Thomas Duane, April 2, 2022 (Part 3)

Thomas Duane, April 2, 2022 (Part 3)

Thomas Duane describes his time in the New York City Council, advocating for the LGBTQ+ community, fighting for the Division of AIDS Services (DAS), and working to ensure habitable living conditions for New Yorkers.

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

2022-04-02

Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.

video

LGBT-31

Mary Foltz

Thomas Duane

01:28:56

5.4 April 2, 2022 Thomas Duane, April 2, 2022 (Part 3) LGBT-31 1:38:15 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 Thomas Duane Mary Foltz video/mp4 DuaneThomas_20220402.mov 1.0:|31(5)|64(14)|87(11)|114(5)|139(3)|168(5)|187(9)|208(6)|231(7)|250(7)|269(17)|294(4)|313(17)|334(16)|353(4)|380(9)|401(5)|422(14)|451(5)|472(16)|495(13)|520(7)|547(6)|576(12)|601(8)|622(12)|643(11)|664(13)|687(10)|706(9)|727(6)|752(7)|769(13)|792(14)|821(7)|846(7)|869(6)|892(10)|921(6)|944(5)|965(5)|984(4)|1009(6)|1032(5)|1055(5)|1078(6)|1097(5)|1116(13)|1141(3)|1160(12)|1185(12)|1210(16)|1237(7)|1260(7)|1287(4)|1304(10)|1327(3)|1352(13)|1373(3)|1392(5)|1417(6)|1438(13)|1461(10)|1484(14)|1507(13)|1534(16)|1557(11)|1580(16)|1603(4)|1628(9)|1649(4)|1678(17)|1709(13)|1740(11)|1769(7)|1790(8)|1817(11)|1834(15)|1861(9)|1884(10)|1911(11)|1940(6)|1967(5)|1994(16)|2019(9)|2046(12)|2071(5)|2094(15)|2119(4)|2144(2)|2177(2)|2206(4)|2227(11)|2252(13)|2277(17)|2300(15)|2333(4)|2366(16)|2377(10) 0 https://youtu.be/uMdnRN9RYm8 YouTube video English 0 Interview Introductions MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here again with Senator Thomas Duane to talk about his life and experiences as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from ACLS, and today we are meeting again at his offices in Manhattan, and it's April 2nd, 2022. So earlier we signed a consent form. I'm just going to go back through some consent questions. Do you consent to this interview today? &#13 ; &#13 ; THOMAS DUANE: Yes. 0 364 Motivation for Running for City Council&#13 ; MF: Well, we're so glad to talk to you again today. And yesterday we ended in 1991. We talked about your runs for city council and your successful run for city council. And I want to start today, I know we're going to move into your work on city council, but I just I wanted to start with why did you run for city council? What were the issues that mattered to you that inspired that run? Could you talk a little bit about, you know, why city council? Why did you decide to run? &#13 ; &#13 ; TD: Well. There was no openly gay member on the city council when I ran in ‘89, you know, sort of around ‘85 and somebody actually ran very many years before that, Jim Owles is his name, and also lost. But the person who ran before me, David Berg, did very well. And, I just thought it was important that there be an openly queer person on the city council and the district after ‘89 was drawn to make it more… to give a better shot -- to give to make the odds better for a gay person to win. 0 906 Joy of the Journey TD: And this is a terrible way to talk about this, except for it's kind of the right way, but it's inappropriate, but it's perfect, you know, and I even say this to my students, oh, my gosh, if anyone ever sees this. But I do preface it by like, I know this is inappropriate and I just-- but, you know, I need to explain something to you as you move forward in life. I said it's the joy of the journey, which is a which is a 12-step slogan. 0 1100 Concentrating on Supporters TD: And I oftentimes tell people running for office that, you know, we can always talk about the orgasm part, but I do say, like be present in the moment while you’re doing this because this really is like the, you know, this is -- I mean, it's best to win, it is better than losing, but it's really being present, you know, as it goes through. And just concentrate on the people that are unexpectedly for you, not the people that you thought were going to be for you, but aren't, you know, focus on the ones that are for you. 0 1451 Unfair Press Coverage / Fashion Sense TD: And I just I complained at one point, I believe, about how, you know, I always noticed that when women elected officials are covered in the press, even though they're trying to be better now, but the press would always talk about what they were wearing or what their hair was like. And I used to get that, too. 0 1590 City Council Endeavors / Setting Regulations MF: You do have that cool factor. I want to talk about -- So you get into office 1991. What's happening on city council at that time? What are the big issues that you're facing with city council? What are you fighting for at that time? &#13 ; &#13 ; TD: Well, I think people. Like me, maybe originally think that you get elected to house the homeless and feed the hungry. And that is something that is always there. It's something, you know, I'm always fighting for. But it was also about sidewalk cafes and discothèques and, you know, quality of life issues, which was [inaudible] because there were things that I hadn't really noticed before, for instance. Whether you call them peddlers or vendors, but people on the street who would put their wares out on the sidewalk, some people really hate that. I never even really noticed. I just thought, you know, it came with the territory. In fact, right across the street from where I live, there were people who would put things out. 0 1921 Discothèques TD: Noise complaints at the time, discothèques, discos were very big and they were both gay and non-gay and they tended to be concentrated in my district and some of them, many of them, you know, absolutely no problems and nobody complained about them. But sometimes when a place would become less in and say sort of a way that these places where first it would be gay, then it would be slowly but surely more heterosexual, white, heterosexual, and then it would mostly become people of color, be it was, say, urban youth. And but the responsibility for how a disco was many, many owners of these places licensed it out to promoters. 0 2161 Loftdwellers / Ensuring Habitable Real Estate/Living Conditions for New Yorkers TD: Again, I had a lot of especially, I then, but in my district I had a lot of loft dwellers who had moved into manufacturing or commercial spaces and had fixed them up and they had to fight landlords to be allowed to stay. So, there was a whole battle over saving tenants who were lofts. And I got even more when I was elected to the Senate because I got all of SoHo and TriBeCa where there were, you know, even more of these lofts. 0 2642 Fighting for Tenants TD: But, of course, I was fighting for a lot of other, you know, you know, on behalf of tenants. And I got you know, I passed a bill and again, this has been improved upon after I left, but it made it illegal for a landlord to discriminate against someone based on how they paid their rent. So people are probably familiar with the Section Eight program. So it would be illegal to discriminate against someone because they paid their rent with a Section Eight voucher. 0 2754 Division of AIDS Services (DAS) TD: So I like that bill a lot, actually, and I'm glad that it got built upon. You know, another bill to make it so that buildings would have the lighting outside to make the streets safer. And but, you know, the two -- maybe the two things that I'll be most remembered for. Maybe the two biggest things. One was, I'm putting -- there was an agency that was started by Mayor Ed Koch and continued through Mayor Dinkins. And it put within our city human resources department where people get their entitlements or their benefits, government benefits, something called the Division of AIDS Services, DAS. It’s now called HASA, [HIV/AIDS Services Administration]. At the time, it was DHS, and when Mayor Giuliani was running for office, he said that he'd heard from people that it didn't work that well. 0 2947 Speaking Against Homophobic Comments in Council TD: And really, I was able to only because of my press visit, you know, when I said earlier where, you know, because it was the case, but it's also having a seat at the table. I'm sorry. I should have said that. That's maybe the most important thing that changes everything to have a seat at the table. And so my being there was very helpful. And I had had a. When I first got elected to the council, the chair of the health committee had been there for a very long time and was kind of an old fashioned gentlemen, I’ll say. He was quoted in the papers as saying that gay rights caused AIDS. 0 3341 Creating Fair Treatment for HIV/AIDS Patients TD: Well, the battle continued to stop the you know, reconfiguring, reforming the Division of AIDS Services, you know, and one of the things that happened was by… Well, every year in the budget, everybody in the council would fight to stop the mayor's cuts to the Division of AIDS Services. So that was very important and they were very sensitive to that. And that was very you know, that's no substitute for a seat at the table kind of thing. So not just because of being gay, but the HIV was very powerful for making that be a reality that everyone then cared a little bit. I mean, many of them did care about the Division of AIDS Services, but they cared maybe just a little bit more now that they understood the stakes are so high that, you know, there was a possibility of under, you know. 0 3847 Battling for Domestic Partner Benefits TD: The other thing that I'm probably very known for was a battle to provide domestic partner benefits, which would only go to city employees. You couldn't mandate that private employers would provide domestic partnership benefits. But previously there had been a bill where there was just a registry, and that entitles you to visit whoever it was in the hospital and I don't even think you got benefits, but it was just a place to sort of recognize your relationship in some way. 0 4131 Advocating for Community-Created Land and Zoning Plans / Attempting to Create Affordable Housing TD: But, you know, I also was a big champion of communities being able to create their own land use and zoning plans. So there was in the new city charter which made 51 city councilman was there something in there that said that a community board could bring forward their own land use and zoning plan. They had to go through, you know, reviews and hearings and everything for the plan. And then the City Planning Commission would have to decide whether or not to accept it. 0 4365 Chelsea Planning Committee TD: And the Chelsea Planning Committee had been, it was a combination of, like, small business owners and people who cared deeply about preservation because we expanded the Chelsea historic district and housing activists and just, you know, average citizens in Chelsea that all wanted to sort of preserve the character of the neighborhood. And everybody got everything they wanted except for the people who were fighting for low income housing, really, more or less my team, are the ones that got blocked out. 0 4633 Keeping Records / Sign-on Letters TD: Oh. I'm trying to think if there's -- I mean, I could list, you know, a whole number of things that I did that were, you know, really very good things, just not very high profile. But let me say I also did something. There were a few things that I started. We used to cut out – this is me with scissors -- cut out newspaper articles if I was in it, and we kept them in scrapbooks, and we also kept every letter that we wrote about anything, because a lot of them could be, you know, reused in a way. 0 4745 Community Boards TD: And the other thing I did was elected officials go to these community boards, which I've talked about. Over 50 members from neighborhoods that make advisory just, you know, resolutions to be sent to elected officials and to the city government, sometimes even to state. And I would -- and what would happen is a good staff member who you would send to that community board, would they say, and the council member did this, the council member did that. 0 4984 Learning New Things While on Council / ConEd TD: And I, I feel strongly -- I want people to be able to do that. And one of the reasons I love being on the city council is we had lots and lots of public hearings on the city council. And I loved learning new things. And, you know, I know a lot about a few things and a little about a lot of things but I know not very much at all about a lot of things. And I would learn things in a [inaudible] they worked in the constituent issues where if they were focused on an issue, I would say go for it because I could be the mouthpiece for it. But it made me smarter too. 0 5174 Transforming Real Estate for Community Organizations TD: You know, there was a, you know, real estate wasn't doing that well in the early nineties. And there's this city owned building. It had been a library and the city wanted to sell it. And the local community board… and I supported this wholeheartedly because it had to go through city government, set aside for some kind of social services group. So, I mean, you could be the coalition for the homeless. It really could have been -- it turned out to be God's Love We Deliver, which is fine. And so they've been there ever since. They don't just -- God's Love We Deliver is a food delivery program for people with AIDS, that was much needed. And, you know, in the days of HIV and AIDS where there is -- when it was wasting disease. 0 5411 Closing Remarks MF: Well, I apologize, but we're going to have to stop because our video camera has -- we've taken up all of storage space.&#13 ; &#13 ; TD: This is what happens with my relationships, too. They get tired of me. [laughs] &#13 ; &#13 ; MF: But we're not tired of the you we just ran out of the ability to save the interview. &#13 ; &#13 ; TD: Well. 0 MovingImage Thomas Duane describes his time in the New York City Council, advocating for the LGBTQ+ community, fighting for the Division of AIDS Services (DAS), and working to ensure habitable living conditions for New Yorkers. MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz, and I'm here again with Senator Thomas Duane to talk about his life and experiences as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has funding from ACLS, and today we are meeting again at his offices in Manhattan and it's April 2nd, 2022. So earlier we signed a consent form. I'm just going to go back through some consent questions. Do you consent to this interview today? THOMAS DUANE: Yes. MF: And do you consent to having this interview transcribed, digitized and made publicly available online and in searchable formats? TD: Absolutely, yes. MF: And do you consent to the LGBT archive using your interview for educational purposes that could include films, articles, websites, presentations or other formats? TD: Does that mean they'll know I'm gay? MF: Yes, it does mean that. TD: All right. All right. MF: So that's a yes. TD: Yes. MF: And then just like the yesterday, you'll have 30 days to review the transcript and then decide if you want to pull the interview. We'll just delete it. You could delete parts of the interview or you can contribute the whole thing. Okay. TD: Yes, I got this thing. Will, I really read it? You know what I mean? Right. You know, let's say best efforts to read it, but I doubt I'll take anything out. But you never know. MF: Well, you'll have the opportunity to do that. And we won't post it -- TD: Read like, a couple of hours about me, but I mean. MF: Well, you'll have that offer. So we ended -- TD: Call my therapist like "hello?" MF: Yeah, well, your therapist could review the draft. [laughs] So yesterday I was just so grateful to talk to you yesterday. And thank you so much for talking with me again today. TD: I think it's important that people know that every day that I've been filmed, I have been late. I have arrived late. I do have a lateness issue, but it's been a little extreme so. Usually it's best to tell me an hour before, like lie about the time. But then I'm not always that way. It's just it's an occasional thing. It's part of my ADHD, which I didn't find out I had til I was in my forties. I don't know what I have talked about that, but my therapist at the time said, you know, you might have ADHD and his wife, who is an art therapist, has ADHD. Or A.D.D. or whatever. It's, you know, it's a spectrum, I guess. And he's said why don't you go see Dr. so and so, he's an expert in the field. So, I went to see him and he gave me a test. Fortunately, no homework. He just asked me questions. I answered them and then he said that is the highest -- or you are off the charts. It was like the best grade I ever got in an exam. And but it just made -- then I was like, oh. Because my default is "I'm stupid and lazy and can't follow directions". And that's, you know. It's because of my, you know, the way I learn things. And, you know, I'm not stupid. I mean, I don't think I'm the smartest person in the room usually, but, you know, I can compete. I'm not lazy. Like I got elected to office, it's not, you know. But I don't really follow directions very well. That is true. I mean, sometimes I do, but I mean, like, you know, how to set up something, you know, a new TV or something just to tear it up because it's written by people who already know how to do it. Like, I need someone to write it who's, like, doing it, you know, learning how to do it. Like, I am. So as soon as I, you know, explain to me, show me. Don't do it for me, but let me do it and, you know, make mistakes. And then once I got it, I got it. But it just takes me. I don't know whether you should. I could stay longer. I need to look at it in a different way. But did -- because the first year after that, I really I cried a few times. I think, you know, that's what it is. Because, you know, my family used to say, you don't stick to anything, which I guess is which is a combination of all of, you know, I didn't get as good grades as my brothers and, you know, I get an A in something and they'd be like, oh you're going to get an A in that, why don't you get an A in everything. Like, you don't know how hard it was to get that A. And I, by the way, I did like I was -- I just wasn't the top class. It was like this second class out of nine. But, you know, so it was a -- you know, even though it was very good, it was a self-esteem issue that I couldn't, you know, measure up. And I sometimes say, you know, I exceled at everything that my parents hated. So, you know, anyway, but that was important information for me because then I knew sometimes when someone tried to explain something to me that I would say, you know, we'll tell you a little bit about it and let me ask questions. And then after, if there's more that you think I should know, then tell me then. But if you just keep going, I'm just going to get lost and, you know, keep stopping this question. So let me just do it this way. We'll save a lot of time. It really, you know, it helped. And then people got used to my way of figuring things out, you know, anyway. MF: Well, you were on time today, I just wanna say. So, and we were the ones that were behind. TD: Because I took the subway, which is just one stop. Although I don't want to support the subways and boost the ridership. Ordinarily, I would walk here, but then I'd be all sweaty when I arrived. So I thought it would be better if I was cool, calm, and collected when I got here. Anyway... MF: Well, we're so glad to talk to you again today. And yesterday we ended in 1991. We talked about your runs for city council and your successful run for city council. And I want to start today, I know we're going to move into your work on city council, but I just I wanted to start with why did you run for city council? What were the issues that mattered to you that inspired that run? Could you talk a little bit about, you know, why city council? Why did you decide to run? TD: Well. There was no openly gay member on the city council when I ran in '89, you know, sort of around '85 and somebody actually ran very many years before that, Jim Owles  is his name, and also lost. But the person who ran before me, David Berg, did very well. And, I just thought it was important that there be an openly queer person on the city council and the district after '89 was drawn to make it more-- to give a better shot -- to give to make the odds better for a gay person to win. And, it's a tough question in a way, because I'm going to sort of preface it with something else. I had a -- he's still alive, but he's just not living in New York. Had a very good friend who is a police officer. And when I was campaigning in 1989, I bumped into him on the street. I knew him a little bit from the neighborhood, but I didn't know he was a police officer and he asked me a lot of questions. And I guess I did okay. And then he said, you know, I'm a police officer. I said, oh, no, I didn't know that. And he you know, in the course of the conversation, he said, you know, I was called to do this work to be a police officer. It's more or less a vocation, like some become a priest, or a minister, or rabbi. It just it called me, it pulled me. I didn't really have any choice. And that made a lot of sense to me. And it's not that I had never run for something before, obviously I'd run for district leader. And I'm sure I think I ran for, I may have run for something at Lehigh, but I wasn't like [inaudible]. Well, I would -- I always thought of myself as not very competitive, but actually I think I'm bloodthirsty competitive. I mean, I don't know if I could have hurt people, but like, I'm, you know, focused and determined. But I did have all this community experience, you know, neighborhood issues and also the LGBTQIA things and the HIV crisis, the AIDS crisis was still raging. So, I feel as if I was called to do it. And on some level, I just knew that I could. And it's hard. I talked about, you know, I ran and then I lost, but I ran again. And it is a special, you know, club of people who are willing to do it again. So, I feel like the pull was very strong to do it. And so I think that's why I feel like I had no choice in a way. But I also was very aware that, you know, I could get a lot done and everyone could do an awful lot without a title, you know, without a public office. But it's a helpful tool, you know, so that was -- I also factored that in that it would be a good way to bring attention to things that I cared about. And I like people. And actually, I was a painfully, pathologically shy child. And whenever I started school and really, you know, elementary school and high school and Lehigh, in the beginning I would be very shy, not -- I don't know whether I was afraid or not as time went on. But until I got the lay of the land and then I could, you know, come out as myself. But there is something a little, you know. I mean, I have a few very good friends that know everything about me. And if they don't, it's just because, you know, I forgot. You know, we just didn't talk about it, but I would speak with him about it. But I think I was able to overcome this shyness. And it's sort of easier if there's just something between me and you. I don't have to be on a stage or something. But, you know, if I'm campaigning and I have to go up to strangers like I'm going to hand them a flier or someone else is going to like the reason that I'm doing it. So, it's not just, oh, all of a sudden, you know, we're really good friends, although I really like people a lot. So, the shyness, it's a paradox, you know, and I -- and it does account for some when I talk about my sort of intimacy issues and, you know, close sort of romantic relationships, you know, it does kind of make sense then also. But I also have this, you know, I said I've said that, you know, children, teenagers, animals feel safe around me. And I feel I love that about myself. I feel like it's a gift. And I also, I'm very empathetic and I can take in people's pain like I'm someone that people can talk to about something painful in their lives. But, in a way that I want to say, it doesn't take a toll like I'm able to do it. It does a little bit take a toll on me when I think back on it. But it's more the toll is more like, you know, it's like sort of like an even deeper empathy in a way, you know, with how brave it is for people to go through the things that they go through. And, you know, I am the keeper of many, many, many, many secrets. And I'll go to my grave, you know, people who are queer, people who maybe -- people living with HIV, people who had a person in their family who died of AIDS. But they don't tell people. But that also translates into other, you know, people who are, I don't wanna say outliers because there's never just one person. But you know someone who there's something unique and special and you know about them or, something that's happened to them or someone in their family that they. It's painful for them to share, but it's important. And I'm open to hearing about that. And I don't, I won't ever tell anybody about it. I'll sometimes if I see you again, I'll repeat back to you what you told me. And I realized some people would get startled and I would be like, No, no, no, no. I'm just telling you, you know, I just want you to know that I remember what you said. Like, I saw you. And I'm only telling you that I remember our conversation and what that was. And sometimes that impacted what I ended up fighting for in office too, things that had happened with people and I think I was always that way. And I think it's something my, certainly my mother, you know, in her good moments, of which there were many, but not all. Something that she did reference about me, that she did know that about me and, so I feel fortunate also. And I brought that into my political life, my community activist life, and then my my political life and running for office. So, I was called to do it. And really, I feel like I had no choice. I just had to do it the next thing that I was supposed to do. And this is a terrible way to talk about this, except for it's kind of the right way, but it's inappropriate, but it's perfect, you know, and I even say this to my students, oh, my gosh, if anyone ever sees this. But I do preface it by like, I know this is inappropriate and I just-- but, you know, I need to explain something to you as you move forward in life. I said it's the joy of the journey, which is a which is a 12-step slogan. And it really is the joy of the journey. And I see, you know, if you have a goal and you're going towards it, they be present and like enjoy your way to it and maybe you end up going in a different direction because something has happened along the way. But when you achieve whatever it is that you wanted to achieve, it's kind of like having an orgasm. Like the good part is the foreplay. Then, you know, when you get there, when you have the orgasm, it's over. So, and then you have to think about what's next. So, I just urge you to, you know, enjoy this part of it as you go towards whatever it is that you are going towards. And I'm not sure I always did that, you know, that I stopped to do it and I have kind of learned, or I'm better at not giving advice when it's not asked for. And, you know, there are two kinds of advice. Someone might ask, do they want confirmation of what they already think, or do they really want advice? And I often ask them, do you want me to, you know, agree with you? Or say, that's fine, you know, or do you really want my advice? But I got to meet Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and I talked with her a little bit and she's just as amazing as you would think she is. And she didn't know who I was, and she talked to me anyway. She's just so smart and just so nice and open and, like, I love her. And, when we stopped talking, she was kind of walking, we were on a platform together. And I went over to her and I said, You know, I don't I really I don't usually give people unsolicited advice. But I said, you know, ask some your staff to make sure that you put aside a half an hour or an hour to write down what's happened in that day, because you'll probably remember it, but I always wished I had kept a diary of what happened. And because it's going to be very important in you're living during amazing times. So, I don't know whether she did it or not. And, you know, I didn't even know, I kind of knew I should. So it's fine if she doesn't, and she actually because of social media and many other things, there'll be more of a record of, you know, what her life is like, but, there's also always an internal thing that goes on and like, I'm very good at sharing that about myself. She's very good about sharing personal things about herself, but there is always sort of another level to everything. So that was it. And I oftentimes tell people running for office that, you know, we can always talk about the orgasm part, but I do say, like be present in the moment while you're doing this because this really is like the, you know, this is -- I mean, it's best to win, it is better than losing, but it's really being present, you know, as it goes through. And just concentrate on the people that are unexpectedly for you, not the people that you thought were going to be for you, but aren't, you know, focus on the ones that are for you. And, you know, you have to be kind to the ones that for have a reason, you know, aren't. But don't worry about them right now. Just focus on the people that are supporting you, especially the people who are. Don't take for granted people who are, you know, of course, what they would be for you. But, you know, also concentrate or give, you know, I've taken the feeling good about the people who support you, who you never thought were going to support you or came to help you just -- and you don't know why. That and, if you don't believe what you're saying about an issue, people -- I believe people can tell you're not telling the truth. And so the only thing is that I also learned is that I usually wouldn't take it unless there's a press conference and take a question from a reporter. But in those cases I would practice before, but I had a very good consultant later on. His name is Margot and he, whenever I ask him about a difficult issue, he would always start off with, What do you think? What do you think? You know? And then we could talk about a way to frame it in a way that people could hear it. So I didn't change my position at all, but I was able to explain, give my, you know, position and explain it in a way that people could hear it. Because I also had another wise professor at the JFK School who said, I only do that, just I mean, I'm honored to have gone there. It was a wonderful experience. It really was. And just there was so much wisdom. And he said, and I can't remember why. Okay, I'm a ground. Oh, that politics is oftentimes like the art of telling people something that they can't hear or that they don't want to hear in a way that, you know, they are able to hear to the best of their ability, that you can say it to them, you know, in a way that they can hear it, even if they don't agree with you. So there's a way to tell people things that they may not agree with, that you know, makes it easier for them to hear. And I think that I did that because I had that big experience with, like, the national press when I was running in '91 that whenever possible, I knew what my positions were on things. But I did try to think of the best ways to say it so that people could hear it and understand it. And, you know, many times it's something that, you know, it's personal, the reason that I feel a certain way and I was fortunate my district was pretty progressive in some ways. I think I was more progressive than they were, but I think they liked that I was a little bit more progressive than they were, you know, because they had other responsibilities, you know, protecting whatever their families or, I don't know, their businesses or whatever it maybe I did something that might not seem like it would be in the best interests of their family. But on the other hand, I think that they sometimes wanted to be altruistic and wanted me to do that on their behalf, even if they themselves couldn't do it and I was in a position to do it. As I say, my face is turning red. For some reason I'm having a shame attack about I'm saying good things about myself. So this is what happens. I have a shame attack, which is something. Thanks, Dad. It starts here and it comes up, and then my face turns red. And I didn't say anything I should be ashamed of, but it just it's an automatic, you know, response. And I lived with a lot of shame in my life. And it wasn't until there was an absence of shame in my life because of work that I had done and myself to get, you know, psychologically, spiritually better. It wasn't until I had a lack of shame or that I realized when I was feeling shame because I lived with shame almost all the time, which is kind of a heavy burden. But I, you know, I moved on through it, but I am glad that I figured that out, that, that I don't have to take on shame that doesn't belong to me, even if my body doesn't always reflect that like I know here. But this just red, you know, I'm Irish, so, you know, red. You can really see it. Anyway. MF: I can't see it. You're a little flushed, but you're glowy. TD: And it's because I of my COVID beard, which I never had before. I was, you know, the clean shaven, wholesome, dressed like a Republican elected official. Even though I was for [laughs] -- some of my best friends -- I know people are no - I know people who are Republicans. But you know, I'm a very, very liberal Democrat. So, but I dress you know, I dress like every other elected official, you know, dressed. And, you know, I think it's a nice tie. Right? I have pretty good taste in ties. MF: I love your tie. TD: And I said it's a little too fall-ish for this since we're talking in the spring but still I think I hope it's popping. MF: It's popping. TD: And I just I complained at one point, I believe, about how, you know, I always noticed that when women elected officials are covered in the press, even though they're trying to be better now, but the press would always talk about what they were wearing or what their hair was like. And I used to get that, too. You know, people would comment on what I was wearing and my council, nobody who I love. I just loved him. He is a heterosexual. And he noticed very early on that that was something that happened. And, you know, it's not something that I didn't push back against it. It just was -- it wasn't worth the fight. But it made me very, again, you know, empathetic towards what women have to go through. And it also I mean. Well, I mean. Comments about things like that. I often -- people of color get comments like that, too, you know, like heterosexual white males, men who I realized have stuff too. Sometimes their lives are not easy, but that's not really usually commented on what their tie was, what shirt they were wearing, you know what I mean, or what if they got a haircut? It's not -- but anyone who's not, it's something that comes up as a description of them as if, you know, I want to make sure that it's presumed that you're, you know, a heterosexual white male unless you, like, say things to make it obvious that the person is not that, you know, anyway. I digress. But I was called to do it because I have such a great fashion sense. No, I did represent FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology, which I love, but, oh. One time I was in the elevator at FIT going to a community meeting and there was some students from FIT and I just get to, like, an off-price store and bought a pair of shoes and I -- so I was out with these kids, and I said to him, What do you think of these shoes? They're like, Oh they're cool. And I -- yes. That made my day. Yes, I could still have, you know, that cool factor. So, anyway. MF: You do have that cool factor. I want to talk about -- So you get into office 1991. What's happening on city council at that time? What are the big issues that you're facing with city council? What are you fighting for at that time? TD: Well, I think people. Like me, maybe originally think that you get elected to house the homeless and feed the hungry. And that is something that is always there. It's something, you know, I'm always fighting for. But it was also about sidewalk cafes and discothèques and, you know, quality of life issues, which was [inaudible] because there were things that I hadn't really noticed before, for instance. Whether you call them peddlers or vendors, but people on the street who would put their wares out on the sidewalk, some people really hate that. I never even really noticed. I just thought, you know, it came with the territory. In fact, right across the street from where I live, there were people who would put things out. And it's a bit of a complicated issue, which you can never say never say something is complicated because. Even if it is. There are laws covering which you can vend and where you can vend. But if you are selling used books or magazines that's protected by the First Amendment, you can't tell someone like that to move. You can say you have to be a certain number of feet away from a door to a store or a subway grate. So there are regulations about where you can do that. And, you know. A lot of these people are, you know, somewhat marginalized. And I was not -- and I was empathetic towards everyone to put them out of business. But I remember going out with a measuring tape with some people from a block association, you know, to be sure that they're within the regulations. And I had to be, you know, the law is the law, you know, and if I don't like the law, then I should, you know, fight to change it. And so quality of life issues was, you know, a huge thing. There's an area in my district, the meatpacking district, which for it was really exactly what it's called, Meatpacking district. You would see, you know, cows was hanging from these things outside, which is now a historic district. So they've kept these sort of overhangs over the buildings in many places. But the only people who were there were the people who worked in the meat industry. And many of them were in the butchers union, I know. And but there were also a couple of gay bars opened in that area so then there were gay people there and then sex workers and I'll just say in this case, predominantly non-binary sex workers, whether they still had male genitalia or not, sort of started to move away from Times Square because this is an issue that came up. Tom Duane and Rudy Giuliani [inaudible] which I'll get to, but a lot of the sex industry stuff was moved out of Times Square and moved into the Meatpacking District and the area right around it, which is 14th Street and that part of Village got gentrified even a little bit more. And more people started to live in Manhattan who had children, used to be they weren't that many children who lived in Manhattan. And so there are people who probably didn't like seeing that, you know, transgender sex workers. You know, providing their services in a place where their children might be able to see it and you know, I understand that. And I have empathy towards the sex workers because no one does that because that's what they want to do. They're doing that because that's all. It's the only way to make money. And but the law is the law, you know. So that's really how I would respond to it. And I would torture young people who I was hiring. And I would ask them that question if a constituent calls to ask what can be done about sex workers, you know, near where I live and my children see it and, you know, they would always start off at the place that I would have started. Well, you know, job training programs, and [inaudible] is available to transgender -- I mean, maybe slightly better now. But, you know. And yes, I agree. However, the law is the law, you know. And so that was tough that that kind of issue. Noise complaints at the time, discothèques, discos were very big and they were both gay and non-gay and they tended to be concentrated in my district and some of them, many of them, you know, absolutely no problems and nobody complained about them. But sometimes when a place would become less in and say sort of a way that these places where first it would be gay, then it would be slowly but surely more heterosexual, white, heterosexual, and then it would mostly become people of color, be it was, say, urban youth. And but the responsibility for how a disco was many, many owners of these places licensed it out to promoters. And so it was very much the responsibility of the promoters on how the clientele was that they brought in. And sometimes they just didn't care, you know? And that was when problems, of course, but there was a just a huge movement to get rid of discos. But of course there were a lot of people in my district who went to discos too. So that was very difficult and I had to sort of try to craft legislation that would have enough for everyone to hate and enough for everyone to like. And it was -- one time when Debra Glick, my friend, who had been elected to the assembly, so she was the first openly gay person elected to the state legislature, had an article because -- or an op-ed I think or something. There was a news story on SONDA, I think the nondiscrimination law had passed. And in the times and the same day, there was an op-ed for me, it was a Saturday. And, you know, you don't write the headlines, but the headline was Save Our Discos exclamation point. Oh, did I get letters like he or she's doing this really substantive stuff and you're trying to save the discos? You know, it was like, couldn't you have run my op-ed on a different page? And I did go after bad disco operators. So, but the weird thing is now, and you had to have a cabaret license and if you had just a normal bar and you didn't have a cabaret license that would permit dancing, you could be fined, etc., you know, and too many fines and you could be knocked out of business. Now you can dance anywhere. Like they eliminated the entire cabaret part of the licensing laws. You can -- because big discos are no longer like a thing, you know? And that what people really objected to was the loud noise that young people made when they were leaving. And it would be late because, boy, stay open until 4:00 in New York. So they were you know, that was disturbing to people and I understand that. And more and more decided to have children in these lofts because they were large. They were mostly in Flatiron or the far west side of Manhattan, where there's a lot of brownstones and families who didn't. So, you know, their children would be awakened. Anyway. So, I did have some of course, I feel badly for them also, and their property values are tanking. And I'd be like, Oh, if only I had some money, I'd buy it from you. You know, prices are terrible. No one's real estate ever went below what they bought it for, but it just stopped going up. But I did think sometimes, like, did you look out your window when you moved in? Like, did you not see this was like an industrial block before you moved in and you know, now and that is a big problem in New York. Again, I had a lot of especially, I then, but in my district I had a lot of loft dwellers who had moved into manufacturing or commercial spaces and had fixed them up and they had to fight landlords to be allowed to stay. So, there was a whole battle over saving tenants who were lofts. And I got even more when I was elected to the Senate because I got all of SoHo and TriBeCa where there were, you know, even more of these lofts. But for many people, they moved in when it was cheap, you know, but then the different things happened. You said people would maybe when a new tenant came in and the people who had been living there would sell everything that they had done to fix up the loft to the incoming tenants, they might be more well-heeled than the original artist or whoever who had moved in, so they had paid more in a way for their space. And also as these buildings became legalized, because there were certain things that a landlord would have to do. So, this is an issue that I have to work on, and I'm glad to do it, though it was complicated. Landlords had to bring the building up to residential code, which is different than, you know, commercial or manufacturing. And at that point, then the tenants up until that point, tenants would have to would not be given a rent increase and they would only get rent increases that went along with all other apartments that were rent regulated at the the rent increases would only ever be the same percentage as regular apartment units. And the landlord was required to keep the building habitable. Anyway, so that that -- I can come to Lehigh and give a whole lecture on loft dwelling and what happened with lofts in New York City. Because, you know, in New York City, just many of these places are just not used for manufacturing anymore. In fact, right here where my office is, this building I think was always an office building. And Chelsea was like this along Sixth Avenue. And now we're on Eighth Avenue where the nicer real estate would be on the corners, and the mid-block was where the factories were. And that's a throwback from the 18th century because, you know, fancy people or, you know, would be on the avenues and the stores would be nicer and the avenues and the offices would be nicer. And the avenues of mid-block is where manufacturing everywhere in the garment center. And they actually made a lot of garments here. There's not quite so much of it anymore and a lot of these buildings have been converted to office buildings and some were converted to residential buildings. So but it is important that every place is habitable for people, whether they live someplace and they work someplace. I mean, I represented -- you know, factories have to maintain certain standards. It was in New York City where there was the terrible fire where the ladies garment workers were locked into there. They couldn't get out. And that's what led to some of the the making sure that there was, you know, egress for everyone and that they were habitable, that there was water so people could wash up and use the bathroom. And, you know, many different rules and regulations came into place after that. So, you know, there is -- I represent an area where there is that history also, and I represent even more of that area when I was a state senator. I picked up even more territory. So, you know, that terrible, horrible tragedy did lead to better working conditions. But the truth is, I can look out the window here and there's still some sweatshops here and I can tell where they are by the windows. And we could go into greater depth on how, you know, I can tell that. But it's also similar to places that are, you know, they're... They seem to be massage parlors, but they don't say they're massage parlors. They say they'll, you know, rub down or they used other words. They don't say massage because you need a license to be a massage therapist. And they really just to cover for people where people are doing sex work and many of them have been trafficked or... There's a whole host of reasons why women, not only women, but mostly women get trapped into that and, when I was in the Senate, I was able to pass a bill that did something positive for the people who had been trapped into really indentured servitude. And to have to do whatever it is they were told to do, and we'll talk about that at another point. But, you know, people also didn't like to have prostitution in their buildings. And I did just say prostitution. I sense that people [inaudible] one of the floors of this building is used for prostitution. So, there'll be sex workers there and people appropriately didn't like that there were strangers coming in and out of the building. So, you know, I don't even want to say legal -- In a way, I feel like there should be no laws about sex work except when someone is harming someone. It's the same way I feel about choice. Like there should be no laws. The laws should be silent, but there should be laws to protect people who are being hurt. And there already are, but there should be more. And that's the way we should do things that are very important to me, that people have autonomy over their own bodies. And if they're being forced to use their bodies in a way that they don't want to or they're not being protected. You know, sometimes I've worked with the people organizing, people worked in the house, wants to make sure that they had appropriate safety gear, masks. And anyway, I feel very strongly about that. But we should be silent on the way anyone is using their bodies aggressively go after we mostly go after women almost completely to try to control what they can do with their bodies. And I think the law should just be silent on that. I don't think that was a particularly popular view in my district that I probably never led with that because the law was the law and you weren't supposed to be, you know, having sex work going on in a building. I had constituents who -- RASP, residents against street prostitution. And I was just saying like, So you don't care if it's indoors, you just don't want it on the street? Yes, that's what they didn't care. They just didn't want the sex work happening on the street. They wanted it behind closed doors. So they're very, you know, a lot of gradations of like, so many levels of like where people are on on sex work. And of course, nobody ever wants to talk about sex. It's a whole big issue, like how you really shut things down or off as soon as I start to say something about sex. Like just stop, we're not talking about sex anymore. Not that I did that often, but I did it more of this in the state Senate than on City Council. But, of course, I was fighting for a lot of other, you know, you know, on behalf of tenants. And I got you know, I passed a bill and again, this has been improved upon after I left, but it made it illegal for a landlord to discriminate against someone based on how they paid their rent. So people are probably familiar with the Section Eight program. So it would be illegal to discriminate against someone because they paid their rent with a Section Eight voucher. But also, we have a program for seniors that, depending on what their income is, the rent in their apartment is not allowed. When the rent is increased, the city will make up the difference of the seniors' income, which it offers is very static. And then people from the Division of Aid Services, which we'll talk about also, they're paid the city pays their rent. So this bill needed that. Now, no one can discriminate. The law that I was able to get passed said, if you got any kind of city tax abatements or any kind of favorable, the recipient of, you know, something from a city program that, you know, made your cost less, they were the ones who couldn't discriminate. So the city gave them something or the state gave them something that brought down their cost. Well, they are not allowed to discriminate now. No one's allowed discriminate based on who how people pay their rent. But at the time that was it was sort of the first step towards prohibiting discrimination against people who were poor. So I like that bill a lot, actually, and I'm glad that it got built upon. You know, another bill to make it so that buildings would have the lighting outside to make the streets safer. And but, you know, the two -- maybe the two things that I'll be most remembered for. Maybe the two biggest things. One was, I'm putting -- there was an agency that was started by Mayor Ed Koch and continued through Mayor Dinkins. And it put within our city human resources department where people get their entitlements or their benefits, government benefits, something called the Division of AIDS Services, DAS. It's now called HASA, [HIV/AIDS Services Administration]. At the time, it was DHS, and when Mayor Giuliani was running for office, he said that he'd heard from people that it didn't work that well. That's true. You know, like many government agencies, it was a little slow to action. And, you know, maybe people with AIDS were in more dire need of services. I'm not sure that's 100% true. I think it might also have been kind of empowered gay white men who had never had to be involved with entitlements or benefits that way. But for whatever reason, it was not running smoothly. So when Mayor Giuliani got elected, he wanted to totally eliminate the division of AIDS services. So huge battle demonstrations, arrests, ACT UP. And I was on the council to save DAS. And even though they said, Oh, we [inaudible] it didn't really work that well. But the thing that Mayor Giuliani, first of all, he beat an African American person. And I believe there was... There was definitely racism involved in that, similar to the backlash, I think from President Obama where people are like, oh my God, you know, we have a black mayor, or we have, you know, a black president and that like whips them up into a frenzy, anyway. But Mayor Giuliani backed off eliminating the Division of AIDS Services, not because he cared about people with AIDS, but sort of people who consider themselves moderate to liberal. You know, Democrats, some of them had voted for Mayor Giuliani and he didn't want to lose their votes because they know, That's terrible. He's cutting a program for these people who are suffering and poor. So he backed off and then he started to have meetings on how to restructure the Division of AIDS Services, which was just another way to get rid of it. And we had to fight against that. And on the city council every year, I actually get everybody in the council to -- there was a committee that had dealt with the General Welfare Committee to push back against making cuts to the agency. And really, I was able to only because of my press visit, you know, when I said earlier where, you know, because it was the case, but it's also having a seat at the table. I'm sorry. I should have said that. That's maybe the most important thing that changes everything to have a seat at the table. And so my being there was very helpful. And I had had a. When I first got elected to the council, the chair of the health committee had been there for a very long time and was kind of an old fashioned gentlemen, I'll say. He was quoted in the papers as saying that gay rights caused AIDS. And it was it was maybe April when it started that January. And I remember because I remember I was going to the Museum of Natural History and it was that that lovely pastel green and pink that everything is before, you know, it pops out. So I was at the Museum of Natural History is very close to Central Park anyway, so I was enjoying how beautiful Central Park was before going to the museum to meet with government people. And I think we had beepers in those days, but my office had called ahead to the museum and you know, to telling the story. So by the time I left, I had to have like a, you know, something prepared to respond to this and the speaker of the city council, someone named Peter Vallone who's old fashion man, but he did allow the gay rights bill to be voted on before I was there. But he always wanted all the council members to get along. He you know, he was the kind of person very nice, never swear or anything. He would often be home, you know, he'd have dinner with his family every night. Just an old fashioned guy. And I'm sure the people around him, I'm sure they said this is a problem. So he got the council and everything was, you know, Williams. So he got Councilmember Williams to back off that. And Councilmember Williams was to have a press conference where he would say that he was whatever, sorry. He said that he didn't -- he misspoke, that gay rights didn't cause AIDS or whatever. So the press conference happens and I'm watching, and he backs right back into gay rights caused aids. And he didn't really disagree with that. So then I was left with, you know. And, you know, Peter Vallone he just wanted it to get [inaudible] was, you know, and-- Well, I couldn't let that sit. Yeah, of course. I mean, I just couldn't. And I remember going to ACT UP and they were very angry with me. I mean, of course, they spoke out against it publicly, but they wanted him thrown out of office. And, uh, anyway, what happened in that case was, this is before the days when there are cameras in the legislative body, so there wasn't a camera. Or if there was, it wasn't -- the local public television station would have a camera crew there, maybe covering the council meetings. But I'm not sure that the tapes even exist like it would today be on YouTube, but nobody ever moved away from their seats to make a speech in the council. Even voting you voted from your seat. Even the speaker didn't move away from his seat except for to stand at a podium right next to his seat with the council. President ran the show. He was the parliamentarian or she was the parliamentarian. It happened to be a he. It was someone actually who I knew and who had been supportive of me when I ran for city council. And I reached out to his office and I said, look at the beginning of the meeting, I want you to recognize me because I'm going to come to the front of the council chamber and make a speech. And he did that and there were no microphones or anything. And there are ways to see speeches made by time to read when he's angry. But this was one of those speeches about what a terrible thing it was to go after a community that and this is, you know, 1992, like people were still dying. There was no cure, very few treatments. And it really, you know, you know, I think I said it, you know, how dare you kick people when they're already down? Anyway. I was angry and I made a very angry, impassioned speech about it. And, you know, actually the same something which happened to everyone like. Applauded. You know. And he never said that again. Yeah. Somehow the I guess the speaker of the council, they just found out I was going to do something because ACT UP was always doing something and I was a member of ACT UP. So they had the council staff, many staff. It was going to fill up all the seats in the balcony so that there weren't enough seats for the public. But some ACT UP people still got in there and when I finished my speech and then they started throwing condoms. This was not my -- like I said, this is not part of my plan. And I remember there was one of the counselors, the Reverend Wendell Foster came up to me and he said, you know, like you make a great sermon and, you know, everybody likes it. They're moved by the issue. Just leave it like that. I was like, I agree, you know, and I'm going to be very happy. I won't be shy to tell you, other occasions like that don't make Tom mad moments in legislative bodies. [break in audio] MF: We are back. We just had some technical difficulties with our video camera and Senator Duane had just finished telling us about Councilperson William's homophobic comments about HIV, to which he responded powerfully. And we're in the middle of a conversation about what he's most known for as a councilperson in New York City. So I'll turn it back over to you. TD: Well, the battle continued to stop the you know, reconfiguring, reforming the Division of AIDS Services, you know, and one of the things that happened was by-- Well, every year in the budget, everybody in the council would fight to stop the mayor's cuts to the Division of AIDS Services. So that was very important and they were very sensitive to that. And that was very you know, that's no substitute for a seat at the table kind of thing. So not just because of being gay, but the HIV was very powerful for making that be a reality that everyone then cared a little bit. I mean, many of them did care about the Division of AIDS Services, but they cared maybe just a little bit more now that they understood the stakes are so high that, you know, there was a possibility of under, you know. You know reforming it they would possibility of its being eliminated and I think it was 1997. I was able to -- I had written a law at some point that put the Division of AIDS Services, which was a sub agency of our human resources agency. To put this Division of AIDS Services in law two enshrined in law and two have very specific elements to it, timeframes for when someone could get services. At the time, Mayor Giuliani was making people who got public benefits or entitlements. They had to go to this place for a health check up, in this place for see if they were employable. So they had to go to all these different places before they could get help, you know, even food stamps, but any kind of public benefit. And so people with AIDS had to do all of those things, too. So this made it so they didn't have to go to all these places. Now I'm trying to remember the thing that he's made, he was something reviewed for that employment review, something which he, of course, contracted out to private people who were not sensitive to people who were having difficulty surviving at all. You know, this is true. It's a whole history that people who were women who needed public benefits. They were required to work for it. Which. Just despicable and something that actually was able to make a little bit better when I was in the Senate. But they had to fulfill a work requirement. And basically, as you say, it made it really hard for them to go to school and to, you know, to get ahead. It was just grotesquely unfair and it's punitive anyway. You know, an advisory committee. And, you know, if you are entitled to Medicare or Medicaid, which everybody was because they were generally poor. All of that happened in one place. You know, find a place to live, find a place to get health care. And it had to all be done within a certain time period. And the places that they were set to live had to be in good shape. And then also clients were given a stipend of $200 extra a month, of which the thought was $100 of it was for food because HIV/AIDS was called wasting disease. It was very hard for people to keep any weight on because they had gastrointestinal issues that came along with it and other things. So an extra dose for food. And then the other $100 was to buy tokens. I think this was pre-Metro cards. So tokens to take the subway to doctor's appointments or, you know, whatever. But it was just a little extra money to live on because their needs were, you know, great. And so anyway, Mayor Giuliani, at some point, I guess he finally gave up trying to, you know, get rid of the Division of AIDS Services. But I wanted to make sure no one could ever try to do it again. And I did get that bill passed, and it was passed by the council unanimously. And it's actually a model like every agency, like a child services. Everyone should have, you know, these benchmarks that they have to meet and, you know, the level of care that they had to me. The other thing was the ratio of clients to caseworker. We also put into the bill and so it was a, you know, collaboration between, you know, the, the activist community, my colleagues in government, but also the unions, because the people who provided these services in agencies were union workers at various levels, the caseworkers were one union, the support staff was another local in the same union. So anyway, everyone had to sign off on it. And we did do that and it passed unanimously, which meant that even if Mayor Giuliani had vetoed it, we would have just overridden his veto. So he didn't even bother. So that was a very important victory. And the agency's still there today. I mean, it's been changed in certain ways, and I don't follow it, you know, precisely. Maybe I just, you know, I'm a control freak, so I have to let things go, you know, even with the way things are, but not that anything was wrong with it or anything. But there could be and I would be upset. But anyway, another thing that I was able to do and Christine Quinn and people from ACT UP were very helpful with this. There was a time in the nineties, probably '92, '93, when there was a tremendous number of people from Haiti who were trying to get to the United States. And, you know, the rule for Cubans is if they touch, you know, land, they're allowed to stay here. But no, that didn't go for Haitians. So, Haitians who came and however they were detained, you know, had to go through a process to be allowed to stay here or in which I don't know what percentage were allowed to. It was a lot of people I know, but the people with HIV were sent to Guantanamo Bay. And of course, women have families, too. So there were all these Haitian people in Guantanamo Bay, because they had HIV. And so we went to Mayor Dinkins, first as a political person, I believe, and then we went to the person who headed up Human Resources Agency to ask if they would say to the federal government, We'll take them in New York and let them come to New York, get them out of Guantanamo Bay. We'll get them here. We'll put them up with benefits. And, you know, you know, people were -- many people like me were able to work at everything. And just because HIV did mean that you were, you know, going to be a burden on, you know, society. But anyway, we did it and they came to New York. So, you know, it was quiet because it wasn't something -- just better to get it done. We didn't have to write -- I don't know. I don't know whether, you know, there was any press around it or anything. But it wasn't-- it certainly wasn't a huge story. We just wanted to get them out of there to bring them to New York. So it was really just a very good thing, you know, for people all around. My chief of staff, Chris, other people in the office and people in ACT UP and, you know, the mayor's people and just, you know, the unions, everyone just came together and made it happen. And so, that was something I'm proud of. Am I turning red yet? The other thing that I'm probably very known for was a battle to provide domestic partner benefits, which would only go to city employees. You couldn't mandate that private employers would provide domestic partnership benefits. But previously there had been a bill where there was just a registry, and that entitles you to visit whoever it was in the hospital and I don't even think you got benefits, but it was just a place to sort of recognize your relationship in some way. But I introduced a bill that said whatever married people received in terms of public benefits or whatever responsibilities they had as a result of being married, domestic partners would be treated equally. Now, it just -- it was sweeping. It just said if it says marriage, it's domestic partnership also. So I had that bill and I actually got everyone, including the speaker, Peter Vallone, to sign off on it. And Mayor Giuliani got wind of it, and he substituted a bill where he had his staff go through the entire -- all of New York City laws and all of the administrative regulations. And so what he did was anywhere it said married, he put in domestic partner. And the problem with that is any time anything new happened, you would have to make sure that they remember to put domestic partner in, whereas mine was just it was presumed. But anyway, he put his bill in and that's the one that we passed. So I'm not quite sure what the politics of that was. My bill is better so but anyway, it was sweeping domestic partnership for city, and they said all the benefits that married people got now were provided to domestic partners. And the thing that people -- and I had to explain to my colleagues, in some cases to the public, you know, for instance, health benefits. Health benefits aren't like a reward you get for being married. Health benefits are something that's part of your compensation. It's so people who had domestic partners and didn't have spouses were being discriminated against because they weren't getting the same benefits and they weren't able to bring their loved one, or family onto their benefits and pay for it the exact same way that married couples do. So it wasn't without its complications because, of course, you know, any compensation it's complicated [inaudible] IRS or state and city tax people. But, you know, there are certain tax advantages to being married and what compensation and how much money you're making. You know, it's factoring, you know how much money you make, and with tax free, with domestic partners, it was more complicated than that. And so, as I recall, I think we made it. Maybe it was, I hope what happened was that, whatever that penalty was that people would have to pay because they had someone on their health care plan would be absorbed by the city. I'm pretty sure we did put that in as well with whatever maybe even Mayor Giuliani put it in. I can't remember it. I'm sorry that I have to go back and research, but it was a good bill because there were people that tried -- they just wanted to expand a little bit, the registry thing. And I was like, No, no. Like everything, everything that we'd already gotten a little bit. We'd already got the registry so you could visit someone dying in the hospital, which is great, but it's not. It's not everything by anything, you know. So, it was very helpful. And even though Brushy for rent regulated tenants was in existence, it was helpful for people who lived together in any kind of housing, you know, co-ops and condos or, you know, anything. So I was very happy about that. And again, it didn't mandate the gender of the person. Heterosexuals could be domestic partners. In fact, many, many, many heterosexuals signed up to be domestic partners. So it was a non-discriminatory domestic versus bill. And so there was that one and the Division of AIDS Services those would the kind of two big sweeping things I guess that I would be maybe known best for. But, you know, I also was a big champion of communities being able to create their own land use and zoning plans. So there was in the new city charter which made 51 city councilman was there something in there that said that a community board could bring forward their own land use and zoning plan. They had to go through, you know, reviews and hearings and everything for the plan. And then the City Planning Commission would have to decide whether or not to accept it. Because in the past, all zoning, land use and zoning changes sweeping or tiny were only done by the City Planning Commission. So this wasn't at the grassroots get involved in it also and I had helped author this thing called the Chelsea Plan and that was-- it was the first one written. It wasn't the first one passed, but it was the first one written. But I was very pleased when that passed the city council and I had to make some compromises on it which, you know. It's not that I won't answer them, but it's not entirely relevant to this. But there was a give and take on it. Let's just say that. if something was going to be [inaudible] and there had to be areas that had to be [inaudible]. So that was the battle. But I also -- there weren't any programs to create housing, affordable housing for very low income people. And so there was something in this that if there should ever be such a program that that kind of housing would be built on city owned land, which, regrettably, after I left office, the community. One of the things it did was, all of the these buildings in Flatiron that were used as garages or that were lots used for parking. The owners of those buildings could build residential housing on those sites. So there were lots of empty lots in the in Flatiron between let's say Sixth and Seventh Avenues in the in the high teens and the twenties. So, it was high income housing that was built there unless you know someone took the public benefit. But most of them didn't take a tax break from the city or anything. So now there are all these sort of more well-heeled people in the first sight that came up was in that area where they could build, where the city -- was the promise was that they would build low income housing and people in the neighborhood did something incredibly dishonest of these new people who moved into those nice places that were only living there because the zoning had been changed and the residential buildings went up there. And they had, you know, thousands of people sign a petition that says, you know, do you want a park? Like there was no description of what the park -- you know, what it was. So, of course, who doesn't want a park? But it was on the site where this housing should be built in. It was terrible. Just terrible because, yeah, we always need more open space, more green space, but they said, Oh, it's such a long walk to parks. Well, this is on, uh, 20th Street. And just three blocks south is the beginning of Union Square, and three blocks north is Madison Square Park. And then there's two huge parks on the west side now, like, you know, could we build some new housing here? And by the way, Chelsea was the kind of neighbor that would want that in Hell's Kitchen also. So it was I don't know, I guess there were, you know, concessions made where they were going to build housing for low income people elsewhere. But it was like they just don't want been living here, you know, and I'm not going to torch the park or anything, but I try not to go down that block because it just makes me mad because it was -- I made a good deal, you know, it was a it was a very good pact. And the Chelsea Planning Committee had been, it was a combination of, like, small business owners and people who cared deeply about preservation because we expanded the Chelsea historic district and housing activists and just, you know, average citizens in Chelsea that all wanted to sort of preserve the character of the neighborhood. And everybody got everything they wanted except for the people who were fighting for low income housing, really, more or less my team, are the ones that got blocked out. And when I talked earlier about Jane Wood's Way, Jane Wood was like, I'm sorry, Jane, because you stuck with the coalition and we got the plan through and we didn't get this affordable housing. And that was really, really it was really important. Anyway. The people, they were so weird. They're like, well, there are all these other sites where you get of affordable housing. And yes, there were a couple of city-owned sites that the city was going to eventually renovate that were kind of eyesores, that some of them had people living in them and they weren't in great condition, but they were going to -- in fact, they are now -- make them, you know, make the buildings better or. And the families that leave will, you know, be able to go back in. But they also had this is building at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 14th Street called the Vermeer, and they had that as like an affordable housing site. And there are lots of other places. This was just like a huge example because this gigantic building and I was like, I don't -- that is not affordable housing. It was an eviction co-op. We used to have non-eviction co-ops where you couldn't get rid of the tenants if they didn't want to buy when the building was converted to a co-op. This was not one of those buildings you either bought or you were thrown out. So this was not affordable housing. You couldn't -- these places were going for hundreds of thousands of dollars, these apartments. This is just one example, but there are other buildings like that and I'm like, This map is a lie. Also, not only is it do you want a park a lot, you know, so too is this map. And then when they came to me, I bet you think we're just hideous gentrifiers. And you know what the truth is? I did lie. I said, Now, why should I think that, I'm open? I wasn't. I wasn't. So, yes. But I didn't want to not meet with them. And I didn't. But I didn't have an open mind. I was angry with them, you know. But I still met with them and I tried. And I didn't try that hard. And I had a staff member who that was his area that he -- his responsibility was to... That part of the district was one that he served on behalf of my office. And, you know, he felt the way I did. He didn't bother hiding, he didn't bother to try, you know, make believe that these people were, you know. That there was something terribly wrong with these people, from my point of view, I certainly felt there was something terribly wrong with me, but I was like, You would not be living here but for this planet. This is like the only concession we got for this, because other places we had to accept bigger buildings, you know, but in order to get, you know, maintain more low-rise areas in Chelsea and also to expand the historic district. So, you know, the trade off in those days was that you had to give some other places where you could build larger buildings, of which one is, say, 23rd Street, where you can build taller buildings, anyway. I don't know. So, but I did love getting the Chelsea plan passed, and I did it by bringing all of the members of not all that it, but several members of the Lanier Studio City Council gave them a tour of Chelsea, where it's so important to us, you know, to be able to see the sky and have light and air, etc. And also a few members of the New York City Planning Commission, including the city planning commissioner, who was familiar with the area. But he's the person with whom I actually had to negotiate so that it would be acceptable to the City Planning Commission and then get passed by them and then go on to the city council and get passed. So and then other communities have done that since then. So it's kind of a missionary feel, missionary to help people to come out and missionary people to, you know, to create their own land use and zoning plans. Oh. I'm trying to think if there's -- I mean, I could list, you know, a whole number of things that I did that were, you know, really very good things, just not very high profile. But let me say I also did something. There were a few things that I started. We used to cut out -- this is me with scissors -- cut out newspaper articles if I was in it, and we kept them in scrapbooks, and we also kept every letter that we wrote about anything, because a lot of them could be, you know, reused in a way. You know, if we were writing, I'm ready to express my extreme dismay with something or I'm writing to, you know, support in the strongest possible manner. But so there was a certain, you know, style that you could copy. So, on many different topics, so the people in the office didn't always have to be reinventing the wheel when they wrote letters on my behalf. And I also invented sign on letters where I would write a letter about some issue and I would get all of the other elected officials that represented whatever area or building or whatever institution that was to sign on to it. So, they would be more powerful that all of our names are on it. And that was kind of in its time doing maybe, but I didn't invent it, but I certainly used it an awful lot. And sometimes funny things happen, sometimes a staff member in another office would like try to rewrite it and someone else would rewrite it. And then it would be incomprehensible after everybody made their edits and I would just rewrite it. They couldn't -- that was it. Like you sign it that the way is now, or not it all. So anyway. And the other thing I did was elected officials go to these community boards, which I've talked about. Over 50 members from neighborhoods that make advisory just, you know, resolutions to be sent to elected officials and to the city government, sometimes even to state. And I would -- and what would happen is a good staff member who you would send to that community board, would they say, and the council member did this, the council member did that. But I always said Councilmember capital 'C', [inaudible] capital 'M', I didn't say councilman, councilwoman, council member because I -- to the best of my ability, I tried to make things gender neutral. Sometimes it's impossible, you know, like, if you're a fellow at a university like, what's the, you know. But, you know, firefighter, police officer, Medicare, you know, there's many -- most things you can make gender neutral. Anyway, instead of having the staffers to say that the councilmember was this. One of the things that we did since the last time here, since last month when you had your last meeting, I would have everyone write a report on like what they had done in the area that they covered for me or the issues that they specialized in. And it served two purposes. Well, of course, everyone in the office then could see what everyone else was doing in a formal way, and also, if they needed to use something like that in the area, they had it. But also we would hand it out to everybody in the community board. There was eventually, you know, people who were like, I don't want to do paper. I would have it on my website, so they didn't have to. But you know, people still like paper those days and they were planting two trees for everyone they cut down, I'm sure. I hope so. I promise. So all the wonderful and amazing things I have done in there would be in this report. And then, you know, the staff member, you know, I'd ask them maybe to just go into more detail on one or two things, so they didn't have to, you know, just be saying. And I would do the same thing because I would take -- and then there'd be questions and answers, but it saves a lot of time and people could read it at their leisure, and people loved it. And then all the other officials that are doing it and I'm not sure that the staff members of these other elected officials are so fond of this this sitting but that was the other thing you know. I just, I always felt it was so important to be really very respectful and really, you know, try to be nonhierarchical to the best of my ability with staff members of an agency, with the city or government or who works for another elected official. And I do know that there was something special that accrued to me because I had a title and, you know, which people used in different ways. But I used it mostly, I think as a megaphone that people sort of had to listen to what I had to say. So there was that. But, you know, it's a problem with sexual harassment. Like people, it could be that I don't know the power I have over someone, you know, and they don't know if they could say no or that, you know, I'm being inappropriate. So, but I mean, I tried never to do that either. And I don't know whether I always said this even when I was in the council, but I felt very strongly that. And now even when I teach, I see, you know, if I say something that's insensitive or that you seem, you know, that you don't like what I said, I want you to please tell me because I want to be able to either apologize or say I could have said a better way or say, you know, this is how I made it. But, you know, I want to be able to address it and not just leave it there. And I, I feel strongly -- I want people to be able to do that. And one of the reasons I love being on the city council is we had lots and lots of public hearings on the city council. And I loved learning new things. And, you know, I know a lot about a few things and a little about a lot of things but I know not very much at all about a lot of things. And I would learn things in a [inaudible] they worked in the constituent issues where if they were focused on an issue, I would say go for it because I could be the mouthpiece for it. But it made me smarter too. I learned something new and it was to become very important later on in my senate district, a power plant was being repaired. Like I really didn't know that much about how power plants were being retooled, which, you know, probably are again now. But I learned, you know, I could tell you all of that particulate matter and the percentages and it like beyond all of that. And I will tell you, -- it's when I was in the Senate. But I will tell you anyway. So the law puts aside money for a community to argue with the utility to make a fair playing field, which of course it's not. But still, there's money to fight back against a power company, a utility company. And there was a ConEd plant, and I don't hate ConEd as much as everyone else in the -- the city's old. All the infrastructures old, things happened. But, you know, it's not -- it's their fault, but it's not like, you know, deliberately making things fall apart, buy anyway. But I appreciated people's anger at it. But I also appreciated the other side that, you know, we don't know what's happening with every pipe and everything in the city anyway. We couldn't get one of the like the environmental organizations to help us because many of them were attorneys who worked for law firms, which in this case, ConEd hired all of those law firms to be to work for them. So there was a conflict and they couldn't do it. And I remember before I started yelling at someone, I said, this is like so bogus, like you're on the board of the, you know, the Natural Resources Defense Fund, and you can't help us. I mean, come on. Like, don't you see what's happening here? And we did finally find, you know, a not-for-profit legal group that did help us. But, you know, we were, like, hanging out there because they couldn't these other groups couldn't take positions on things because they were compromised. Very smart of ConEd, you know, when many times an issue or the thing no matter what, they'll hire like all of the good lobbying organizations and in a way co-op the -- not co-op but, you know, it's there's usually a power imbalance in these kinds of situations. And even well-intentioned people who wanted to do good things for the environment, they have now put themselves in a position where they can't do anything. So that was a lesson I learned. And that was when -- it could have happened when I was in the council, it just didn't. I just happen to have a power plant that really impacted my Senate district. But there are other things. You know, there was a, you know, real estate wasn't doing that well in the early nineties. And there's this city owned building. It had been a library and the city wanted to sell it. And the local community board-- and I supported this wholeheartedly because it had to go through city government, set aside for some kind of social services group. So, I mean, you could be the coalition for the homeless. It really could have been -- it turned out to be God's Love We Deliver, which is fine. And so they've been there ever since. They don't just -- God's Love We Deliver is a food delivery program for people with AIDS, that was much needed. And, you know, in the days of HIV and AIDS where there is -- when it was wasting disease. And now they provide meals for other people as well that have, you know, difficult health issues, cancer or something. So anyway, they're a good group and they took it. And I really, you know, like that. That community board that I represented the area where they were the community board did this and said something. So I mean, not every neighborhood would do that because, you know, who knows who would want to move in there. But it turned out to be some of the people that wouldn't reject you, but even if it was, it would have been okay with this community board. So there were those kinds of things. You know, sometimes it would be, you know, a facility for a -- not a facility that's a terrible word. There was-- oh well, on the same block. I was very supportive of a place called Safe Space, which is on 46th Street. At the time, Port Authority was still a place where young people lived ; runaways, throwaways. And John Wright, who is part of this organization, came forward with a proposal where a church that wasn't using one of their buildings was willing to give it to this organization Safe Space so that kids could drop in there during the day. It was not zoned so they could stay overnight, but they could go there during the day and shower and get a meal. And there were, you know, social services, if, you know, to try to help these kids because they did whatever they could to survive and find some place to spend the night, you know, and they used to call the Port Authority the port. It's not really the same there. Kids aren't there in the same numbers that they were then. But I was very happy to support their putting Safe Space in. And then there was another building I supported where, you know, it was sort of like a "no must, no fuss" place for people with AIDS where, you know, they would bring meals in to people. It was not like the most luxurious place, but it was certainly way better than a SRO, which is single room occupancy which oftentimes, was just dreadful. I mean, sometimes they were okay, but mostly they weren't. So this was a nice place and I supported that being put there. So I like being able to help bring social services into neighborhoods and to work with them. Whether they were willing to accept it off the bat or were they a little bit reticent or, you know, and I was generally very supportive of them. And a couple of times they were for whatever reason, there was a reason that I couldn't support it and I wanted something different. But mostly I was helpful in helping organizations get their projects through if they were helping people with problems, basically. MF: Well, I apologize, but we're going to have to stop because our video camera has -- we've taken up all of storage space. TD: This is what happens with my relationships, too. They get tired of me. [laughs] MF: But we're not tired of the you we just ran out of the ability to save the interview. TD: Well. MF: So what I'm going to I'm going to just end on the audio and then what we'll do is we'll transcribe the audio and then we'll have the video as our backup, which has a majority of what we talked about. I think we have room for another interview or two because we haven't really gotten to the Senate yet. And I'm hoping you'd be willing to do another interview. TD: Yes, when, it's my reunion? Was it May or June? I don't know what your deadline is or-- you know. MF: No we have no -- we're ongoing, so yeah. TD: Oh so definitely around that I'll try to make my way a little bit earlier and we can do it then. But also I think now I don't have to make that vlog anymore. It's all here my whole life. [laughs]. So, you know, that as told to book is totally unnecessary now. I don't need the ghostwriter anymore because I used to that book that I'm never going to write with all your -- should I name names? [laughs] Anyway, when you come here, next time I'll have a plan. If you bring your son too we'll make sure it's something that, you know, he would enjoy, too, because, you know, he's my demography. MF: He would love to come. I mean, he's been asking us all kinds -- what did you do? Where did you eat? Where do you go? You know? So he would love that. TD: And there's, you know, lots of on Broadway off-Broadway stuff. We'll do something . MF: That would be wonderful. We would love that. Okay. So I'm going to be in touch with you and Bruce to set up something. And I just want to say thank you so much. This was wonderful today. TD: Well, thank you. It's been great. Like, it's been great. I'm very glad we're doing it. And even though it's very hard to talk about myself. Like I felt a little hung over when I got home last night, you know, spending so much time to talk about my stuff, I was like, ugh. And the person I'm dating is a flight attendant, so I couldn't really discuss it with him. And so I was. Anyway, it's just weird to, you know, speak at great length about how wonderful I am. But I'll have to put in some things when I wasn't so wonderful. I'll have to definitely find some of those things. Things that I -- well, right when I stop teaching one class in a public high school when I was in office. Right towards the end instead of asking about sex and drugs, which they were always asking about, this question ; Was there ever a bill that you regretted, you know, that you voted for? And I was stunned by the question. Like nobody -- kids ask the greatest questions, like even reporters when they'd asked me about my HIV disclosure, they never asked as good questions as the kids did on World AIDS Day when they would ask me questions. For instance, when did you find out you had HIV? 1988. But, they didn't ask, how long have you had HIV? And the kids knew to ask that, you know, how long do you think you had been infected with HIV and, you know, definitely before 1985, but I think before 1982. Well, 1983 is when they started to say to use condoms, and it's all use from then on. So it was probably before 1983. Anyway. But kids knew how to ask, you know, better questions. So was ever -- like who asked that? It's a great question. And I was like, whoa. And I really, really, really had to think about it. And I finally was like, no, but I did change my mind about a couple of things, you know, and the truth is, is in those cases, I don't know which was the right position, you know. And many of them, not many, there weren't that many -- guns. I changed my position on guns and crossbows, because there was a bill that came up that said that like 15-year-olds could hunt with crossbows, they could get a license to do that. And I would vote against -- well actually I love animals, you know. And maybe the third time I did, a Republican came over and he said, [inaudible]. And I said, Why? He said, Because they're doing it anyway, and in this way, they have to take a class. And I thought to myself, they are doing it anyway. And this way they do have to take a class. So now they learn you don't injure the animal. That's the worse thing. Kill it. You know what I mean? But it was, Are we encouraging people to do it? I don't know. But they were doing it anyway. So at least now, if they hadn't taken the course, they would get in trouble for that. So anyway, so it was a couple of bills like that, you know, and sometimes gambling is a tough one, also. You know, I hate gambling. I don't have that addiction because it's not here. And actually slot machines, that sort of thing, you know, that it'll be like you're going to spend $30, you know, win or lose, you know. But if it was 21 or poker, like, I would be one of those people that would see the sun because, you know, I have that ADHD. It's because it's uneven focus. That's what it really is. It's so, you know, and sometimes even when I'm looking at stuff on the computer, like I can't, like it's 2 hours later so. [laughs] No, that's for me. You know, Saratoga is right by Albany, and they have pon -- the trotters. And, you know, the riders and all this. So anyway, all the Senate Democrats, we all went to the track and I had never been to the track before. And on the way there, there are a couple of senators who knew a lot about gambling and knew a lot about horse racing. And they showed me there's this --I haven't looked at it since it's been maybe 15 years now. I only looked at it once. But they had little things at the top that tell you like where the horse has won, or how long it's been in, who the jockey is. Like, I can't remember all the little pieces of information that they tell you. So it's time to start betting, and I bet and I win, and then I win, and then I win, and then I place and then I'm scared that the person isn't going to get to our table in time to take my bet. And then, you know, after nine races or something, well, time to go. And I didn't want to leave. And as I walked in, I was like, I must never come here again, because I, you know, I picked that, you know, of course, the first time you do anything, you know, I don't know what it's the second time, but because it was my first time, you know, the universe made it so that I would be a winner. But because it had, you know, there was focus involved. Well, this is better cold, but it has a couple of unnatural things in it. But it's delicious. Like three calories. MF: Oh, yeah, we love it. We have it at our house. TD: Oh, you do. You do. MF: Oh, yeah, Sparkling Ice is delicious. And then we will take this on the ride home now, and guzzle it with glee. TD: It's incred -- I mean, who knows? Well, one time there was a frozen yogurt. They said a pint was 90 calories. Well, as it turned out, that actually was not true about this particular -- they went out of business like. And I think they did less than the amount of fruit juice in it at some point. I didn't really notice but I've noticed people commented on it. It's still tastes lemony to me. MF: Well, I'm going to I'm going to stop the interview now. TD: Oh, me too. I'm talking about Sparkling Ice. MF: We're talking about Sparkling Ice, people in the future are going to want to know what you and I both enjoy drinking. TD: I don't mean for it to be a commercial and I am sorry if I -- that I badmouth it because I really don't know the facts, but it is delicious. MF: I'll just say thank you again. TD: Thank you. Thank you. MF: I can't wait for the next interview. TD: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. Thanks. 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