Website—Organizing and Policy Work: The 30th Anniversary of Gay Community News

Community Organizing

The 30th Anniversary of Gay Community News:
Celebrating the Paper and Scrutinizing the LGBT Movement

October 16-18, 2003 / New York LGBT Community Services Center

Gay Community News (GCN) was one of the nation's first weekly newspapers covering LGBT issues, providing a powerful voice for a progressive queer movement from 1973-1998. Bringing together journalism, activism, and cultural work, the newspaper was based in Boston and served as a training ground for many people who would go on to be leaders in queer activism, social services, and cultural work.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of GCN's founding, a three-day series of panels, workshops, readings, and fishbowl conversations has been organized, aimed at providing a space for all interested parties to come together, review and rethink our movement's values, and chart new directions for the future.

Join GCN staff, contributors, volunteers, and subscribers as they come together from all over the country to reflect on the LGBT movement, the queer media, and progressive activism of the past three decades.

All events are free and open to the public. Former GCN subscribers are especially urged to attend. We also hope movement historians, long-time activists, queer journalists, and others will find this event of interest. This website will be updated to reflect changes in the schedule and to add the names of key participants.

*For general celebration information contact Tyrone Clay at the NY LGBT Center at 212-620-7310 x 234 or tclay@gaycenter.org.

*Media information and press inquiries to Inga Sorensen at 212-620-3710 or iss@gaycenter.org .

*Former GCNers are sought to participate in the workshop sessions below. Please contact Eric Rofes at gmhs3@aol.com or 415-255-6210 to arrange participation. Help us connect with many of our former GCN colleagues by directing them to this website. We are still searching for many people including: Lynn Rosen, Pat Kuras, David Holland, Lisa Orlando, Ellen B. Davis, and many others…

October 16, 2003
Thursday, 7:30 PM

Kickoff Panel:

Did It Matter? Gay Community News, the LGBT Liberation Movement, and the Politics of LGBT Communities Today

From 1973 until 1998, the national community newspaper, Gay Community News, was published out of Boston, Massachusetts. GCN influenced the sexual politics of several generations of activists, served as an outlet for scores of talented writers and artist, and was, as the Village voice called it, "the Movement's newspaper of record." This panel of people involved in GCN and the LGBT movement explores the impact of GCN in particular, and progressive politics in general, on the movement over the past three decades and today.

Richard Burns (GCN, 1977-1986) has been Executive Director of New York's Lesbian,Gay,Bisexual & Transgender Community Center since 1986. He served as Managing Editor and later as President of Gay Community News in the late 1970's and early 80's. He was President of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) from 1978 through 1986 and today serves on the Board of New York's NonProfit Coordinating Committee. He is Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Assn of LGBT Community Centers.

Ann Holder (information to come)

Tony Kushner is a playright and cultural critic with a long history of activism in the GLBT and AIDS movements. Kushner is author of the epic play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes which earned a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Evening Standard Award, two Olivier Award Nominations, the New York Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the LAMBDA Liberty Award for Drama. Kushner is also author of Homebody Kabul, A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs! (from material not used in Angels in America), as well as several adaptations including Goethe's Stella, Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan, Corneille's the Illusion, and S. Ansky's The Dybbuk. His work has been produced at the Mark Taper Forum, the New York Shakespeare Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Hartford Stage Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre Center as well as theatres in over 30 countries across the globe. He is the recipient of a 1990 Whiting Foundation Writers Award and playwriting and directing fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Kushner is currently an adjunct faculty member

of New York University's Dramatic Writing program.

Eric Rofes, moderator (GCN Friday folder, news & features writer, features editor, acting news editor, Board member, 1975-1983) is a professor of education at Humboldt State University, 300 miles north of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast. He teaches courses in community organizing, queer issues in schools, and sociology of education and heads up a program that prepares students to become elementary school teachers. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, National Lesbian and Gay Health Association, and the OUT Fund for Gay Liberation. He served as the founding chair of the Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, and as executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center and San Francisco's Shanti Project. He currently serves on the board of Womanvision, a feminist media production company, and the North Coast Center for Community Organizing, a rural skills-building program for activists. He lives in San Francisco and Blue Lake, California and can be reached at eerofes@aol.com.

Urvashi Vaid (GCN volunteer, Board member, news stringer 1980-1987; development committee, 1993-1995) is an attorney and community organizer.She is the Deputy Director of the Governance and Civil Society Unit of the Ford Foundation's Peace and Social Justice Program.Vaid worked at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force as media director and then executive director, 1986-1992, and again from 1997 to 2001 as director of its Policy Institute.Vaid is author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation and co-editor of Creating Change:Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights.

Followed by Reception sponsored by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and Absolut

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October 17, 2003
Friday, 7:30 PM

GCN Reunion:
Evening of Cultural Presentations Celebrating the 30th Birthday of Gay Community News

This evening will include a series of readings, performances, and presentations in honor of the 30th anniversary of Gay Community News, and will serve as a time for GCN contributors and subscribers to gather to celebrate the paper and the movement. At some point, a group photo will be taken of GCN alums.

Performances and other cultural presentations from:

Susie Day (GCN 1985-1997) wrote occasional book and theater reviews for GCN as well as political satire -- which she still writes for New York's *Gay City News*. She has also written on labor and prison issues, and her work has appeared in *Monthly Review*, *Sojourner*, *The Advocate*, *Z Magazine* and *The Windy City Times*. She is very happy to live in Washington Heights, where she loves her domestic partner, Laura Whitehorn, quite a lot.

Kelli Dunham (GCN subscriber) is a stand-up comic, writer and co-founder of Gayety Queer Humor Zine. Reading GCN smoothed her transition out of the convent into dyke life.She lives in Philadelphia and can be reached through her website, www.kellidunham.com.

Amy Hoffman was GCN features editor from 1978 to1980 and managing editor from 1980 to 1982.She served on the GCN board from 1983 to 1985. Her memoir Hospital Time (Duke University Press, 1997) focuses on her experience taking care of Mike Riegle, GCN office manager from 1978 to 1991, who died of AIDS in 1992. It also includes sections on Bob Andrews and Walta Borawski. She is currently writing a memoir about GCN, An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News.

Abe Rybeck (GCN 1982-1986, Thursday night volunteer) is the founding Artistic Director of The Theater Offensive. Among Abe's shows as Playwright/Performer are Dirt, about insider gay politics and housecleaning; Immaculate Infection, created with Brenda Cotto Escalera and Noelia Ortiz Cortes; This is Not a Test, a vaudeville show about AIDS; and the musical Pure PolyESTHER: a biblical burlesque, based on the Book of Esther. In the 80s he founded the gay street theater troupe United Fruit Company and was lead singer of the band Adult Children of Heterosexuals. He got his start in Boston volunteering at GCN. Abe's heart is still in the street (and his mind is still in the gutter).

Charley Shively is a long-time gay activist, poet, historian, and one of the founders of Fag Rag, where his essays included "Cocksucking as an Act of Revolution." He also helped to start such groups as BLAGMAR (Boston Lesbians and Gay Men Against the Right); Good Gay Poets publishers; the Boston Gay Review; and GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders). He is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Tom Wilson Weinberg began reading GCN in 1973 and selling it at Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia that same year. He is a songwriter ("Ten Percent Revue," "Get Used To It" and other queer shows), recording artist and performer. He's currently at work on a new musical. Tom and John Whyte live in Philadelphia and share the year 1973 with GCN. (tww10@hotmail.com)

Reception sponsored by HX Magazine and Absolut

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October 18, 2003
Saturday, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Day-Long Gathering: Celebrating 30 Years of GCN-Inspired Activism

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10:00 Opening Session:
Welcome to the GCN 30th Gathering!

Greetings from the NY LGBT Center and orientation information on the conference. Includes "In Memoriam" acknowledgement of deceased GCNers.

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10:30 AM-12:00 Noon
Workshop Session #1

#1A Fishbowl Conversation:
Linking Politics and the Arts:
Artists, Writers, Photographers and Critics Who Found Inspiration at GCN

Adrianna Alty (Art Director, sometime writer, 1989-1992) lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is Director of Legal Resources for the Community Legal Resource Network (CLRN) at the City University School of Law. After graduating from Cornell Law School in 2000—where she was Managing Editor of the Journal of Law and Public Policy—Adrianna received a 2000-2002 NAPIL/Equal Justice Works Fellowship to build "virtual communities" of public interest attorneys to share legal resources and strategy.She still considers herself a visual artist/painter/writer and tries to actually create physical evidence of this from time to time. Email: alty@mail.law.cuny.edu.

Paula Bennett (GCN 1977-78, occasional reviewer and feature writer) has just completed her eccentric career in academe with an eleven year stint as Professor of Literature at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Having reached the enviable status of emerita she has retired to Vermont on her laurels (six academic books and many articles) and is once again doing something useful, working for the Dean campaign. Art has never trumped politics in her imagination. Her last book was *Poets in the Public Sphere: the Emancipatory Project of American Women's Poetry, 1800-1900* Princeton 2003.

Jennifer Camper (information to come)

Veneita Porter (GCN 1978-1986, reporter, book reviewer, distribution assistant, etc.) is a long-term activist and actor trying to apply lessons learned yesterday to today's world. She lives in Berkeley with my partner Chris and two dogs, Mona Lisa and Frieda. She can be reached at veneita@concentric.net.

James M. Saslow, known to the GCN staff from 1974-76 as Jimmy, is a professor of art history and theater at the City University of New York. Since he was studying studio art at the time, he began at the paper doing layout and design, but gradually moved into writing about the arts rather than making them. He was New York Editor of The Advocate for many years, and has published on gay/lesbian visual history in both LGBT and academic publications. His four books include Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society (1986), The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation (1991), and Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts (1999). He is currently national co-chair of the Queer Caucus in the College Art Association, and has received two Lambda Literary awards and the Monette-Horwitz Achievement Award. saslowj@aol.com

Denise Sudell (information to come)

Moderator: Will Seng

#1B

Reporting and Living the AIDS Epidemic:

Three former news reporters and editors from GCN share their experience reporting and living the epidemic.

AIDS changed everything, from the social networks we knew to the communities we lived in to the newspaper we created every week. Queer sexuality zoomed from the pages of GCN to the pages of the New York Times and, in what seemed like a nanosecond, queer people shot out of our hushed obscurities into the center of social policy debates. We lived a heartbreaking conundrum: the epidemic both consumed us and also illuminated our lives, our desires, our hopes and dreams as never before. The fight to find out what was happening, the role of the GLBT media in the epidemic then and now, the challenge of breaking into the mainstream media then and now will all be discussed in this panel. And not all turned to ash. This session is a reflection on the epidemic's losses and transformations, as understood at GCN.

Chris Guilfoy reported news at GCN from 1983 to 1986, during which time she wrote countless stories about the exploding AIDS/HIV epidemic. Her years at GCN led her to a reporting career at the Worcester Telegram in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Andrew Miller was a news stringer for GCN from NYC. He became the News Editor of Outweek magazine shortly after its founding and directed the coverage of AIDS and AIDS activism.

Sue Hyde is former News Editor of GCN from 1982-1986. She is former director of the NGLTF Privacy Project (working on sodomy law repeal from 1986-1991) and is the Director of Creating Change, the national GLBT conference.

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12:00 Noon-1:00 PM
Lunch Break

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1:00-2:30 PM
Workshop Session #2

#2A Fishbowl Conversation:
It Saved My Life: How a Community Newspaper Can Be a Life Changer and Life Saver?

John Kyper first joined GCN in the summer of 1973, when he wandered into the back room of the coffeehouse at the Charles Street Meetinghouse and was promptly drafted to help mail out issue #3. He was a frequent contributor over the following two decades until GCN ceased regular publication, posting news stories from Boston, the SF Bay Area and Mexico City, as well as numerous obituaries, book reviews and other features.He lives in Boston and is, variously, a municipal bureaucrat, naturist and public transit activist.He can be reached at jkyper@gis.net.

Dee Michel (GCN, 1975-83, volunteer indexer, get-GCN-on-microfilm-into-libraries project, layout, folder and stuffer, writer of “Speaking Outs” and letters) is a freelance consultant in the organization of information.He used to be a librarian and a professor of library science.Dee lives in Northampton, MA, and is writing a book about the appeal of The Wizard of Oz (both books and movie) for gay men and boys.He can be reached at damichel@krkkypto.net

Eric Rofes, (GCN Friday folder, news & features writer, features editor, acting news editor, Board member, 1975-1983) is a professor of education at Humboldt State University, 300 miles north of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast. He teaches courses in community organizing, queer issues in schools, and sociology of education and heads up a program that prepares students to become elementary school teachers. He lives in San Francisco and Blue Lake, California and can be reached at eerofes@aol.com.

Will Seng (Moderator), known as Harry in the GCN days (1976-83; business manager, features editor, managing editor, book reviewer) is a lecturer in the Technical Communication program in the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley. Prior to this education stint, he taught academic writing for four years to Ph.D. economics students from Eastern Europe at CERGE--Charles University, Prague. He's been a member of the San Francisco Sex/Politics Study Group since its inception in 1994 and lives in the Haight in San Francisco.He can be reached at hwjseng@aol.com.

Donald Stone (GCN Friday-night stuffer, book reviewer, microfilm diva, 1981-1991) is a retired college teacher. Specializing in French literature, he has written on contemporary portraits of Henry III and his mignons and contributed entries to The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage, edited by Claude Summers. He lives in Cambridge, MA, and can be reached at dastone@fas.harvard.edu.

Maida Tilchen (GCN Promotions Manager, 1980-1982, and writer, 1978-1986) lives in Somerville with her partner of 17 years. She works at Cambridge College teaching writing/research skills and administrating online library services. She's seeking a publisher for her novel which won the 2001 Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation lesbian/gay historical fiction prize. Email: maidatil@hotmail.com.

#2B Fishbowl Conversation:
How Has the Queer Press Changed Over 30 Years?

Over the past thirty years, a huge transformation has occurred in the LGBT press, as changes in technology, economic and political shifts, and the ever-changing trajectory of LGBT movements have created a revolving door of queer publications. How was GCN's development influenced by other publications, such as The Body Politic, Sister Courage, Off Our Backs, Sojourner, and The New York Native? What was the lesbian and gay press like in the 1970s? Why have so few progressive queer publications folded during the past decade? And in what ways have profound changes in the ways in which queer issues are covered in the mainstream media affected the LGBT press?

Chris Bull (GCN national news writer, 1986-89) is Washington correspondent for The Advocate and co-author of Perfect Enemies: The Battle between the Religious Right and the Gay Rights Movement , The Accidental Activist, and Going the Other Way with Billy Bean. His critique of the Republican Party and its relationship to extremist groups, Fatal Attraction, will be published in 2004 by Thunder's Mouth Press. He is editor of the anthologies Come Out Fighting and While the World Sleeps. A recipient of an Alicia

Patterson Foundation Journalism Foundation Fellowship for 2000, he is a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. He is the recipient of NLGJA honors for a series of articles including "Suicidal Tendencies" and a finalist for the Livingston Award.

Jessica DuLong launched her career in the LGBT press by co-founding masque, a boutique queer arts and literature magazine which was awarded Vice Versa's Best New Publication 1998. She got her start as a freelancer by writing features for QSF magazine. Since then DuLong has written for Newsweek International, Rolling Stone, Parenting, The Advocate, Curve, Out, Newsday, and the New York Times Syndicate, among other publications. Previously as director of content and site development for AtBalance Solutions and managing editor at SavvyHealth.com she produced an online catalogue of health articles and multi-media packages, including digital video and interactive tools. A graduate of Stanford University, DuLong is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She has been an NLGJA board member since 1999.

Richard Goldstein (information to come)

Oriol Gutierrez Jr. is managing editor of DiversityInc, a new bimonthly business magazine that promotes diversity, which includes GLBT issues, in corporate America. He was publisher and editor in chief of LGNY Latino, the first bilingual Spanish/English GLBT periodical in the United States, as well as editor at large for LGNY (now published as Gay City News). He was also executive editor of Pet Business, the leading business magazine in the pet industry. He has a master's degree in publishing management and a bachelor's degree in print journalism and elementary education, both from New York University.

Duncan Osborne is an associate editor at Gay City News, the nation's largest circulation newspaper serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. His work has also appeared in Out, the Advocate, the Philadelphia Gay News, the Dallas Voice, the Baltimore Gay Paper and other gay publications. Additionally he has published in the Village Voice, New York Newsday, the Daily News and other mainstream publications.

Marc Stein, participant & moderator, (GCN 1986-89; volunteer, board member, coordinating editor) is an associate professor of history at York University in Toronto.He is the author of City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia (U. Chicago Press, 2000) and the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of LGBT History in America (Scribner's, 2003). He lives in Toronto and Maine with his partner and can be reached at mrstein@yorku.ca.

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2:45-4:15 PM
Workshop Session #3

#3A In the Beginning: The Earliest Years of GCN

This panel includes some of the original founders of GCN from the early 1970s and will feature a recently re-discovered video of a 1974 public access broadcast program of the Gay Community News, one of a collection belonging to Libbe S. HaLevy (formerly Loretta Lotman).

John Kyper first joined GCN in the summer of 1973, when he wandered into the back room of the coffeehouse at the Charles Street Meetinghouse and was promptly drafted to help mail out issue #3. He was a frequent contributor over the following two decades until GCN ceased regular publication, posting news stories from Boston, the SF Bay Area and Mexico City, as well as numerous obituaries, book reviews and other features.He lives in Boston and is, variously, a municipal bureaucrat, naturist and public transit activist.He can be reached at jkyper@gis.net.

Loretta Lotman, now known as Libbe S. HaLevy, sold copies of GCN's first issue and wrote the Media Message column until she became Media Director of the National Gay Task Force in New York. Since then, her eclectic life has led to over 50 productions of her plays and musicals, including a 2-1/2 year LA run for the incest recovery play SHATTERED SECRETS; co-founding Broadway on Sunset, the LA-based musical theatre development organization; producing and performing one-person shows for Highways in Santa Monica and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; writing freelance articles and columns for over 35 publications; and leading the Incest Survivor community's protest of the first McMartin Pre-School verdict. Her latest musical, "NOW, VOYAGER," is optioned for Broadway, and she is completing her memoirs, entitled Finishing . She lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a Spiritual Psychology counselor, recovery coach and shamanic healer.

David Peterson was one of the founders of GCN, and served in many different capacities through the mid 1980's, mostly in business and promotions, and as editor of GCN's publication "A Gay Person's Guide to New England" .He has also worked with a number of other GLBT organizations, including SpeakOut Boston (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Speakers Bureau), Lesbian and Gay Media Advocates (the late "LAGMA"), and the Cambridge Gay Political Caucus (a forerunner of the Cambridge Lavender Alliance). Since the mid 1970's he has collected, archived, and analyzed original documents from religious right groups regarding GLBT people. He is currently a disability advocate and lives in a modest Victorian Palace in Cambridge MA where he can be reached at WinterPalace43@hotmail.com.

Moderator: Open

#3B Conversation:

Pioneering Lesbian and Gay Content in Art and Entertainment: GCN and Beyond

Sarah Schulman (GCN reporter, 1979-1984) is the author of nine books, most recently the novel Shimmer (Avon) and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (Duke Universty Press). Her most recently produced plays were Carson McCullers at Playwrights Horizons and The Burning Deck at the La Jolla Playhouse. She is currently writing theatrical adaptations of Carole Anshaw's Aquamarine and Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies, A Love Story. Sarah is co-director with Jim Hubbard of the ACT UP Oral History Video Archive.

Don Shewey (GCN, 1975-78, theater critic and arts feature writer) is a writer, therapist, and pleasure activist who lives in New York City. He has published three books about theater, including Out Front, a collection of gay and lesbian plays for Grove Press. A prolific freelance writer for many publications, he currently contributes articles about theater to the New York Times Arts & Leisure section and theater reviews to the Advocate. An archive of his writing is online at www.donshewey.com, and he can be reached at Dshewey@compuserve.com.

Amy Hoffman (Moderator)

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4:30-6:00 PM
Closing Panel

What Did We Mean By Queer Activism in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s and What Do We Mean Today?

Kevin Cathcart (GCN 1979-1984) has been the Executive Director of Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund since 1992, serving as a leading strategist and spokesperson in the movement to achieve full recognition of the civil rights of LGBT people and those with HIV or AIDS. A long-time civil rights leader, Cathcart served from 1984 to 1992 as the Executive Director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, New England's LGBT and HIV/AIDS organization.

Sue Hyde, GCN reader from mid-'70s to the very last issue and still mourns the old rag. News editor 1983-1985; board member 1991-1993; OUTWRITE organizer

1992. Staff member at National Gay and Lesbian Task Force for the past 16

years. She can be reached at shyde@ngltf.org.

Benjamin Shepard never read GCN. But he always cruised the obits in the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco as the AIDS health crisis decimated lives from a cross section of outsiders in American life in ways that forced him and countless others to reconsider just what queer life, activism, and community mean. Today he works in a syringe exchange and writes about queer activism within the context of the struggle for dwindling pieces of public space in New York City. He is one of the editors of From ACT UP to WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization (Verso, 2002) and can be reached at benshepard@mindspring.com.

Moderator: Richard Burns
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Please note that "panels" will be made up of 5 or10-minute presentations by the panelists, then open to full discussion back and forth with the audience. "Fishbowls" consist of a roundtable of 5-8 people sitting in the middle of the room and participating in a facilitated conversation. The rest of us observe and listen. There are no formal presentations. After about 45 minutes, the roundtable opens up into a full-room facilitated discussion of the topic.

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Community Organizing

The 30th Anniversary of Gay Community News: Celebrating the Paper and Scrutinizing the LGBT Movement

October 16-18, 2003 / New York LGBT Community Services Center

The 30th Anniversary of Gay Community News:
Celebrating the Paper and Scrutinizing the LGBT Movement