Video Interview, Thomas Privitere, January 21, 2013

  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: (unintelligible) I'll try.
  • CREW: Adam, rolling.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.
  • This is the toughest question.
  • I need the correct spelling of your first and last name
  • as you want it to appear on screen.
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Ah.
  • Thomas, T-H-O-M-A-S. Middle initial M. Privitere.
  • P as in Peter, R-I, V as in Victor, I-T-E-R-E.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, good.
  • This just kind of sets for me, really, and maybe the audience
  • to kind of get to know you.
  • Because I don't really know you that well.
  • I know the questions I have to ask you in regards to labor
  • union and all that stuff.
  • But before we get into that, I want to kind of get
  • a sense of who you are.
  • A little bit about your coming out
  • experience in that kind of scenario.
  • Why you then got--
  • which then sets it up, why you got involved later
  • on in activism for gay rights.
  • So just talk to me about that.
  • I mean, your coming out experience.
  • What was Rochester like at that time for gay people?
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, I came out in the mid-'70s.
  • And I grew up in Rochester.
  • I went to school here.
  • I went to college here.
  • Grew up in a middle-class, inner-city Italian
  • neighborhood.
  • Growing up, I had these feelings of being different.
  • I think I kind of knew deep down inside what was going on.
  • But you know, I also understood that it
  • wasn't safe to be who and what I felt I was.
  • And so I squelched and stuffed and repressed any feelings
  • that I had that might even be remotely same-sex attracted.
  • Went through high school and college.
  • And while I was in college, my then girlfriend,
  • we got pregnant.
  • Got married.
  • It did keep me out of Vietnam in those days.
  • Had I know all I had was to tell them I was gay,
  • I probably would have taken that path.
  • But stayed here, worked.
  • Went to MCC and graduated from MCC,
  • and then went to criminal justice in RIT
  • When I was in school, I had a law professor.
  • And he became integral later on to my coming out process.
  • One of the things I did as part of my internship was
  • went to work in the police department.
  • And at that time, they were civilianizing jobs back then
  • after the riots of the '60s and the social unrest
  • and the civil rights movement.
  • And I was tangentially involved with that as an activist.
  • Because I went to a school here in Rochester,
  • which was predominantly Italian and African American.
  • And so I had an experience at 15 actually
  • going South, where a friend of mine took a bus to Florida.
  • His father lived down there and his mother lived in Rochester.
  • And we stopped in a small diner in Kingstree, South Carolina.
  • It's about 2 o'clock in the morning.
  • And I unwittingly sat in the wrong section.
  • And segregation was still going on back then,
  • even though the civil rights bill had been passed.
  • And King had given his now famous "I had a dream" speech.
  • Things were still segregated.
  • And I remember sitting down at a counter at about 2 o'clock
  • in the morning.
  • And the waitress came over and asked me
  • why I was sitting there.
  • And I said, well, is this section closed?
  • Because the only people there were the people from the bus.
  • And she said in her best North Carolinian accent, no,
  • y'all can't sit here.
  • You're in the colored section.
  • And I just looked at her aghast and I said,
  • you people really do that shit down here?
  • And my friend, who had been experiencing
  • this thing for years because he had been going back and forth
  • said, we got to get out of here.
  • We'll get killed.
  • And it was my first experience with overt racism
  • and segregation.
  • And the farther South we went, the worse it got.
  • It was colored-only drinking fountains and restaurants.
  • And after about two and a half weeks,
  • I called my mom back here.
  • I said, I want to come home.
  • And the back story was I had bugged her for years to go
  • to Florida with my friend.
  • And I finally went to the Supreme Court of the family.
  • Back then, it was my grandmother.
  • She talked my mother into letting
  • me go in the first place.
  • And I remember my mother saying, so you want to come home?
  • And I said, yeah.
  • I said, it's horrible how they treat colored people down here.
  • She said, I got an idea.
  • Why don't you call your grandmother?
  • And she hung up the phone.
  • And that was my first experience with discrimination,
  • overt discrimination.
  • And I think that was a seminal point in my life
  • that changed everything from that point on.
  • And so I came back here and there had just
  • been-- the schools and the colleges,
  • they were just starting African-American studies.
  • And I enrolled in an African-American studies class.
  • I was the only white kid in the class.
  • It kind of gave me a sense later on when I started activism
  • in the gay rights movement how important it
  • was to fight against injustice.
  • And so when I went to work for the police department
  • back then, I recall that there was a guy who
  • had been on the police force.
  • And the buzz went around that he had
  • been fired because he was gay.
  • They didn't use that term back then.
  • It was queer.
  • And that sent a chill up my spine
  • because despite having lived in the closet, gotten married.
  • I already had a child.
  • I knew in my gut that something just wasn't
  • passing the smell test for me.
  • So I remember I got my first job in the police department.
  • I moved down to criminal court.
  • And in those days, companies like McCurdy's and Sibley's
  • and large commercial stores downtown, people
  • still used paper checks.
  • And when checks bounced, they'd bring them in.
  • And I was the chief complaint clerk.
  • And it was an intake and criminal court.
  • My ex-law professor had a client who owned a bar downtown.
  • And as a favor to my professor, I
  • would bring him in the back door and take care of him.
  • And we would just send letters out to people.
  • And later on, he came in one day and he had a stack of tickets
  • to a Halloween drag show open bar thing.
  • And what I didn't know was that his client
  • was a guy named Jim van Allen who
  • owned a gay bar downtown called Jim's on North Street.
  • I'd never been there.
  • I didn't know that I knew any gay people actually growing up,
  • but I did know that in my neighborhood,
  • there were some pretty tough customers.
  • And they would go downtown and they would roll queers.
  • That's what they called it back then.
  • Beat them up, take their money.
  • So there was this dichotomy in me.
  • This sense that I knew I was hiding from something,
  • and I was afraid to have it come out.
  • And at the same time, knowing that it
  • was wrong what they were doing, but not speaking up.
  • And it wasn't until an incident in Kingstree
  • that I experienced the racism, the sense of injustice kind of
  • took hold in me.
  • I think that's probably--
  • I went into the field that I eventually went into,
  • which was criminal justice.
  • And then, I got active in the labor union movement
  • while I was an employee in the city.
  • And-- backtrack.
  • He gave us these tickets.
  • We went to the bar.
  • And of course, it was Halloween, which
  • was the high holiday for gay people.
  • And it was a traditional drag show,
  • but I also noticed out of the corner of my eye
  • that there were men dancing with other men.
  • They had jeans on and flannel shirts.
  • It was the '70s.
  • It was the look.
  • And mustaches.
  • Picture the Village People on steroids.
  • And something clicked.
  • Again, another click.
  • You know, like the clicking in that restaurant.
  • Something turned on, some switch.
  • And I was intrigued, and enthralled, and thought
  • and felt, for the first time in my life, oh my god.
  • I'm home.
  • And I went back the following week, met my first lover,
  • who was also married and in the closet.
  • And that was my coming out.
  • It wasn't planned.
  • It certainly wasn't something that I expected to happen.
  • And I would go out every Friday night
  • after that, telling my then ex-wife
  • I was going out with the boys, the guys.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Which was the truth.
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Which was the truth.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to hit on something that you just
  • said here, a place like Jim's becoming a place like home.
  • That this is where you were finding yourself.
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, for the first time
  • ever, I saw gay men who looked like any other man.
  • I had this stereotypical image in my head
  • about what gay men were supposed to look like.
  • And they all wore makeup and tutus.
  • And these were guys with other guys holding each other,
  • kissing each other, drinking at the bar together, and dancing.
  • It was a real eye-opener for me.
  • And of course, in those days in the mid-'70s before the AIDS
  • epidemic, I recall that a lot of straight people were coming
  • to the bar, including myself at the time.
  • And they were coming for the disco.
  • There seemed to be a social melding
  • of gay and straight people back then.
  • And that continued, I think right up until the early '80s.
  • And at that point, I decided that I
  • couldn't live this lie anymore.
  • And my ex-wife and I decided to separate and divorce amicably.
  • We had three children at that point.
  • And she was a great woman, good wife, good mother.
  • We weren't aware that she had married a gay man, because
  • socially, culturally, and certainly
  • economically, it wasn't feasible for me to come out.
  • And I knew what had happened to that police officer
  • back then who had gotten fired because they discovered
  • he was apparently gay.
  • And that's what happened in those days, you lost your job.
  • There was a real underlying fear that coming out
  • could cost you dearly.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: I don't want you to get too far ahead here.
  • When you came to terms with being a gay man--
  • and you're now going out to the bars and all that stuff--
  • were there other outlets/resources
  • for gay people back then?
  • Or was the bars it?
  • I mean, what was the gay social scene like as far as meeting
  • people and finding other resources for information
  • and that kind of thing?
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: The only information
  • I got about being gay was what I had
  • read in high school in the Kinsey report.
  • That was it.
  • And as far as I knew, because my first coming out experience was
  • in a gay bar, the only place that we did gather
  • were in the bars.
  • And that was a double-edged sword
  • because I know a lot of gay people,
  • myself included, who went into those bars.
  • And I wasn't a drinker.
  • I wasn't a partier.
  • But what I did discover though, after a couple of drinks,
  • my inhibitions dropped.
  • So the point is I still wasn't comfortable in my own skin.
  • I wasn't comfortable with my sexuality.
  • I had come home in a sense, but it was a dysfunctional home,
  • I guess is the way I would describe it.
  • The bar scene-- they seemed to-- no matter what city I went to,
  • they seemed to all be located in the same dark corners
  • of inner cities where a subculture existed.
  • Whether you were in Manhattan, or Rochester, or Washington,
  • DC.
  • And I remember-- maybe I'm getting
  • a little ahead of myself.
  • But even out of the city, when I would go to DC,
  • they actually had signs outside the bars in those days,
  • this is a gay establishment run for gay people by gay people.
  • And it was sort of welcoming, but it was also a warning.
  • I guess it was be aware.
  • If you're straight and you're coming in here,
  • this is a gay bar.
  • We didn't have that here.
  • We all, of course, knew were the gay bars were.
  • And as I said, the time of my coming out, which ironically,
  • was in '76--
  • the bicentennial year-- there were straight people
  • definitely coming to the bars.
  • I think it was easier to buy drugs
  • in gay bars in those days.
  • It was in ghetto-like areas.
  • North Street was pretty tough neighborhood, even back then.
  • And there was, around the city, gay bars peppered here.
  • Mostly along Monroe Avenue.
  • In the early '80s, after my separation and divorce,
  • I moved in with my first lover in an apartment on Goodman
  • street near Park Avenue.
  • And I kind of half-jokingly tell people today
  • that you could fire a cannon down Park Avenue
  • and not hit a straight person in those days.
  • And gay people were moving into what
  • now is the Park Avenue area.
  • I later discovered it's what we do.
  • We move into an area.
  • We beautify it and raise the property values, kind
  • of faggotize the houses, and then we
  • can't afford to live there anymore because the taxes go up
  • and everybody wants to move in.
  • And I tell people, if you really want
  • to know where property values are going to rise,
  • follow the queer.
  • It's what we do.
  • So early '80s, I'd really come into my own.
  • I was living openly as a gay man.
  • I went to work for a public sector labor union.
  • And I actually came out at work.
  • It was something that I hadn't planned on doing,
  • but it was something that I needed
  • to do because I had come to terms with being
  • gay with my wife and my family.
  • My ex-wife.
  • And ironically, all the terrible things
  • that I thought were going to happen when I came out
  • didn't happen.
  • I didn't lose my children.
  • I wasn't ostracized by my family.
  • I think I was very fortunate because I've
  • heard horror stories from a lot of people
  • about how their family rejects them and turns on them.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Back up just a little bit then.
  • I want to explore a little bit why you felt
  • or how you got to the point where you felt
  • that you needed to come out.
  • What was driving that decision?
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, one of the things
  • that drove my decision to come out at work
  • was the realization that what I was
  • doing for a living, which was representing people at the work
  • site.
  • Labor unions were historically famous for being on the cutting
  • edge of social justice movements in this country,
  • including the civil rights movement.
  • And I think historically, people forget that Martin Luther
  • King, when he was in Memphis and when he was shot,
  • he was there on behalf of striking garbage workers.
  • AFSCME employees.
  • And I was working for a AFSCME union.
  • And so it wasn't lost to me that I was now
  • working in an industry where I realized
  • that the contracts that we were negotiating
  • and the benefits that we were proposing for the rank and file
  • people tacitly excluded any reference to gender
  • identity, sexual orientation.
  • This is pre-domestic partner benefit negotiations.
  • So I felt that it was important for me personally
  • to make it clear to my employer that I was gay.
  • It was a couple of years after I'd started working there.
  • Believe me, I didn't just jump in and say, oh, I'm queer.
  • I'm here.
  • Hire me.
  • But I had built a reputation at that point in time.
  • And I had been active as a member of my union
  • before I went to work for the union.
  • The early '80s were pretty rocky,
  • primarily because at that time, AIDS and HIV started to hit.
  • I remember the first time I started hearing
  • about what they were then calling this "gay cancer."
  • And being in Rochester, we were kind of isolated,
  • we thought, from the impact of what we were reading
  • about in the newspapers.
  • And it certainly caught my eye.
  • And we wondered about it.
  • I remember the first person that I knew personally
  • to come down with later we found out
  • to be HIV was a prominent bar owner here.
  • A fellow owned a bar called Friar's on Monroe Avenue.
  • And he had gotten sick, and nobody could really identify
  • what was wrong with him.
  • And he had the resources to search out specialists.
  • He died relatively quickly, as most people in those days did.
  • And by the time we realized what was going on,
  • it was almost too late to do anything about it.
  • People who were diagnosed in those days in the early '80s--
  • as soon as you found out somebody was diagnosed,
  • it seemed that within a matter of months, they were dying.
  • And one of the backup plans that I had
  • had when I got out of college--
  • I should have mentioned this earlier.
  • I realized that it was risky being gay.
  • I had these feelings.
  • I had been to the bars.
  • I had a lover.
  • And it was before I came out at work,
  • and I went to hairdressing school
  • to have a backup occupation.
  • And I thought, wow.
  • I went to college.
  • I had a bachelor's degree.
  • I was working on my master's and realized if I weren't careful,
  • and if they found out, especially when I
  • was working in the courts for the government,
  • I could be fired.
  • And how would I support myself?
  • How would I support my children?
  • I was divorced and paying child support
  • and responsible for everything-- their education, their health
  • insurance.
  • So I went to school and got a hairdressing license.
  • And I thought, well, if something does happen,
  • at least I'll be able to support myself.
  • When the AIDS epidemic hit, I remember
  • friends of mine getting sick.
  • And it was a pretty scary time.
  • If you were out and you were gay and you
  • went to a hospital or a doctor in those days,
  • and even suspected you were gay, they wouldn't treat you.
  • I knew people who started deteriorating physically
  • and what I could do--
  • and this is one of the blessings,
  • I suppose, of having--
  • to have a second career.
  • I was able to go and cut people's hair
  • because nobody would touch them.
  • And bring them some comfort, some relief.
  • I remember too, when I first came out, the bar scene was--
  • there was a timing to it.
  • Lesbians would come out a lot earlier than gay men.
  • They'd be in the bars, probably by 6 o'clock.
  • And by 8:30, they were gone.
  • And we didn't come out until 11 or 12 o'clock at night.
  • And so there was this separation between gay men and lesbian
  • women when I first came out.
  • And that rapidly changed with the AIDS epidemic.
  • I heard people talking about how important lesbians
  • were to gay men during the early days of the crisis.
  • And I was there and I saw it.
  • And I was fortunate in that I had--
  • I was in a committed relationship
  • for the first several years of my coming out.
  • And you know, dodged a bullet.
  • And so I did what I could.
  • And my activism around labor unions and AIDS
  • sort of dovetailed.
  • So I hearken back to what I was doing
  • during the '60s in the civil rights movement.
  • That kind of laid the foundation for me
  • in the labor union movement.
  • And I started realizing how much of an impact
  • I could potentially make on my own people
  • by advocating for LGBT people in the workplace.
  • Fast forward to the early '90s.
  • A lot was going on in the country
  • in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and we capitalized on all of the--
  • "we" meaning gay people capitalized
  • on all of the elements of organizing and mobilizing
  • that we learned in the union movement
  • and in the civil rights movement.
  • And of course, we'd heard about Stonewall.
  • It was sort of distant from Rochester,
  • but we knew about it.
  • And those of us who considered ourselves activists started--
  • we started building and forming our own network system here.
  • Part of what I did as my job with the union
  • was to get involved in politics, because I
  • was in a public sector union.
  • And so the political machine was critical to negotiating
  • with employers.
  • Whether they were the city or the state.
  • And I realized that I could make a difference because my jobs
  • became increasingly more--
  • progressively more integral to the negotiating process
  • and the organizing process.
  • So I found myself in the mid-'80s coming to work
  • for the New York State Public Employees Federation,
  • which has a statewide union that represents professional,
  • scientific, and technical people that work for the state.
  • And I had left AFSCME to work for PEF,
  • and was very pleased and surprised to find
  • that they had a very active gay and lesbian caucus within PEF.
  • So I got involved with the caucus.
  • And then I became the liaison to the LGBT members
  • in our union, which suited me just fine.
  • In the mid-'80s, there was really a movement within
  • the movement by LGBT activists to make some changes in things
  • like health insurance, bereavement leave,
  • sick leave for family.
  • And we started to redefine what family meant
  • based on our experiences and our realization
  • that the larger community, even the labor community,
  • didn't recognize our families.
  • At least not technically.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Back up a little bit.
  • I kind of want to put that in the context of--
  • and I think this was related to the AIDS crisis
  • as well, because that really brought
  • to light a lot of the rights issues
  • that gay people didn't have.
  • The right to visit your partner in the hospital.
  • A right to property that you shared
  • if a partnered died, that of--
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Correct.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Can you kind of maybe pick it up there
  • and kind of tie it in for me?
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Sure.
  • Yeah, I think what's critical to understand about what
  • was happening during the AIDS crisis was
  • the acute awareness that we had that people weren't covered
  • by health insurance.
  • A lot of times, if they did have health insurance on the job
  • and they were fired, they were without health care.
  • And even if you had health insurance
  • and you had health care, doctors and hospitals
  • were rejecting you, which--
  • again, the flip side, the double-edged sword
  • to the AIDS epidemic was that for the first time
  • in my lifetime, in my experience, which
  • began with the gay bar scene in the dark corners of the middles
  • of cities, gay people for the first time
  • were coming out into the light.
  • We were coming into churches and synagogues and public places
  • in the day time.
  • Unfortunately, to bury our dead.
  • And it was a catalyst, I think, the burying of our dead
  • and the awareness that if we didn't do something--
  • and if we didn't do something dramatic, we, as a community,
  • we're going to die.
  • Because we didn't know what was causing the disease.
  • And it wasn't until people like--
  • locally, people like Bill Valenti
  • began building AIDS awareness, and research,
  • and fundraising drives.
  • And the first Dining for Dollars here in Rochester.
  • I remember that.
  • So there was an awareness on my part
  • that what gays and lesbians didn't
  • have that straight people took for granted.
  • That safety net that their employer or the government
  • even provided for heterosexual people
  • was glaringly lacking during the AIDS crisis.
  • So fast forward to my negotiating contracts,
  • which I believed it was important for us
  • as a community within a community.
  • Meaning gay and lesbian union activists within the union
  • movement started to network.
  • And we participated.
  • I know many of us from Rochester participated in the 1993 march
  • on Washington, the gay march on Washington.
  • And it was a three-day event.
  • Another seminal moment in my life
  • where for three days in Virginia, Maryland,
  • and Washington, DC, there were a million
  • LGBT people, men and women of all colors and stripes.
  • And it was-- for the first time in my life,
  • I felt the sense of what it must be like to just walk down
  • the street and not have that inner alarm
  • bell of not being safe silenced for the first time in my life.
  • And I thought, wow.
  • This is wonderful.
  • This is what it's like to walk around as a human being,
  • as an adult and not be afraid.
  • Because I think the underlying cause of homophobia and fear
  • is a lack of knowing and understanding.
  • I felt that in Kingstree, South Carolina.
  • And I felt that in the early days of burying my friends
  • and going to hospitals.
  • And you know, wearing masks and gowns
  • and realizing that nurses weren't coming in.
  • And doctors weren't coming in.
  • And they were lying in beds.
  • And the families and friends were taking care of them.
  • And so I guess my activism--
  • I can't parcel it out and say that I woke up one
  • morning and decided that I was going to fight for gay rights.
  • It doesn't happen that way.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Let me ask you this then.
  • How did you come to the realization
  • that you could make a difference in regards to gay rights
  • through the labor unions?
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, it's an interesting story.
  • In the early 1990s, then Governor Cuomo
  • decided to extend what they then called "domestic partner
  • benefits" to state workers.
  • And domestic partner benefits simply
  • meant that if you met the criteria
  • for having a domestic partner, living
  • with someone as a couple, being financially interdependent,
  • you could sign your domestic partner up
  • for health care coverage.
  • And that was great to the extent at which it went.
  • But fast forward through 1995, Governor Pataki,
  • the Republican, came into power.
  • And simultaneously, Dennis Vacco,
  • who was the new attorney general, who was also
  • a Republican, came into office.
  • And the very first thing that Dennis Vacco did
  • was rescind what had been a standing
  • policy in his agency of not discrimination against gays
  • and lesbians.
  • And an aha moment occurred over my head.
  • And I thought, yeah.
  • Well, what one governor gives, another governor
  • can take away by executive order.
  • So part of my training was that I
  • knew if we had negotiated benefits like those
  • into our contracts, that in order for them to take them
  • away, they'd have to bargain them away.
  • The gay and lesbian caucus have started to actively promote
  • the concept of negotiating these benefits
  • into our collective bargaining agreement.
  • And I just happened to be the chief negotiator in 1995
  • for the PEF contract.
  • And part of my coalition building,
  • which I had started back in the civil rights
  • days and the college days, part of that coalition building
  • started to kick in.
  • And I went to other labor unions who were also negotiating
  • their contracts at the time.
  • And I said, look.
  • And again, it was becoming increasingly apparent to us
  • that health insurance was--
  • which in the early '70s was just a given.
  • Every employer gave you health insurance back then.
  • Kodak, Xerox, public sector workers, health insurance
  • was not an issue.
  • Everybody expected that when you went
  • to work for a company or an agency,
  • you would get your health insurance
  • and it was part of the package.
  • Well, as health insurance began to escalate in cost,
  • and we realized that it was going
  • to be an important issue at the table.
  • I met with my colleagues and counterparts
  • in other statewide unions.
  • And I remember particularly going to the Corrections
  • Officers Union, the guys who work in the prisons,
  • in the state prisons.
  • And one of the principals that I lived by was--
  • the fact that we had been discriminated against
  • didn't mean that I was going to participate
  • in that same principle.
  • Because they had been approaching us and saying,
  • look, we will give domestic partner benefits to gay people
  • but not to straight people.
  • And I said to my then colleagues, look.
  • I'm not about the business of discriminating
  • against heterosexual people on the job.
  • It's not right.
  • It's not right to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
  • And it's certainly not right to discriminate
  • against straight people.
  • So why would I want to negotiate a benefit that
  • excluded 90 percent of the potential benefactors?
  • And the corrections officers came to me
  • and said, well, we don't have any gay people in our party.
  • And I said, OK.
  • I said, but you misunderstand my proposal.
  • I don't intend to exclude heterosexuals.
  • And I think that made all the difference in the world
  • to them, that they knew that they had members who maybe
  • had been living with their girlfriends or boyfriends
  • for years.
  • And that this was something that they could embrace.
  • And that took us over the edge.
  • It was the pivotal moment and the decisive factor
  • for us being able to actually negotiate
  • for the first time in state history
  • that language into a state contract.
  • And I still point to that as probably the highlight
  • of my career, the ability to negotiate and bargain
  • health insurance benefits for LGBT people
  • into their labor agreement.
  • And it wasn't just that.
  • It was bereavement leave for their domestic partner,
  • sick leave for children of their unions.
  • And keep in mind, this is way before we even
  • thought that marriage was going to be a reality for us.
  • But it was the precursor.
  • The domestic partner benefits in our contracts
  • was the precursor to the political basis
  • for us arguing that marriage is the next logical step.
  • And because I worked in the public sector
  • and because the state legislature
  • had to approve contracts.
  • And actually, the governor-- whoever
  • the respective governor was.
  • As a sideline, I got very active in partisan politics,
  • both here in the city, and at the county level,
  • and at the state level.
  • Not just part of my job, but I was aware
  • that politics was the key to success for us as a community.
  • We had already in Rochester elected
  • the first openly gay city councilman
  • in the state of New York.
  • Tim Mains was a good friend of mine.
  • And I'm so proud of people like Tim and now Harry Bronson.
  • And I read in the paper last week
  • that Christine Quinn, who's an openly lesbian
  • woman in the city council in Manhattan,
  • is considering running for the mayor of the city of New York.
  • And you know, today, ironically, as we're
  • filming this is the inaugural festivities in Washington
  • for the first African American president of the United States.
  • And I think one of the quotes that I heard on the radio
  • today that he made is, instead of turning on each other,
  • we should be turning toward each other.
  • And you know, I revel in the fact
  • that we have elected the first African American president.
  • And twenty years ago, if somebody had sat in a chair
  • opposite me and said that we could legally
  • marry each other in New York state, I would have said,
  • you're out of your mind.
  • And twenty years to go, I would have equally said,
  • you're out of your mind if you would've
  • told me that we could have elected an African
  • American as president of the United States.
  • And today, we're talking about gay mayors, and senators,
  • and congressmen.
  • And perhaps, some day a gay or lesbian president
  • of the United States.
  • And as the father of a gay son--
  • I'm proud to call him second-generation queer--
  • the path to inclusion for us is open.
  • And there are still some hurdles to jump
  • and there are still places in this country where
  • it's not safe to be African American or a person of color.
  • And there are certainly still places
  • in this country where it's not safe to be
  • gay and lesbian and out.
  • In my memory is the vision or the visual
  • of Matthew Shepard dying and hanging on a fence in Wyoming.
  • And so it's important.
  • This whole project is critical because the veil
  • of forgetfulness about the horrors and the fear
  • and the homophobia that existed in my lifetime,
  • and the changes that have occurred in my lifetime,
  • they certainly give me pause for concern.
  • But they also give me the aspiration for hope
  • that someday people will look back at this period in history,
  • as we look back at the abolitionists
  • and we look back at the Revolutionary War and say, wow.
  • Against all odds, those people took on a European country
  • with the military might--
  • the British-- and conquered.
  • And African Americans did that in the '60s.
  • And certainly, gay Americans did that in the '80s and '90s.
  • And who knows where this will take us?
  • But I hope in some small way, people
  • that I hitched my wagon to.
  • You know, other activists, other people
  • who came before me, certainly in this city and in this state,
  • have made a difference for our community
  • and for gay and lesbian people across the country.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to go back just a little bit here
  • with your work on the labor unions.
  • There seemed to be, to me, to my way of thinking,
  • that there may be a fine line there,
  • in working within the labor unions
  • to promote legislative change on contract basis
  • with unions as opposed to enacting political change
  • through the unions.
  • Using the unions as a vehicle of enacting political change.
  • Talk to me a little bit, because there is a fine line
  • to walk there.
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, there is a fine line
  • between political change and activism.
  • And labor unions have, as I said before,
  • been at the forefront of most human and worker
  • rights and civil rights issues in this country.
  • But there was an inextricable link between partisan politics
  • and our success in creating equality
  • at the workplace in our labor unions.
  • Because keep in mind that if it weren't
  • for our political activism--
  • pride at work, Empire State Pride Agenda.
  • If it weren't for changing individual hearts
  • and minds of politicians who--
  • we passed legislation who actually then--
  • we use the power of the unions at the ballot box.
  • And we use the influence that collective bargaining and labor
  • unions had with politicians in their own self-interest
  • in getting elected and re-elected.
  • In convincing them that these issues
  • that were important to those of us who are activists
  • and who were members of labor unions, it was a package deal.
  • We got involved in politics because we realized
  • that politicians ultimately had to make decisions that
  • were going to either approve or disapprove
  • of these collective bargaining agreements
  • that we would reach with these--
  • weather it was at the city level or the county level.
  • So there was a political movement simultaneously
  • within the labor movement that coalesced
  • to increase the probability that we would
  • be able to get the votes needed down the road in the state
  • legislature and the governor to sign what we now
  • know as marriage equality in New York state.
  • And here in Rochester, I know the Rochester Area Labor
  • Federation and the Rochester Labor Council
  • in 2006, they formulated and passed
  • the first resolution in support of marriage equality
  • here in Rochester.
  • And that resolution then went to the state AFL-CIO.
  • And I called and lobbied the leaders
  • of my union, who then networked out
  • to the leaders of other unions who were sitting on the state
  • AFL-CIO at the time and said, this is an issue
  • that labor is bringing to the political arena, to the table.
  • And so labor and labor's involvement in politics
  • helped the issue of marriage equality
  • actually get the support that it needed
  • in the state legislature.
  • Because if labor unions were supporting marriage equality,
  • then politicians who needed labor support
  • for their individual political objectives and their careers
  • couldn't turn their heads.
  • Even though they may have not been
  • 100 percent behind the concept, they're pragmatists.
  • Most politicians understand that it's a game of give and take.
  • That there are concessions that they have to make.
  • And so when labor got behind marriage equality
  • in New York state, and when labor went to the legislature
  • and to the governor and said, we support marriage equality.
  • And took it from the domestic partner
  • arena, then the next logical progression and step
  • would be marriage.
  • And even then, I think there was an awareness among those
  • in the movement that simply because we had it
  • in the contract, and simply because we were passing
  • legislation here in New York state for marriage equality,
  • we recognized that at the federal level,
  • the Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA,
  • was still another hurdle for us to jump.
  • And keep in mind also that labor unions were supporting
  • progressive candidates, like President Obama, who
  • was saying that while--
  • the beginning of his first term, it didn't look like Don't Ask,
  • Don't Tell was going to be a major agenda
  • item for his administration.
  • It turned out to be something that he
  • put all of the power and influence
  • of the Office of the President of the United States.
  • So we, as gay people in the labor movement
  • involved in politics, started to support progressive candidates,
  • both at the local and at the county
  • and at the state level, that synergy that
  • occurs between local politicians and federal politicians.
  • And you know, the party, and all of the power
  • that the unions had in influencing those outcomes.
  • We
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: What challenges lie ahead?
  • And what will the role of labor unions
  • be in meeting those challenges?
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, the sad part is that there is a--
  • I think there's a direct correlation
  • in the demise of labor, both in the private
  • and the public sector in this country,
  • and the demise of what we call the middle class.
  • There were correlations between the success of workers
  • and the middle class in organized
  • labor in the mid to later part of the 20th century.
  • And if you look at what's happening in our country today,
  • the glaring disparity between the haves and the have-nots
  • and the decline of unions.
  • Not that long ago, 30 percent of American workers
  • were unionized.
  • Now, the stats are down to 12 percent.
  • And 7 percent of those are public sector workers.
  • So the decline of unions and the decline in the middle class--
  • I use this term earlier.
  • Our wagon is hitched to that team.
  • And you know, gay people and marginalized people
  • and progressive people need to understand,
  • I think, and not sit on our laurels
  • and just think everything's fine and dandy because we can get
  • married in New York state.
  • Well, you take that piece of paper into Mississippi.
  • And you know, the ink might as well be blood
  • because with the federal Defense of Marriage Act,
  • even with domestic partner benefits and health insurance
  • for married couples in New York state, as we all know,
  • the taxation problem is there.
  • Because the federal government doesn't
  • recognize our marriages.
  • And even domestic partner benefits in those
  • places where they do have DP benefits and not marriage,
  • those are taxed unlike married couples.
  • And even married gay couples have
  • to pay taxes on those benefits because of the federal Defense
  • of Marriage Act.
  • So the question about, where do we go from here?
  • We have to keep going.
  • We have to keep fighting.
  • We have keep struggling for full equality.
  • And I think the unions have demonstrated in the past
  • and they continue to demonstrate that they're allies of ours.
  • My hope, I think, is that the day
  • will come when conversations like this will be obsolete.
  • That organizations, like the Gay Alliance and Empire State Pride
  • Agenda, and Pride at Work, will be dinosaurs.
  • That we'll look back and think, why did we need those ever
  • to provide the benefits to a certain segment
  • of our population that were considered
  • marginalized and different from?
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's kind of wrap it all up.
  • All the work that you've done with activism
  • through the unions and whatnot.
  • How do you want history to reflect upon you?
  • What do you want history to--
  • Tom Privitere.
  • Oh, yeah.
  • He was the man that--
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, history.
  • You know, I think people that forget history
  • are doomed to repeat it.
  • And so I think in answer to your question,
  • how would I like to be remembered for--
  • I'd like to be remembered as somebody
  • who took pride in who I was and what I was,
  • who took pride in who we are as a community
  • and the contributions that we make
  • to society disproportionately to the size of the population
  • that we are.
  • Somebody said we were about 10 percent of the population.
  • And I think for 10 percent of the population,
  • we certainly contribute disproportionately
  • in the arts and entertainment.
  • And you know, culture and the sciences.
  • So as a group, and as part of that group
  • that I embrace now fully and totally,
  • being out and proud, and gay and proud, and just proud,
  • is what I'd like to be.
  • I'd like to be remembered as a proud person who
  • became proud of who I am, proud of who I was,
  • and proud of being part of this community.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Which brings up another question
  • that I usually ask most people.
  • Because you grew up here.
  • But what does it say about Rochester as a whole?
  • About what we've been able to do as a gay community in terms
  • of gay activism and civil rights for gay people?
  • Because Rochester, it's a small city.
  • You
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Rochester is a small city.
  • But historically, for some reason,
  • I don't know if it's cosmic or planet--
  • whatever it is.
  • We seem to be mired in a tradition in this community,
  • in this place, that smacks of historically, history-making
  • people.
  • I mean, I've read up on the spiritual history
  • of this place.
  • Native Americans were coming here for hundreds of years
  • to this valley as a place where they worshipped.
  • And you know, the spiritualist movement,
  • the Fox sisters in Sodus, New York
  • began the spiritualist community here.
  • Certainly, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Tim Mains.
  • We are a community of firsts.
  • So for a very small place and a very small part of a very large
  • country, there's just something about us
  • and our DNA and the place that we come from.
  • And the history that we have here
  • that I think sparks those of us who come from this area
  • to believe because it happened here
  • once before with other people who overcame,
  • that if it could happen to them, then
  • why can't it happen to us now?
  • And so I think we build on the history of the successes
  • in the face of daunting odds.
  • You know, abolitionists and women's suffragette movements.
  • And it certainly was the next step and the next generation
  • of civil rights and activism for us here in Rochester
  • was a natural.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: You said something really interesting
  • that kind of triggered a light bulb in my head here.
  • But you said, people like Frederick Douglass,
  • and Susan B. Anthony, and Tim Mains.
  • Interesting that you'd put someone
  • like Tim Mains in the same category as them,
  • but I don't think we would even ever
  • think of putting a contemporary into those kind of terms
  • with a Frederick Douglass or Susan B. Anthony,
  • who are noted nationally, if not internationally,
  • in the history records.
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Well, if you think of the gay civil rights
  • movement here in this country as being
  • the catalyst for gay civil rights movements worldwide.
  • And if you think about the fact that Rochester provided
  • the very first openly-gay elected official in the history
  • of the state of New York, it's certainly not a quantum leap
  • for us to realize that people like Tim,
  • with the courage and the foresight
  • and the drive to change the tide of what previously
  • had been something unthinkable.
  • To put him in the category of Frederick Douglass and Susan B.
  • Anthony, for me as a gay man, is not a big stretch.
  • I'm so proud of him.
  • And so proud of this community for what it did in the past
  • and what it continues to do to fight injustice
  • and to coalesce around people brave enough
  • to buck the system.
  • To say, the line is drawn here in the sand.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Excellent.
  • Let's leave it at that.
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: OK.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, thank you very much.
  • THOMAS PRIVITERE: Thank you.
  • KEVIN INDOVINO: Great.
  • I didn't even have to ask you that many questions.
  • Every time I went to ask you a question, you kind of already
  • moved into the question I was going to ask you.