Video Interview, Betty Dwyer, August 16, 2012

KEVIN INDOVINO: Get into this.

Just think of it as a one-on-one conversation between the two

of us--

no camera, no lights, none of that stuff.

If you get lost, if you lose your train

of thought or stumble or something, just stop.

Let me try that again, answer it again.

The audience is not gonna hear me and my questions to you.

BETTY DWYER: OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK?

So if you could somehow set up your responses that

incorporates my question into your response-- you know,

Betty, tell me about you coming into the city today.

Well, when I was driving into the city today, I--

BETTY DWYER: Um-hm.

KEVIN INDOVINO: That kind of thing.

CREW: And we may, just because there's a hallway,

we may have to stop because someone's walking--

KEVIN INDOVINO: (unintelligible) yeah.

And I'm--

EVELYN BAILEY: Have you had to do that?

KEVIN INDOVINO: No, just once or twice when

the caterers were coming through with their squeaky carts.

But for the most part, it's been pretty quiet.

EVELYN BAILEY: Good.

CREW: I'm rolling.

KEVIN INDOVINO: We're rolling?

OK.

First of all, Betty, when we put your name on screen,

can you give me the correct spelling of your first

and last name of how you would like it to appear?

BETTY DWYER: Alright.

Sure.

B-E-T-T-Y. D-W-Y-E-R.

KEVIN INDOVINO: There's two points of interest

that I really want to focus in on with you.

One is the CETA funding and then later on, GAGV

and their fights with the city.

So let's just kind of focus on the CETA funding thing first.

Can you describe for me, as though I've never

heard of CETA funding before, what is it?

And how did the Gay Alliance get involved with it?

BETTY DWYER: OK.

OK.

In the late seventies, there were serious economic problems,

and employment, or lack thereof, was a major issue.

So the federal government instituted

a program called the Concentrated Employment

and Training Program, then becoming known as CETA.

And it made funds available to localities, cities,

municipalities to hire people who

were unemployed to work in a public service capacity.

And so the city of Rochester, of course,

was always on top of trying to get whatever assistance

it could.

And it got funds.

And it decided to designate one million dollars of those funds,

or approximately one million dollars

in creating jobs for unemployed people

that would provide a public service.

And they decided that they would contract out,

to nonprofit organizations, funds to hire people

to do various types of jobs.

And initially what they decided was that since they did not

want to administer all of that money,

they asked the United Way, which I believe at the time

was probably called the United Community Chest--

I can't recall for sure--

but what we would call today the United Way to administer this.

And they solicited applications from a variety

of nonprofit organizations throughout the city

to request workers and to tell them

what those workers would do, of course, as a public service

and to employ them.

And the United Way got responses from numerous organizations.

They had approximately enough money

for about one hundred jobs.

The average wage at that time would

have been between five and ten thousand dollars, maximum

ten thousand dollars.

And it happened-- the Gay Alliance took the opportunity,

as a nonprofit organization, to put an application in to hire

three people to serve with the--

to do outreach work and to provide services

for gay people in the community.

And when the United Way reviewed those applications,

they accepted and included the Gay Alliance

as one of those organizations.

The contract from the city required

them to go back to City Council to have

the final selection of the organizations

and the final contract to be approved by City Council.

So in other words, there had to be a public forum

and a public approval of that.

And when the word got out that the Gay Alliance was included

in that package of I'm not sure how many organizations,

but numerous organizations to receive, essentially,

the funds to hire people, it created quite an uproar,

particularly with some of the more conservative

religious organizations.

And one church in particular, who unfortunately,

the actual name of the church I don't recall now,

was particularly active in opposing that.

So they appeared at City Council and created quite an uproar.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Hold that thought.

We've got a ringer.

That one cart.

EVELYN BAILEY: One what?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Cart.

BETTY DWYER: It has bells on it, huh?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Sounds like he's got a load of glasses on it.

Probably getting ready for some big party.

OK, let's pick it up from when word got out that the Gay

Alliance was included.

BETTY DWYER: Right.

When people began to understand that the Gay Alliance was

included, there was quite an uproar, the most public uproar,

of course, by the conservative religious organizations,

or least one church in particular,

a fundamentalist church, who appeared before City Council

when the approval was to be granted for the contract.

I was not personally there.

I believe probably what happened was

that they tabled the whole thing given the uproar.

And the next morning, the United Way,

being particularly sensitive about that kind

of political issue, announced to the community through the media

that it had decided that it would prefer

not to manage this contract.

They were getting calls from people threatening

to withdraw their support and their contributions

to the United Way, and they clearly

felt that they couldn't afford to be

at the forefront of that kind of a project

or that kind of controversial issue.

So they just dropped the ball completely

and left-- essentially left City Council with the hot issue

in their hands.

At the time, I was not personally

active in the Gay Alliance.

And I had been interviewed and was

going to work for the United Way to help administer the program.

But obviously, when they dropped the program,

that was the end of my potential job with them

and running it or assisting to run it.

I was not being hired as a manager.

And I was not out as a lesbian.

Nobody in the community-- although,

I worked in the community for many years--

was particularly aware that I was gay.

So at that time what happened was that Bill Johnson, who

was then the head of the Urban League of Rochester,

I think probably saw that there was an opportunity

to talk to the city about a contract-- about the contract

and to get a major contract for the Urban League,

really, to run this employment program, which

of course, was very significant for the minority community too.

Because unemployment is particularly

high among black and Latino people.

So he moved in.

He talked to the city, and the city began to essentially,

I guess, agree to consider the Urban League for the contract.

I, in the meantime, just kind of followed

this in the newspapers.

And having had some affiliation with the Urban League

in the past and knowing Bill Johnson and some other people

who were there in particular, just

let them know that I was interested in possibly

working on that project.

And in the end, got hired to manage the project.

So it was kind of an interesting position

to be in at that point.

Should I just continue?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

I'm just going to go back just a little bit,

just so we can hit some of those key points in there.

Can you tell me-- talk to me a little bit

briefly about hearing the news for the first time

that the United Way was going to step away from the contract.

Do you remember when and where you actually heard that?

BETTY DWYER: Yeah, absolutely.

I heard on the news in the evening of city--

that the City Council had met, of course,

that all this uproar had occurred at City Council

and that people had come down.

And there was weeping and gnashing of teeth,

and the world was going to come to the end, of course,

because gay people were going to somehow promulgate

their lifestyle among all the poor people of the world.

So I was quite curious, because I

was expecting that the City Council was going

to approve that contract on like a Thursday night,

and I was going to start work on Monday.

And clearly, that was tabled.

And so I thought, well, I'll just go down--

go down to the United Way and see what's going on.

So I physically drove down and went into the offices

of the United Way to see--

not the director, the president, or whatever the executive

of the United Way himself speaking, but actually

an African-American woman who was then

the assistant, his assistant, setting up the microphones

and in the process of announcing to the press

that the United Way was not going

to continue with this contract.

So I heard the announcement at the United Way offices

themselves among the media and the microphones and whatnot.

And they just made it clear.

They made comments about people calling in and saying

that they would withdraw their pledges of support

to the United Way and that this just wasn't something

that they could manage.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, now this was significant for you

because you were slated to start a new job along

with this contract.

BETTY DWYER: Exactly.

I mean, I had been interviewed by the person who

they had already actually hired at the United Way

to manage this contract.

And I guess, whether they had gotten some preliminary funds

from the city to do the reading of the selection

of the applicants and whatnot, anyway, I

had been interviewed by the person who

had been hired by the United Way,

was already on board to manage the contract.

I had worked for twenty years-- or no, the previous ten years,

I had worked in the community for Action

for a Better Community and had run the neighborhood center.

And so I was very familiar with most

of the non-profits and neighborhood-based

organizations in the city.

So he was hiring me really to get that kind of experience

I think.

And he had no discussion at that time about who

was applying or--

I had no idea that anything was going

to happen in reference to the Gay Alliance.

But I was looking for a job, and he had job to offer.

So yeah, I was-- it put me back on the job market

is what it did.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And Bill picked you up, right?

BETTY DWYER: Yup.

I was interviewed by Jeff Carlson, actually,

who was the deputy to Bill Johnson, who was the head of--

So I never spoke directly to Bill about the job.

I did speak to Jeff.

Like I say, at the time, I was not out.

Nobody was particularly aware that--

to my knowledge, anyway--

that I was a lesbian.

And I made sure--

I was very concerned that I not walk into a position

where deals had been made and that had already

been decided that we could--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Hold that thought.

It's an important point, and I want to make sure we get it.

OK.

Let's pick it up a little back about your concerns

about walking into a job without any kind of political bindings

or whatever.

BETTY DWYER: Yeah, when I spoke to Jeff Carlson--

who I had previously known too, and he knew-- did know me--

I was concerned that, and not at all interested

in, taking a job where any kind of deals

had been made to take the heat off

of everybody around this issue.

I was not an out lesbian, but I was a lesbian.

And I was not about to be a party to anything that

was going to be detrimental to the gay community.

So I very openly and clearly asked Jeff

if, in fact, there had been any agreements with City Council

in the process of negotiating for this contract

about excluding the Gay Alliance or dealing.

And he assured me that there absolutely was not,

that the agreement with the city was that the Urban League would

assume the responsibility of re-reviewing,

that any of the work that was done by the United Way was

past, and we had no interest in what they're--

the way they had selected or not selected applicants and that

we would put together our own process of review and selection

of proposals that were submitted and that the Gay Alliance would

be included and reviewed according

to the same criteria that everybody else was

and that there were no deals that had been made.

So based on that information and those assurances,

I said I was certainly ready to manage the contract, which

was a different position than what I would

have had with the United Way.

I would have been an assistant there.

At the Urban League, they were hiring me as the manager.

So that along with my responsibilities

for the overall management, once the applications

were agreed to, I would be the primary person

to develop the criteria by which the applications would

be judged and the process that they would

be judged and oversee the whole nine yards, which

was attractive to me.

Because it, therefore, put me in a position

to have some influence in terms of defining the criteria

and overseeing the process and assuring

that the process was fair.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Good.

There were times when you and Bill

had to attend City Council meetings that weren't always

so nice.

There were some things said during City Council meetings

people, from the public that were, in my opinion,

were pretty downright offensive.

But a lot of strong reactions from the community.

Can you talk to me about some of those experiences

and some of the things that maybe people

were saying in regards to, again, the Gay Alliance being

involved in this contract and those kind of things.

BETTY DWYER: Yeah, the controversy

over the issue of the Gay Alliance being involved in this

and receiving federal funds certainly

didn't go away once the United Way backed out of this.

It was tempered, certainly, the first--

under the first contract, because it didn't have to go

through all of the processes.

And I can't recall exactly how the final contract

with the Urban League was approved.

But the way it was done just didn't

trigger the same kind of public demonstrations

and whatnot for that first contract.

But the contract was only a twelve-month contract.

So of course, you were going to have

to go through this whole process again in twelve months, which

I was quite aware of throughout the period

that that would happen.

And so I really tried to make sure--

because of course, the Gay Alliance was accepted

as an applicant, and three jobs were assigned to the Alliance.

And we had to be particularly concerned, of course,

that at any time, there could be some sort of public issue

that would come up.

So that's just part of the territory, so to speak.

But the second year, when we had to go

back again for the renewal of the contract and had--

and the Alliance again was going to be included in the contract,

and of course, the public knew it was coming up,

which gave the churches that were particularly

vehement about this issue time to organize.

And we had to go through the committee process of city,

as well as the general Council meeting.

And for whatever reason, they had it

in the personnel committee, as I recall.

And in Chuck Schiano was the Republican--

only sole Republican representative on City Council

at the time.

And he was kind of the champion of the anti-gay forces

of the community.

So we had to appear at that personnel committee meeting.

And much to Bill's credit, Bill Johnson's credit, really,

I think-- because I think he could have avoided it if he had

chosen to--

he did appear before the committee.

The two of us appeared before the committee.

And of course, they allowed public comment.

And the public appeared with all of their dire predictions

of the world being corrupted by the gays and et cetera.

And interestingly enough, it was quite an experience for me

in relationship to Bill Johnson, because one of the people who

came up to speak most vehemently against the gay community was

speaking to Ruth Scott, who was an African-American woman,

who was then--

she was chairing the committee.

I can't recall whether she was chairing Council at the point

or not.

At one point she was.

A very together woman and very respected.

And as he spoke to her he said, well,

in the immorality of the gay lifestyle and gay people

and how we're going to burn in hell and whatnot,

he kind of said to her around this issue of sexual morality,

"Well, you understand."

And everybody just kind of stopped.

I mean he was--

his insinuations about what Ruth Scott

might know about sexual immorality was just stunning.

And at that moment, really, as I was

sitting next to Bill Johnson, of course,

an African-American man, great fighter for the rights

of African-Americans, I could feel

the light go on in his head.

I could feel that the connection was there,

that this was no different, that what this man was talking about

was the same.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And ultimately, you

got another second year of funding, right?

BETTY DWYER: We did.

We had to go to City Council.

Of course, the worst part of it wasn't the committee.

Then, you had to go to City Council, which of course, is

in City Council chambers.

And that was my experience.

And I would say in all of my years, seventy of them

now, that I have never experienced the level of hatred

that was openly expressed by just what appeared

to be very average people, working class people, probably,

who had their children with them and were sitting in City

Council chambers just expressing the most outrageous

and the most deeply felt levels of contempt and hatred.

Really shocking to me, and I had been active in the civil rights

movement for many years, both for the black community

in town, with the Latino community.

And it was a level of--

that I thank heavens, really--

I've never personally experienced with a group again.

It scares me.

It really scares me these days, because obviously, it

has not disappeared.

It's obviously still very prevalent

in many people and groups.

But I just personally haven't been in the--

a group of people surrounded by a group of people,

actually, who were scary, really scary.

And I had to really admire the representatives from the Gay

Alliance who went to that meeting.

It was a small group who were there to speak.

And they did speak and took all of that venom and hatred.

And I think it probably shocked--

I think it probably shook up a number of the City Council

members to see that kind of expression.

I think when people do that, there is a--

it can be shocking to other people

who don't normally experience that, not

in their own religious congregations or whatever.

So it was a pretty scary evening in the sense that there--

and I'm sure they had brought several busloads of people in.

People were being led, of course,

by the particular-- by this pastor, who

I guess preached love and goodness on Sundays to them,

and there they were expressing their hatred.

But we knew that it would pass.

It was supported by the majority of City Council.

So it's kind of a process that had to be gone through,

that's all.

It's what our democratic process calls for.

So it was approved, and we managed the project again

for another twelve months.

And then, in their wisdom, I think, that City Council really

didn't want to have to go through that again.

So rather than have to say, no, we can't deal with gays,

and we can't deal with this issue,

they decided that that type of employment program

wasn't still--

it wasn't the best way to approach the employment issue.

And so they did a new energy conservation program,

which just took the issue of the table.

But by that time, we had gone through two years.

The world hadn't crashed.

Everybody on the street hadn't become gay.

And so I think it really did have

a significant impact on the community at large watching

the whole process go on.

KEVIN INDOVINO: In speaking with you,

it's obvious that you have a great deal of respect for Bill

in stepping up to take this challenge,

not being afraid to take this challenge on.

Obviously, there was some incentive for him to do that.

There was money involved, particularly

for his organization, Urban League.

It was a great opportunity for the organization.

But it seems like it became more than that for him, particularly

after that City Council meeting.

BETTY DWYER: Yeah.

To be perfectly honest, we never discussed it.

I never discussed it with him.

At that time, I still was not openly gay.

I believe that by the time I left employment

with the Urban League, which was a number of years later--

I worked for the organization for over ten years.

I ran you know the employment and training program division,

and it enlarged.

And so I was there for a long time.

We never discussed it.

I think that because I did have a partner,

I lived with my partner--

I remember having a party at my house that Bill came to.

And my guess is is that the lights went on in his head

at that stage.

And so who knows how people think then?

I don't know if they go back and reconstruct

history and everything else and think, oh, my heavens,

what was going on?

But it was a very striking experience,

as I mentioned, at that committee meeting.

Now, how much that impacted him in the future

or his future political life and whatnot, I really can't say.

Because obviously, he was prepared and never in any way

interfered with what was going on

or tried to dictate in any way how we set up

criteria for the Gay Alliance.

He did not use his authority to try and eliminate

issues and problems, because I'm sure as he--

I have heard him say since--

that he had to take a lot of flack from black churches.

And black churches are big supporters of the Urban League.

The Urban League is a membership organization.

They do a big membership drive every year.

And their primary contributors, of course,

were from the black community, and so a lot

of that membership drive had to go through the black churches.

So it's very important, his relationship

with the ministers and the pastors

there, who are not exactly the greatest

supporters of gay rights--

or many of them.

I shouldn't and can't say all.

Although, I didn't feel as much--

I didn't feel as strongly that way then as I do today.

Today, there appears to be a much more

vociferous and stronger voice out of many

of the African-American churches that are anti-gay, which

I did not feel in those days.

They were not coming down to City Hall.

It was not black congregations that were coming down

to oppose that.

They were all white congregations.

So it's a little hard to judge where--

I think he was open.

He's a fair and open man, and I have

a lot of respect for his integrity and his fairness.

I just think that at that particular time,

he really saw that what was going on

was the same kind of thing.

And hopefully, it really helped in his development

in terms of his future attitudes around political issues.

I wouldn't doubt his support.

And I just respect him and say he was--

I worked with him for many years,

and I respect his intelligence.

I respect his integrity and his commitment.

He could have gone--

when Governor Cuomo was elected governor of New York state

years ago, he could have been in Albany in a flash.

He was very committed to this community,

and he stayed in this community.

If he had been really out for pure personal advancement--

and as far as the organization goes,

the organization had had some very difficult times.

I had been on the Urban League's board in the early seventies--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, hold that.

Jesus Christ.

OK.

Actually, we can just go to the next question here.

Because I want to move to--

you eventually become active with the Gay Alliance.

You got on their board.

Talk to me a little bit about that personal decision

that you made.

Why?

Why get involved with the Gay Alliance to the point

where you actually were sitting on their board?

BETTY DWYER: Well, now we push forward about ten years.

So it was when I had--

I just left the Urban League.

I had a kind of personal policy of working

for an organization for ten years

and then leaving and taking some time

and deciding what other kind of direction

I might want to go in.

So we're up to like 1986, 1987.

And at that stage, I made--

I was changing jobs.

There was personal things going on in my own personal life.

And I just said to myself, well, it's

time to step up and do something.

People have been fighting the good fight for years.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm gonna stop you just for a second.

We're gonna pick up on this, but it just dawned on me

another question that I should've

asked you before this because I think it's a fun little story.

There was some point--

I think maybe in that second year of evaluation--

where maybe it was Schiano that wanted

to see all receipts, books of where the money was going.

Tell me that story and tell me how you handled it.

BETTY DWYER: OK.

Well, I mentioned that we had to appear before this Personnel

Committee of City Council, which is the regular process.

Things have to go to committee, and then committee

makes recommendations to the Council.

And then, the Council acts.

So we had to go and appear before the committee first.

And Schiano, was, like I said, being champion

of the anti-Alliance people.

So one of the big things that they had said

is that none of this money could go for supporting

the Empty Closet.

Any promotional-- because of course, we were portrayed,

or the Gay Alliance was portrayed,

as really wanting to go out and recruit people to be gay.

And so they didn't want this used for any recruitment

purposes, which the publication of a newspaper was considered

recruitment.

So Mr. Schiano said that he wanted

to see where all the money had been spent.

Now, we're talking probably about--

I think their contract was probably about thirty thousand

dollars or thirty-five thousand dollars maybe, for--

almost all of it going purely to salaries.

It was just a small amount that could

go to office supplies or mileage or something like that.

So he said, OK.

I had been a fanatic as a manager

about keeping track of the money.

And we structured the thing in such a way

that each organization had an actual contract.

And we reimburse them for their expenses.

But to reimburse them, they had to provide us

all of the documentation for the expenditures.

So I said "OK, Mr. Schiano wants to see

the financial information?

We'll give him the financial information,

and we'll give everybody the financial information."

So we literally duplicated every receipt

for every penny that had been spent,

whether it was five dollars or whatever, which fortunately,

for us, ended up being a stack of material about this high.

And we assured them that we would provide them

this material at City Council meeting.

So if anybody has ever gone to a City Council meeting

and you see people up there shuffling papers and everything

else, to all of a sudden distribute a stack of material

about a foot high or as close as we could get to a foot

as we could, what do they do with it?

You've got people.

You've got all this commotion.

People are coming in on buses.

You have a certain amount of time at the mic.

And everybody wants to get home before three o'clock

in the morning.

And so it really becomes useless.

Not that we had anything to hide,

but there probably had been something

that somebody could wildly connect with the Empty Closet.

So of course, he was-- they were all

just overwhelmed with the information.

And it was useless and kind of stymied

going into three hours of how much of this paper

was used to reproduce the Empty Closet.

And very little of it probably was anyway, so.

But that pretty much cut that piece of the problem out.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And didn't he actually go through some of it

and question some of it?

BETTY DWYER: Oh, he did.

He tried to connect something with--

he was valiantly trying to connect something

with our failure to prevent people

from using it for the Empty Closet,

but it didn't get-- he didn't get too far with it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

So let's jump forward a bit.

You're on the board of the GAGV.

Just talk to me a little bit about the environment

back then, about being on board with the GAGV.

What were the kind of things that were

being done in the community?

BETTY DWYER: Well, when I first went on the board,

we were still on Monroe Avenue with the co-op building,

which of course, everybody recalls.

You had to walk by the garbage cans--

down the alley and by the garbage cans and up the

steps in order to get into the room.

So the room was fine, but symbolically it

wasn't the greatest location.

And it wasn't large enough, really,

to accommodate what was going on.

So Claire Parker, of course, was really

involved with the Alliance at the time.

Claire had actually worked at the Urban League with me,

and she had been the monitor for the contract

with the Gay Alliance.

It was important to me to be sure

that whoever was going to be working with the Alliance was

going to be friendly and helpful and not

somebody who was going to hassle or give them a hard time.

So fortunately at the time, Claire

happened to be looking for a job.

And I didn't know her prior to that.

But she did a really good job there.

So at that time is when the proposals

were beginning to come out to look for another location.

Or they probably had been coming out for some time,

but we were ready to really try and put that into motion.

So that was the primary project that we initially

got involved in was the building and purchasing the building

and being able to raise the funds that

were needed initially and then gradually, to raise funds

to do what improvements-- some improvements that

had to be made to the building, deal

with the city around the issue of tax-exempt status,

which they tried to hit us with taxes.

And so we had to get into that issue.

And so that was--

I became treasurer of the board, so I

was used to watching the money in an organization

and nonprofit organizations as managers.

So I really focused most of my energy that way.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to talk about the tax incident

with the city.

Kind of walk me through that story.

You bought the building.

You're a nonprofit organization.

Yet, the city is still claiming that you're not

exempt from taxes and then, I think basically,

you had to go to court, right?

BETTY DWYER: Right.

Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, walk me through that story.

BETTY DWYER: Yeah, well, we got the building.

And we totally assumed, there was never any

thought about the--

possibly having to pay property taxes for the building.

But lo and behold, as soon as we got the building,

the city said that we were--

I can't even remember how the communication

came, whether they just sent us a tax bill.

But anyway, we became pretty quickly aware of the fact

that the city wanted to charge us

property taxes, which to me, just seemed totally absurd.

I had worked for Action for a Better Community for ten years.

I had been around when Ibero-American Action

League was actually formed.

And I had worked for the Urban League.

And I knew darn well none of these organizations

paid any property taxes.

Not all of them owned property, but it wasn't even

a thought as far as I was concerned, that it shouldn't

be tax exempt.

So what we said is hey, why should we be paying taxes?

We're a 501(c)(3) corporation, which is a tax-exempt

corporation, a charitable organization.

And we shouldn't have to pay taxes.

Well, city said they disagreed.

So we said, hey, let's go to court.

The city had recently lost a big court case around taxes,

property taxes, to businesses.

And I just totally associated the Gay Alliance as an advocacy

organization.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

Let's pick it up there.

CREW: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's pick it up where

the city disagreed with you.

BETTY DWYER: So the city disagreed.

They said that we needed to pay property taxes,

that there was no basis for us to have property tax exemption.

I certainly wasn't a lawyer.

And I certainly wasn't someone who

was up on all of the details.

But to me, it just seemed obvious

that the Gay Alliance was an organization very much

like the Urban League or Ibero-American Action League.

They were advocating for the rights--

primarily, the Urban League was, for the rights

of African-Americans.

The Ibero-American League was set up primarily

as an advocacy organization for the Latino community.

And we were an advocacy organization

for the gay people.

What difference is there in the terms of the law?

So we decided we would go to court over it.

And one of the things that I suggested-- and of course,

Ellen Yacknin was involved with the Alliance at the time--

I can't really recall whether she was actually a board member

or not-- but an attorney.

And so she said that she would be willing to take the case.

My suggestion was, hey, let's--

to me, it's comparable.

Let's compare ourselves there.

Now, to what extent she used that in her--

her arguments in court, I can't recall.

But it did go to court.

She certainly did appear, and we won the case.

To this day, I just, in my mind, I

don't see how anybody could justify.

Although, in my mind now--

because I did development for Ibero-American Action League

in my last job--

I do understand that there are reasons that some--

and I might even argue at this point,

particularly with churches, that they should pay property taxes.

But if we're saying apples and apples and equality

and fairness, yeah, there is no-- there

was no basis in my mind for them to be able to charge us

property taxes.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Do you recall anything specifically

in the city's language or response to you?

Exactly what was their argument?

BETTY DWYER: We met with Mr. Cash.

Lou Cash was then the corporation counsel

for the city.

And we met with him at City Hall.

And I can honestly say I could never

understand what their basis was and what their justification

was for applying the taxes.

We spoke to him.

I don't remember that much what the conversation was about

or what he said.

The only recollection I have-- or my clearest recollection

is that we left the meeting with him saying

that he would get back to us.

Now, somebody mentioned something.

I think Evelyn mentioned something about--

he claimed that it was the mayor who was insisting on this.

I believe Tom Ryan was mayor at that time.

I find that kind of difficult to believe.

And if he told us that at the meeting,

I would have found it difficult to believe

and would have been perfectly happy if he said, "Well,

I'm going to go and talk to the mayor,

and we'll get back to you about this."

He was supposed to get back to us.

He never did.

He never did, and it went on--

it went on to court.

And he lost, and we won.

And I don't remember the circumstances.

But I'm sure that there was a time later

when it was raised without my knowledge.

And he publicly claimed that I had not

followed through on something.

Well, I wasn't there to defend myself,

and I don't have to defend myself.

He was supposed to get back to us.

The man lost the case, and we won it.

And it was right.

They didn't have a basis.

KEVIN INDOVINO: God, I would love

to be a fly on the wall between Tom and Lou

after that court case, their meeting together.

BETTY DWYER: Yeah.

If it was.

For all I know, it could have been just a side step.

I don't take anything for granted

when it comes to what he may have--

what his motivations were.

I don't even know that.

It was little to no money.

We did not have a Taj Mahal to charge property taxes for.

It was just a little building on Atlantic Avenue

that we paid, what, seventy, ninety thousand dollars for,

something like that.

How much property taxes did it represent?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

Somebody had a chip on their shoulder.

BETTY DWYER: Yeah, it was strange.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Considering your involvement

with the gay community, whether it

was the CETA funding and the issues that

came with that or eventually becoming involved with the Gay

Alliance board and the city property tax issue

and whatever else after that, how

do you want history to reflect upon you in

regards to what you've contributed

for the gay community?

What do you want them to note most about you?

More importantly, what are you most proud of?

BETTY DWYER: Oh, I'm most proud of the--

managing the CETA project.

I did it very consciously, very deliberately

to assure the community of some help.

And I succeeded I think.

And I think it did mean something.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, that was gonna

be my next question-- the significance of it

for the community as a whole.

BETTY DWYER: Well, I think when you're

fighting the fight of civil rights, whoever it is, whatever

group, and you have this fear factor out

there that people are--

it's kind of they don't understand, they don't know,