just don't know. LB: Yeah. CV: "Were you ever happy? Was there anything we did to hurt you, you know, in your childhood?" You know. All of this stuff that a loving family, hopefully, would want to have -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- just never had the chance to have -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- because it was too late. LB: Yeah. CV: And ditto with the siblings. LB: So yeah. And one of the things that Maria Rodale said, which I thought was a brilliant statement -- she said one of the reasons that her parents were so upset -- her brother was totally out to the family. But the parents felt guilty because they couldn't protect their son. I mean they had a younger son, you're younger than them, you've got a kid, you've got a healthy, young person, and you can't keep them from dying. And I think that that's quite an interesting thing. I mean, it was an interesting way of describing it. CV: I knew David pretty well. In fact, he lived right down the street. And David wouldn't have been an easy guy to control (laughter) in my sense, you know. You know, I loved him dearly. Loved him dearly. And we had a casual banter, back and forth kind of friendship. But, you know, you'd tell him, "Don't go through red lights." (laughter) "All right. What red light?" You know. He'd go through it. And I can tell you some stories, but they wouldn't be appropriate (laughs) for this setting. But he was just a tough one to corral. So, while I certainly respect his family's being disappointed that they couldn't, you know, help him and save him, David was into his twenties, you know -- well into his twenties And, in fact, I think he was running the theater at the time. LB: He was thirty when he died. CV: Yeah. And I think he was running the theater. The -- LB: [He'll be on that?], but yeah. According to her. But he was very young, and it was very fast, too. CV: Yeah. LB: And it was early in the epidemic, so there wasn't any -- I mean, he wasn't at a time when people were telling you what to do to keep from getting it. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: You know, because it was -- CV: Well, that's -- LB: -- that time. CV: Yeah. That's it, you know. Kind of like what we're learning about COVID now, you know -- now we're learning, "Oh, you could be asymptomatic and spreading it around all over the place." Well, there, back in those days, you didn't even know the disease existed. LB: Right. CV: Therefore, having unprotected sex -- what was different today than yesterday. LB: Yeah. CV: "Oh, by the way, you know, maybe one of you two or both of you are positive. And now you both are going to be positive at the end of this." So, you know, you can't really say, you know, "Well, it was you, because, you know, you got sick." And, "Oh, you spread the disease, because you didn't know." LB: Yeah. CV: They really didn't know. You weren't doing anything differently than you were doing a year before -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- except the world had changed in a time. And now anybody who -- after it became obvious what the disease was, and how to prevent it -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, condoms and safe sex -- if you were men practicing on safe sex, then, you know, then that was totally irrational behavior, and, you know, people being mad at you for doing that was absolutely appropriate. LB: Did you think there was a lot of anger at people who were not taking protections to protect their partners? CV: Yeah. I mean there were times I would have to correct people, you know, having this conversation in the bedroom about, "What do you mean you don't want to have condoms? I mean, what do you mean?" LB: Yeah. CV: And now, you know, (laughs) you're not -- you know, I've gone through this, okay. (laughs) This is the wrong house to have this conversation in -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know. So yeah. There were people who still, "Oh, well, it's not that important." What? LB: Yeah. CV: I said, "No." Just because I tested negative, you know, two weeks ago, doesn't mean I'm negative today. LB: Yeah. CV: Because, I mean, I think that disease -- HIV has the ability to hang out under the covers for quite a while before it would surface. So it didn't always surface in an immediate time frame. LB: Yeah. Yeah. CV: You know, I mean we may have better tests now. I don't know. But -- LB: Well we have PrEP now. CV: Yeah. LB: That's the thing that we have. And the T load, you know, they understand about if you have a zero load and stuff. CV: Yeah. LB: But, still, you'd have to rely on the person's information -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and where they got it, and how they understand it, and stuff like that. CV: And the last thing I saw about the PrEP stuff -- I mean that was pretty pricey. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean, don't quote me, but I think it's like a five figure -- you know, ten or twelve-thousand dollars a year for -- LB: Yeah. CV: Does that sound about right? Are you familiar with it? LB: Yeah. It's ridiculous. I mean, in some countries, it's 25 dollars. In our country, it's five-thousand dollars. So, you know, that's it. But the truth -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- is that PrEP -- particularly for people -- and I've said this on other (laughs) videos -- but for people who cannot control what happens to their body. CV: Yeah. LB: And that's true for many people in the world. CV: Yeah. LB: They can't stop getting HIV, because they can't always tell the person that's having sex with them, "No, you can't do that." CV: Yeah. LB: But they can take PrEP, which will keep them from getting it -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- which is a great thing. CV: Yeah. LB: And then, you know, people now, who -- if you take PrEP, you have to be tested. CV: Yeah. LB: You have to be regularly tested. You have to know whether or not you're positive. CV: Yeah. LB: And, actually, people who take PrEP -- they're not cavalier about what they're doing. CV: Yeah. LB: They're being really, really careful. CV: Sure. LB: So it's kind of a good thing. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: Well, so at the time that Jim was sick, and at the time that other people that you knew were sick from AIDS, what about healthcare? I mean did you see positive and negative things were happening in the hospital? Because we had somebody in our extended family who -- at the beginning of the epidemic -- who couldn't -- like they wouldn't even bring the tray into the room when he was in the hospital. So -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- this was a little bit later, when Jim was sick. But -- CV: Yeah. LB: But -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- [maybe it was a bit?] earlier. CV: Yeah. He would have been in the hospital during the winter of nineteen-ninety. We took him in in February -- just a few days after my birthday, actually. And he was pretty much in there through April of ninety. And I don't remember there being -- now, I was in there every day from three to whenever they kicked me out -- three to seven. And I don't remember there being any issue. LB: That's good, yeah. CV: The bigger issue was that, you know, the extended family with, you know, all the little nieces and nephews and crying babies, you know, were around too. LB: Yeah. CV: So, you know, there's like crowd control going on. LB: Yeah. CV: And, again, Jim was a member of the medical community, so I'm guessing that, you know, he might have had people taking care of him that knew him from his professional experience in -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and, you know, just said, "Hey, you know, this is a brother of ours, so we're taking care of our brother." LB: Yeah. CV: But yeah. From what I could gather though -- and Jim had three RN's in the family -- LB: Wow. CV: -- with master's degrees, psychologist, and, (laughs) you know. So there were some heavy-duty materials on the family side -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- at his side too. LB: So they understood the medical circumstances much more than people who were abstract about it -- CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: -- who didn't have that, or -- CV: Yeah. LB: had it, but -- CV: But of the, you know, three or four, five people that I would visit in the hospital, they never struck me -- again, and these would have been in the late-eighties -- no, it would have been in the nineties, because I think Jim died pretty early in the cycle. LB: Yeah. CV: But, yeah. They were in the nineties. And, you know, people would come in and do their thing and bring food and go back. And some of them were cheery, and, you know, "I'm going to stick you again," you know. LB: Yeah. CV: It's time for another stick," you know. LB: Yeah. Did you know that David Rodale had HIV/AIDS when he got sick and died? Apparently it went very fast for him. CV: I noticed him losing some weight, but he was always into wearing, you know, practically spray-on clothing anyways. So he always looked thin. But, you know, one brief period, I said, "Jeez, you know, he was thin to begin with, you know. What's going on here?" And then I do the usual, "Well, oh, maybe." And then yeah. And then he kind of went out of the public eye for a while. And the next thing I knew, I was reading that he had passed away. LB: Yeah. Did he live on Eighth Street? CV: Yes. LB: Oh, wow. CV: Now, he may have lived other places too, but -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- he lived, you know, near Eighth and Chew. LB: Yeah. Oh. Right there. Right up the street. CV: Yeah. LB: So I didn't know that. I wasn't here -- I think when he died, I hadn't moved here quite yet. It was a couple years later. So let's see. I talked about that. (laughs) CV: Yeah, I'm doing the same thing. (laughter) I've got to put my glasses back on to check. I think I got -- LB: I can't ever take mine off. When FACT really was formed and it started to do some very, very significant work in fundraising, were you involved with it? CV: Yeah. Yeah. I was on their board -- I've lost track of how many years -- and probably went off the board and came back on the board, and was involved with doing my bit at the summer games too. And I think I was also on the committee that dispersed the -- I don't know if they still do -- but we used to call them "contingency funds" -- LB: Okay. CV: -- because we would raise money for a whole lot of purposes, but we would keep a separate stash of money for if somebody needed a pair of glasses, and whatever insurance, or whatever thing they had wouldn't cover the pair of glasses -- could we pay for their glasses. LB: Yeah. CV: Somebody needed another prescription, or if somebody was back in their rent and they couldn't get anybody to pay their rent -- could we pay their rent for them. LB: Yeah. CV: So where costs fell through the system, and nobody had money to fix the front tire on the car -- all those little things that, if you were working, you'd have some income, but if you're not working, you don't have any income, and you're relying on, you know, gifts, and/or some grants to help you along. If there's a gap in there, then it could be the smallest thing, but it could mean maybe you can't go out to get food. So we had this contingency pot that we would use for that. LB: And was that most of the money from FACT? Or did other money go to AIDS Services Center? Because, you know, there was a time when FACT was doing fundraisers that were bringing in a hundred-thousand dollars, at a time when a hundred-thousand dollars was really a lot of money. (laughs) CV: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. LB: Could hold you for the rest of your life. CV: Yeah, well, especially since it was all volunteer. So there was no payroll. LB: Right. Right, right. CV: And I think for a while we had free or reduced rent from Candida and one of her places. So, you know, the operating costs weren't sky-high. LB: Yeah. CV: But the demand for funds, you know -- and I remember the direct service money that we were handing out. We may have also gave -- Services Center pretty early on got absorbed by the hospital system. And either it got absorbed, or it was started there, and merged with our little hotline -- how all that worked, I don't really remember. But if they needed money, you know, or if they had a client who couldn't get their dental fees paid for, they would come to us and ask us to do that for them and other agencies who had AIDS patients. And, you know, over time, you know, it went from -- just like a progression of any disease -- it went from most of those requests being gay male-oriented to HIV, drug user-oriented. And it just switched, you know -- so the gay men figured this out, got the condoms in place, and safe sex, and they started behaving themselves, and the meds started to help them, so it could stabilize the needs in the gay male population. But then the other populations weren't controlling it. So where that was going crazy, then we would have to come in and help, even though FACT was basically a gay organization. And now it's much more diverse at this point. But back in the early days, a few women and a bunch of gay guys around a table -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- making stuff happen. LB: Yeah. I know that a variety of people were involved in education. Did you used to be involved with that to talk to people about the stuff? Or have the opportunity to speak out about what's going on? How to -- CV: I think I did, but it wasn't a major part of what I did. LB: Okay. CV: And I'm not sure -- because by then we had engaged the medical community to help us. So there may have been, you know, somebody from FACT to introduce a medical professional and have them dispense the information. That part's a bit foggy for me. I was always involved with the money part, you know -- raise it and spend it. That's what they (laughs) used me for. LB: Yeah. (laughter) Well, that's what it was about, really. CV: Yeah. (laughs) Raise it and spend it. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) too. CV: Yeah. LB: Yeah. I mean extraordinary job, with regard to that. I mean there was a time, I think, when medications became -- because, at the beginning -- particularly in 1985, and between eighty-five and ninety -- there was no hope. And it was so dangerous, and there wasn't anything that people could do. So they went to the doctor, and they didn't say, "Well, here. We have these protocols." But then there was medications. CV: Yeah. LB: And some of the medications were very, very successful. Some of them had horrible side effects. Some actually -- and I've talked to a couple people who said that they thought that the medications actually killed the people that they were working with. And then in other circumstances -- but one of the things that Bill Aull said was even though some of the medications had terrible side effects, at least it was hope. CV: Yeah. LB: They were actually doing something. So what was your awareness of the medications that kind of -- CV: And, again, my time to be most intimate with those was Jim's case. And they were just basic, really, you know -- the basic things you would put in place to reduce fevers, and that sort of thing. So the medical -- in the early days, there was hardly any consequence. LB: Yeah. CV: And so I'm not really familiar -- I mean I've heard the stories about some meds being worse than others -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- but we also know that everybody's body handles meds differently. LB: Yeah. CV: So, you know, it could be that this med worked miracles if you had certain conditions in place. And if you didn't, or if your T cells were too far low, or not low enough, they may not trigger, you know -- just like with some of the people getting that overreaction of their immune system to COVID. I mean, it could be the same thing. I mean if you were at a certain point along the HIV spectrum, some of the meds might have been more contradictory than others, depending on your gene make-up and your disease progression. So, you know, a lot was learned over the decades about meds. And the good news is we have, you know, PrEP. Whether people would consider that a vaccine, per say, probably not, you know, which also makes you nervous about COVID. Well, if we'd been pouring money into the research around HIV for decades -- LB: Yes. CV: Now, granted, we're using all kinds of fast track, sped up processes and collaborate-- I mean, all great. But, you know, people are just assuming there's going to be some vaccine. Like you're going to take a tab off a packet and pour it in water, and away, you know -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- COVID's going away. Not going to happen that way. LB: Yeah. CV: Well, I won't get on my soap box. And, I mean, you go down and you go -- I went to a beach and I walked onto the beach, and I looked down one side, and people were packed on top of each other -- no masks, running around. I said, "I've just got to turn around." I said, "This is my favorite beach. I'm leaving." LB: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. We had to go to a doctor's appointment that Trisha had -- and it was pretty important, and so we had to go -- it turned out to be everything was fine, but we had to go to the doctor. And we really haven't been out. CV: Oh, right. Right. LB: She's a very high-risk, and, you know, I'm over sixty. I'm at risk too. But she's a very high-risk. I mean, I'm just scared -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- because I can't count on people to do the right thing. CV: Yeah. LB: We had to go over to the (laughs) community center, where one of our cars is parked in the garage there, and it has to be inspected -- the battery's run down, because we haven't used it in so long. CV: Of course. LB: So we had to go get the mileage for the inspection. CV: Yeah. LB: So I had to go into the parking lot. And to get into the parking lot, I had to walk by about twelve people. And maybe three of them had masks. And I was mad. I actually climbed over the wall so I wouldn't have to walk by these people. And I get to the car and look at the odometer, and I can't see it, because the battery (laughs) is -- CV: Oh, right. Right. Right. LB: So then I'm like (laughs) okay, well that's not an option. But I was -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- really [pretty?], "Well, you know, you didn't have to climb over the wall." I said, "I did. There were all these people there. I couldn't get through. There was no way I could have gotten" -- CV: Yeah. LB: You know, the alternative was to walk all the way around the garage. And then I would have passed a whole bunch of people that way too. CV: Yeah. LB: So it's very frightening, I think, and it's as frightening as finding out that people then during the AIDS epidemic were not testing and were not using condoms. CV: Yeah. LB: And I knew that there were people that -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- Steve Black died of AIDS. CV: Yeah. LB: And it was really late. I remember, it was just a little while ago -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- like (inaudible). And I knew Steve well enough to say that I don't think he knew he had it. CV: Or, it's very likely, because he was young enough, that he would have been in an age category that wasn't around for the first wave. And so it came in after all your friends had died. So he got it in I think after -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- the tail end of all that. LB: Yeah. CV: So it wasn't as in your face as much. You know, when you're walking to the club and you see six people that are ready to fall over dead, you know, your awareness of AIDS is pretty high. LB: Sure. CV: If you don't see anybody who's carrying AIDS, and if it's not in the press, and it's not in your face all the time, eh, you know. And that was a worry, and still is. I mean, a lot of the people I lecture to -- "lecture to" in quotes -- about safe sex, you know, are the ones that are in their 30s -- LB: Yeah. Yeah. CV: -- you know. Thirties and forties, because, you know, they were in that section of time where it wasn't a big deal. LB: Yeah. CV: And they're watching porn sites where there's all unprotected sex on these porn sites. So they say, "Okay. Everything must be good." LB: Yeah. CV: And, "No, it's not," you know. "It's not eradicated." LB: And there's also the reality that if you get the disease and you never get tested and you're not treated, then you're going to die. CV: And you're going to infect a whole lot of other people. LB: Right. Right. Did you come in contact with people who were -- I mean, testing became more of an issue and more available -- and certainly more available now, with the rapid test. It's so easy now, in comparison to the way it was. But, you know, how were people advocating testing at that time? CV: Well, I mean, it was the basics. Well, you know, your partner, or if you've had unprotected sex with somebody who you don't know, you know, you need to go get tested. LB: Yeah. CV: And there was the usual reluctance, for two reasons -- number one, "Oh, they're going to tell me I'm going to die. So why should I be in a hurry to go hear this news?" Number one, because there is no cure. LB: Right. CV: Number two, "Oh, now my parents are going to find out." LB: Yeah. CV: "Oh, my work is going to find out." Or, you know, "Somebody else is going to find out." So it had at least two stigmas to it that would have kept people not running out the door to go get tested. LB: I think -- CV: You know, they didn't know what it -- you know, "Do I have to like be signed up? Is my name going to be on some board some--" you know. In early days, there was just no information about, you know, how confidential was this really going to be, can I trust these people, I don't even know who they are, it's not my family doctor -- our family doctor doesn't even know I'm gay. Now he's going to know I'm gay, or she's going to know I'm gay. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean ugh. It's just a whole mess. LB: Yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: Yeah. And Dave Moyer was talking about disease tracking, you know -- once they had a positive person, they really had to say to them, "Okay, you have to tell us everybody that we have to notify." CV: Yeah. LB: And they were like, "Well you're going to tell them it came from me." So they're not going to tell them, but they might (laughs) be able to figure it out -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- you know. But we have to do this. CV: Yeah. LB: There's this, "Oh, you're putting this putting at colossal risk." CV: Yeah. LB: But it's interesting -- what you just said about testing, and one of the reasons that people didn't get tested was that if they were positive, their family was going to find out, or their boss was going to find out, or their neighbors, or something like that. And that talks a lot to the fact that most people in those days were closeted to at least a segment of the population. CV: Yeah. LB: I mean there's you and me and Trish, who every single person in the world knows, you know -- you ran for office as an openly gay man. (laughter) But not everybody's like us. And -- CV: True. True. And, in some cases, thank God (laughs), you know. But, to be honest, you know, when I first came to the Valley, I wasn't out, oddly -- I mean, believe it or not. And you have some personal experience with this, too, in that I used two names -- the Charlie, and the Chuck. LB: Yeah. CV: And, growing up as a kid, I was always Chuck, because my father was Charlie. And then somewhere along the way, in high school, the same kids that used to call me Chuck started calling me Charlie. I don't know how that happened. It just happened. LB: Yeah. CV: So I became a Charlie, and I was a Charlie all through college and grad school. And then when I moved here, I was a Charlie. But then when I started going to the Stonewall, I said, "Hmm. Maybe I'll be a Chuck here." LB: (laughs) Oh, that's interesting. CV: So when I hear someone call my name -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- I know where they're coming from. (laughs) LB: I get it. CV: How I know this person. LB: Yeah. CV: So that was the beginning of all that. And that, of course, all collapsed once, you know, Jimmy moved in, and, you know, people started coming here, and they would hear him call me Chuck. And they would go, "Who's that?" And, as more gay people came out at Air Products, the ones who knew me from the Stonewall as Chuck then all of a sudden went, "Wait a minute. Who's this Charlie guy? Is it the same guy we know, you know? How come he's got two names?" LB: Yeah. CV: And, as it turns out, there were lots of people that I met -- mostly guys -- who had two names. But it was more of a childhood thing, you know -- their real name was Harold, but -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- all their friends called them Butch. And their real name was Paul, but his family called him Skip, you know. And it was all these -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- there are versions to that all over the place, but mine had just a slightly different twist to it. And then I finally said, "That's enough," you know. (laughs) I can't (inaudible), and there's no reason for this to be. So it didn't have to be this complicated. LB: But the circumstances of you living with Jim -- and then really Jim dying, too -- really must have put you into the light, in terms of that you were gay. And did you find that there was problems with that? I mean did that happen? CV: Well, no. I mean I think people knew way before he died -- LB: [Can you move?] the microphone? CV: Oh, I'm sorry. Am I muting it? LB: Yeah. CV: Okay. LB: Something's rubbing ag-- there you go. That's good. CV: Okay. What was that? What was bothering the sound before? LB: (laughs) It's okay now. It's good. CV: Okay. It was just my notes, and I didn't want to have to -- LB: Oh, yeah. No -- CV: -- (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). LB: -- that's what was happening. So you've got to -- CV: Yeah. So I had them up on the keyboard -- who knew that I had it on top of the microphone? I didn't know -- in fact, I never even knew where the microphone was on this bloody thing. Anyway. So people knew. I mean, again, when he was not sick, we would have parties here at the house, and there would be company parties, and I would bring Jim. So, you know, again, it was before rainbow flags out in front of the house things, but people drew their own conclusions. They said, "Okay, that's his date. And that's his date then, and again it was his date next time" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "and five years later, he's still the date. Maybe this is something going on, okay." (laughs) So, I mean, people just drew their own conclusions. And, again, I used to make people uncomfortable, because whenever they asked me about my experience being discriminated against, I'd say, "Well, you know, I'm discriminated against more because I'm five foot two than I am" -- (laughter) because I just never felt discriminated against being gay -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know. But seriously. At least in those days, and in the Air Products mentality -- I mean there was the physical, "This is what you look like," if you were going to be a senior manager -- "this is what you look like." And if you don't look like that, it doesn't make any difference what you are. If you don't look like that, you've got to perform your way into the circle. LB: Yeah. That's a good point. CV: So I just performed my way into the circle -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and got there. And then they said, "Well, how did he get here?" you know. LB: Yeah. CV: And then they wiped the sweat off their brow, and said, "Well, thank God. Because we needed a gay senior manager. (laughter) So aren't we lucky. We didn't have to go" -- LB: You totally balance it out -- CV: -- "look for one." LB: -- though by not having a high, squeaky voice. So that's the -- CV: Oh, yeah. LB: -- you get away with being your height if your voice is like yours. CV: Well there's a funny story about that, too. And a lot of the vendors I would deal with in the IT community would just know me from the voice on the phone. LB: Sure. CV: And then they would come to the office to come meet me, and then they would always be, "Well where's the guy on the phone?" Like looking over my head like there was somebody else in the room. LB: Oh, that's funny. CV: I said, "No, this is the guy on the phone." (laughs) LB: Yeah. CV: "Oh, wow." LB: But, you know, in terms of discrimination -- and I've talked to a lot of people about this -- I mean there are some very significant instances of discrimination that are not unique circumstances, with regard to somebody, you know, throwing a brick through your window with "fag" -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- written on it or something. But let's face it -- you couldn't marry him. CV: Right. Right. At least not then. LB: And that would have been a very different thing. And when, you know, Steven Olofson died -- did you know Robert Rousch and Steve Olofson? CV: Yeah. LB: And Steve died of prostate cancer, and it was a long time, and at the end he was in hospice care. And Robert did a program for me -- Robert said -- this is relatively recently -- he said, "If I hadn't been married to him, I don't know how I could possibly have gone through this." CV: Yeah. LB: Because every single day, somebody would come in and say, "Well, who are you?" In hospice, you know -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- go in his room, or making decisions for him -- because he was really not able to make decisions for himself anymore. And he would say, "I'm his husband." And then they'd just be done with it. CV: Yeah. LB: Because he could make legal decisions himself. CV: Was that pre or post-HIPPA? LB: Oh, this just happened. CV: Okay. LB: I mean this happened -- I don't know -- three years ago, maybe four years ago. I think -- CV: You see, I don't -- LB: -- it's been (inaudible) since Steve died. CV: Yeah. Because I think again, back in the -- LB: Well, that's a good point -- the HIPPA -- CV: -- nineties. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean, if you want to know who was in the hospital, you can just ask the lady at the front desk (laughs), you know -- LB: Yeah, that's true. CV: -- "What room is it? Okay, thank you." Off you went, you know. But you did remind me that I was in the room when they had an attorney -- the hospital arranged to have an attorney to come, and a notary, and we took care of the advance directives and the will and everything, out of his hospital bed. LB: Yeah. CV: I remember, you know, pre-making up the disbursement checks -- he wanted handed out -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and having him sign them before -- he authorized me as his power of attorney. So we did all that at his hospital bed. And, I mean, yeah, we weren't able to be married -- but, again, in those days, the regulations about who could come to the room and who could be providing help or providing care was not so rigid as they are now. LB: Except for that they could have said, "You can't be in here." CV: Yeah, they could have. LB: You could have had somebody -- because that actually almost happened to me. Trish was in an accident, and I rushed to the hospital. She was in the hospital, and she was knocked out -- she was injured. And, you know, I was in the hospital room with her. I wanted to stay there all night. They said she had a major concussion -- she could die in the night or something. I'm not leaving. CV: Yeah. LB: And then I was helping to fill out the form, and they said, "Well, do you have a power of attorney?" And I said, "Yeah. I have it in my pocket." CV: Yeah. LB: Because I never went anywhere without it. CV: Yeah. LB: And I had it in my pocket. Because they were going to throw me out of the room. CV: Yeah. LB: And that was a long time ago -- I mean it was about 20 years ago. But I think that the significance of that was that if it had been somebody who was the decision maker at that moment. Had they been somebody who was extraordinarily anti-gay -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- or really fearful of HIV/AIDS, they could have just said, "You have to leave." CV: Yeah. LB: So, you know, you can be in a circumstance where -- one of the things that -- this has become really apparent to me -- is that the Lehigh Valley really had an excellent response to AIDS -- CV: Oh, absolutely. LB: -- compared to other communities -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- that were terrible about it, and just let everybody die, and, you know, discriminated against them, and -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- bury them, and that kind of stuff. They just turned it's back on the entire gay population -- gay, male population -- CV: Yeah. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). But the Lehigh Valley -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and part of it was because that community center existed already, I think. CV: Yeah. LB: So there was -- CV: There was a community organization, and then quickly following it was FACT, and then the bar organizations as a fundraising machine -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- for the summer games and other things. And then you had the beginnings of the AIDS Services Center -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and they had social services wrapping around. And the AIDS Services Center really being driven by the hospital system. LB: Right, right. CV: So you had the medical community engaged with the gay and lesbian community organizations. And it did kind of come together probably as a model way of dealing with an AIDS epidemic in that era, and probably on the -- you know, outside of San Francisco and New York -- may well have been in the forefront. LB: I think so. I think so. And part of that was there was a large part of the community that was out -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and would be activists -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- who would stand up to be activists. And HIV -- I mean, when you'd have a common enemy like that -- because this was [the problem?] -- you are in a situation where people are banding together to help each other. And, you know, before that, I think there had been a sort of division between the gay, male population and the lesbian population. And this kind of brought this together, in terms of a force of people who were there to help each other. CV: Yeah. LB: I mean even the fact that we had three gay bars -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- or we had two gay bars in nineteen eighty-five -- just meant that people had a place to go every week -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- every day, if they want to -- to be around other gay people. And -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- that's what it was. And these weren't like little back rooms where like nobody knew they were there. CV: Yeah. LB: And I've been to bars -- I went to bars like that. CV: Yeah, yeah. LB: But, no, there was a very strong community and leadership within the community that was significant, I think. CV: Yeah. LB: And not just one leader, too. CV: Right. LB: It was not just one person that was doing stuff. CV: Yeah. LB: And, in many cases, there were communities where the one person had AIDS and died, and that was the end of the whole circumstance of activism. CV: Yeah. Yeah. And in organizations where there's not a lot of death, and they're dependent on one charismatic leader, and, you know, it's all defined by the one person, and then the one person goes -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and everything else goes too. LB: Yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: Well, we're coming to the end. We've got about ten minutes left. CV: Yeah. LB: So, you know, I've talked to a lot of people about how this archive -- so this is all going to be archived at Muhlenberg. CV: Yeah. LB: And we've given all the papers -- Dixie White's papers -- forteen boxes of Dixie White's papers went over there -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- in just the last -- and I had a whole bunch of stuff from her -- and our papers and everything have all gone to Muhlenberg to be digitalized and stuff -- and we've been working on that for four years. It's in conjunction with the community center. We actually own it -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- but they're doing the work on it. CV: Right. LB: We generate the grants and stuff. And so this particular project is coming through Muhlenberg as well -- it's going to be digitalized. And so there's a really good chance that, you know, thirty or forty or fifty years from now, somebody's going to see this. CV: Okay. LB: So what do you want to say to them about that time, and maybe about this time too? I mean you've said a lot, so if you can't think of anything, that's fine. (laughter) CV: Well, you know, the question you're asking is "What would I tell my thirty year old friend thirty years from now?" LB: Yeah. CV: Hmm. Well part of it is that, you know, there's a whole bunch of messages now that are flooding through my mind. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). CV: (laughs) And some of it is tainted by our current situation. But at number one -- I mean, I'll quote some of Tom Friedman, from yesterday's New York Times -- you know, "Science. There's this thing about science. So when you're dealing with disease, diseases are a function of science. So if you want to understand the disease, you've got to understand the science behind it. And that doesn't come from whatever the thirty year version of Facebook looks like, it doesn't come from the thirty year version of Twitter, it doesn't come from the thirty year any of those things. It's going to come from the science organizations and the researchers who are leading this charge" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "and they're not going to know everything on day one" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "they're not going to know much more than anybody else on day one" -- LB: Right. CV: -- "and it's really the caliber and the quality and the robustness of the intellectual science community, globally, coming together to go solve the diseases of the future." I mean that's how this one -- this COVID thing -- is going to get addressed, hopefully, and solved. And that's what was lacking thirty years ago in the AIDS world is that, you know, the research and science communities were scattered. They had no way of collaborating other than a phone call, or mailing -- God forbid -- mailing a research paper from one place to -- maybe fax. You could probably fax it, you know. But that was the extent of the network back in those days. So now we'll have a whole more robust communications world -- and that will be even much more easy to use and abuse -- that we have today. So one message is to leverage science, and make sure they have the tools and the technologies to help them work together on a global basis to solve, you know, whatever the disease problem is of the future. LB: Yeah. CV: Secondly is when there's a disease, you've got to learn what it means to you. You've got to figure that out. And you're not going to read it, again, by listening to a Facebook post about what it means to somebody else. No. You've got to unplug the things out of your damn ears and sit down and do some pondering, do some reading, and figure out what this disease means to you, to your family, to your friends, what are the risks to you, personally, and to the ones you love -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you've got to understand those risks, understand the science, and then you take your responsibility -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- just like you did, jumping around the parking lot to get away from people. LB: Yeah. CV: You can take responsibility to manage your exposure to that disease and your reaction to it. And, yeah, the government may come by at some point and, you know, hand out masks and whatever. But if people don't take the personal responsibility to put the damn mask on -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, it's macht nichts). It doesn't make any sense. So those are my nuggets -- my nuggets for the thirty years in the future. LB: Okay. I'll give you one more opportunity to comment on this, because when we talk about the difference between AIDS and COVID,one of the p roblems with the stigma of AIDS in the nineteen-eighties is that, governmentally, even the science world was not as desperate to deal with the disease and the cure for it, because it was affecting a minority group that they didn't like very much. And that can happen in other circumstances as well. This is only affecting poor people in Africa. CV: Yeah. LB: Or it's only affecting poor people in the United States -- in the slums of the United States. CV: Yeah. LB: So should we rush to figure this out? Or is it not as important? Now, right now, COVID is kicking everybody in the head. CV: Yeah. LB: Well everybody in the science world is trying to figure it out, which is pretty significant. So we may accelerate the understanding of this disease, simply because every scientist is working on it, as opposed to HIV/AIDS, where nobody even mentioned it for two years, you know, in a lot of those. CV: And this is more complex. LB: Yeah. CV: And one of the key differentiators -- and may be the key differentiator -- and this is going to sound terrible -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- is that HIV/AIDS did not pose an economic impact -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- regardless of who -- regardless of who it was. LB: Yeah. CV: If it was only attacking senior people in the senior center, you know, period, and no one else -- even if there were ten times the number of AIDS cases, there was not an economic impact. LB: That's a good point. Yeah. CV: The accelerator, for now, why this global thing is -- is the global shut down. LB: Yeah. CV: Well, you can't do that. LB: Yeah. CV: Now, it made the environmentalists happy. I mean, from a guy who spends his time four months in Jamaica, it made me happy for Jamaica, because the environment there gets a chance to breathe. LB: Yeah. CV: And here. I mean the air cleaned up here, you know, the noise. But the economic impact is the killer -- that's the deal. And I might be biased, but my perspective is that it's the economics that drove this free-for-all, go after the virus. LB: I think that's very -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- very reasonable. CV: I mean I think -- LB: But, economically to figure out that the way to slow this down is by wearing masks is ultimately going to make everybody have to wear masks. Yeah. It is often always about money. CV: Yeah. LB: It's about the economy, it's about greed -- but also, you know, I mean you said, "Well this is better for people." But you could say, "Well, look, you know, we're talking about fifty-thousand cases a day now." So if we've got fifty-thousand cases a day -- and that's an exponential thing. It's not fifty-thousand cases every day for the rest -- it's going to be fifty-thousand(inaudible). Pretty soon, it's going to be a hundred-thousand cases a week. And if that happens, somebody in a governmental situation is going to say, "Okay, now everybody has to wear a mask, we have to shut down. Otherwise, we're never going to stop this. So we have to -- I don't know -- evoke martial law." And people could say, "Well I don't want to do that." Well too bad -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- because there's money involved. And sometimes that really makes the difference. I think that is the case. CV: Unfortunately, it's sad -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- because, you know, the forty-thousand who died because of COVID, you know, are no more or less important than the forty-thousand who have died in AIDS. LB: Sure. CV: Those lives are the same lives, you know. LB: Yeah. CV: And the forty-thousand, plus, that died from car accidents, and all the other things that people die from. But none of those things shut down the globe. LB: Yeah. Yeah. That's true. CV: Okay. LB: That's very true. Well you've been brilliant, as usual. (laughter) CV: That's just because my shiny head is in the light above me. LB: Not at all. Not at all. (laughter) [Actually?] it's a terrific picture -- your house looks great. CV: Oh, thank you. LB: I think I could practically see it if I just look like this -- because I'm on my third floor, looking out the -- CV: Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. LB: But I really appreciate this, and I do want to say, for posterity, that Charlie Versaggi, or Chuck Versaggi -- either one -- has been an enormous, significant beacon, with regard to not only the work that codified the fight against AIDS in the Lehigh Valley, but working for the civil rights of people in the Lehigh Valley. Because you did some really important things right at the beginning, including -- I remember in ninteen ninety-eight when we were fighting for a passage of the ordinance that you got I think the vice president from Air Products to come and speak. Do you remember that? And you said, "Yeah, I could do it. But here's this guy" -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- "really high up in the" -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- "corporation." And that was very significant that that happened -- and that's just one of dozens of things that you've done I think that really mattered. I really appreciate that very much, Charlie. CV: Oh. LB: Thank you for all the work you've done. So, you know, that -- CV: I spend my time on things that are important. LB: Well I really appreciate that, and I hope that we can -- I'm going to turn off the thing now, but I really appreciate all the work you've done. Let me turn this recor-- END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:29:39
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Charles Versaggi, July 2, 2020
Description
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Charlie Versaggi talks about the early days if the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the loss of his partner to AIDS, his work with the Lambda Community Center (formerly Le-Hi-Ho), the AIDS Services Center, and Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT).
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PH40_01
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2020-07-02
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/6df75b76c76c512af877a1741a061f02.png
e4823686b00b9cef9cbb0d4d8adcad13
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: COVID-19
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Chloe Cole-Wilson
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_24.xml
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COVID-19
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5.4 July 14th, 2020 Chloe Cole-Wilson, July 14, 2020 PH40_24 01:24:56 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg COVID-19 COVID-19 Activism Pandemic Chloe Cole-Wilson Liz Bradbury video/mpeg Coles-WilsonChloe_20200714_video.mp4 1.0:|27(2)|50(8)|85(2)|116(5)|141(9)|164(2)|183(6)|210(11)|251(14)|274(8)|299(16)|324(5)|347(4)|376(17)|399(14)|428(3)|449(13)|476(12)|499(14)|526(6)|553(2)|576(9)|599(15)|624(14)|649(9)|672(5)|691(13)|716(9)|737(13)|766(9)|793(15)|818(11)|841(7)|862(11)|887(11)|914(8)|937(2)|960(12)|985(17)|1012(16)|1041(15)|1076(3)|1103(15)|1130(18)|1151(7)|1174(2)|1199(5)|1224(16)|1249(5)|1278(15)|1303(15)|1326(18)|1347(5)|1370(7)|1393(6)|1416(13)|1439(8)|1460(4)|1481(10)|1510(7)|1531(11)|1550(16)|1573(11)|1600(9)|1625(17)|1644(11)|1667(14)|1696(2)|1719(12)|1744(6)|1769(5)|1794(15)|1821(11)|1842(4)|1865(9)|1886(15)|1917(3)|1940(8)|1969(11)|1992(9)|2017(5)|2052(5)|2081(20)|2114(5)|2149(5) 0 https://youtu.be/6bYdJH4BdhE YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction LIZ BRADBURY: -- a little problem. Okay. So there we go, and I’m going to turn the audio on too. Now, I’m going to read you these -- this piece -- this intro. Oh, turn off my phone. (laughs) I write that right on here, so I don’t forget to do it. 
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 ; CHLOE COLE-WILSON: (laughs)
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 ; LB: And I want to also pin -- oops -- pin you in this. Okay. It’s good. Pin in the video, I got the audio, okay, it’s good, and record it. So with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I’m here with Chloe Cole-Wilson -- is that right -- to -- 
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 ; CCW: Right.
 ; Activism ; Allentown ; Bethlehem ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; COVID-19 ; Liz Bradbury ; Project SILK Lehigh Valley 0 207 Description of Project SILK Lehigh Valley + COVID Experiences LB: Okay. Oh, so here are some of these thing. And so I already sent these questions. And the concept of the archive, I like to think about it as that there will be people who will, hopefully, look at this many years in the future to see what it was like for people at this point in the COVID epidemic in the Lehigh Valley who are part of the core community to get sort of an idea. Because there have been other circumstances with pandemics and epidemics where we really didn’t talk about people’s personal experiences. You can say anything you want about this. I have some of those questions. You can answer those, or you can think about those. I’ll ask those if you want, but you can say whatever you want. But let’s start out with this, are you by yourself in your home or do you have other people there or what’s the deal? 
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 ; CCW: It’s myself and my partner and then we have three other roommates.
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 ; LB: Oh, okay, okay. I know the answers to some of these things, but you could talk about this for the archives. Have you been working, has your employer closed or laid off, and why don’t you talk about a little bit what you do? 
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 ; CCW: Yeah. So I am program coordinator for Project SILK Lehigh Valley, which is an LGBT drop-in center that focuses on Black and brown youth. So a lot of the work that I’ve been doing during this time is just planning, programming, and getting the Valley Youth House staff in a place where they feel comfortable providing services virtually while also responding to crisis. During this time, we did have a few youth that became homeless and so it was trying to respond to those needs as quickly as we possibly could with -- considering my safety, my staff’s safety, and things like that, the youth safety, so yeah. Chloe Coles-Wilson ; COVID-19 ; Liz Bradbury ; Project SILK Lehigh Vally 0 340 HIV + STI Testing during COVID-19 
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 ; CCW: Mm-hmm. So a lot of what we did was six feet, we stayed six feet away, we were masked up. We supplied some hand sanitizer to our workers and things like that. But I was one of the only workers that was really out working with a youth who was identifying as like unsheltered and was living in what -- in Allentown, what people would call it as like tent city where folks -- where all the unsheltered folks kind of cohabitate together and exist. So a lot of it was just like dropping things off on the corner and being like, “Hey, these items are here. I will wait for you to pick up these items.” And then, you know, sometimes because we are in partnership with a shelter as well, to give and provide HIV, STI testing but also provide sexual health counseling and things like that. In those moments, we were meeting outside on the porch six feet away. Now that restrictions have lessened, we’ve been doing some more contact work with our other sites. There’s been some very interesting things that I’ve done to try to appease the youth and provide the service, you know? 
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 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; COVID-19 ; HIV ; Liz Bradbury ; STI 0 532 The Impact on the Youth + Activism in the Arts Park CCW: And it’s like a central place, so kids coming from all over the city will be able to just kind of know where it is, access where it is, and it kind of works. And also too, we might be able to interact with new youth there because there has been a lot of youth out because of the protesting, the Black Lives Matter protests that are happening right now, which is -- it’s so crazy because that’s on the other end of the work that I do. I also have an arts organization called Basement Poetry. And we’ve been doing some activism and advocacy around just like so many things, police brutality, inclusive shelters that will allow trans and gender nonbinary folks to identify in the identity that is theirs. Because if they cannot, it is a health risk. So that’s been something that we’ve been really talking a lot about with these other organizations that are Black and brown ran. 
 ; 
 ; It’s how to have inclusive spaces. Talking with city council about this. When we’re defending the police like when this funding starts trickling down, making sure these organizations are anti-racist, making sure these organizations are anti-oppressive. That’s another piece of this too. But what’s interesting is the area like... Because the kids are so like, “I don't know what’s going on, I don’t know what to do with myself,” so they’ve been out. They’ve just been out hanging out. So I’m hoping that we can foster a space for youth that are just like migrating and hanging out. 
 ; 
 ; A place for them to be a little bit that’s a little bit more supervised, that’s safe, that gives them access to services. Because it’s been very interesting how like all the protests have rolled out and just youths, kind of, just hanging out in the city. Basement Poetry ; BLM ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; COVID-19 ; Liz Bradbury 0 672 Talking with Friends and Family Over Zoom LB: Well, Leonardo never made that horse, but other people have taken the designs that he made it and then they recreated it in a couple of different places, and that’s one of the places where it is. His design was much bigger than that, but it’s pretty, and it’s Leonardo, a genius who was gay, so, one of our ancestors. So for you personally in terms of communicating with people in your family or other -- of friends that you may not be able to be near with regard to social distancing and stuff, have you been using a lot of electronic conversations? Like where have you -- 
 ; 
 ; CCW: Oh yeah. It’s like Zoom, I -- even just today for work, I was on nothing but Zoom calls. Instagram Live is like our outreach pool, so we can say, “Hey, this is what we’re doing.” But with friends and family, I’m always on the phone, I’m always texting. It’s been really hard. I will say there were moments during this whole continuing on in this pandemic where I’m like, “I need to see my mom, I’m going to go see my mom, I don’t care, I’m seeing her, I don’t care, I just -- I can’t,” you know?
 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Leonardo da Vinci ; Liz Bradbury ; Zoom 0 878 Youth's Right to Shelter CCW: I guess one of my biggest concerns is shelter, right? I think that when... I have a very special relationship with one of our clients. When I had discovered that they were struggling in this way and had no place to go, I’m like, all right, so I’m going to go, and I’m going to hunt down all of my resources, so I’m pulling out all the resource guides, pulling out all the books that I’ve created and put together, all the protocol. And I’m looking at them and I’m like, There’s nothing that will work for this young person. And this young person is not under the age of 18, so it’s not like I can call Valley Youth House shelter. This young person is identifying as nonbinary, so it’s like putting them in a shelter can be so difficult. And Salvation Army and all of these other shelters are very religious, and there is follow your faith and do what is best in your practice and in your meeting and -- you know what I mean? That’s what nonprofits are, right? Like a lot of people start nonprofits from their hearts, right? 
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 ; 
 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Shelter ; Valley Youth House Shelter ; Youth 0 1070 Allentown School Closings LB: -- high school seniors or college seniors? 
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 ; CCW: High school seniors. It was so immensely frustrating with how [00:18:00] everything -- the information was coming down and how everything was handled. Everything was very like just put together, which I get. We’ve never been... Our folk, I would at least say the generations like Millennials and Gen Z’s have never been through something like this. So you have half of the population that’s never been through a crisis and the other half who has experience with this kind of things. It’s just such a cluster of all of these mixed experiences, anyways. But with the schools, like the Allentown School District weren’t getting the things that they need right away. There was a moment where the kids didn’t even go to school for like -- or have any formal education for three and a half weeks, almost a month until April. In the midst of April, they were able to get like Wi-Fi to youth, [00:19:00] hotspots to youth, and technology to youth, and that was another concern of mine too. So, again, it was just like that just misinformed and then explaining to the youth that this happens sometimes. But when it consistently happens, they’re like, “What is going on?” and so then they’re in crisis, right, and they’re freaking out like, “What’s going on? I need answers,” you know what I mean, so... 
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 ; LB: Yeah. Young people really look to older people to fix things and explain things to them, and we have no answers on this. I mean I’m sixty-three years old, and there’s nothing in my life experience that compares to this. I can say that I know somebody who is one hundred four years old who’s been in the center by the way, who was alive during the flu epidemic of 1918. And that’s the only other thing that’s comparable to this one because [we?] had the flu. Because even if you look at HIV/AIDS, which was a very different thing, it wasn’t like everybody had it, and it was really [00:20:00] hard to get it. I mean, you can’t just get AIDS. You have to have sex with people and be involved with people. That’s not the same situation. On the other hand right now, every single -- this is a hopeful thing that you can say to youth is that every single scientist in the world that knows about this kind of stuff is working on this issue, which wasn’t true for AIDS. Nobody did anything about that for years -- 
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 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; High school seniors ; Liz Bradbury 0 1166 Police Brutality and AIDS LB: Yeah. Young people really look to older people to fix things and explain things to them, and we have no answers on this. I mean I’m sixty-three years old, and there’s nothing in my life experience that compares to this. I can say that I know somebody who is one hundred four years old who’s been in the center by the way, who was alive during the flu epidemic of 1918. And that’s the only other thing that’s comparable to this one because [we?] had the flu. Because even if you look at HIV/AIDS, which was a very different thing, it wasn’t like everybody had it, and it was really hard to get it. I mean, you can’t just get AIDS. You have to have sex with people and be involved with people. That’s not the same situation. On the other hand right now, every single -- this is a hopeful thing that you can say to youth is that every single scientist in the world that knows about this kind of stuff is working on this issue, which wasn’t true for AIDS. Nobody did anything about that for years -- 
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 ; CCW: For -- yeah.
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 ; LB: -- and years and people just died, all over the place. Really, it sounds like such a tricky thing when you have young people who want these answers, and they’re not going to really put up with you saying, I don't know. 
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 ; CCW: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? I feel like all of my youth that I work with, I’ve known them for a very long time since Project SILK started. And so they are built with the same tenacity that I have and the same questioning of authority, questioning of the system, the same activist spirit. So I kind of set myself up to have these awesome kids that will advocate for themselves, but then in these situations I’m like, Why did I do this? (laughs) It’s been very complex. And even for my team, it’s been very hard to figure out how to have these conversations without having the meltdown. But luckily, we’re going to be starting some therapy services in August, so I think that’s going to really help with some of these, like this processing of all the things that are happening. And including the trauma that we are constantly exposed to with the Black Lives Matter, the police brutality but not just Black Lives Matter but like police brutality and systematic racism and microaggressions and all of these experiences that they’re having. They’re also processing that too at the same time that they’re processing a pandemic, and we’re in this in this civil unrest, and it’s like -- it’s a lot. They’re going through a lot right now. And then also, they’re seeing the systems start to crumble in front of them. So it’s like they were aware before that things weren’t good. But then when you’re not getting educated and your peers in the Whitehall School District or Parkland Area School District and Bethlehem Area School District are all on the computers doing their homework while you’re just waiting, it really does go to show you the barriers and how the system fails. And so many youth were responding to that like, “What do I do, what --? How do I respond to this?” And it’s just like email, email congress, email your local reps, make sure people know and are on top of what’s happening in your school. 
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 ; AIDS ; Allentown School District ; Black Lives Matter ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; HIV ; Liz Bradbury ; Police Brutality 0 1376 Importance of Voting LB: Right, right, right. Register to vote because some of them will be old enough too, so, you know? 
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 ; CCW: Mm-hmm. Our kids right now are aging out -- not aging out, but they’re coming out of that phase where they’re in the drop-in center all the time. So the kids to that are in the drop-in center all the time between the ages of like 14 to 17. And then once they graduate high school, they’re really focused on their life and themselves and getting things together. So a lot of times, they’re not spending a lot of time there. So we have a lot of older youth there, so I’m always encouraging them to vote and be a part of and know your local government because that is where you have a lot of power and say in what happens here. 
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 ; LB: Whenever I used to talk to running a voter’s -- an LGBT voter’s organization -- it’s called [PAL?], and we did that for many, many years -- one of the things we talk to people about is being a super voter. And a super voter is a person who votes in every election in the primary for four years in a row. And whether or not you vote is a matter of public record. So any person can get a list that shows whether or not you voted this in the primary and then that stuff, in the main election every year for years and years. And when you write a letter or you write an email or you write a card to your state representative, they look up to see whether you vote. That’s why they pay more attention to old people than they do to young people because older people vote -- are more likely to vote. So when they look at your super voter status or they’ll look to see and if you’re a super voter, they’ll listen to you. And if you’re not a voter, you’re not even registered, they figure, oh, you’re not going to vote for me anyway, who cares? And they really do that, and it’s a shame, but it’s true. And that’s the whole thing about the voice of voting because in the Obama elections, youth, college students and 18-year-olds put him in office. That’s the swing vote. That is the swing vote. And during the Obama election, Adrian organized -- sent hundreds of kids to go and vote at the voter’s places. And he was there at Muhlenberg College, and after he left, they stopped doing that. So like hundreds and hundreds of people were voting and then all of a sudden, they weren’t. And one of the things about us being in Pennsylvania is it’s a swing state. It really matters in Pennsylvania as opposed to like -- New York is always pretty liberal and New Jersey is pretty liberal, and people tend not to. It’s not so close, but it’s very close here. So that’s great that they’re doing that, good for them. Have you been talking to any of the youth and also for yourself stuff about Dr. Rachel Levine being our secretary of health, and she’s the one that’s been there in the health. And now what do you -- have you had a chance to see her and talk to youth about her? Allentown ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Liz Bradbury ; Voting ; Youth 0 1570 Transgender Empowerment CCW: Yeah. A lot of youths are very upset with the way she’s treated. I think that that for our trans youth, like that has been the most difficult part of all of this is... Before the Black Lives Matter movement was like -- had this visceral showing up, we were really trying to manage conversations around transphobia. And every time because we’re seeing Rachel Levine, at one point we were seeing her almost every single day, which is beautiful. With style and grace, style and grace, she would like -- was amazing onstage and was amazing with giving us the information we needed, was very clear and concise, and was about to give us information that wasn’t too doctor-y, too wordy, or too -- or filled with things that didn’t matter to us, right? 
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 ; CCW: And it’s like even through that, even through all of that beauty and poise and intelligence, it’s like people were still just questioning her gender consistently. And I think for our clients, it was more so like, “Well, can that -- will that happen to me if I decide to do something like that? Am I possible?” Those are conversations, and we really worked with her and [Goodwin?]. We had a group, a trans health group that was really powerful, and we talked a lot about -- they talked a lot about passing and things like that. And how that is maybe important for your transition but also it’s not important for the social world. Like you don’t need to set up for hyper masculine or hyper feminine identities or these belief systems or these systems, like you don’t need to do that, right? And so, I don’t know. Some interesting conversations happened, and sometimes it would happen sporadically with our young people, so... Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Liz Bradbury ; Rachel Levine ; Trans ; Youths 0 1788 Lehigh Valley's Progressiveness
 ; CCW: And you’re in... You are representing an identity that people don’t want to embrace. Like I know for a while even myself when I was in chats, in conversations with my -- just like my family, we always have that conversation of “Why are you asking whether or not what her gender is? Like this is bad. It’s not the conversation we need to be having. She is giving us the most important health information day to day, and we need to listen to that. That has nothing to do with anything.” I think it’s a culture shock for Pennsylvania because I feel like sometimes we dress up. Especially in the Lehigh Valley, we dress up like we’re -- oh my God, we’re so progressive, yay, but we’re really not. We’re really behind on a lot of things. I always say to people, I’m like, “We’re always about ten -- five to ten years behind because like --” 
 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Lehigh Valley ; Liz Bradbury ; Progressive 0 1902 The Marginalized People LB: I know. I grew up in a suburb of New York City, and it was so conservative there. It was ridiculously conservative there. My parents were the only people who were democrats, and it doesn’t even mean that that’s radically... They were the only democrats that we knew in the entire town in the suburb. And now, it’s really one of the most progressive areas of the United States and Connecticut. So it’s an interesting thing to see, I guess. But that does happen in the suburbs, and it’s a shame, and we shouldn’t let them get away with it. There’s no question of it. I’d love to live in the city where it’s not like that per se, per se. I mean there are still issues, you know. 
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 ; CCW: Oh, for sure, for sure, for sure. It’s been very interesting. It’s been very interesting to see the hate because you -- like because I work... My life is working like LGBTQ+ folks, the marginalized people, I’m always in spaces -- not always, let me take that back. I’m mostly in spaces where I’m accepted genuinely pretty much. I’ll deal with microaggressions, and I’ll deal with moments of racism and things like that, which I’m not negating, but for the most part, I’m not like in fear of my life, right? But -- what was I going to say. But, yeah, but like I know that, and I’m now aware that this space is not safe all the time. And when I was starting to see those messages and the way -- and the comments about Rachel Levine and her appearance and the way she was presenting or whatever the case maybe and just like the little, snarky things that they would say about her, I’m like, holy crap, we are really behind. And I would have never thought that, but then again, I have to remind myself, I’m in certain spaces because of my work life. I have a girlfriend and our family’s very accepting. We have a language barrier. They speak Spanish, so there’s always like a cultural catcher, but other than that, my family’s very loving. There’s a lot of education around nonbinary and trans folk. And I’m always doing that work with them every day, and they’re always very accepting and loving. But like I forget, I forget, I really do. 
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 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; LGBTQ+ ; Liz Bradbury ; New York City ; Progressive ; Rachel Levine 0 2056 The Writer's Surprise LB: Yeah. It’s amazing though because you could be talking to people who you just think are wonderful. My dad was a major -- I mean he worked with Martin Luther King, and he edited his books, and he was really, really involved with him when he was in New York City and stuff. And he was talking about all this, and he didn’t... I knew that he did these things, and he was very, very positive, and he had gay friends and he -- and stuff. And then all of a sudden, he -- I was saying... We lived in Connecticut, and I said, “So that place where we lived, where we went swimming, was that a restricted place?” and he goes, “Yeah, of course.” I’m like, “Wha-- why would you do that?" And then he’s telling me about this club for writers and editors and stuff that he belonged to in New York City -- it was called the Coffee House -- where people in literature were members of this club. It was only for men, and I said, “Well, yeah, because there’s no women writers. I mean --”
 ; Connecticut ; Liz Bradbury ; Martin Luther King ; New York City 0 2159 The Racists World is Changing CCW: Right. I don't know. I feel like... And now as I’m thinking of the Black Lives Matter movement, I feel like the current administration definitely has tapped some souls and some wounds on some people and had opened up this space of like, Well now, I don’t have to be silent about my bigotry, but it’s expressive, it’s beautiful that they don't have to be silent anymore. It’s very strange to see. It’s very strange to see this. It’s very weird how folks who are very supportive of Trump and who are racists will open up and be like, “Oh, I feel safer now. Now that he’s in office, I can say what I want to say, and all lives matter,” and so then -- you know what I mean? Like, ah, I don’t know. But I will say that like I... 
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 ; It’s something I’ve learned in this -- in the very short amount of time that I’ve done a lot -- the activism that I’ve done. In the last five years, I’ve just learned that racists are in a different place, and they will come down when they are ready. They will work on their stuff when they are ready, and being triggered by them will do nothing for you. And so that’s something I’ve really been working a lot on especially with our youth. Like you’re going to see racist things. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Tony McDade, these are all racist acts of state sanctioned violence or police brutality, right? You’re going to see these things. 
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 ; This is the unfortunate and sad world that we are in. But we have to turn our rage into something else, right, because we will -- we’ll self-destruct. And that was something I took a lot -- it took me a really long time to really work on. Because I’m just like any time that I experience a microaggression or any racism, I would get so hot and so angry. And I would be in this place of just kind of thinking about it and letting it churn in my head for weeks and weeks and months on end and then I’m recognizing that like I haven’t, one, done anything about it, and, two, I’m making myself sick. 
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 ; So it’s been something that I’ve been really working actively on is not even responding to the racist comments on Morning Call, the racist comments that are seen on WFMC, especially when -- as we’re talking about the movement and as we’re processing the things that are happening around us. Because also, too, racists are going through -- and not that I’m giving them any empathy at all whatsoever, but racists are going through a huge change in their whole life. Everything is changing around them. The Redskins have dropped their name and logo, so that’s -- for a lot of people who are committed to that team, that’s hard, you know what I mean? And I’m, whatever, this is what you’re processing. I’m processing death and safety ; you’re processing a logo. That’s cool. That’s fine. Black Lives Matter ; Chloe Cole-Wilson ; Racism ; Trump 0 2362 The Changing World of Racism CCW: -- I don’t know. It’s very interesting to watch racist folks just kind of implode and like -- and white America too in general to just implode and be like, holy crap, I have to do all this work now. I have to process my identity, I have to process myself, I have to really watch my microaggressions, I have to do all this. It’s been really intense for everyone. It’s been a lot for everyone. I don’t have much empathy for that, but I will say that like I think we have to put into consideration as we’re doing this work that everyone is at a different place. And so that’s really been healing for me because I’ve been -- I get really wrapped up in what people say. I get really wrapped up in it sometimes and so I’m like, no, no, no, no, I’ve got to let it go. Morning Call is going to be racist comments because it’s been -- we’re in Pennsylvania, so... (laughs) Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Racism 0 2549 Changes in Philosophy LB: “-- stop just thinking that it’s hard to do this because it’s change.” And I think that’s a very good point that you’re making and it’s a... And it does drive you crazy, and you have to stop ha-- I don’t have any empathy for racists even though when people would say things like, “Well, you know it’s hard and they...” I can’t, I can’t and maybe it’s because I’m older but I just -- like there is just... There’s a very important saying that hit me very hard years ago and it was you cannot make compromises with people who don’t think that everybody should -- that minority people and disenfranchised people should have equal rights because they would deny us oxygen if they could. So ask -- expect every equality, expect total equity because if you say, “Well, we’ll take this half nod from you,” they don’t even want to give us oxygen, come on, you know? They be -- yeah. 
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 ; Change ; Liz Bradbury ; Minorities ; Racism 0 2829 The Life of an Everyday Person During COVID-19 LB: -- say it hasn’t, it has. Have you noticed anything that is just glaringly different for you? 
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 ; CCW: Oh, I feel like my sleep cycle, sleep has changed immensely. So I already was a night owl, so two o'clock was the cap. That was like I’m up too late, I’m going to go to sleep. But when COVID started and because I was working at home, and all I had to do was like wake up, put on a T-shirt, make sure -- put on my pajama pants, make sure I look somewhat decent, and I’m ready to go, I had all the time in the world. I didn’t have a 30-minute commute. I like to say 30 minutes because I like to take my time driving and listening to music and stuff. But I have a 30-minute commute, and get ready in the morning will be another [00:48:00] hour so that’s an hour and a half that I’ve now saved. But I -- because of the anxiety of the pandemic and the anxiety of not knowing what’s going to happen next, and as the pandemic went through and then now we’re in this civil unrest -- at the end of May we’re in the civil unrest, my sleep schedule is like whatever, you know what I mean? I’ll wake up in six o'clock in the morning and then I’ll start. I’ll answer some emails, I’ll casually do some filing, organize some things, get myself kind of prepared for the day and then I’ll go back to sleep and then I’ll wake up again. My sleep has been so off because we’re -- I’m just so comfortable with being at home, and I get so stir-crazy. So that was one of the biggest changes. Now, my partner is an essential worker. Well, I don’t even like using that term, but she has to go outside to work. And for her, she’s -- everything is the same. If you were to ask her this question, she’d be like, “I don’t think my life has changed much, I just miss my family” because she has older parents. Her mom is like forty-eight and her dad sixty-three. Well, her mom is not older ; it’s her dad that’s older. So they couldn’t see each other, and he’s already had cancer in his health history, and he has diabetes. So things are really like we cannot see them at all whatsoever. That’s just a no go. We can’t even take the risk, you know what I mean? So for her, that’s the only thing that she would say, but other than that, all parts of her life is kind of like the same, you know?
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 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; COVID-19 ; Liz Bradbury ; Routines 0 3108 Biggest Pandemic Fear LB: Yeah. Well, people are scared. So are you scared about getting it? 
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 ; CCW: I think my biggest fear about getting it is -- oh. I feel like my biggest fear about getting it is it’s just transferring it to older people in my life like my grandmother. So my grandmother is also sixty-three. She’s spry, she’s doing her thing, she doesn’t have any serious health issues, and she’s very, very, very, very health conscious and very -- and eats very well and cares about her diet, cares about her, all of that stuff, so... But that’s my biggest fear with getting it. As for me getting it, I’m a young, healthy person, and from the statistics, young and healthy people usually live and survive and sometimes become asymptomatic. So that’s something I was holding on to for a while. Because even when I was working with youth out on the ground, I had a scare where I was like, oh, snap, this youth is getting tested. So I had to quarantine until her results came in and that was really terrifying. But it was mostly terrifying because of the way like work set it up. They’re like, “You can’t do anything, none of this, no, no, no, no, no.” And I’m just like, “Oh, okay,” and it made COVID-19 really real for me. (laughs)
 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; COVID-19 ; Grandmother ; Grocery Store ; Liz Bradbury 0 3208 Client's Low Income Mother Has COVID-19 CCW: Yes, I did, I did. Not any of like my close immediate friends, but a client’s mother had it. So that for that client -- and that was another moment during this pandemic that was interesting was a lot of our clients because they’re low-income folk, a lot of them who are... And especially if they’re like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, they’re the caregivers in their home. So teaching a young person how to be a caregiver for a disease that we don’t understand or a virus we don’t understand was one of the -- one of my most challenging moments with this young person. Because it really was like -- you have books on how to take care of your younger siblings, you have all this education. But it’s like how do you take care of your mother who’s also -- has asthma, has COVID-19, and how do you, one, have her quarantine in your home when you have one bathroom? So it was like creating a whole new plan with this young person on how to keep the house healthy while also having them literally run the household. For that young person, it was so scary, it was so frightening, you know? It’s like, holy crap, now I have to do all these things that I didn’t think I had to do in these two weeks. Before I was doing it, but now, it’s a little different because mom is like completely out of the picture, you know, what I mean because she has to self-quarantine, so -- yeah.
 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Client's mother ; COVID-19 ; Low Income 0 3317 Chloe Coles-Wilson's Concern For Her Mother CCW: That too was like one of my -- if -- concerns about COVID too is like if my mom were to get sick, you know what I mean. My mom is -- I think she’s turning fifty this year, so she’ll be forty-nine. Well, she’ll be forty-nine -- she’ll be fifty ; she’s forty-nine. If she got sick and I couldn’t see her, I would be a mess. I would be a mess, and I would be a mess, I would be very upset and devastated especially if like she died and she died without even me knowing. Because I think like a lot of -- a lot about COVID-19 that has been very complex and difficult is the messaging between the providers and the patient’s families. Because they’re so focused on keeping themselves safe, keeping the hospital safe, keeping the people that are in the hospital safe, keeping all the patients safe, separating the non-COVID patients from the COVID patients. So this whole like I’m going to get back to this family about a death that just happened is maybe happening a little bit later in the day, you know what I mean? Even though it’s a huge deal for the family, but for them, their list of worries is so large. You were constantly seeing that in the news too of like... And again, more conspiracy theory of these folks just struggling to get information to people but also struggling to take care of their patients because they’re -- it was just so much. It’s so much. And even now, one of my staff members was like, “I’m very afraid,” and I was like, “What are you afraid of?” And I get what she’s afraid of, but she’s just like. “I’m afraid of the uptick and what is going to happen with the hospitals again because the hospitals were packed for so long.” It’s just such a general fear of like there’ll not be enough of anything, so... 
 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Cole Coles-Wilson's Mother ; COVID-19 0 3454 Civil Unrest During the Pandemic LB: Well, what’s the biggest frustration you’re having from all of this stuff? I mean we’re talking about a variety of things but... 
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 ; CCW: I think my biggest frustration is us in civil unrest during a pandemic. I think that is the hardest part of all of this is that. It’s, oh, like you would think that with the... Because what I’ve noticed, at least, in my social circles is like everyone who is on unemployment, they’re getting the extra six hundred dollars a week, so they’re now making money. And I’m a professional, and I’m in a management position, you know what I mean, so you would think I get the big bucks at this point, but no, definitely not. But people are making more money than me, right? So there is this sense of happiness amongst the people of my life, you know what I mean, especially since like we -- like my families have been very poor and low income. So I’ve noticed that there have been a lot of folks who are low income just experience just kind of some happier moments, you know what I mean? Because there’s more money and there’s more funds and there’s more things available. Who was that going on with this? What was the question again for -- 
 ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Civil Unrest ; Money ; Pandemic ; Stimulus Checks 0 3564 Civil Unrest in the Transgender Community LB: Well, you were -- 
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 ; LB: -- talking about civil unrest. You were talking about -- 
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 ; CCW: Yes, yes, okay, there we go, sorry. But at the same time, you would think that like police brutality wasn’t going to be happening during this time. You would think like the amount of Black transwomen who have died, six transwomen died in a week, that is absolutely ridiculous, you know what I mean? There has been just so much police brutality, trans violence, racism, systematic racism, and it’s like it doesn’t stop. And so think that’s the most frustrating because I’m watching my friends and then family finally get like a leg up. They get this extra money, people are saving, they’ve got the extra 1200. Some people kind of financially did pretty well during this whole thing and then it’s like this violence continues on. But racism is going to continue, and that system is going to continue on, and it’s like, damn, when are we going to catch a break, so... And I would get mostly frustrated with people pushing back about the protests and pushing back about why are people outside, and I get it, I get it. We’re in a pandemic, but people need to move, people need to do this work. I’ve been really proud of a lot of activists who have been finding ways to get folks who cannot be out involved, and that has been really good, but it’s -- you know. I think that’s my biggest frustration is the civil unrest and how we’re still dealing with these big crises on such a larger level? Because Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, they happened almost in a couple of months, right? It’s like the same time frame, so it’s like, holy crap, that is insane. What is happening here? Yeah, that’s my biggest frustration. Breonna Taylor ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; George Floyd ; Liz Bradbury ; Nina Pop ; Tony McDade ; Transgender 0 3700 Bradbury's Take on Police Brutality LB: You know what I think about that though as? I think about that kind of horrible racist crime has been going on with that ferocity all along but that now, people are say -- First of all, they have -- always have their cameras with them with their video, and so there’s been so much more live video footage of this happening so that other people can’t say, “Well, that’s just not happening, it didn’t really happen that way, these people shouldn’t have been -- they caused what happened to them.” And you say, “Look at this, that’s not what happened, look, look at this.” And the other thing is that I think people are fed up with it and so when it happens, they’re making a public issue about it, which I don’t think has happened as much in the last 20 years as it’s doing now. And in part it is because people are... I mean people are speaking up about it more, which I think is very, very positive to me I mean for white people who are clueless and I have people... I know plenty of white people who are clueless and certainly some people in my family and other parts of my family who will just try to look for some kind of excuse for this kind of stuff, and they’re seeing these videos, and they’re saying -- I’m saying, “You can’t look at this and say --” this is what happened in Allentown. “You cannot look at this and say this was all right. You have to stretch beyond any kind of credibility to say that this nine-minute video shows appropriate action by the police. It doesn’t ; it just doesn’t. And if you’re saying that, you’re lying because it just doesn’t say that.” I watched that video six times, and I wrote down every single thing that happened in it. And I saw -- I -- the police said that they had -- that the man had fallen down and they fell down with him. When you watch the video, you can see the police kicked his feet out from under him and pushed him to the ground. They lied in their public -- 
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 ; George Floyd ; Liz Bradbury ; Police Brutality ; White People 0 3913 Discussion About Policing CCW: Exactly. Because policing is a very toxic culture, you know what I mean? 
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 ; LB: Yes. 
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 ; CCW: And after a while, once you -- because even -- and even in the line of social work, I’ve seen some things, I’ve heard some awful, horrendous, terrible stories. And I’ve only been doing -- I’ve been doing volunteer work for about seven years but -- and always in the community for a really long time, but this work with Project SILK has only been for three years. And in these three years, I have heard, seen, some crazy stuff, and it really doesn’t change the way you see people. But once I get to that point where I’m like -- I’m starting to see -- feel myself fall back into like bigotry or fall back into like a space of hatred, I’m like, I need to train, I need to train, I need to read, I need to educate myself. I need to get back into this place because -- and I need to like have healthy, healthy conversations with a therapist. I need to do self-care. Because that’s when I know that, one, I’m tried, and it’s -- I’m exhausted, right? And that’s what I think is happening with a lot of police officers is that their exposure to violence is insane, it’s insane, you know? In my place as a social worker, my exposure to violence is pretty intense, but I’m getting folks either prior to events or after something very terrible has happened. Because I also do like sex trafficking work with the shelter as well, and I do trainings on that with our agency. And some of the stories I’ve heard from these young folks is devastating stuff. But again, I’m only hearing it. Just imagine being the police officer seeing and reacting and doing the -- that physical brunt work in order to take care of a person. And they’re constantly being shown this stuff and so their place of bigotry and hatred if it already isn’t there. Because a lot of police officers go into this work either thinking I’m going to do the best, I’m going to be a public server, I’m going to do a great job. Some police officers, and it’s very, very rare but some do go into this work being like, I’m racist and I want to continue to raise Havoc in my area. I have upset, like mental health issues, whatever the case maybe, I want to be a terror right? Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Liz Bradbury ; Police Officers ; Project SILK 0 4173 Allentown Policing LB: Well, it’s certainly true that -- I mean I think that it -- for police officers in Allentown, most of them do not live in the city. They believe that they -- their experience is that every single person they come in contact with is either a person who has done something bad, they believe that, or because it so frequently is, or a victim of somebody who has done something bad. That there is no in between. There’s no activists and people planting gardens and folks that are playing with their kids, and there’s just nobody that isn’t a perpetrator for them because everybody they deal with is a perpetrator. And that’s one of the problems with the way police are that they -- that they’re totally reactive. So they only are there to react to some emergency situation, which is often a very negative thing. And they never have experiences working with people in the community to -- let’s build a, I don’t know, a garden shelter in the park. They never do that. They never say, “Well, we’re here today to be at this big barbecue for the community, to just hang out with you to see what you think is going on in the community.” We never do that. And so as a consequence, their constant experiences with people who they either think may have done something bad or who have really done something bad. And then they have this terrible, terrible attitude about the city because they never see anything positive in the city. They just never see anything positive any place in the whole -- anywhere at Lehigh Valley. A lot of them live way up in the Poconos, and they’re afraid, they’re afraid to live in the city. I’ve actually had them say, “I’m afraid to live in the city because my family would be terrorized,” and there’s actually no statistical evidence to that at all. I mean there’s lots of older police officers that have lived in the city for years and years and years, and they manage softball teams for kids and they do all sorts of stuff and they... I know some of these guys. And they don’t think everything is bad because they live here, and they know that there is an organization like Project SILK that’s having youth programs in the park, hanging out. They’re just doing it, so... But they’re conditioned to be constantly suspicious of everything because they never have an experience that is anything other -- in fact, they never get out of their cars or off their bicycles. Even the bicycle cops don’t get off their bicycles. 
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 ; Allentown ; Allentown Police ; Lehigh Valley ; Liz Bradbury ; Poconos ; Project SILK 0 4487 Solutions to Police Brutality CCW: It’s continuous. So police officers should be going to a racial equity training yearly. They should be attending these things. These things are important and vital for the education of self. And I think everyone should consider those things. I read up, and I read up and I’m constantly paying attention to human rights campaign, them, any LGBTQ+ resource area. I’ll have scheduled time to be like, all right, I need to make sure I’m caught up with language of the times. I’ll talk to my youth, “Are there new -- are there anything new that I should know? Is there information I should know? Is there culture pieces that I should know, so I am aware and I am not hurting you?” If you are a public servant or you are a person that’s working with social services, you need to do that work consistently. 
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 ; LB: Right, right, right. That’s really true. Well, we’re just about to the end of this. So imagine that somebody is looking back at this from 30 years hence, and it could be you because you’ll still be around. I won’t be but you will be. So you looking back, people are looking back at this way in the future, and you’re going to give them a message about what’s going on now, maybe a message of hope and a message of awareness that you could pass on to them, what would you say? What’s sort of a thing that you would say about that? Chloe Coles-Wilson ; LGBTQ+ ; Liz Bradbury ; Police Officers 0 4607 Training and Workshops CCW: Exactly. That’s something that I’ve been really pushing with my supervisor is that our staff needs consistent, constant workshop, training, workshop, training. Training is a little bit more official because they’re learning a new skill. Workshop is where you practice, have some conversation, it’s a little bit more lighter, right? I guess I would just tell people who are peering into the future is I hope people are still reading. I hope people are still educating themselves and really spending that time. Because ego trips are serious, and I feel like a lot of times when you think you are so woke and so educated, you tend to completely breeze by education. You completely breeze by things that you should know, and you become ignorant very quickly. So I’m always ready and always open, and I hope the same for people in the future too. 
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 ; LB: Oh, that’s a great thing to say. Thank you so much for saying that and for doing this interview. And I’m so glad that we got a chance to talk, and it’s been really helpful. And I hope you stay safe and your partner stays safe who has to be an essential worker, which I do understand that that term is -- actually means for many people, you have to work, but we don’t have to pay you a lot of money. And you don’t -- Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Liz Bradbury ; Training ; Workshops 0 4746 Counseling Work CCW: There’s going to be a few things that we’re going to work out. The therapist is like now she is becoming licensed, which I’m like, yay, proud for her. She just finished her licensure. Her first test -- I think she has a second test to take for some other level of licensing, but... So the counseling will work where it would be like short-term counseling. So we would say that the client would be able to see the -- I’m sorry. The client will be able to see the therapist for six to eight weeks and then we will review and see if -- that there needs to be any more further like treatment. And a lot of the focus would just be on the gender and sexuality stuff. She has a ton of training on LGBTQ+, Black and brown youth and how those intersections affect health. She is amazing, and she’s also getting a certification in geek therapy, which is like video game therapy. So that’s really, really, really cool. So that’s where we’re at now. We’re going to kind of keeping it short term just to get her flexible. She is only -- just to get her in a good place. She is only part time, so her caseload is probably going to be like maybe 15 to 20 youth, kind of the starts -- 
 ; Black ; Brown ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; LGBTQ+ ; Therapist ; Youth 0 4867 Turning People Away CCW: You can’t just turn people away because you’re uncomfortable, then you need to quit your job.
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 ; LB: That’s really true. When HAVEN first started over at -- in Bethlehem, they kept talking about -- the people at the church kept talking about it -- and we were involved at the beginning of it, kept talking about how they wanted to train people to... Because the youth were at risk and they kept talking about the high level of or the high instance of suicide and the high instance of self-harm. But then they would get these really problem kids, young people who would -- problem youth who would come to the thing. And they’d say, “Well, this person is too much of a problem, we can’t have him around here.” (laughs) Some of the people that I was working with said, “Okay, wait a minute, these are the kids that are the highest risk. You can’t tell them that they’re the ones that can’t come here.”
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 ; Bethlehem ; Chloe Coles-Wilson ; HAVEN ; Liz Bradbury ; Problem Youth 0 5040 Closing Remarks CCW: That culture is still continuing on and so they’re -- they have -- they’re a part of the house and they go to balls and they compete and they are professional voguers. So that was just such a unique piece to our team, and we’re really excited, so... 
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 ; LB: Cool, all right, I can see that, yeah, good. That sounds exciting. I think that’s an excellent thing. Well, good. Well, thank you again so much, and I really, really appreciate it, and it’s been great to talk to you. And I hope you have a great -- a nice rest of the evening and get a little chance to regulate your sleep patterns. Chloe Coles-Wilson ; Closing Statements ; Culture ; Liz Bradbury 0 MovingImage Chloe Coles-Wilson describes how the LGBTQIA+ youth coped with COVID-19, by talking about her experiences with activism. She talks about her experience working for Project SILK in the Lehigh Valley, and how her experience there has shaped her. She also addresses the racial inequalities going on in the US, and offers her opinion to the interviewer. Ultimately, she talks about her activism and how COVID-19 has affected the community. Chloe Coles-Wilson 2020-07-14 LIZ BRADBURY: -- a little problem. Okay. So there we go, and I'm going to turn the audio on too. Now, I'm going to read you these -- this piece -- this intro. Oh, turn off my phone. (laughs) I write that right on here, so I don't forget to do it. CHLOE COLE-WILSON: (laughs) LB: And I want to also pin -- oops -- pin you in this. Okay. It's good. Pin in the video, I got the audio, okay, it's good, and record it. So with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I'm here with Chloe Cole- Wilson -- is that right -- to -- CCW: Right. LB: -- I suddenly blanked on it, I was like, wait, I just remember it now -- to talk to her about her experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Lehigh Valley's LGBT Community Archive. Oh, we're meeting on Zoom on July 14, 2020. So thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? CCW: Do you want my middle name too? LB: Sure, why not. CCW: Okay. Chloe Amanda Cole-Wilson, C-H-L-O-E A-M-A-N-D-A C-O-L-E-W-I-L-S-O-N. LB: Good, okay. And will you please share your birthdate? CCW: March 20, 1992. LB: Okay. And you are in Allentown, is that right? We have to have the right town. CCW: I'm in Bethlehem. LB: In Bethlehem, okay. So this is the consent part. Do you consent to this interview today? CCW: Yes, I do. LB: Good. Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? CCW: Yeah. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats that we may not even know today? CCW: Okay. Sounds good. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview, to review your interview, identify any parts you'd like to delete and or withdraw from your -- from the project? CCW: Yes. LB: Okay? Yes. Okay. So this is just a little bit of identity stuff. What is your ZIP code, so we can have a demographic? CCW: 18018 LB: Okay, and what is your age? CCW: Twenty-eight. LB: And how do you identify within the LGBT community? So basic SOGIE stuff or whatever you want to say. You can say whatever you want in this. CCW: I identify as queer. LB: Okay. Oh, so here are some of these thing. And so I already sent these questions. And the concept of the archive, I like to think about it as that there will be people who will, hopefully, look at this many years in the future to see what it was like for people at this point in the COVID epidemic in the Lehigh Valley who are part of the core community to get sort of an idea. Because there have been other circumstances with pandemics and epidemics where we really didn't talk about people's personal experiences. You can say anything you want about this. I have some of those questions. You can answer those, or you can think about those. I'll ask those if you want, but you can say whatever you want. But let's start out with this, are you by yourself in your home or do you have other people there or what's the deal? CCW: It's myself and my partner and then we have three other roommates. LB: Oh, okay, okay. I know the answers to some of these things, but you could talk about this for the archives. Have you been working, has your employer closed or laid off, and why don't you talk about a little bit what you do? CCW: Yeah. So I am program coordinator for Project SILK Lehigh Valley, which is an LGBT drop-in center that focuses on Black and brown youth. So a lot of the work that I've been doing during this time is just planning, programming, and getting the Valley Youth House staff in a place where they feel comfortable providing services virtually while also responding to crisis. During this time, we did have a few youth that became homeless and so it was trying to respond to those needs as quickly as we possibly could with -- considering my safety, my staff's safety, and things like that, the youth safety, so yeah. LB: How did that work out? I mean I know you can't talk specifically about youth, but why don't you describe a little bit how that happened? And I think that's really important stuff. CCW: Mm-hmm. So a lot of what we did was six feet, we stayed six feet away, we were masked up. We supplied some hand sanitizer to our workers and things like that. But I was one of the only workers that was really out working with a youth who was identifying as like unsheltered and was living in what -- in Allentown, what people would call it as like tent city where folks -- where all the unsheltered folks kind of cohabitate together and exist. So a lot of it was just like dropping things off on the corner and being like, "Hey, these items are here. I will wait for you to pick up these items." And then, you know, sometimes because we are in partnership with a shelter as well, to give and provide HIV, STI testing but also provide sexual health counseling and things like that. In those moments, we were meeting outside on the porch six feet away. Now that restrictions have lessened, we've been doing some more contact work with our other sites. There's been some very interesting things that I've done to try to appease the youth and provide the service, you know? LB: Yeah, and stay safe at the same time and have every -- CCW: Yeah. Mm-hmm. LB: That's tricky stuff, so... And is that your main thing that you do? So that's pretty much the main thing you do that you're setting up those kinds of things. So right now, those are the things that you're working on, and there is virtual programming that's going out to people? CCW: Mm-hmm. Actually starting tomorrow, we're going back into some more in-person services. Monday -- no, I'm sorry, Wednesdays and Fridays, we're going to do like luncheon/snack services. So from one to three, we'll meet with the youth at Arts Park because it gives us the ability to have the space to social distance. We'll take temperatures, we'll ask COVID-19 questions, do quick screenings, and then they are able to be in this drop-in space. Now, if they want to schedule testing, they can, but it can only be one appointment at a time. So that's where we're at with our protocols and things like that. LB: That's a great place too. So Art Park like right in front of the art museum in that big, grassy area? CCW: Mm-hmm. LB: A little place for croquet. (laughs) CCW: Yeah. What happened? Oh, for -- LB: [That we?] frequent for croquet -- CCW: Oh, yeah. (laughs) LB: -- or lawn bowling then. CCW: Listen, we're trying to think of some activities, so that might be on my list to be like, "Look, let's play croquet." LB: Lawn bowling would be really good. I think we should have a lawn bowling team there actually someday when we can finally be around in a circumstance like that. But that's a great place because it's got tables and -- you know? CCW: Mm-hmm. LB: They're right there. You don't have to schlep a lot of stuff over there. It's great. It looks -- CCW: And it's like a central place, so kids coming from all over the city will be able to just kind of know where it is, access where it is, and it kind of works. And also too, we might be able to interact with new youth there because there has been a lot of youth out because of the protesting, the Black Lives Matter protests that are happening right now, which is -- it's so crazy because that's on the other end of the work that I do. I also have an arts organization called Basement Poetry. And we've been doing some activism and advocacy around just like so many things, police brutality, inclusive shelters that will allow trans and gender nonbinary folks to identify in the identity that is theirs. Because if they cannot, it is a health risk. So that's been something that we've been really talking a lot about with these other organizations that are Black and brown ran. It's how to have inclusive spaces. Talking with city council about this. When we're defending the police like when this funding starts trickling down, making sure these organizations are anti-racist, making sure these organizations are anti-oppressive. That's another piece of this too. But what's interesting is the area like... Because the kids are so like, "I don't know what's going on, I don't know what to do with myself," so they've been out. They've just been out hanging out. So I'm hoping that we can foster a space for youth that are just like migrating and hanging out. A place for them to be a little bit that's a little bit more supervised, that's safe, that gives them access to services. Because it's been very interesting how like all the protests have rolled out and just youths, kind of, just hanging out in the city. LB: Yeah. Don't forget that when you're at the Art Park that that giant bronze horse that's at the -- across [from the art school?] was designed by Leonardo da Vinci who was gay. CCW: Oh, wow. That's awesome. I would love to share that with our kids. LB: Well, Leonardo never made that horse, but other people have taken the designs that he made it and then they recreated it in a couple of different places, and that's one of the places where it is. His design was much bigger than that, but it's pretty, and it's Leonardo, a genius who was gay, so, one of our ancestors. So for you personally in terms of communicating with people in your family or other -- of friends that you may not be able to be near with regard to social distancing and stuff, have you been using a lot of electronic conversations? Like where have you -- CCW: Oh yeah. It's like Zoom, I -- even just today for work, I was on nothing but Zoom calls. Instagram Live is like our outreach pool, so we can say, "Hey, this is what we're doing." But with friends and family, I'm always on the phone, I'm always texting. It's been really hard. I will say there were moments during this whole continuing on in this pandemic where I'm like, "I need to see my mom, I'm going to go see my mom, I don't care, I'm seeing her, I don't care, I just -- I can't," you know? LB: Yeah. CCW: It was really difficult not being able to have these interactions with my friends. And it's so funny because my friend [Will?] who is also gay, we were talking about how even the internet, like the way he interacts with guys and men, it's crazy, you know what I mean? He's single, so I'm always talking about safety because I'm like, "Well, you know, your friend is a healthcare provider, so I'm just going to just let you know like no kissing and remember washing your hands after the stuff." But he was even saying that online, it's insane that people are still meeting up, you know? LB: Yeah. CCW: So I felt less guilty to see my mom after I heard about that, so... (laughs) LB: Yeah, and you be careful and you can -- you know? You know what your level of danger is, and I'm sure she does too. But, yeah, I was just talking to somebody else about that some people are really not being careful in terms of hooking up with apps and stuff. And it's -- CCW: Oh, not at all -- LB: -- other people would say -- in fact, I was just talking to Ariel and he was saying, "It's the hi, bye kind of thing, hi, bye, but this is just going to be bye." (laughter) Because (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). He just coined that. He said that "It's not going to be -- it's not going to be hi if there's no carefulness in here." So let me see. We did that. We've got a lot of stuff going on and -- but let's talk about what your biggest concerns are during the pandemic and concerns for the Lehigh -- for -- in the LGBT community, of the Lehigh Valley. And I do want to have a whole section where I want you to talk about Black Lives Matter, but if you want to talk about that during this part of the conversation, that's fine, go ahead and do that too. So -- CCW: Okay, cool. LB: -- [you're?] -- CCW: I guess one of my biggest concerns is shelter, right? I think that when... I have a very special relationship with one of our clients. When I had discovered that they were struggling in this way and had no place to go, I'm like, all right, so I'm going to go, and I'm going to hunt down all of my resources, so I'm pulling out all the resource guides, pulling out all the books that I've created and put together, all the protocol. And I'm looking at them and I'm like, There's nothing that will work for this young person. And this young person is not under the age of 18, so it's not like I can call Valley Youth House shelter. This young person is identifying as nonbinary, so it's like putting them in a shelter can be so difficult. And Salvation Army and all of these other shelters are very religious, and there is follow your faith and do what is best in your practice and in your meeting and -- you know what I mean? That's what nonprofits are, right? Like a lot of people start nonprofits from their hearts, right? LB: Mm-hmm. CCW: But there is this moment where it's like when will you start to follow and understand your populations and understand the people that are in your community? And so places like the Rescue Mission, I would never send kids there. It's like the most unsafe place for LGBTQ+ youth or LGBTQ- people in general. Because it's a men's shelter, but at the same time if you have any type of like, say, moment, hand gesture, gender expression that is not masculine, you are ostracized and treated a certain way in that space. So that's my biggest concern is sheltering and especially sheltering for trans and gender nonconforming folks. Now turning point, they're really open and have been really working on being gender inclusive, but the pieces. It's like you -- there has to be DV in your case. So if there's no domestic violence in your case, then there's no space at their shelter because that's their focus. So that's one of my concerns. Another one of my concerns has always been the way things have been kind of given us. Like the messages have been given coming down like news and how youth process it. Because as COVID started, I remember we have two peer navigators [Xander?] and [Michelle?], and I just remember them just completely shutting down. This is senior year for them, so this is a very important year of their life, and they're excited for everything that we're going to do at the center, they're going to do in their school life. And I just remember them just like mentally gone, shut down when they figured out school was going to be closed because of COVID. LB: So they were -- CCW: And it's like -- LB: -- high school seniors or college seniors? CCW: High school seniors. It was so immensely frustrating with how everything -- the information was coming down and how everything was handled. Everything was very like just put together, which I get. We've never been... Our folk, I would at least say the generations like Millennials and Gen Z's have never been through something like this. So you have half of the population that's never been through a crisis and the other half who has experience with this kind of things. It's just such a cluster of all of these mixed experiences, anyways. But with the schools, like the Allentown School District weren't getting the things that they need right away. There was a moment where the kids didn't even go to school for like -- or have any formal education for three and a half weeks, almost a month until April. In the midst of April, they were able to get like Wi-Fi to youth, hotspots to youth, and technology to youth, and that was another concern of mine too. So, again, it was just like that just misinformed and then explaining to the youth that this happens sometimes. But when it consistently happens, they're like, "What is going on?" and so then they're in crisis, right, and they're freaking out like, "What's going on? I need answers," you know what I mean, so... LB: Yeah. Young people really look to older people to fix things and explain things to them, and we have no answers on this. I mean I'm sixty-three years old, and there's nothing in my life experience that compares to this. I can say that I know somebody who is one hundred four years old who's been in the center by the way, who was alive during the flu epidemic of 1918. And that's the only other thing that's comparable to this one because [we?] had the flu. Because even if you look at HIV/AIDS, which was a very different thing, it wasn't like everybody had it, and it was really hard to get it. I mean, you can't just get AIDS. You have to have sex with people and be involved with people. That's not the same situation. On the other hand right now, every single -- this is a hopeful thing that you can say to youth is that every single scientist in the world that knows about this kind of stuff is working on this issue, which wasn't true for AIDS. Nobody did anything about that for years -- CCW: For -- yeah. LB: -- and years and people just died, all over the place. Really, it sounds like such a tricky thing when you have young people who want these answers, and they're not going to really put up with you saying, I don't know. CCW: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? I feel like all of my youth that I work with, I've known them for a very long time since Project SILK started. And so they are built with the same tenacity that I have and the same questioning of authority, questioning of the system, the same activist spirit. So I kind of set myself up to have these awesome kids that will advocate for themselves, but then in these situations I'm like, Why did I do this? (laughs) It's been very complex. And even for my team, it's been very hard to figure out how to have these conversations without having the meltdown. But luckily, we're going to be starting some therapy services in August, so I think that's going to really help with some of these, like this processing of all the things that are happening. And including the trauma that we are constantly exposed to with the Black Lives Matter, the police brutality but not just Black Lives Matter but like police brutality and systematic racism and microaggressions and all of these experiences that they're having. They're also processing that too at the same time that they're processing a pandemic, and we're in this in this civil unrest, and it's like -- it's a lot. They're going through a lot right now. And then also, they're seeing the systems start to crumble in front of them. So it's like they were aware before that things weren't good. But then when you're not getting educated and your peers in the Whitehall School District or Parkland Area School District and Bethlehem Area School District are all on the computers doing their homework while you're just waiting, it really does go to show you the barriers and how the system fails. And so many youth were responding to that like, "What do I do, what --? How do I respond to this?" And it's just like email, email congress, email your local reps, make sure people know and are on top of what's happening in your school. LB: Right, right, right. Register to vote because some of them will be old enough too, so, you know? CCW: Mm-hmm. Our kids right now are aging out -- not aging out, but they're coming out of that phase where they're in the drop-in center all the time. So the kids that are in the drop-in center all the time between the ages of like 14 to 17. And then once they graduate high school, they're really focused on their life and themselves and getting things together. So a lot of times, they're not spending a lot of time there. So we have a lot of older youth there, so I'm always encouraging them to vote and be a part of and know your local government because that is where you have a lot of power and say in what happens here. LB: Whenever I used to talk to running a voter's -- an LGBT voter's organization -- it's called [PAL?], and we did that for many, many years -- one of the things we talk to people about is being a super voter. And a super voter is a person who votes in every election in the primary for four years in a row. And whether or not you vote is a matter of public record. So any person can get a list that shows whether or not you voted this in the primary and then that stuff, in the main election every year for years and years. And when you write a letter or you write an email or you write a card to your state representative, they look up to see whether you vote. That's why they pay more attention to old people than they do to young people because older people vote -- are more likely to vote. So when they look at your super voter status or they'll look to see and if you're a super voter, they'll listen to you. And if you're not a voter, you're not even registered, they figure, oh, you're not going to vote for me anyway, who cares? And they really do that, and it's a shame, but it's true. And that's the whole thing about the voice of voting because in the Obama elections, youth, college students and 18-year-olds put him in office. That's the swing vote. That is the swing vote. And during the Obama election, Adrian organized -- sent hundreds of kids to go and vote at the voter's places. And he was there at Muhlenberg College, and after he left, they stopped doing that. So like hundreds and hundreds of people were voting and then all of a sudden, they weren't. And one of the things about us being in Pennsylvania is it's a swing state. It really matters in Pennsylvania as opposed to like -- New York is always pretty liberal and New Jersey is pretty liberal, and people tend not to. It's not so close, but it's very close here. So that's great that they're doing that, good for them. Have you been talking to any of the youth and also for yourself stuff about Dr. Rachel Levine being our secretary of health, and she's the one that's been there in the health. And now what do you -- have you had a chance to see her and talk to youth about her? CCW: Yeah. A lot of youths are very upset with the way she's treated. I think that that for our trans youth, like that has been the most difficult part of all of this is... Before the Black Lives Matter movement was like -- had this visceral showing up, we were really trying to manage conversations around transphobia. And every time because we're seeing Rachel Levine, at one point we were seeing her almost every single day, which is beautiful. With style and grace, style and grace, she would like -- was amazing onstage and was amazing with giving us the information we needed, was very clear and concise, and was about to give us information that wasn't too doctor-y, too wordy, or too -- or filled with things that didn't matter to us, right? LB: Yeah. CCW: And it's like even through that, even through all of that beauty and poise and intelligence, it's like people were still just questioning her gender consistently. And I think for our clients, it was more so like, "Well, can that -- will that happen to me if I decide to do something like that? Am I possible?" Those are conversations, and we really worked with her and [Goodwin?]. We had a group, a trans health group that was really powerful, and we talked a lot about -- they talked a lot about passing and things like that. And how that is maybe important for your transition but also it's not important for the social world. Like you don't need to set up for hyper masculine or hyper feminine identities or these belief systems or these systems, like you don't need to do that, right? And so, I don't know. Some interesting conversations happened, and sometimes it would happen sporadically with our young people, so... LB: It's really true that sometimes in circumstances like that, for trans people who are transitioning and they have a certain idea of what that means, it can become hyper binary that they... You know I can't ride a motorcycle because it won't be feminine enough, and it's really limited I think for a lot of people. Yeah, Rachel Levine is amazing, and one of the great things about her is she has an extraordinarily thick skin. She'll actually say I don't care what people say to me. It's pretty brave. I don't think everybody should feel that they have to be that way, but she's the secretary of health and so, you know? CCW: Yeah. LB: She -- CCW: And then on top of that, you're also giving COVID-19 health regulations that people are uncomfortable with managing. And she's giving news that is not the greatest on top of being a fierce trans leader. So it's like -- you know what I mean? Already she was going to get pushback, you know? LB: Mm-hmm. CCW: So yeah. LB: It's tough when you're telling people things they don't want to hear, but that's the thing. CCW: And you're in... You are representing an identity that people don't want to embrace. Like I know for a while even myself when I was in chats, in conversations with my -- just like my family, we always have that conversation of "Why are you asking whether or not what her gender is? Like this is bad. It's not the conversation we need to be having. She is giving us the most important health information day to day, and we need to listen to that. That has nothing to do with anything." I think it's a culture shock for Pennsylvania because I feel like sometimes we dress up. Especially in the Lehigh Valley, we dress up like we're -- oh my God, we're so progressive, yay, but we're really not. We're really behind on a lot of things. I always say to people, I'm like, "We're always about ten -- five to ten years behind because like --" LB: Behind what? CCW: Just behind like -- LB: New York? CCW: Yeah, behind really progressive spaces, you know what I mean like New York City and... I think of Philly as like progressive, but then again, there have been -- I've had moments there where I'm like, wow, this is pretty conservative in parts of Philly. So the interesting part is that we -- in Pennsylvania, we have these really small pockets of what we would consider safe places for all people and very small pockets. And then outside of that, it's just like a ring of hate. You know what I mean? And you drive out ten minutes and then boom, confederate flag and -- LB: It's the suburbs, I know it's terrible. Terrible. You're absolutely right. CCW: It's like crazy. LB: I know. I grew up in a suburb of New York City, and it was so conservative there. It was ridiculously conservative there. My parents were the only people who were democrats, and it doesn't even mean that that's radically... They were the only democrats that we knew in the entire town in the suburb. And now, it's really one of the most progressive areas of the United States and Connecticut. So it's an interesting thing to see, I guess. But that does happen in the suburbs, and it's a shame, and we shouldn't let them get away with it. There's no question of it. I'd love to live in the city where it's not like that per se, per se. I mean there are still issues, you know. CCW: Oh, for sure, for sure, for sure. It's been very interesting. It's been very interesting to see the hate because you -- like because I work... My life is working like LGBTQ+ folks, the marginalized people, I'm always in spaces -- not always, let me take that back. I'm mostly in spaces where I'm accepted genuinely pretty much. I'll deal with microaggressions, and I'll deal with moments of racism and things like that, which I'm not negating, but for the most part, I'm not like in fear of my life, right? But -- what was I going to say. But, yeah, but like I know that, and I'm now aware that this space is not safe all the time. And when I was starting to see those messages and the way -- and the comments about Rachel Levine and her appearance and the way she was presenting or whatever the case maybe and just like the little, snarky things that they would say about her, I'm like, holy crap, we are really behind. And I would have never thought that, but then again, I have to remind myself, I'm in certain spaces because of my work life. I have a girlfriend and our family's very accepting. We have a language barrier. They speak Spanish, so there's always like a cultural catcher, but other than that, my family's very loving. There's a lot of education around nonbinary and trans folk. And I'm always doing that work with them every day, and they're always very accepting and loving. But like I forget, I forget, I really do. LB: Yeah. It's amazing though because you could be talking to people who you just think are wonderful. My dad was a major -- I mean he worked with Martin Luther King, and he edited his books, and he was really, really involved with him when he was in New York City and stuff. And he was talking about all this, and he didn't... I knew that he did these things, and he was very, very positive, and he had gay friends and he -- and stuff. And then all of a sudden, he -- I was saying... We lived in Connecticut, and I said, "So that place where we lived, where we went swimming, was that a restricted place?" and he goes, "Yeah, of course." I'm like, "Wha-- why would you do that?" And then he's telling me about this club for writers and editors and stuff that he belonged to in New York City -- it was called the Coffee House -- where people in literature were members of this club. It was only for men, and I said, "Well, yeah, because there's no women writers. I mean --" CCW: Right, because they totally don't like this. LB: "How could you do that?" He goes, "Well, they had good soup," you know? So there's that constant vigilance that you'd have. And you think that things are getting better and then all of a sudden, it rolls back. And part of it comes from -- you know? And we can't just blame this, but part of it comes from the current administration, which has sort of opened the floodgates of that, but it's not like that's the only thing. I mean it's not like it hasn't -- there isn't -- this stuff hasn't always been there. I think that's -- CCW: Right. I don't know. I feel like... And now as I'm thinking of the Black Lives Matter movement, I feel like the current administration definitely has tapped some souls and some wounds on some people and had opened up this space of like, Well now, I don't have to be silent about my bigotry, but it's expressive, it's beautiful that they don't have to be silent anymore. It's very strange to see. It's very strange to see this. It's very weird how folks who are very supportive of Trump and who are racists will open up and be like, "Oh, I feel safer now. Now that he's in office, I can say what I want to say, and all lives matter," and so then -- you know what I mean? Like, ah, I don't know. But I will say that like I... It's something I've learned in this -- in the very short amount of time that I've done a lot -- the activism that I've done. In the last five years, I've just learned that racists are in a different place, and they will come down when they are ready. They will work on their stuff when they are ready, and being triggered by them will do nothing for you. And so that's something I've really been working a lot on especially with our youth. Like you're going to see racist things. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Tony McDade, these are all racist acts of state sanctioned violence or police brutality, right? You're going to see these things. This is the unfortunate and sad world that we are in. But we have to turn our rage into something else, right, because we will -- we'll self-destruct. And that was something I took a lot -- it took me a really long time to really work on. Because I'm just like any time that I experience a microaggression or any racism, I would get so hot and so angry. And I would be in this place of just kind of thinking about it and letting it churn in my head for weeks and weeks and months on end and then I'm recognizing that like I haven't, one, done anything about it, and, two, I'm making myself sick. So it's been something that I've been really working actively on is not even responding to the racist comments on Morning Call, the racist comments that are seen on WFMC, especially when -- as we're talking about the movement and as we're processing the things that are happening around us. Because also, too, racists are going through -- and not that I'm giving them any empathy at all whatsoever, but racists are going through a huge change in their whole life. Everything is changing around them. The Redskins have dropped their name and logo, so that's -- for a lot of people who are committed to that team, that's hard, you know what I mean? And I'm, whatever, this is what you're processing. I'm processing death and safety ; you're processing a logo. That's cool. That's fine. LB: Yeah, death and safety (laughs) versus a logo. CCW: Yeah, you know what I mean? Just like -- LB: I could not -- you don't even play it, you just watch it on TV or -- yeah, death and -- CCW: Exactly, so -- LB: -- [safety, or?]. CCW: -- I don't know. It's very interesting to watch racist folks just kind of implode and like -- and white America too in general to just implode and be like, holy crap, I have to do all this work now. I have to process my identity, I have to process myself, I have to really watch my microaggressions, I have to do all this. It's been really intense for everyone. It's been a lot for everyone. I don't have much empathy for that, but I will say that like I think we have to put into consideration as we're doing this work that everyone is at a different place. And so that's really been healing for me because I've been -- I get really wrapped up in what people say. I get really wrapped up in it sometimes and so I'm like, no, no, no, no, I've got to let it go. Morning Call is going to be racist comments because it's been -- we're in Pennsylvania, so... (laughs) LB: People are commenting on that from Poland, I mean, you know, and people can comment from anywhere on that. Comments are completely not news, and they're just there to rile people up. CCW: Right. And say things that don't even like -- LB: [They're talking?]. CCW: -- just something intense like -- LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) that by the time you get to the seventh comment, the person is completely off the thread of the whole story anyway. They're talking about -- you know? The thing is about putting fluoride in the water, and by the seventh comment, they're blaming Obama, and by (laughs) the tenth comment, it's about Israel. It's just -- CCW: Right. And then -- LB: -- this has nothing to do with reality. CCW: And then they toss in this six hundred dollars a week unemployment. Like -- LB: Yes, exactly. CCW: -- and how everyone was getting -- LB: -- in fact you know -- CCW: -- that was my debate the other day. (laughs) LB: Yeah. You know in the trainings I do -- there are a lot of philosophies about training where they try to do all of this empathy stuff and they talk about... And I really don't do that because of exactly what you're talking about. You can't change people from being racist by giving them an empathy training. So what I do is I tell them, "Stop saying this stuff, just cut it out." And at the end of the training and I say, "These are the words you should use because this is LGBT stuff, so these are the words you'd use. This will create a barrier, you won't be able to do your job, understand that this is what people are thinking when you say these things so say this, do this, don't say that love the sinner and hate the sin." And then we get to the end of the thing, and I say, "And don't think is way too much for you to learn." Because that's always what they say, "Oh, it's so much." I say like, "Come on, you went to college, this took an hour. You can learn this stuff. It's not that hard. For heaven's sakes, you take trainings all the time. And it's less than programming your phone. So just remember these words and --" CCW: Yes. LB: "-- stop just thinking that it's hard to do this because it's change." And I think that's a very good point that you're making and it's a... And it does drive you crazy, and you have to stop ha-- I don't have any empathy for racists even though when people would say things like, "Well, you know it's hard and they..." I can't, I can't and maybe it's because I'm older but I just -- like there is just... There's a very important saying that hit me very hard years ago and it was you cannot make compromises with people who don't think that everybody should -- that minority people and disenfranchised people should have equal rights because they would deny us oxygen if they could. So ask -- expect every equality, expect total equity because if you say, "Well, we'll take this half nod from you," they don't even want to give us oxygen, come on, you know? They be -- yeah. CCW: Right, okay, okay. LB: I don't think it's... When you're talking about the people in the comments section, they'll never going to be able to... They're not there to learn let's put it that way. CCW: Yeah, they're not, they're definitely not, they're definitely not. They're there to troll. It's always like an ego test. Like who's smarter in this debate, you know what I mean? And it's just so -- I don't know, anyways. But, oh, you know? And even our local news has just been so just like really messy in the way they've been reporting and journaling some of these protests and the way they've even been just journaling about COVID-19. And that's like another concern of mine. It's like we already have very scarce information because the WHO and the CDC, who most people are not believing because conspiracy theorists have taken over the world, right? (laughs) People that I thought would never fall into conspiracy theories are loving them now because we've never experienced anything like this, you know what I mean? The fact that we use quarantine in common language is mind-blowing to me, so... So we have the CDC and the WHO that are still really working aggressively and hard on trying to figure out things. And as science works, finding out the smallest thing is huge for scientists, but for us, finding out that like COVID-19 is now on surfaces is so miniscule, but it took them so much time to get to that, you know what I mean? And so many hours and thought process and chemical and whatever they needed to do to get to that hypothesis that this is what it is, to get to that answer, and to get to us. So already we're dealing with that and kind of like following science as we are going through this and then you have the Morning Call and WMFC with their very, very strange and vague things. Like COVID-19 Could Kill You would be like the headline, and everyone is like, oh my God, no, it's going to kill us. But then when you click on it, it's like could kill you if you don't wear a mask and wash your hands. (laughs) LB: Yeah. And well, the [second page?], you know and it was -- oh it was horrible. I remember -- well, I could tell you a million stories about this but -- and it's all the same gig. It's all the same thing where people are latching on to that kind of urban myth stuff and talking about that as real. And well, you know, that wearing a mask could kill you kind of thing. I was just talking to somebody and how that's just -- it's like an urban -- it's like one of those stories that, well, I have a friend whose brother's name is John, and this happened to him, you know? CCW: Mm-hmm. LB: A camp story, you know, (laughs) so anyway. So in terms of your everyday life, and there's a question on here that's sort of a list of questions. It says has it affected your life? And it's kind of ridiculous because it's affected every single minute of everybody's life even if you -- CCW: Oh, yeah. LB: -- say it hasn't, it has. Have you noticed anything that is just glaringly different for you? CCW: Oh, I feel like my sleep cycle, sleep has changed immensely. So I already was a night owl, so two o'clock was the cap. That was like I'm up too late, I'm going to go to sleep. But when COVID started and because I was working at home, and all I had to do was like wake up, put on a T-shirt, make sure -- put on my pajama pants, make sure I look somewhat decent, and I'm ready to go, I had all the time in the world. I didn't have a 30-minute commute. I like to say 30 minutes because I like to take my time driving and listening to music and stuff. But I have a 30-minute commute, and get ready in the morning will be another hour so that's an hour and a half that I've now saved. But I -- because of the anxiety of the pandemic and the anxiety of not knowing what's going to happen next, and as the pandemic went through and then now we're in this civil unrest -- at the end of May we're in the civil unrest, my sleep schedule is like whatever, you know what I mean? I'll wake up in six o'clock in the morning and then I'll start. I'll answer some emails, I'll casually do some filing, organize some things, get myself kind of prepared for the day and then I'll go back to sleep and then I'll wake up again. My sleep has been so off because we're -- I'm just so comfortable with being at home, and I get so stir-crazy. So that was one of the biggest changes. Now, my partner is an essential worker. Well, I don't even like using that term, but she has to go outside to work. And for her, she's -- everything is the same. If you were to ask her this question, she'd be like, "I don't think my life has changed much, I just miss my family" because she has older parents. Her mom is like forty-eight and her dad sixty-three. Well, her mom is not older ; it's her dad that's older. So they couldn't see each other, and he's already had cancer in his health history, and he has diabetes. So things are really like we cannot see them at all whatsoever. That's just a no go. We can't even take the risk, you know what I mean? So for her, that's the only thing that she would say, but other than that, all parts of her life is kind of like the same, you know? LB: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. CCW: But for me, it's just the sleep, and my schedule was so off. And even going to the grocery store was just like, it's hell on earth, you know what I mean -- LB: Has it -- CCW: -- because it's like -- LB: Have you been limiting that, or what's that like for you? Explain because you -- CCW: So -- LB: -- people are going to be watching this thirty years from now, so talk about what it's like to go to the grocery store. CCW: Well, grocery store shopping... So at first in start of the pandemic, I limited. As we started to get deeper into it, I realized that going shopping for two weeks of food wasn't realistic anymore. Because like I was either -- because I always shop a lot of fresh food or -- and then I'll get a bunch of frozen stuff. But I was just like this isn't working, you know? And next week, I don't really want this food, so, like I'm not interested in this meal. So I ended up shopping a little bit more. And because my partner is still going out and working and I'm at home, now I have to pack lunches and things like that. Because there was in the beginning that concern of do we eat out? Because there wasn't any regulation yet. But we were just like, you know what, let's just -- whatever. At this point, let's just try this. But even the experience at the grocery store, GIANT had and probably still has this, it's a voiceover and it's like, "Stay six feet away from everyone, and" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Is this like Black Mirror or --? Yeah, I don't know if you've ever seen that show before, but it felt so surreal because everyone is in their gloves and their masks just like walking around the grocery store, wiping things down. I've seen people do crazy things in the grocery store, wearing crazy things to stay protected, which I get. LB: Yeah. Well, people are scared. So are you scared about getting it? CCW: I think my biggest fear about getting it is -- oh. I feel like my biggest fear about getting it is it's just transferring it to older people in my life like my grandmother. So my grandmother is also sixty-three. She's spry, she's doing her thing, she doesn't have any serious health issues, and she's very, very, very, very health conscious and very -- and eats very well and cares about her diet, cares about her, all of that stuff, so... But that's my biggest fear with getting it. As for me getting it, I'm a young, healthy person, and from the statistics, young and healthy people usually live and survive and sometimes become asymptomatic. So that's something I was holding on to for a while. Because even when I was working with youth out on the ground, I had a scare where I was like, oh, snap, this youth is getting tested. So I had to quarantine until her results came in and that was really terrifying. But it was mostly terrifying because of the way like work set it up. They're like, "You can't do anything, none of this, no, no, no, no, no." And I'm just like, "Oh, okay," and it made COVID-19 really real for me. (laughs) LB: Yeah. Do you know anybody who's had it? CCW: Yes, I did, I did. Not any of like my close immediate friends, but a client's mother had it. So that for that client -- and that was another moment during this pandemic that was interesting was a lot of our clients because they're low-income folk, a lot of them who are... And especially if they're like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, they're the caregivers in their home. So teaching a young person how to be a caregiver for a disease that we don't understand or a virus we don't understand was one of the -- one of my most challenging moments with this young person. Because it really was like -- you have books on how to take care of your younger siblings, you have all this education. But it's like how do you take care of your mother who's also -- has asthma, has COVID-19, and how do you, one, have her quarantine in your home when you have one bathroom? So it was like creating a whole new plan with this young person on how to keep the house healthy while also having them literally run the household. For that young person, it was so scary, it was so frightening, you know? It's like, holy crap, now I have to do all these things that I didn't think I had to do in these two weeks. Before I was doing it, but now, it's a little different because mom is like completely out of the picture, you know, what I mean because she has to self-quarantine, so -- yeah. LB: And then that whole thing of when people get super sick and they have to go in the hospital, and we can't see them, and you don't know what's going on and... Yeah. CCW: That too was like one of my -- if -- concerns about COVID too is like if my mom were to get sick, you know what I mean. My mom is -- I think she's turning fifty this year, so she'll be forty-nine. Well, she'll be forty-nine -- she'll be fifty ; she's forty-nine. If she got sick and I couldn't see her, I would be a mess. I would be a mess, and I would be a mess, I would be very upset and devastated especially if like she died and she died without even me knowing. Because I think like a lot of -- a lot about COVID-19 that has been very complex and difficult is the messaging between the providers and the patient's families. Because they're so focused on keeping themselves safe, keeping the hospital safe, keeping the people that are in the hospital safe, keeping all the patients safe, separating the non-COVID patients from the COVID patients. So this whole like I'm going to get back to this family about a death that just happened is maybe happening a little bit later in the day, you know what I mean? Even though it's a huge deal for the family, but for them, their list of worries is so large. You were constantly seeing that in the news too of like... And again, more conspiracy theory of these folks just struggling to get information to people but also struggling to take care of their patients because they're -- it was just so much. It's so much. And even now, one of my staff members was like, "I'm very afraid," and I was like, "What are you afraid of?" And I get what she's afraid of, but she's just like. "I'm afraid of the uptick and what is going to happen with the hospitals again because the hospitals were packed for so long." It's just such a general fear of like there'll not be enough of anything, so... LB: Well, what's the biggest frustration you're having from all of this stuff? I mean we're talking about a variety of things but... CCW: I think my biggest frustration is us in civil unrest during a pandemic. I think that is the hardest part of all of this is that. It's, oh, like you would think that with the... Because what I've noticed, at least, in my social circles is like everyone who is on unemployment, they're getting the extra six hundred dollars a week, so they're now making money. And I'm a professional, and I'm in a management position, you know what I mean, so you would think I get the big bucks at this point, but no, definitely not. But people are making more money than me, right? So there is this sense of happiness amongst the people of my life, you know what I mean, especially since like we -- like my families have been very poor and low income. So I've noticed that there have been a lot of folks who are low income just experience just kind of some happier moments, you know what I mean? Because there's more money and there's more funds and there's more things available. Who was that going on with this? What was the question again for -- LB: Oh, it's about the frustrations that you're having. You were talking of the money and stuff. CCW: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So... Jesus, I forgot what I was going to say. Yes, so everyone's pretty content but at the same time, it's like -- LB: Well, you were -- CCW: -- you -- LB: -- talking about civil unrest. You were talking about -- CCW: Yes, yes, okay, there we go, sorry. But at the same time, you would think that like police brutality wasn't going to be happening during this time. You would think like the amount of Black transwomen who have died, six transwomen died in a week, that is absolutely ridiculous, you know what I mean? There has been just so much police brutality, trans violence, racism, systematic racism, and it's like it doesn't stop. And so I think that's the most frustrating because I'm watching my friends and then family finally get like a leg up. They get this extra money, people are saving, they've got the extra 1200. Some people kind of financially did pretty well during this whole thing and then it's like this violence continues on. But racism is going to continue, and that system is going to continue on, and it's like, damn, when are we going to catch a break, so... And I would get mostly frustrated with people pushing back about the protests and pushing back about why are people outside, and I get it, I get it. We're in a pandemic, but people need to move, people need to do this work. I've been really proud of a lot of activists who have been finding ways to get folks who cannot be out involved, and that has been really good, but it's -- you know. I think that's my biggest frustration is the civil unrest and how we're still dealing with these big crises on such a larger level? Because Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, they happened almost in a couple of months, right? It's like the same time frame, so it's like, holy crap, that is insane. What is happening here? Yeah, that's my biggest frustration. LB: You know what I think about that though as? I think about that kind of horrible racist crime has been going on with that ferocity all along but that now, people are sa-- First of all, they have -- always have their cameras with them with their video, and so there's been so much more live video footage of this happening so that other people can't say, "Well, that's just not happening, it didn't really happen that way, these people shouldn't have been -- they caused what happened to them." And you say, "Look at this, that's not what happened, look, look at this." And the other thing is that I think people are fed up with it and so when it happens, they're making a public issue about it, which I don't think has happened as much in the last 20 years as it's doing now. And in part it is because people are... I mean people are speaking up about it more, which I think is very, very positive to me I mean for white people who are clueless and I have people... I know plenty of white people who are clueless and certainly some people in my family and other parts of my family who will just try to look for some kind of excuse for this kind of stuff, and they're seeing these videos, and they're saying -- I'm saying, "You can't look at this and say --" this is what happened in Allentown. "You cannot look at this and say this was all right. You have to stretch beyond any kind of credibility to say that this nine-minute video shows appropriate action by the police. It doesn't ; it just doesn't. And if you're saying that, you're lying because it just doesn't say that." I watched that video six times, and I wrote down every single thing that happened in it. And I saw -- I -- the police said that they had -- that the man had fallen down and they fell down with him. When you watch the video, you can see the police kicked his feet out from under him and pushed him to the ground. They lied in their public -- CCW: Right. LB: And I have to say that -- CCW: Even like just the comments on the spitting, he was vomiting, so of course, he's going to spit out whatever is in his mouth or maybe he's continuing to vomit, but it was very clear and apparent that he was vomiting. So it's like -- LB: He was sick. CCW: He was sick. LB: He's a sick guy, and he's praying. You know every -- there's just -- there's no excuse for this. And what's going to happen because I've seen this happen for 30 years is that the police, they're always going to excuse themselves. They're going to say their -- "Well, but yeah, but this has been --" and they're going to say that. And I think that it's going to be... Unless city council people band together and stand up against this, it's going to be awfully hard to get the police. The police will never admit they're at fault in my -- they just never will do that but -- so things have to change. I mean divestiture is really significant because they're just never going to admit the way the system is set up now, and it doesn't even matter who the police officers are. They're always -- CCW: Exactly. Because policing is a very toxic culture, you know what I mean? LB: Yes. CCW: And after a while, once you -- because even -- and even in the line of social work, I've seen some things, I've heard some awful, horrendous, terrible stories. And I've only been doing -- I've been doing volunteer work for about seven years but -- and always in the community for a really long time, but this work with Project SILK has only been for three years. And in these three years, I have heard, seen, some crazy stuff, and it really doesn't change the way you see people. But once I get to that point where I'm like -- I'm starting to see -- feel myself fall back into like bigotry or fall back into like a space of hatred, I'm like, I need to train, I need to train, I need to read, I need to educate myself. I need to get back into this place because -- and I need to like have healthy, healthy conversations with a therapist. I need to do self-care. Because that's when I know that, one, I'm tried, and it's -- I'm exhausted, right? And that's what I think is happening with a lot of police officers is that their exposure to violence is insane, it's insane, you know? In my place as a social worker, my exposure to violence is pretty intense, but I'm getting folks either prior to events or after something very terrible has happened. Because I also do like sex trafficking work with the shelter as well, and I do trainings on that with our agency. And some of the stories I've heard from these young folks is devastating stuff. But again, I'm only hearing it. Just imagine being the police officer seeing and reacting and doing the -- that physical brunt work in order to take care of a person. And they're constantly being shown this stuff and so their place of bigotry and hatred if it already isn't there. Because a lot of police officers go into this work either thinking I'm going to do the best, I'm going to be a public server, I'm going to do a great job. Some police officers, and it's very, very rare but some do go into this work being like, I'm racist and I want to continue to raise Havoc in my area. I have upset, like mental health issues, whatever the case maybe, I want to be a terror right? LB: Right. CCW: But you have these folks who go in here, and they're like, I'm going to do a great job. And they go in there and then their exposure to violence heightens and heightens and heightens and heightens, and nobody's managing it. No one is managing the sickness and the monster that is being created. Like, no one is managing that. So yes, so then you -- leading up to this moment of a man who when you watch the video, he is just sick. And there's no way that he -- his resistance is because he didn't need to be restrained. You can listen to like people -- there are -- people will do terrible things, right? We totally understand that. That was just a human condition, a human experience. But people for the most part, you can feel when they're genuine and they're genuinely hurt when you are healthy, when you are okay. And then for that police officer, he was not okay. Something else happened prior from that nine minutes that pissed him off and got him upset, something at home, something in the work field, the fact that he's not processing the trauma that he's constantly seeing on a daily basis. And so in that moment he was fed up. The police officer was fed up, so he responded in the way he did. If you're not thinking about holistic care for these people who are constantly exposed to trauma, then you're not doing -- you're not -- you're doing such a disservice. You're doing such a disservice to people. LB: Well, it's certainly true that -- I mean I think that it -- for police officers in Allentown, most of them do not live in the city. They believe that they -- their experience is that every single person they come in contact with is either a person who has done something bad, they believe that, or because it so frequently is, or a victim of somebody who has done something bad. That there is no in between. There's no activists and people planting gardens and folks that are playing with their kids, and there's just nobody that isn't a perpetrator for them because everybody they deal with is a perpetrator. And that's one of the problems with the way police are that they -- that they're totally reactive. So they only are there to react to some emergency situation, which is often a very negative thing. And they never have experiences working with people in the community to -- let's build a, I don't know, a garden shelter in the park. They never do that. They never say, "Well, we're here today to be at this big barbecue for the community, to just hang out with you to see what you think is going on in the community." We never do that. And so as a consequence, their constant experiences with people who they either think may have done something bad or who have really done something bad. And then they have this terrible, terrible attitude about the city because they never see anything positive in the city. They just never see anything positive any place in the whole -- anywhere at Lehigh Valley. A lot of them live way up in the Poconos, and they're afraid, they're afraid to live in the city. I've actually had them say, "I'm afraid to live in the city because my family would be terrorized," and there's actually no statistical evidence to that at all. I mean there's lots of older police officers that have lived in the city for years and years and years, and they manage softball teams for kids and they do all sorts of stuff and they... I know some of these guys. And they don't think everything is bad because they live here, and they know that there is an organization like Project SILK that's having youth programs in the park, hanging out. They're just doing it, so... But they're conditioned to be constantly suspicious of everything because they never have an experience that is anything other -- in fact, they never get out of their cars or off their bicycles. Even the bicycle cops don't get off their bicycles. CCW: Their bicycles, yeah, they do not. LB: Have you ever seen --? CCW: They do not. LB: You have never seen one of those cops off of his bicycle. It's like this thing that he's afraid to have an interaction with a person, so he's got that bike. It's like the car, he never gets out of the car, or if they do, they just stand there. Even the way those guys were standing there watching the guy who was sick so far away, they just watched him and watched him and watched him. It's an interesting thing. CCW: Yeah. And again, it just goes back to what you were saying too that like they're set up to react to violence, and that's it. That is something that I think that... As we are talking about defunding the police, as we're talking about abolishing the police and all of these things, that's something to also recognize is that when people fall into these systems, they are also going through immense emotional and intense changes. And not giving them any empathy for the shit that they've done. But this is -- you create monsters. You create a team of folks who are in this belief pattern with a certain set of skills, you know what I mean, and there's no continuous training. Something that I've been working on in our space, our Project SILK because we've had moments and struggled with all types of stuff with race and things like that. And I say all the time like, "This is stuff that you have to do consistently." I'm consistently training. And some people will be like, "Oh my God, oh, you're so smart, you're so -- look, oh yeah, you're on to -- you get it." But I'm like, "No, I don't. I also need to continue doing work like I'm still..." There has been programmed -- conscious and unconscious programming of sexism, homophobia, transphobia. All of these things have been into my body, right, so I need to find ways to make sure that they never come out and they are completely -- not never come out but they're gone, you know? LB: Right. CCW: It's continuous. So police officers should be going to a racial equity training yearly. They should be attending these things. These things are important and vital for the education of self. And I think everyone should consider those things. I read up, and I read up and I'm constantly paying attention to human rights campaign, them, any LGBTQ+ resource area. I'll have scheduled time to be like, all right, I need to make sure I'm caught up with language of the times. I'll talk to my youth, "Are there new -- are there anything new that I should know? Is there information I should know? Is there culture pieces that I should know, so I am aware and I am not hurting you?" If you are a public servant or you are a person that's working with social services, you need to do that work consistently. LB: Right, right, right. That's really true. Well, we're just about to the end of this. So imagine that somebody is looking back at this from 30 years hence, and it could be you because you'll still be around. I won't be but you will be. So you looking back, people are looking back at this way in the future, and you're going to give them a message about what's going on now, maybe a message of hope and a message of awareness that you could pass on to them, what would you say? What's sort of a thing that you would say about that? CCW: Oh, I don't know. I feel like I've just been -- LB: I think you've been -- CCW: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) continue to educate yourself. I feel like -- LB: What you just said was very significant because when you're talking about -- you can't just say, okay, I know everything now, you know? CCW: Yeah. LB: You can't take a two-hour training and think okay, now, I'm -- CCW: Exactly. That's something that I've been really pushing with my supervisor is that our staff needs consistent, constant workshop, training, workshop, training. Training is a little bit more official because they're learning a new skill. Workshop is where you practice, have some conversation, it's a little bit more lighter, right? I guess I would just tell people who are peering into the future is I hope people are still reading. I hope people are still educating themselves and really spending that time. Because ego trips are serious, and I feel like a lot of times when you think you are so woke and so educated, you tend to completely breeze by education. You completely breeze by things that you should know, and you become ignorant very quickly. So I'm always ready and always open, and I hope the same for people in the future too. LB: Oh, that's a great thing to say. Thank you so much for saying that and for doing this interview. And I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk, and it's been really helpful. And I hope you stay safe and your partner stays safe who has to be an essential worker, which I do understand that that term is -- actually means for many people, you have to work, but we don't have to pay you a lot of money. And you don't -- CCW: Mm-hmm, yeah. LB: -- get a choice as to not wanting to work. I've talked to several people that have had that situation where it's, "I'm so essential, why am I not getting paid for --" CCW: Right, okay. LB: -- "why am I not being taken care of?" You know that is important. I hope that all of your family is safe and stuff like that. I'm glad to hear that there's going to be some counseling components for Project SILK, and how is that going to work? I need to know about that because I get loads and loads of [info, whine?] calls and often calls from people who are counselors that are trying to place youth, which I will immediately tell them about Project SILK. So how is that going to work, that counseling component? CCW: There's going to be a few things that we're going to work out. The therapist is like now she is becoming licensed, which I'm like, yay, proud for her. She just finished her licensure. Her first test -- I think she has a second test to take for some other level of licensing, but... So the counseling will work where it would be like short-term counseling. So we would say that the client would be able to see the -- I'm sorry. The client will be able to see the therapist for six to eight weeks and then we will review and see if -- that there needs to be any more further like treatment. And a lot of the focus would just be on the gender and sexuality stuff. She has a ton of training on LGBTQ+, Black and brown youth and how those intersections affect health. She is amazing, and she's also getting a certification in geek therapy, which is like video game therapy. So that's really, really, really cool. So that's where we're at now. We're going to kind of keeping it short term just to get her flexible. She is only -- just to get her in a good place. She is only part time, so her caseload is probably going to be like maybe 15 to 20 youth, kind of the starts -- LB: Great, wonderful, that's great. So -- CCW: Yeah, and we're really excited to bring that service. It's something that we had in the beginning and then our therapist in the beginning just needed a lot of work. And we needed to find someone that was going to work with the populations and not work with them. Because that's what was happening a lot, like just pushing away certain folk and I'm just like, no, these are priority populations, what are you doing? You know what I mean -- LB: [You're like -- yeah?]. CCW: You can't just turn people away because you're uncomfortable, then you need to quit your job. LB: That's really true. When HAVEN first started over at -- in Bethlehem, they kept talking about -- the people at the church kept talking about it -- and we were involved at the beginning of it, kept talking about how they wanted to train people to... Because the youth were at risk and they kept talking about the high level of or the high instance of suicide and the high instance of self-harm. But then they would get these really problem kids, young people who would -- problem youth who would come to the thing. And they'd say, "Well, this person is too much of a problem, we can't have him around here." (laughs) Some of the people that I was working with said, "Okay, wait a minute, these are the kids that are the highest risk. You can't tell them that they're the ones that can't come here." CCW: Exactly. LB: "Of course they're hard. That's the reason that they have to be supported. They're the hardest ones. They're the most at risk. If this was an easy circumstance for these young people and their life was an easy thing and easy for them to interact with --" (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) CCW: Our services would be nonexistent. LB: Right, right. Sure, everybody likes the A+, poindexter-y kid who is going to say -- do everything you say but when you have somebody who -- and they had kids who were really problems, and they said they can't come anymore. We actually worked with them and said, "You cannot do that. If you're saying that they can't be with the youth, then you have to get another two people who are facilitators to work with them one on one if they were too dangerous or whatever to be around the youth. But you can't turn them away. That's --" CCW: Yeah, you got -- LB: -- (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) CCW: -- to find a way to make it work. So that's why having this therapy of -- a therapy position is really going to be beautiful to our services. And then we're adding on two peer navigators. One is a part of the ballroom scene, and the other one has a really, really great connection with the community, so we're really excited to have them. And then we're going to be adding on another case manager, so it's going to be a crazy -- LB: That's terrific. CCW: -- set. (laughs) LB: That's great. CCW: I'm really happy that our services are expanding because they're just -- they're so needed. They're so needed. LB: Yeah. I'm not very hip to this but -- I mean that's probably an old-fashioned thing to say, but when you say part of the ballroom scene, what did you mean by that? CCW: Oh, so they're a part of the... I'm trying to figure out how to explain this, so... Like Paris is Burning. LB: Oh, oh, okay, okay. Yes, like that kind of -- CCW: That culture is still continuing on and so they're -- they have -- they're a part of the house and they go to balls and they compete and they are professional voguers. So that was just such a unique piece to our team, and we're really excited, so... LB: Cool, all right, I can see that, yeah, good. That sounds exciting. I think that's an excellent thing. Well, good. Well, thank you again so much, and I really, really appreciate it, and it's been great to talk to you. And I hope you have a great -- a nice rest of the evening and get a little chance to regulate your sleep patterns. CCW: Yeah. I need to work on that, so... (laughs) LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) CCW: I hope you and your wife are doing well and your family is doing well during this pandemic. LB: Uh-huh, we're great, we're great. Well, thanks a lot. CCW: Thank you. LB: Bye-bye. CCW: Bye. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). 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01:24:56
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Title
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Chloe Cole-Wilson, July 14, 2020
Description
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Chloe Coles-Wilson describes how the LGBTQIA+ youth coped with COVID-19, by talking about her experiences with activism. She talks about her experience working for Project SILK in the Lehigh Valley, and how her experience there has shaped her. She also addresses the racial inequalities going on in the US, and offers her opinion to the interviewer. Ultimately, she talks about her activism and how COVID-19 has affected the community.
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PH40_24
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COVID-19
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2020-07-14
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.