Message from the Center’s CEO

• Chief Executive Officer Lorri L. Jean

PICKING OURSELVES UP AFTER THE PANDEMIC

These days I find myself much more focused on the future than on the here and now. Of course, in a year, on July 1, 2022, I will retire from the helm of my beloved Los Angeles LGBT Center. But there is SO MUCH on my mind before then, some of which is about the Center and some that has to do with our larger movement. A few of the things keeping me up at night include: • When will our Ariadne Getty Foundation

Senior Housing building open, after countless Covid-related delays? • When will the rest of the Center’s programs return live and in person? • Are people ready to once again attend

Center events? And is my own nervousness about everything reopening logical? • Joe Hollendoner begins his one-year tenure as Executive Director in July; how do we make his year of transition a valuable and meaningful one—for him and the staff he will soon lead? • We’re relaunching the AIDS/LifeCycle late this summer for 2022—will it come back full-force? What are the consequences if it doesn’t? • The Equality Act was passed in the

House; does it have a chance in the

Senate? • Has it really been 40 years since the

CDC first reported cases of AIDS, right here in L.A.?

For my thoughts on each of these, please read on.

The Ariadne Getty Foundation Senior Housing

This 98-unit affordable housing building designed for LGBTQ seniors has been beset by seemingly countless Covid-related delays. We’ve faced everything from construction staff unable to work because of quarantines to materials shortages caused by the pandemic. As the opening date continually receded, the lucky seniors whose names were drawn from more than 1,500 lottery applicants to secure one of these coveted units have been understandably anxious about when they can move in. If City inspectors cooperate, we hope to have our Temporary Certificate of Occupancy by the time you read this and look forward to celebrating the move-in by early July. Stay tuned!

When will the rest of the Center resume in-person services, including Center events?

Since March of 2020, one-third of our staff has continued to provide front-line, essential services onsite, while the remaining two-thirds have been working from home. So, while the Center never stopped providing services, many programs certainly adapted to circumstances, including going virtual. Currently, the staff of programs and departments that were not considered front-line, essential services, and were required to work from home, have either already returned to work or are preparing to safely do so. Directors are implementing schedules that make sense for each area (and some of our virtual programming worked so well, we’ll likely keep much of it!). Of course, the rules for workplaces like ours and for some of the services we provide are different from California’s general reopening rules, so we’ll have to navigate them carefully. In terms of returning to in-person events, in June we dipped our toes in the water with our Pride Picnic at Hollywood Forever. Some people definitely are ready to get back out there! I’ve found myself very excited about the prospect of seeing (and hugging) friends again. Yet, when a board committee recently scheduled a meeting in a restaurant’s private dining room, even though all of us planning to attend were fully vaccinated, I felt nervous. Clearly, my reaction wasn’t completely logical. I suspect it will take a little while for many of us to get used to doing things we’ve been avoiding for 15 months.

What’s going on with Joe Hollendoner?

Joe begins his tenure at the Center on July 6th. He and his husband, Bill, have found an apartment that is close to the Anita May Rosenstein Campus. My team and I and the Board of Directors have been preparing for his arrival for many months. We have a comprehensive and detailed plan for what we hope to achieve in Joe’s “onboarding” year. Most new nonprofit CEOs have no choice but to immediately begin focusing externally, which deprives them

of the opportunity to really get to know the organization deeply at the beginning. Because I’m still here, Joe will have the luxury of immersing himself internally for the first few months, getting to know the staff and the programs first-hand. After several months, he’ll be able to turn his attention outward. I believe that this internal focus will build an incredibly strong foundation for Joe’s work and a seamless transition once he assumes the CEO position in July 2022. Honestly, I’m really excited about the opportunity to work more closely with Joe. We have been collaborative partners on the AIDS/LifeCycle (ALC) for the past five years. I have been very impressed by Joe’s intelligence, judgment, ethics and humor and have grown very fond of him. That makes the prospect of our year of overlap a fun one! It also is a great relief to me to know that the Center will be in such capable hands.

What about relaunching the AIDS/LifeCycle?

Covid required that we cancel the ALC in 2020 and 2021. This is our largest fundraiser, and it nets millions every year for the Center and our event partner, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. It hasn’t been easy, but despite the huge loss in revenues, the Center has managed to survive the last 15 months without having to cut the vital HIV- and AIDS-related services and staffing that are made possible by the ALC. But that is not sustainable going forward. We desperately NEED the AIDS/LifeCycle to be back at full strength in 2022 and we’ll be launching the event in August. If you’ve always wanted to do the AIDS ride, or are a veteran and have considered doing it again at some point, please make 2022 your year! What better way to get beyond Covid than to start training in the great outdoors for a noble cause? It also will be MY last year on the ride and we’ll do our best to pull out all the stops. It’s an incredible week that people find to be life-changing. I hope you can join us.

What’s happening with the Equality Act?

The Equality Act seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, federally-funded programs, credit, and jury service. It’s exactly the kind of law we need to ensure that LGBTQ people across the country have the same protections from discrimination as everyone else. Many Californians may not realize how important this is because we’ve had virtual legal equality in California for over two decades. But every state isn’t California. In fact, in 2020, a national survey from the Center for American Progress revealed that 1 in 3 LGBTQ Americans, including 3 in 5 transgender Americans, experienced discriminationinjustthepreviousyear. Fortunately, the House of Representatives passed the bill in February and sent it to the Senate. Unfortunately, because we need 60 votes, I and many pundits believe it does not have a chance to pass in the Senate this session. Not only are the vast majority of Republican senators against it, but a few Democrats aren’t in the right place either.

If I’m right, however, it doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for the Equality Act. After all, most important pieces of legislation don’t happen overnight. They can take years to get passed. And while that makes me sad, it doesn’t make me hopeless.

Each time we pull together to achieve progress, even when we lose, we are expanding the foundation for the next battle. Whether it’s fighting back against a homophobic Supreme Court decision that denied us our rights, or working to overturn Proposition 8, or rising up after the horrific murder of queer people in the Pulse nightclub, we learn something and we become more resilient and better prepared for the next battle.

Twenty years ago, most LGBT people my age could not fathom that marriage equality would become the law of the land in our lifetimes. We could not imagine an openly transgender person being approved by the Senate for a senior position in a presidential administration. We could not foreseeanopenlylesbianBlackwoman addressing the press corps on behalf of a U.S. President in the White House briefing room. But we never gave up and we never gave in. And look at all that we’ve accomplished that once seemed unfathomable!

That’s why I believe we must look at the Equality Act as more than just a piece of legislation. It is a declaration of human dignity and a promise to future generations of LGBTQ people that the struggle for full acceptance continues. And we will keep fighting to get it passed—regardless of what happens in this session of Congress. Remember, it took women more than 50 years from the first proposal to win the right to vote. Throughout it all, women kept fighting. We have to keep fighting, too.

The good news is that most of the American people are on our side. And we have a new Presidential Administration that has already made great strides in restoring some of the rights and privileges that the Trump Administration stripped from LGBTQ people. In fact, Biden and his team have taken more pro-LGBTQ actions in the first five months of his tenure than any President in history.

Finally, last month marked the 40th Anniversary since the Centers for Disease Control issued a report about five gay men in L.A. with a rare cancer that eventually became a global pandemic known as AIDS. Then, as now, the Center responded, providing critically-needed services that simply weren’t available anywhere else. For the last 40 years we have not only continued to provide quality, state-of-the-art HIV and AIDS-related services, we have been a leader in prevention efforts, in the search for better treatments and in advocating for the interests of people living with HIV. Throughout, we’ve never forgotten the many members of our community who were lost to the Center’s first pandemic, just as we will never cease our efforts to finally end HIV.

So, while I may have a lot to worry about these days, I also know that everything is on the right track. Just as our community is resilient, so is the Los Angeles LGBT Center. We’ve been serving and fighting for our community for 52 years and we’ll keep at it until we’ve achieved our mission of building a world where LGBTQ people thrive as healthy, equal and complete members of society.