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.