Video Interview, Kelly Clark, April 15, 2013
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So first thing, I
- need you to give me the correct spelling
- of your first and last name and how you
- want it to appear on screen.
- KELLY CLARK: OK, just Kelly Clark.
- K-E-L-L-Y. C-L-A-R-K.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Kelly, if we were to put a title under you,
- what would you like us to put?
- KELLY CLARK: Well it's currently Intergenerational Programs
- Director.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's start, actually,
- let's start there then.
- One thing want to get a sense of, when you're
- looking at a social organization like the GAGV
- and any given programs within it,
- when it comes to the LGBT community,
- we're such a diverse community.
- So we can't just apply some sort of cookie cutter outreach
- to these people across the board.
- Can you talk to me a little bit, from your own experience
- of that diversity within our community
- and how there are so many different ways
- of trying to reach out to them.
- KELLY CLARK: So are you interested more
- in that outreach or the engaging?
- Because I see them as kind of two different things so.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: To me, it's the same thing.
- You reach out to them to engage them.
- KELLY CLARK: Right.
- Because the outreach, I mean--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: How do you reach the LGBT community?
- Let's put it that way.
- KELLY CLARK: OK.
- So I mean I can tell you how we outreach to the LGBT community.
- I can also tell you how we probably
- should be outreaching to the LGBT community
- if we really have the resources.
- So that's where some of this gets a little touchy for me,
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, I don't think we even need to go there.
- KELLY CLARK: So just in general--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What I really want
- to do is just kind of get a picture of who
- is the LGBT community of Rochester?
- KELLY CLARK: Right.
- OK.
- I can talk about that.
- Because what I don't want to do is to give people a false
- impression that these are all the things that we're doing
- to outreach to the community, which are things that we should
- be doing but just really can't.
- OK so that's fine.
- So Rochester's LGBT community is extremely diverse.
- I've had several jobs here at the Gay Alliance, which
- have helped me to really actually touch
- lots of different parts of the community.
- So I've moved from the Anti-Violence Project Director
- into my new role as Intergenerational Programs
- Director.
- And so what I'm doing currently is really
- working with both our teen program, which
- is ages thirteen to twenty and our senior program, which
- is fifty plus.
- And so reaching out to them and connecting means you know,
- getting out there and talking to the high schools,
- going into some of the colleges.
- We have students who regularly contact us
- from very suburban and rural areas of Western New York.
- We have a number of inner city kids
- who are coming to our programming.
- We have youth who have been out since they
- were twelve or thirteen.
- We have some who are trying to find their way at seventeen
- or eighteen.
- We've got a really growing group of young folks who
- identify as transgender.
- And our Transgender Identity Support Group
- has a number of youth who recently, this
- is very new for us, so recently are identifying
- along the masculine continuum, so mostly
- female to male transition.
- And it's just been amazing to watch them find each other.
- Because typically they're the only one in their high school.
- They're the only person they know.
- Their families aren't familiar.
- And so being able to create a space where
- those students can come together has been really awesome.
- Equally as much fun is working with our older LGBT adults.
- And most of the people that we're currently working with
- are in the retirement age, so they're really
- in their mid-sixties and up.
- And again the same levels of diversity.
- We have folks who come from quite prominent backgrounds,
- people who've had professional careers, people of means.
- We also have people who are using Social Services
- and Social Security to get by who
- are living in some of the Rochester housing authority
- properties around town.
- We have folks who are coming in and kind
- of sharing their experiences, which
- is really great because then they
- get a nice cross-pollination.
- We have people who have lived in Rochester
- for their entire lives or in one of the surrounding farming
- communities.
- And we have folks who have just come to Rochester
- because perhaps other family members are here
- and they're starting to age and need more support.
- And so they're moving in with relatives,
- they're moving in with children.
- There's a lot of diversity across race and ethnicity
- and even nationality.
- We have a wonderful older adult who
- comes here whose parents escaped from the Holocaust.
- And she remembers coming over as a little girl
- and telling stories about what it
- was like back in her old homeland
- and what it was like when she came here.
- It's really great for the other folks to hear.
- When I was working in the anti-violence program
- it really got I think myself as well as the entire agency
- in touch with another level of LGBT folks in town.
- Those are people really of low means, low SES.
- They're living in again public housing.
- They don't have the power that having a middle class
- background kind of gives them.
- And so they're the ones in our community
- who are really facing a lot of violence.
- And just getting to understand that not
- everyone in the gay community is doing well.
- There are people who really need significant levels of support.
- That job also put me in touch with people
- who, for one reason or another, are
- kind of not doing well in terms of their own mental health
- issues or maybe issues of addiction.
- They've never been in a position to learn or gain
- any kind of resiliency.
- They've been fighting their identity issues
- for their whole lives and have been bullied and picked on.
- And so there are a number of people
- across the spectrum who need real serious mental health
- support.
- So our community is hugely diverse.
- I like Rochester because we have a great history
- of social justice.
- Our big three, Kodak, Bausch & Lomb,
- and Xerox provided a great kind of training ground for the some
- of the very first employee resource groups in the country
- where professionals were really helping corporations
- to figure out how to have LGBT professionals
- and how to support them.
- And so that is a real strength for our community.
- And I think that the rest of the community, even those people
- who are not doing well benefit from having
- had such a strong history of the employee
- resource groups at the various companies here.
- So it's yeah.
- I'm just talking.
- Sure.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's focus just on the youth program
- for a moment.
- KELLY CLARK: OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about how significant
- it is that a city like Rochester could have a gay youth program,
- a successful gay youth program.
- And tie into that really, the benefits thereof.
- KELLY CLARK: Well, it's important for us
- to offer youth services.
- And it's changed significantly over time
- based on the needs of the youth that we're
- serving at that time.
- So I've been working with our youth for just about a year.
- And I can tell you what I see in the importance of connecting
- with these youth currently.
- They're all out.
- And that was, that's not our generation's experience.
- It's not even the generation one or two levels ahead of them.
- Typically people waited until they left the house
- and got a job, went into the service, went to college,
- and then you might come out.
- But you didn't have to deal with the immediate repercussions
- of family.
- You at least had your own space.
- Not anymore.
- Most of the youth that we're working with have been out.
- They're out to families, almost come hell or high water.
- They're out when they know the repercussions.
- I've had at least one teen whose brother
- came out the year before and so parents hit the roof.
- Was not a good scene.
- So she knew exactly what was going
- to happen when she came out and she decided to do it anyway.
- So they have internalized the messages
- that I think the older LGBT population has given
- them, which is you're good.
- You're OK.
- Be yourself.
- So what I think they need, the importance of our program,
- is really supporting them in that.
- They no longer need a safe hideaway
- where they can meet other people like themselves
- because you know we can never find each other.
- The internet I think has a lot to do with opening space.
- There is a gay person on every TV show.
- I mean the president thinks it's great for us to get married.
- So we are in a completely different world from just even
- five years ago.
- So they're out.
- They identify individually as LGBT.
- What we find that they don't have
- or that they're still lacking is any sense of community.
- They don't know what it means to be part of the LGBT community.
- They don't know the LGBT history.
- They don't know the heroes.
- They think you know, the rainbow flag
- is our symbol because rainbows are cool.
- You know, they don't understand the history
- behind even the colors on the flag.
- And so part of the reason why it's still important for us
- to have a youth service is really
- to bring them together and help them to learn and to gain power
- and resilience from understanding themselves
- to be part of a community that's connected.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: But as you said, it's
- kind of evolved from what I've seen over the past years
- that, whenever you spoke about the GAGV,
- when you've spoken to anybody about the GAGV, you know,
- and the work that they're doing, first thing that anybody
- would ever bring up is the youth program.
- I understand that.
- I understand why.
- Because there tends to be more funding available when you're
- talking about educating youth.
- But yet now it's kind of evolving a little bit.
- It's no longer just the youth program.
- It's this intergenerational program and trying
- to bring it all together.
- Can you talk to me a little about the thinking behind that,
- and how, really how things are evolving.
- KELLY CLARK: Well, including seniors in our programming
- has been very important because there
- have been some national studies that have been done 2010, 2011,
- that really kind of peeled the Bandaid off of this problem
- that had very few people recognized.
- And that is our stonewall generation
- is now facing the next level of kind of entering into systems.
- They've been through work.
- Now they're retiring.
- And so working through retirement systems,
- working themselves into maybe, you know, senior living
- communities, for those people who are needing assisted care
- or even nursing facility care, we're
- starting to find that things aren't so great.
- And this pioneering generation is having to be the pioneer.
- They're always at the front of the wave
- and so they're pioneering into retirement
- and the needs of retirement.
- And so what I find fascinating however working
- with the seniors is that we're still in 2013.
- We're still here today.
- So they're dealing with the same society
- that the youth are dealing with.
- Things are opening up in a different way.
- We have our Rainbow Sage Program existed before merging
- with the Gay Alliance.
- So they're about eleven years old.
- And again, back when they started,
- they needed a secret hideaway where
- they could come together find each other
- and kind of be of some support.
- And now what we're finding is the same thing
- that we're finding with the youth.
- Society is open.
- They're volunteering at their churches.
- They're going to community centers in their neighborhoods.
- They're really getting out and experiencing life
- with their straight peers and LGBT peers alike.
- And so, what we're doing with our senior programming
- is to help maintain some sense of community.
- So there is still an opportunity for people to come together,
- identify as LGBT in an LGBT space during the times
- that they would like to do that, but to also have an opportunity
- to support them in some of their needs
- when they are bumping up against systems that don't quite
- understand, when these systems aren't
- used to having open, proud, activist LGBT
- folks as part of them.
- And so it's been a struggle for some nursing homes.
- It's a struggle for some assisted living facilities.
- It's a struggle for some senior centers in the area.
- And so as they're moving into those, rightfully so, when they
- bump up against something then we're
- here to support working through that.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I need you to speak to some of the things
- that you're doing with the Intergenerational Program,
- getting the youth in contact with the seniors
- and engaging them in dialogue about what's
- going on with them.
- KELLY CLARK: Right, right, right.
- So our Intergenerational Program has had some opportunities
- to bring both the seniors and the youth together a couple
- of times this year actually.
- We started back in the summer when we did our first youth
- leadership summer camp.
- And so we brought kids through day camp for one week
- and we taught them all the things that I just
- talked about.
- What does it really mean to have an LGBT identity?
- They don't necessarily know the difference
- between sexual orientation and gender identity.
- So we taught them these things.
- History was an important part of the week.
- And during our history time, we actually
- had an opportunity for the youth to interview some of the folks
- from our Rainbow Sage Program.
- And it actually was one of the favorite parts
- of the week for the youth.
- We broke them down into small groups
- and we had several of our seniors come in.
- And they just sat and had questions
- and just talked about lives and some of the differences
- and some of that.
- You know, whenever you talk to an older person,
- you just can't quite imagine yourself in that time
- or in that era or having to deal with some of the things
- that they dealt with.
- And I think the youth really learned a lot.
- It helped to take some of the I guess
- more dry, historic material that we had talked
- about during the week and put it in some context for people
- who actually lived through those things.
- You know, some of our seniors didn't come out
- until they were forty, fifty years old.
- And our youth who are out at fourteen, just
- could not imagine living a life you
- know until your parents passed away,
- was the time that you came out.
- So it was great to see them come together.
- We also do an annual intergenerational panel.
- And this year we had the kind of similar format
- but this was open to the community.
- And we paired one youth with one senior or older member
- of the community and had them come together and do
- a little kind of public conversation
- I guess you would call it.
- And that actually was really fascinating.
- What I loved most about that is because we
- had it open to an audience, there were forty or fifty
- people here who could learn from the exchange
- that the pairs were having.
- And so talking about some of the parallels, the similarities
- and the differences in their lives based on their generation
- really gave a lot of insight to some
- of the people in the audience.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Again, I know you
- haven't been with the program until recently.
- But I wanted to maybe get a sense of some
- of the challenges of having to be a program
- director for these groups.
- And I'm thinking more in terms of the community's reaction
- to it.
- I just think nowadays, things have
- gotten to be a little bit more open and more accepting.
- People are more willing to be engaged in conversation.
- It wasn't always like that.
- I want to kind of get a sense of how you break down barriers
- from this group of kids or this group of seniors
- that you have with the rest of the community.
- KELLY CLARK: The Gay Alliance plays a really important part
- in helping people to negotiate parts of the community that
- are still closed.
- And the first thing that comes to mind
- is our rural surrounding areas.
- We've got lots of people who have lots of resources.
- We have many open and welcoming churches
- within the city and surrounding suburbs.
- We have lots of adults who are resources in and of themselves.
- So at any given school there are a number of LGBT teachers
- and other folks that students can rely on
- within hospital settings.
- Within some of the nursing home settings
- there are some folks that the older folks can rely on.
- What we find though, is when you go out into the rural settings,
- people are very much alone.
- Times have not necessarily changed.
- It's not the same sentiment with regard to LGBT identity.
- So one of our important, still important roles,
- in terms of battling you know anything
- from school bullying to workplace discrimination
- or even neighborhood harassment.
- Neighbor harassment is a big thing in our community.
- We don't have a lot of physical bashing
- but we have a lot of neighbor harassment.
- People call us from the surrounding areas
- and they're alone.
- They have very little transportation.
- They can't get in to see us.
- They can't get in to see a lawyer here in town.
- So part of what we have to do is to really help
- to bridge the gap, the gap in miles, the further you get
- outside of the city's core, also represents
- a gap almost in time.
- So you're kind of going back to maybe where some of us
- here in the city were five or ten years ago.
- The understanding just isn't there.
- And so we're excited to be able to go out
- and to support people.
- You know we've done trainings in rural schools.
- We've come to the support of parents
- who are needing to have important conversations
- with school districts or principals.
- We've had an opportunity to get engaged in people
- as they're seeking important levels of health care
- that perhaps their providers in more rural areas
- need to learn or update some information and some skills.
- And we can provide that level of service for people.
- So everybody says they live in interesting times.
- Right?
- But I think we are really in an interesting time.
- We're right in the middle of this interesting kind of shift.
- So I kind of liken it to you know,
- what was happening within the Civil Rights
- Movement of the sixties.
- It's like we're moving from that segregated to the integrated
- time.
- And I think it's really important for an agency
- like ours to be at the center of helping that shift.
- Because what we don't want to do is to have society
- open up so far and for everyone to just
- be so happy and integrated that we actually
- lose the sense of identity and a sense of community.
- I think that that would be very easy for us to do.
- Part of what I think our job is in the way in which our work is
- shifting is that we're needing to move from this survival
- mode, which I think we've been in for our last forty year
- history, into this thriving mode.
- So now that we're able to kind of leave
- some of the more basic and kind of serious issues behind us
- because we're getting into a different time, now
- it's time for us to figure out how do we
- use this open space to actually thrive as a community
- and not to disappear into the woodwork.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to just touch base on something you
- just said a little more about.
- Being more visible, being more integrated into society,
- being more accepted, or some people would say tolerated.
- But--
- KELLY CLARK: If you stuff a little newspaper into it,
- it'll stop.
- Yeah, that's what we typically do.
- Sorry.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It's OK.
- I didn't know if, like, someone was trying to get in.
- KELLY CLARK: No, it's just, it's not tight.
- It probably needs some weatherstripping or something
- to kind of keep it from doing that.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Becoming integrated
- without losing a call for identity,
- can you kind of maybe just touch base
- on that just a little bit more?
- You did.
- It's just something I want to make sure I get.
- KELLY CLARK: Well, and I--
- sorry, I want to set it up.
- I think here in Rochester, it's actually
- especially important for us to think
- about how we move into an open society,
- while keeping our sense of community.
- Rochester has this very long history
- of being open and welcoming to LGBT folks.
- I think we're a unique mid-size or small city,
- I'm not sure which we are, in that respect.
- And again, I think it goes back to the leadership
- of the employee resource groups in some
- of our big corporations.
- Such that we don't have a gayborhood.
- You know there's no defined place
- in within the City of Rochester or even
- in the county that is the place where
- you'll find a concentration of LGBT people in community.
- And I think that's wonderful.
- That's a marker of people feeling comfortable enough
- to live in neighborhoods around the community
- where they'd like to live there.
- They're not facing issues that kind of ghettoize them
- in any way.
- But at the same time, as the rest of society
- continues to open up, I think it's
- going to be even more tempting for us to be spread so thin
- that we don't necessarily have that sense of identity.
- So I think Rochester is unique in that way,
- unlike some other places where you're
- going to find a gayborhood that really is the center of life
- and that the community is really going
- to keep going no matter what.
- Couple that with the fact that as I said,
- our teens are identifying earlier and earlier as LGBT,
- but they have no idea what that means.
- To them, it's an individual identity marker.
- It's who I am, it's not the community I belong to.
- So I think with those two things are
- kind are kind of threatening our ability to create strong LGBT
- identity here in the Rochester area
- and to create that community.
- So again, I think the role of the Gay Alliance
- really is to figure out how we move
- from into that thriving space, while creating the synergy that
- keeps our community together in some way.
- We're never going to have a gayborhood in Rochester.
- I don't think that that's--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, we'll have to take you back on that.
- KELLY CLARK: OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: How long have you been in Rochester?
- Born and raised here?
- KELLY CLARK: No.
- I've been here for--
- well, I went to school here and left and came back
- and so I've been here now for about seventeen, eighteen
- years.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Because I would say to you,
- early on, you know, Corn Hill was a gayborhood.
- And to a certain extent, it sort of still is.
- It's for the more affluent gay men and women.
- You know, when I was coming out, Park Avenue
- was the place for all the gays.
- KELLY CLARK: Right.
- The eighties.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I think we did have that, but somehow
- we kind of evolved out of that.
- KELLY CLARK: And I think, again, you know, the Employee Resource
- Group started in that time in that late seventies,
- early eighties piece.
- And I think people just began to just feel
- more comfortable being in whatever parts of the city.
- And they were not facially, as I said, we don't have,
- in the four years that I did anti-violence work here,
- there was one really horrific gay bashing before I started.
- People get into fights, but they're not,
- I mean what every call that I took for four years
- was, my neighbors are being nasty to me.
- You know, they blocked out the windows
- on our side of the house so we can't look at them
- and they can't look at us.
- Or you know my neighbors accidentally
- drove over my flowers.
- You know, that kind of thing.
- And I think that when people are experiencing even if it's
- a level of tolerance, that they really are emboldened
- to kind of move into places in society
- where maybe they hadn't been before and establish roots.
- And I know that there are little LGBT enclaves
- all over the place.
- I can talk to many folks that I talk
- to know the person down the street and the one
- around the corner and say, you know
- there's like five or ten gay couples in our area.
- And it's like that kind of all over the city,
- depending on where you talk to people and where they're from.
- And all my friends have that experience.
- I have that experience as well where I live.
- So you know, maybe I should never say never,
- but I don't think that we're going to all come and coalesce
- around one place any longer.
- And so I think it's the role of the Gay Alliance
- to give us a reason to come together
- and to be in community with each other,
- and to make sure that we don't lose those roots.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: When was it, I don't
- know if you can conjure up a specific moment
- or memory, whether it was your work
- with the anti-violence program or the youth program,
- or now the intergenerational, at what point or moment did
- you realize, and say to yourself, yeah,
- we're doing some really necessary work here,
- that the work that we're doing here is needed?
- And it's also a little special.
- KELLY CLARK: I have the experience
- of feeling like we're doing important work probably
- every day.
- And I think I have since I started working here.
- There's always something that is happening
- that we can get involved in that is going to make a difference.
- And it could be assisting somebody
- because they're being harassed.
- It could be assisting someone who is transitioning gender
- at work and needing our support in terms
- of training their coworkers and their supervisors.
- It could be the young person who comes in and is just
- completely lost and and doesn't know where to go or what to do.
- We take phone calls from people all the time.
- I'll tell you my best phone call ever was an eighty-six-year-old
- man, we regularly get phone calls here from people who are
- kind of questioning their sexuality.
- And I pick up the phone, and this
- was a gentleman whose wife had died probably six months prior.
- And he said, "You know, I'm having these feelings for one
- of my best friends.
- And I'm not sure, I kind of thought
- I always could have been gay.
- But you know I got married and my wife just died
- and now I think up ready to explore this."
- This man is eighty-six years old.
- You know, so even if they're just, our work is so vital.
- You know it's important to have a place for someone to call.
- I just got an email before coming down here
- from a mom whose son is seventeen
- and questioning his sexuality and she
- wanted to know what she should do and what we can help with.
- And we get those kind of calls all the time.
- So, yeah, it's all of the work.
- It's the good pieces and the negative pieces
- that we can support.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What does it say about how far we've
- come when, in today's society, a mother emailing you, asking
- you what she can do to help her son come out,
- or help to understand that process--
- KELLY CLARK: Yes.
- Exactly.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: --where is--
- (unintelligible).
- KELLY CLARK: Our parental involvement actually shocked
- me a bit when I first started working with our teen program
- last year.
- You know, I had a parent say to me,
- "I drop my daughter off behind those metal doors
- and I'm just trusting that what you guys are doing with her.
- And it seems to be working."
- And it dawned on me, yeah, that's been our policy.
- We've had this complete confidentiality zone, again,
- this hideaway that had to be confidential,
- where youth could find each other.
- And it was like the secret place, you know the bat cave,
- where everybody could come together.
- And this was a mom who wanted to be involved.
- And we hadn't evolved.
- We hadn't evolved to the point of parents being involved.
- I mean, we were still working under the premise
- that parents didn't understand and weren't involved
- and kids were needing a secret place
- to explore these areas without having their parents involved
- until they were ready to bring their parents in.
- And so actually, it's a great question
- because this year we've opened up space for parents.
- We have a new parents booster club.
- They act just like any other booster club at the high school
- level.
- They are raising money for a big gay prom,
- just like the football booster club is raising money
- for you know the football team.
- And we have several parents who come pretty regularly.
- They're excited to be a part of it.
- I have parents all the time who are just
- saying, "I love my kid.
- I want them to be happy.
- Tell me what to do.
- I'm on their team."
- They may not know exactly what it is that they need to do next
- or can do next or how best to support,
- but they're on the team.
- And that is very different, as you say,
- it's very different from the experiences
- that we've even had probably a short four or five years ago.
- So I love opening space for parents.
- It's great having them here.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm going to combine
- a couple of these questions that I sent to you on paper.
- When, as I got the history books back, at the Gay Alliance youth
- program, the Intergenerational program,
- the anti-violence program, all of that,
- and I don't want to say that the next generation community,
- there's not going to have a need for a Gay Alliance,
- because there probably will be.
- But when you look back at what we're doing now
- and what we've done over the past forty years, what
- do you want them to know most about and the impact
- that these programs have had in the Rochester community?
- KELLY CLARK: That's a hard one.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Essentially, what
- are you most proud of in the work
- that you've done with these programs?
- KELLY CLARK: I think I'm most proud of, you know,
- the contemporary work that the Gay Alliance is doing really
- around our education, honestly in creation of allies.
- We're doing great work touching LGBT people,
- helping them to gain identity, helping them
- to have a sense of community.
- But I think the work that is really probably making
- the biggest difference in people's lives
- that they don't realize that we do
- is the amount of education in the rest of the community
- that we're doing.
- We are out two, three, four times
- a week, sometimes doing educational programs
- from high schools to churches to hospitals, in nursing homes.
- We're going into other social service agencies.
- So the places that people go to seek
- services, just in an ordinary day
- or an ordinary week in their lives,
- chances are somebody that they're
- interacting with has had some type of education from the Gay
- Alliance that is actually making a difference
- in the type of service that they're receiving.
- Going to the hospital emergency room
- or having a meeting with your child's teacher.
- You are two moms and you're going
- to meet with your child's teacher.
- We've probably been there.
- We've probably talked with those teachers
- about working with LGBT people.
- So I think that that's maybe the well-kept secret around here.
- Is that, and it's hard to appreciate,
- when you can't see it.
- It's hard to prove a negative.
- We can't say that your experience at the dentist's
- office was better because you know,
- that person hadn't been involved in some of our training.
- But I think that, I'd like to believe that it certainly was.
- So I think that that's--
- in these last probably six to eight years
- of the Gay Alliance, just the strength of our education
- programs and the number of people,
- thousands of people that were touching each year
- is something that like for people
- to look back on and understand.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Just want to take a look at my notes here.
- We covered a lot of it.
- Do you have a sense from this vantage point
- of present day of what the challenges might
- be for the next generation?
- KELLY CLARK: For the next generation just of LGBT folks?
- Or for the next generation of leaders at the agency?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: For LGBT.
- KELLY CLARK: People in general?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Community, yeah.
- I think I'm thinking more in terms of the younger people
- that are coming through.
- It's a tough question.
- It's a very abstract question.
- KELLY CLARK: I mean, it's hard when
- we think about challenges that might be coming up
- or things that we might face in the next generation
- or in future generations, I think
- it's really hard to project.
- The way in which I've been looking at where the LGBT
- community is right now in history
- has been to actually look back across the Civil Rights
- Movement of the sixties, which is really
- open space for black people, African-Americans,
- in our society.
- And what constantly comes to mind
- and I've had several conversations about this
- recently, is the conversation that
- in particular the black community
- had around the fortieth anniversary of Brown
- versus Board of Education.
- And of course that was a historic moment.
- And it changed everything in terms of our country
- in thinking about how we educate our children
- and even just how we understand each other.
- Some of those, so the underlying social taboos
- that kept segregation in place have all been shattered.
- And I think that that was a pivotal moment.
- But the conversation that the black community
- had around that time, which is this now fifteen years ago
- probably, was, did it help our community?
- And there were a lot of intellectuals who said,
- this probably wasn't the best thing that
- could have happened for us.
- They talked about losing a sense of identity.
- You know, we had black lawyers and black teachers
- and black doctors and our communities were segregated.
- So we had to have all those things.
- There were stores.
- We supported each other.
- There was a sense of community.
- And so when folks look at those intellectuals who
- are looking at this from today's point of view,
- the number of black doctors the number of you know,
- the community sense that people had.
- The fact that people just kind of scattered and left
- communities because they could.
- I mean society is now open, so we can do what we want
- and we can have the houses and live in the neighborhoods
- that we want to live in.
- And there was serious conversation
- within the black community about whether or not
- integration was or was really a good thing for us.
- If we had to do it over again, might
- we have sought a different solution.
- Or what might we have looked at it differently
- in order to keep the sense of the black community
- better than probably it had has been kept?
- And so at this crux of the LGBT civil rights experience,
- I look at it from that vantage point.
- And as I've talked about already the sense of community,
- I think is going to be our next challenge.
- Because laws are opening up.
- Society is opening up.
- Our social systems, mores, the taboos are shattering.
- And we're going to have an opportunity
- to be just out and integrated more fully into society.
- And something that the black community
- didn't have to really deal with is the notion
- of passing, which is something that LGBT community has always
- had to face, right for the most part.
- So when you talk about having a much more integrated society
- that's open for LGBT people and the notion
- that we could really pass or not if we want when we choose to,
- I think that maintaining that sense of community
- and really thinking about whether, I mean,
- it's great that this is happening for us.
- But having the vantage point, learning from the last movement
- and maybe being able to say, what could we
- do differently so that the same thing doesn't happen to us.
- And again, so I continue to harp on, how do we build a sense,
- maintain a sense of community identity
- and it not just be individual identity?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I think that covers it.
- KELLY CLARK: OK.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I was thinking, like, OK, did I miss anything?
- Brian usually has an extra question.
- (pause in recording)
- KELLY CLARK: A parent who's six or seven-year-old
- was transitioning in a school someplace between here
- and Buffalo, closer to Buffalo than here.
- And the school needed help, you know, we get in our car
- and drive where people ask us to come.
- I know my colleagues just did something outside of Watertown
- last--
- over the summer.
- You know, so we're always out.
- We've got commitments, several workshop commitments out
- in Geneva and you know we are where we need to be.
- But it would be great.
- Those are the service resources that we offer.
- What we're not able to do is to offer the community center
- or at least the central location where
- people could find each other in those small areas.
- So we need somebody to leave us a whole boat load of money
- and allow us to be able to do that.
- Because it would be great to have-- could
- you just imagine, we could have like one kind of mini center
- in all the surrounding counties, so at least people
- in the county could you know, come together
- in whatever central place.
- One of the biggest problems that the people in the rural areas
- have is that they don't have transportation.
- I'm constantly talking to people, so well,
- can you get here?
- No.
- They just--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: If it wasn't for the internet,
- they wouldn't even know.
- KELLY CLARK: Right.
- Exactly.
- So.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Great.
- Well, thank you very much.
- KELLY CLARK: Well, you're welcome.