VOLUME 5, NUMBER 21
THE WEST SIDE’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
JUNE 19 - JULY 2, 2013
Yes, Virginia, Lesbians Live in Chelsea
Photo by Yanan Wang
The LGBTQ advocacy groups at 147 West 24th Street raise their fists in the name of community — and family.
Five in One, on 24th: LGBTQ Activism Thrives BY YANAN WANG From the outside, there’s nothing remarkable about 147 West 24th Street. Walk the block between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and you’re more likely to notice the 99 Cent store or the Hampton Inn hotel. Those looking for a sense of purpose and community, however, will find it — and not just at XES Lounge (a gay bar, at 157, with a similarly nondescript façade that belies the activity within). A quick elevator trip at 147 reveals that the building is home to a unique community of activists. From the third floor to the sixth, the facilities are dedicated — in one way or another — to advocating for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, two spirit, trans and gender non-conforming people. With the elevator providing direct access to each of the organizations’ offices, there is a constant flow — of people and ideas — throughout the building. Many of the groups have overlapping membership, and some of them are collaborating on city-wide projects (a building meeting is held each month so the organizations can stay abreast of each other’s activities). But at its core, the community at 147 West 24th Street extends beyond individual and collective organizing. “The building’s like my family,” said Chris Bilal, a member of the campaign
staff at Streetwise and Safe, an advocacy group on the fifth floor. “It’s a lot of people’s families.” This family started as just one organization in 2006 — when Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment (FIERCE) became the first LGBTQ project to move into the building. Then, little by little, other groups joined them. The growth has allowed them to take on larger projects, said John Blasco, FIERCE’s lead organizer since 2009. When big events are happening, noted Blasco, the building’s groups mobilize as a single contingent. On June 11, representatives from each of the building’s five LGBTQ groups (The Audre Lorde Project, Streetwise and Safe, Queers for Economic Justice, The Sylvia Rivera Law Project and FIERCE) spoke in solidarity at a press conference addressing police brutality against three gay young men in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. A few of the building’s groups host Know Your Rights training workshops to educate LGBTQ youth of color and lowincome LGBTQ youth about how to protect themselves during police encounters. FIERCE, Streetwise and Safe and the Audre Lorde Project are members of Communities United for Police Reform — a city-wide campaign against discriminatory policing practices such as stop
and frisk. For LGBTQ individuals who are also homeless, low-income or people of color, the risk of being mistreated by authority figures only multiplies, said Amber Hollibaugh, the executive director of Queers for Economic Justice. She noted that all of the organizations in the building advocate for LGBTQ peoples who also belong to other marginalized groups. “We’re not here by accident. We’re here because we share an agenda,” Hollibaugh said. “We often see the same people, and we care about similar, overlapping issues even though we work in different constituencies.” As she put it, “We are the ones who see what it’s like to be part of a community and not be invited to the table.”
ENVISIONING LIBERATION, COLLECTIVELY The Audre Lorde Project alp.org @audrelorde 718-596-0342
Over the course of her life, Audre Lorde held many jobs: factory worker, librarian, medical clerk. But she is best remembered by her admirers as a lifelong poet and writer — an activist who
BY WINNIE McCROY The New York City that you come to know is different from the one your friends and neighbors see. Each of us holds on to the imprint Gotham has made in our consciousness, be it the era of Studio 54 or the post-9/11 lockdown. This nostalgic myopia also extends to neighborhoods. You may lay claim to living in Chelsea — but depending on when you arrived, that could be the gritty Chelsea of Hispanic families and mom and pop
shops, the 1990s gay wonderland (when all your friends flocked to the Big Cup on Eighth Avenue to cruise) or even the Chelsea of today — where straight families and single women have changed the neighborhood’s residential identity. In the late '80s, Chelsea was just beginning to become a haven for adventurous gay men looking for cheap rents, among other things. Eons before walking the High Line, locals would
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Alongside Gains, Unhealed Homophobia Lurks BY ANDY HUMM Two years ago, a marriage equality bill was enacted in New York State — and Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had bulled it through in his unique way, was greeted at the pride march on Fifth Avenue by an explosion of joy bigger than any I had ever witnessed in participating in and covering this annual commemoration of the Stonewall Rebellion since 1974. As a longtime activist, I
was surprised by the sheer intensity of it. We have had much to celebrate in past decades — from our own courage in just stepping out publicly into the sunshine (a giddy feeling the first time you do it) to passage of our City’s Gay Rights Bill in 1986 to the coming out of allies, from our parents to celebrities. We could celebrate our very survival in 1996 when the advent of prote-
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Pretty in Pride Special Pride Issue, pages 1 - 15
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5 15 CANAL ST., U N IT 1C • MAN H ATTA N , N Y 10 013 • C OPYRIG HT © 2013 N YC COM M U N ITY M ED IA , LLC