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Trans woman seeks CA office
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Vol. 52 • No. 12 • March 24-30, 2022
Activists stage ‘die-in’ to call for more HIV/AIDS funding Courtesy Blair Fell
Martin Greenberg talked about the impact of COVID on the Deaf community.
Life during COVID challenges LGBTQ deaf people by Matthew S. Bajko
W
hether when he lived in San Francisco or after moving to New York City, Martin Greenberg could always rely on strangers he encountered on the street to help him navigate either city. As a deaf, legally blind gay man, he would carry a written out message asking people for help, for instance, crossing the street. But when COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, and New York City went into lockdown, Greenberg found it near impossible to leave his East Village apartment. If he did, he would often be the only person out on the streets of Manhattan, with no one to provide him assistance. Those he did encounter didn’t want to take his arm, preferring to remain socially distanced. “I still go to the gym; I go to the YMCA. Before COVID, I was going all the time in New York, swimming and exercising. When COVID hit I was stuck; everything closed down. It was very frustrating,” said Greenberg, 69, who grew up in the Bronx and moved to the Bay Area in the late 1970s. “I gained weight as I didn’t have a lot of outdoor activities. I stayed home so much because of COVID.” Those first few months of the pandemic were a scary time, recalled Greenberg. “It just changed everything in New York. It doesn’t feel safe,” he said. Greenberg recently spoke to the Bay Area Reporter via video conferencing with his partner of 13 years, Erich Krengel, 60, who is also deaf, using Tactile American Sign Language (TASL) to facilitate the interview. Further translating the conversation was author Blair Fell, a gay man who is a sign language interpreter and has worked with Greenberg for several years. Fell took inspiration from his work for his debut novel, “The Sign for Home,” being released April 5. It features as main characters Arlo, a striking 23-year-old deaf and blind man, and his new reluctant TASL interpreter Cyril, an agnostic, gay man entering into middle age. See page 8 >>
Paul Aguilar, forefront, gets his body outlined as activists stage a “die-in” outside of San Francisco City Hall as part of a Back to HIV rally to highlight the continuing needs of HIV patients
by Eric Burkett
E
voking memories of earlier angry protests, participants at a San Francisco City Hall rally for increased HIV support staged a dramatic “die-in” after speakers demanded political leaders recommit to fighting the disease with increased funding. About 40 people met for the March 21 action.
Several speakers addressed the audience, all with passion but some with heartwrenching fervor, as members of wedding parties carefully slipped in among the protesters to climb the stairs to their events inside City Hall. One lone man, protesting who knows what, stood across the street from the rally, shouting through a bright orange construction cone about
the government, COVID, the EPA, the CIA, and California’s non-existent fleet of stealth bombers. His shouting continued throughout the demonstration but those addressing the rally from the steps simply raised their voices, never quite drowning him out but keeping the attention of the audience, nonetheless. See page 8 >> Rick Gerharter
Lyon-Martin center breaks from HealthRIGHT 360, changes name by Eric Burkett
A
lmost two years to the day when thennamed Lyon-Martin Health Services announced a massive potential cut in its services, the 43-year-old clinic for women and transgender people is striking back out on its own with a new name, severing a seven-year relationship with a statewide chain of medical centers. Merged in 2015 with HealthRIGHT 360, a network of medical and substance-abuse counseling clinics that now has branches in 13 Bay Area and Southern California counties, Lyon-Martin leaders had hoped the merger would ease its ongoing financial instability. In 2011, just four years before the merger, the clinic was nearly shut down after its board announced the organization was nearly $1 million in debt. While HealthRIGHT 360 did bring in important logistical and structural changes, the hoped-for financial stability never panned out. In 2017, HealthRIGHT 360 also acquired the Women’s Community Clinic, and eventually sought to merge the services of both clinics into a single location. That effort, however, came to a halt in 2020 with the COVID outbreak and subsequent lockdown. Despite its efforts, HealthRIGHT 360 was never able to turn Lyon-Martin’s financial fortunes around. “Lyon-Martin and Women’s Community Clinic experienced very significant financial
Eric Burkett
Lyon-Martin Health Services has changed its name to Lyon-Martin Community Health and is now independent from HealthRIGHT 360.
losses over a five-year period,” stated Vitka Eisen, a lesbian who is HealthRIGHT 360’s president and chief executive officer, in an email to the Bay Area Reporter. In fact, the losses were so bad, Lyon-Martin was facing a cutback of up to 90% of its services, as reported in the B.A.R. in March 2020, just a week before the COVID lockdown. “At that time, the staff of Lyon-Martin and Women’s Community Clinic joined together with our labor partner [Service Employees
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International Union] Local 1021 to advocate for additional financial support from the San Francisco Department of Public Health,” Eisen stated. ”This was done to forestall reducing community health capacity during the pandemic – which would have been the result of the consolidated model – and to buy some time for key clinic stakeholders to determine the best path forward to support Lyon-Martin and Women’s Community Clinic’s enduring sustainability.” See page 7 >>