In the Life: Ep. 703, "Image, Identity, Diversity: Crossing Borders"

on this edition of in the life crossing borders crossing culture revealing the past it's a strange dance what we tell each other and what we don't and the future all up next on in the life america's information line on lesbian and gay issues and culture in the life is funded in part by the h van amoringan foundation additional support provided by william j resnick jeffrey b sorif the michael palm foundation the new york community trust and in the life members nationwide welcome to in the life i'm kathryn linton for black history month celebrated every february in the life takes the opportunity to look at the diversity and complexity of the gay and lesbian community now the word community implies a shared or common experience but while gay men and lesbians drawn together by sexual orientation face many of the same challenges we are by no means a monolithic group varied backgrounds and beliefs races and religions give this community many different faces and more often than not gay people identify with more than one community crossing boundaries of culture geography sometimes even gender on this program you'll meet gay people who are tearing down barriers and crossing borders to find common ground places where history heritage and identity can intersect and integrate or at least co-exist but we begin at the most frequently crossed border in the world and a town known for tourism trinkets and frankly anything goes tijuana mexico but perhaps lesser known said tijuana and its surrounding area has the second highest rate of aids in mexico surpassed only by mexico city but the gay and lesbian community here has been waging an uphill battle against the disease through advocacy education and direct services a battle that can only be fully understood in light of mexico's complex relationship with her powerful neighbor to the north many americans come to tijuana for sex provided by men and women who sell their bodies perhaps to feed a family or sometimes to feed a drug habit so much of the aids that we have down here can be attributed to americans coming from california into this region uh and uh engaging in sexual you know utilizing the services of the sex industry down here which is a major industry in tijuana fred schull works as the volunteer pharmacologist at akosita or alliance against aids an aids outpatient clinic in tijuana run by gay activists was started in october 1989. for eight years it has been the only hiv clinic in tijuana it has never closed currently only 15 percent of akusita clients are gay men 40 percent of the clients are heterosexual couples but a closer look at mexican culture may explain this trend a much higher percentage of men in mexico have bisexual experiences than in the united states and of course that contributes to the aids situation because men can get infected with hiv and take it home to their wives and that's a common scenario here no matter how people get infected with the hiv virus getting treatment for any mexican citizen always depends on access to money if a person has money they can get treated in the united states or they can pay a private doctor who will charge a lot of money and may not help them as much because doctors here are not up to par with the latest treatments people without the financial means the working class who go to the general hospital are referred to government offices and from there they send them here to us accosite is the only clinic in mexico that provides aids drugs to its patients free of charge drugs that are brought here from san diego and elsewhere in the united states i essentially through a network in san diego and throughout chunk of the united states collect medicines and medical supplies that would normally be thrown away and bring them down here because of american laws prescribed drugs that are no longer useful to a patient are usually thrown away let's say if i had azt and i had a friend that needed azt and i gave that friend azt in the u.s i'd be committing a felony if i donate it to a medical organization outside of the u.s that's not violating the law so what happens is this stuff is donated for use down here ironically the supply of life-giving drugs to akusita has depended on the death of americans with aids there might be more of it but we depend on people dying for for our medicines or that their their medicines are changed and prior to the protease inhibitors we were not only providing medicines to this clinic but we were providing medicines to clinics in mexicali and in guadalajara and mexico city uh we had lots of medicines and then all of a sudden they dried up because people were living and i've worked with aids long enough that we have kind of uh oh we've developed a jaded attitude we have seen every wonder cure you know azt was it and then there was ddi and then there was this and then there's three tc every one of those things have come along and the virus has a way of adjusting so we said if things go the way they always have we might have about six months and people are going to start dying again and you know what that's happened the studies have shown only about 50 of the people taking the protease inhibitors that it works with the other 50 it doesn't and so now we're getting a good supply again with a budget of just 12 000 a year and in all volunteer staff the clinic can only see patients once a week and has endured many hardships for a couple of years we had no running water and a lot of times we have had electrical problems it really narrows down to a lot of priorities you know this is why we don't have a cell telephone this is why we don't have the latest technology in computers that's why we don't have a lot of you know modern facilities because we have to sort of make a budget throughout the year and then sort of live by but volunteers at the clinic are fulfilled in other ways it's important for me because there are lots of people that one day i'm not sure it can happen to them but tomorrow or the day after it could happen to any of my kids or to me this is important to me because i can help not only the institution but the patients while akusita provides much needed help to the hiv community in tijuana the majority of those infected by the virus remain untreated people with hiv are susceptible to tuberculosis a disease that has had epidemic proportions in tijuana and is infecting more and more people across the border in san diego as well you have a combination of aids and tb working together which has a synergistic effect and if you don't deal with it here you're going to deal with it over there and they already are starting so it's it's just infectious diseases don't respect borders this philosophy drives the work of many americans and mexicans who cross the border to fight aids this is really just one big metro area divided by a fence a fence put up by the u.s government and it's a fence that runs right down the middle of my life and i don't i don't have any less human feelings for people who live on this side of the fence than who live on the san diego side of the fence and i wish that more people in san diego felt the same way as far as me going up different cities up in california and even oregon new york and in canada and talking about what we do down here and giving them the literature that has been very very successful you know and i think that once they they hear our story our struggle down here i think the people will be able to help us out with the medication because it's you know for us it's more important to have the medication than than to have millions of dollars on our last day in tijuana we traveled down a dirt road to visit casa ogar de san rafael the only aids hospice in the city run by brother armando maya the hospice is home to men and women who are in the final stages of aids and other terminal diseases here he has gotten a great deal of help from brother armando medicine food he has received all kinds of attention the little bit that armando has he shares and we need to take her to the hospital but she has to suffer because the car is too small and she no longer has skin in her affected area so it is very important to give us support besides an ambulance the hospice needs other basic supplies more food more medicine and more volunteers we are only two people here sometimes taking care of as many as 15 patients at a time and we are not enough with up to 15 patients at a time perhaps the most pressing problem is the lack of running water now our priority is the payment of general services such as the water installation because this place doesn't have pipes but for this we need money i have seen a lot of miracles here and i've seen a lot of people very very sick and i've seen them get up we have extended their lives we have given them hope and i think the hope that we give them with the medication with the support with the attention that we give them even going to their houses and sharing the little they have is something emotional that sort of gets to your heart the acquasitor clinic is an excellent example of how a grassroots community based organization can do something when there's nothing happening at all that's the only way that anybody in tijuana with aids gets access to any antiretroviral drugs well that's amazing that's from no drugs to uh to some people getting state of the art treatment some people are on three drug combos with protease inhibitors that would be unthinkable without the aquacity clinic it would be just a crazy dream for singer songwriter joy cardwell negotiating two completely different worlds is something she does almost daily an african american a latina and out lesbian cardwell is also a mother tending by day to the often mundane demands of home and family but by night she's a glamorous performer whose jazz and few songs have topped the music charts we spent a day in the life of joy cardwell and discovered that a down-to-earth diva is not necessarily a contradiction in terms ram says you're going to be a good point stop walking huh come on mike let's go here we go we're late again i'm gay that's been an open fact i guess since the beginning of my career hi george you know realness is a big part of my life and i think that young kids don't have enough role models i am in a relationship of uh almost three years our nephew uh his name is michael he's lit he lives with us here and uh that's a real trip becoming overnight mothers to a seven-year-old boy i was born in the bronx literally born in the bronx and scuttled to queens where i was raised lived there most of my life my first performance was at five years old at carnegie hall where i was in a dance recital i always saw performing as something that everyone did i started so young it didn't seem like anything unnatural for me i write all my own songs it's all my voice so i do the backgrounds myself as well sometimes i call other people and when i need a little weight to it i guess the primary message that i always try to convey is one of hope one of oneness with all people universal themes about love and disappointments and empowerment things that as a woman in particular and as a woman of color and you know colorfulness i try to make sure that my messages are always positive i think growing up in the city has made me more open to to almost anything to uh to other cultures to other experiences and i think the energy of the city definitely has played a part perhaps more so in the past than it does now i find serenity to be a little more appropriate for creating the other side of of my sanity is my partner lori is the the partner in a true sense when i can't do something she is the person that is helping me i think having that a relationship that is actually a true partnership is the only way that that anybody who has so many responsibilities can get through them hey man how was your day today having michael here is an exercise in patience did you have science today no so it's another way of i guess humbling myself by you know living my life for a child because that is our main focus right now the music is is you know something i do and i'm in and out of town and stuff like that but family is very important so who who wears the small shoes the ballerina which one which word is ballerina this one this one this one or this one ballerina we moved here to be closer to my family particularly my mom who passed away this year i had a good life with her and i have a lot of great memories she's the one that gave me my first tape recorder in my first stereo and told me not to mess up her records you know gave me a respect for music i never thought of that i would be this this dance diva or whatever that i've been called the persona is a person that only exists for a couple of minutes when the lights and cameras and and the stage is there that to me is almost not a real life i'd like to thank god's here for this outfit although they didn't know was intended for me once i get up on stage i step out of my average hat and hang it up on the hook and become something larger than that because that's what it's all about the fantasy of being bigger than life thank you very much when you're striving to be a superstar and a super mom most of your attention understandably is on the here and now but as correspondent tanya barfield tells us some lesbians and gay men have turned their attention to the past exploring connections to their cultural and religious heritage from a current play about supernatural possession to homoerotic undertones in old yiddish films gay and lesbian artists are finding connections to aspects of jewish culture in music on stage and on screen they're exploring the parallels between two seemingly different experiences jews in early 20th century europe and gay men and lesbians in this country today and they're finding places where the old and new worlds intersect i noticed there were several films which i had seen different segments of that seemed to me to have lesbiani gay subtext and it took quite a long time until i really could study them in depth but the more i looked the more i found eve secular lectures on gay and lesbian subtexts in yiddish films jewish luck was a soviet yiddish silent film and actually it does not in my point of view have a lesbian or gay subtext what it does have is a great visual moment where these two matchmakers come together and they're they're they've got a couple that should meet and it turns out that someone made a mistake and instead of a bride and groom they're introducing two brides and so these two women in veils and gowns burst forth at the same moment from literally these closet doors in yiddish films generally there's a real element of modesty there's very little that's going to be openly sexual erotic at all jewish life was very segregated by sex is much like spartan life if you'll forgive the simile but and so men spend a lot of time together most of their days studying in the synagogue together both negro shell and eve secular agree that some of the most homoerotic imagery is in the 1937 movie version of the yiddish play the division in regard to a gay subtext in the debut or in the movie version i don't think there is one in the original play the movie however which goes back in time and really starts with the two fathers as friends making a vow to have their children marry one another it has a very strong gay subtext i think we see the two fathers celebrating their friendship by singing the song of songs but the song of song is considered so erotic that's never taught in in in either in jewish grade schools and if you have two men two friends two adolescents or young men in their twenties sing the song songs together the implication is clear uh you have to infer that there is some kind of erotic bond between them in adaptation of the original play the dybic was recently mounted at the public theater in new york i really regard my version of the divock as much a gay play as angels in america i don't think that it needs to be specifically filled with homosexual characters or even have any while nothing in kushner's adaptation of the dybbic is overtly gay a broken promise between men is the single catalyst for the supernatural chaos that follows i think that the play in a certain sense is caused by a broken promise and by failure of love and interestingly enough it's a failure of a bond of love made between two men and i think that's what really catalyzes everything in the play it's not so specifically that anybody's forbidden and i am flame and wherever she is i will be rekindled adobe tells the story of a woman whose body is invaded by her dead lover's spirit on the eve of her arranged marriage to someone else congratulate me and to sign the contract for my daughter's marriage and it's a play that's in a certain sense a kind of a metaphysical drag act i mean there's a lead character which is what gives the play it's great transgressive force and the shocking audiences you know in the 1920s and it's still sort of shocking is that it's a you know a young woman um whose body has been taken over and has invited in the spirit of it of a dead man i mean i think the moment that moves me the most is really a heterosexual moment in one sense although it's universal in another when when conan's ghost the boy's ghost appears at the end to leia when she asks him who are you says i've forgotten and then he says i can only remember if you remember me and i mean that's so incredibly powerful because it speaks to the absolute primal centrality and importance of love that that we don't have an identity singularly and that we rely on those who love us to tell us who we are a moving aspect of a dybbuk is the haunting abstract eastern european flavored music composed and performed by the well-known band the clasmatics how can i describe the cosmetics we are a radical jewish roots music fan and what we do is we take traditional east european jewish klezmer music which is jewish party music dance music and we put a kind of contemporary spin on it and that's what the cosmetics do two members of the classmatics including alicia spiegel's are gay i think that our sexuality always comes up in the cosmetics and there are several reasons for this one is that we believe in playing and creating jewish roots music that's authentic and by authentic i don't mean copying an old 78 from 1917 like many groups do it's we don't like to do historical reconstruction we think about authentic like our shrinks think about authentic like being true to ourselves and that means leaving in our politics leaving in our sexuality leaving in all our other musical influences which is why we've got the sounds and rock of jazz and everything else in there as gay people we we grow up learning to love being marginal for one thing and yiddish culture is really on the margins of jewish mainstream culture and society so if you're already somebody who enjoys being gay enjoys being different enjoys having a position halfway on the outside halfway on the inside then the yiddish culture scene is the place to be foreign issues surrounding identity also inspired new york-based filmmaker mackie alston to examine his own heritage at the age of 27 austin discovered that he had descended from one of the largest slave-owning families in north carolina when he was a child he met african-american children with his same last name at the time he didn't ask any questions but as an adult gay man who knew the cost of keeping secrets and the value of being open and honest alston decided to confront his family's history in his debut documentary film entitled family name mackie alston travels back to north carolina and speaks with both black and white austins about their common name one thing to go and hope to have conversations with african-american austins whose ancestors your ancestors owned um it's great to have great intentions in wanting to do so but it's a really really hard thing to do so i went from record to record to record uh birth certificate death certificate not obsessed because i wanted to have this conversation with an african-american austin and i wanted to have that conversation with somebody who i knew was related to me historically and then i wanted to find somebody who i knew was related to me by blood but that's the kind of history that generations of people have been trying to erase i think this is for the birds now the biggest story is with my grandmother because i had not come out to my grandmother and i say that in the film and it's an interesting scene in the film where i say you know well here i am a little angry that she's not telling me her secrets and yet there are things that i don't tell her down there no it's a strange dance what we tell each other and what we don't can you get up a little or do you want to stay on the road but knowing that the film was coming out i knew i had to come out to her and i went to see her and she was i'm her only grandson and she loves me and i said now meemaw there's something i gotta tell you the man that i have been visiting you with for the last five years is my boyfriend and i'm gay and she cracked this big smile and said you know that nick is so cute he is adorable you know the gay issue for this film was a major one there were many people who encouraged us to keep it out of the film you're muddying the waters uh you're complicating the issues but mackey felt that the experiences of being gay and coming out were crucial to his motivation in the film so they made two cuts for test audiences one where he talks about being gay and one where he doesn't by not including this aspect of my identity the audiences were saying we don't get him we don't get his motivation on the search what is it about him that you could tell us that would make that all make sense and then when we showed them a cut where i talked about being gay and being an outsider in my family and knowing what it's like to keep secrets they got it hi i'm wesley smith hi i'm catherine linton this is for tula clark no wait man i'm kate clinton pete seeger david marshall grant clinton chris jason alexander betty and you're watching you're watching you're watching in the life in the life in the life now i think that's still to come on in the life the audrey lord project a new kind of community center and finding a safe place in cyberspace surfing the web in search of virtual freedom but first so far in this program we've looked at some of the more socially acceptable ways in which gay men and lesbians have escaped the confinements of culture and identity in our next segment however we'll look at a category that remains the most rigidly defined gender it is in fact our very first label when a doctor announces it's a boy or it's a girl in the new critically acclaimed film mavion rose a little boy dares to cross the boundaries of gender by dreaming of becoming a little girl but the fact that little boys can't marry other boys is not a problem to ludvik because he sees himself as or at least one day becoming a little girl now if ludwig were a real person and came to the attention of psychiatrists in north america he could be diagnosed with a pathology called gender identity disorder or gid gid first appeared in psychiatric manuals in 1980 and was directed towards treating children now the diagnosis encompasses both adults and children but for this story we focus on children and on some of the ways in which they are evaluated for gid we begin in toronto at the clark institute of psychiatry the clark institute of psychiatry in toronto home to one of the largest gender identity clinics in north america since the late 1970s i have been involved in the child and adolescent gender identity clinic i'm currently the head of that clinic dr kenneth zucker is also author of gender identity disorder and psychosexual problems in children and adolescents a book that provides us with a roadmap into the diagnosis of gid cross-dressing is one of the earliest signs of possible gid some parents will bring in photographs of their youngster toddling around in their mother's shoes or they might grab a wig out of a dress-up box or they'll put on their mother's jewelry by age two it's more common for them to get into dresses and other accoutrements in addition to signs of cross-dressing doctors have examined mannerisms and voice boys with gid exhibit stereotypical feminine body movements such as letting their wrist go limp girls with gid display masculine traits such as exaggerated walking large strides in addition doctors have measured the level of physical attractiveness in children with gid we have done some studies where photographs of the children have been rated blindly by university students the first study of boys they were rated for attractive beautiful cute handsome and pretty in that study the gid boys were rated as more attractive beautiful cute handsome and pretty than the control boys when we used those same traits for girls with gid they were rated as less attractive beautiful cute and pretty those results made us wonder if attractiveness was connected to femininity for the judges if a little girl insists on only wearing jeans and also insists that her hair be cut very short it simply is reflecting her identification with maleness yet perhaps the most significant test for signs of gid is a child's toy and role play children being evaluated for signs of gid are placed in rooms with sex stereotype toys and clothing and observed through a one-way mirror what is this about what what is this well if you study the toy play of boys and girls or dress up play boys are typically interested in fantasy aggression so they'll like to play with dart guns or they'll like to put on hats that signify masculine roles girls are more interested in playing with a doll like barbie or emulating some female by putting on high heel shoes the results from this task and many ones similar to it are the boys with gid play like typical girls play and girls with gid play like typical boys play all of these studies made us question what children with gid grow up to become there's no question that there is a developmental association between gid in childhood and later sexual orientation the empirical evidence linking childhood gender identity disorder and adult homosexuality is clear and consistent after 30 years of research there are no studies showing that treating a child for gid has any effect on their adult gender identity or sexual orientation therefore we looked at the clinical reasons given for treatment as well as some of the criticisms these treatments have received from activists gender non-conformity is almost always viewed as a pathology as a mental health issue and the focus of mental health professionals will be on fixing you reasons for treatment prevention of homosexuality in adulthood a homosexual lifestyle and a basically unaccepting culture simply creates unnecessary social difficulties those who advocate gid are often people who are liberal on the question of homosexuality they're mental health professionals they advocate toleration but embedded in the theoretical matrix of gender identity disorder is actually an effort to eradicate homosexuality elimination of peer ostracism cross-gender identified children particularly boys are frequently ostracized by their peers gay and lesbian kids for years were described as saying well the problem is they feel isolated and vulnerable well of course they did people hated homosexuals and when people stop hating gender variants those kids will no longer feel isolated and depressed isolation and depression are normal responses in an abnormal crazy world prevention of transsexualism in adulthood there is little controversy in this rationale given the emotional distress experienced by gender dysphoric adults the reason they're now defending people like zucker are now defending the use of gid as a way to prevent transsexuality in adults is because clearly over 25 years it has failed abysmally to change homosexuality in kids and it's no longer politically expedient to say we're trying to prevent homosexuality i feel so strongly that the pain of being a transsexual person you know comes from not having a social space to be transsexual you know transsexualism is not a valued identity at this point in time in this culture just as lesbian gay identity is not particularly valued but certainly more so than it used to be but i love being a transsexual person i think you know it's a somewhat difficult but interesting path the fundamental problem with gid is it's a treatment in search of a problem there is no problem with children being gender variant gender variance is good you can't change the way someone feels you can just make them feel rotten about themselves in our next segment special guest correspondent and author of the recently released my gender workbook kate bornstein takes us to a place where gender race culture and other forms of identity can be transcended cyberspace a recent businessweek survey found that nearly one-third of internet users identify as gay lesbian bisexual or transgender imagine one-third is us from local business to global activism from youth services to aids resource networks the internet has something for everyone all you have to do is log on for everyone who gets into cyberspace you suddenly have a bodyless voiceless communication the timbre of your voice the shape of your body no longer predetermines interactions or assumptions people are going to lay on you so you have to ask yourself who am i what name do i want to use in cyberspace and who is that person and and if i'm listening to someone else i have to really listen to them because i can't see them and make judgments about them wouldn't it be nice to have a place where being safely out was just a mouse click away many queer internet users have found just such a place and one of the things that altogether.com tries to do is actually give you a resource to use while you're coming out the beauty of this site is you get all kinds of different answers from all kinds of different real people so you might type in how will i ever tell my husband that his daughter might be lesbian and all of our volunteers from all walks of life priests grandparents parents gay people will give you an answer to that very question the internet is really unique and it's got some really important features for gay people and one of those is that you can connect in total privacy so before you come out when and that's the time when you really need to understand who are those gay people in that community jen was a teen when she came out and life became unbearable in her hometown through the internet she was able to find the support she wasn't getting at home if i didn't have access to internet i'm not sure i'd even be alive right now i was in such a place of fear when i was looking for information on being gay on the internet that um had i not found anything it would have been fairly devastating would have been like i'm the only one here no one else feels like this you know i don't know anyone and um and i wasn't willing to go into a mental institution so i think suicide would have been an alternative to going in there i would advise um queer youth who are coming out now that if they have internet access to go on the internet and look for um clear resources for youth there are many more sites out there now than there were when i was first coming out the internet is very grassroots it's very much about anybody can do anything and you can connect with people in italy people in russia with people from different races and creeds and religions and and the value of that is simply that you know by the time you understand you understand that you might be talking to a person in italy or a person who's not like you you're already friends with them the ability to cover the globe in mere seconds is one reason that activists especially international activists are relying more and more on the internet to make the world a safer place the goal of the international gay and lesbian human rights commission is to safeguard human rights for gay and transgendered people and people with hiv and aids worldwide there are some obvious reasons why having email access and having internet access in order to do activism is a good thing when someone can get an email within a few hours or within a few seconds instead of taking a week or two weeks for mail to reach them then they can act on that human rights violation a lot more immediately information is power and there are three issues that we need to consider regarding access who has it who doesn't and who cannot have it who has it and who doesn't are obvious questions of access and who cannot have it has to do with censorship we know about censorship internet censorship in this country we should also be aware about internet censorship in other countries there are countries where the censorship is centralized such as for example china and singapore but there are other places where the censorship is a little bit less obvious for example the activists may only have access to the internet through their computers at work and they may be less willing to exchange explicit communications about sexual orientation or whatever from their work computer recognizing the value of the digital revolution to the queer community one organization formed to provide 24-hour road service to gain non-profit groups struggling to get on the information superhighway digital queers programs fall into three main areas through the use through our volunteers and our members we get access to hardware and software that we then give to non-profit organizations to help expand them we do training and our trainings are open to anybody in the community to help them learn how to use email and online communications as well as basic computer information and then finally we provide a lot of one-to-one support via phone or face-to-face with volunteers again helping to help people solve their individual computer needs a current issue of great concern is the communications decency act filtering software and this issue of trying to protect people from what's on the internet our concern is that too many people who are trying to filter will filter everything gay and lesbian and therefore the great resource for young queer people as well as any queer person will be eliminated automatically because the words gay and lesbian happen to appear on the website the internet certainly has its advantages it can give you more information it can give it faster and to more people all at once all that is great and we use the internet but we are also aware of its limitations that we were talking before the limitations about access about censorship and about accuracy of information if you know what the limitations are then you can get the best out of the internet dq promotes that there are many places you can gain access even if you don't have your own computer public libraries cyber cafes colleges and universities will often make online access available to even non-students or to part-time students so we really need to help our community see main means of access you know if dorothy had only known about the internet she could have emailed auntie m to have dinner ready by the time she got home for in the life this is kate bornstein see you online in the world of virtual reality a person can remain virtually anonymous free of the signifiers of gender race sexuality whatever in our final segment we travel from cyberspace to a space where visibility is precisely the point a community center designed specifically for gay people of color where their unique issues and concerns can be front and center and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid so it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive audre lorde black lesbian feminist warrior mother poet she died of cancer in 1992 but her legacy lives on this 130 year old presbyterian church in brooklyn's fort greene neighborhood is the home of an organization named in her honor this is the resource room and it's the third floor of the audrey lord project the audrey lord project is the first community center ever for lesbian gay bisexual transgender and native american sometimes called two-spirit people of color the audrey lord project really came about because of the fact that different people of color communities felt like there weren't necessarily their needs being met in other mainstream service providers around the city whether it was lesbian gay service providers or whether it was people of color institutions um because of racism within lesbian and gay organizations as well as homophobia within people of color institutions for many this is the first place where all their identities come together there's a complete integration of my queer self my black self my personal color self my whatever the other realities are so my immigrant self and they're all put into one and it's not an it's a fit one catalyst for the audre lorde project was the opening of miss saigon on broadway in 1992. many gay people of color thought the show's depiction of asian women was racist and were angry that some prominent gay organizations used the opening as a fundraiser gay people of color mobilized to create a permanent space and services of their own the initial discussions for something called the audrey lord project really started in lake 94 and we actually didn't move into the space until the summer of 1996. as many as 700 people a month come through the doors to meet to organize to advocate and to support one another's work there are actually over 30 queer people color groups in new york city although oftentimes people don't recognize that or realize that there are that many we also have various working groups on different uh initiatives around community education and organizing and that includes issue areas like police brutality immigrant rights and education also working on documenting our histories through oral history as well as photo and video documentary the spirit of the center's namesake audre lorde is always the guide as a black lesbian she recognized that people really did need to cross differences whether it was around age or race and ethnicity or whether it was around other issues such as gender the need to build coalitions across differences the center currently has three full-time staff members samantha martinez coordinates all the groups that meet here she also manages all the volunteers we get often get calls from people just that are want to know you know very basic things like you know i'm a young person i'm a young person of color looking for a support group do you know of any this past november the audrey lord project celebrated its one year anniversary a community celebration marking a milestone a dream that came true to honor the vision of audre lorde from all of us at in the life thank you for watching and we'll see you next time me in the life is funded in part by the h van amaringen foundation additional support provided by william j resnick jeffrey b sorif the michael palm foundation the new york community trust and in-the-life members nationwide you