Interview: Glennda Testone

Interview with Glennda Testone, Executive Director of The LGBT Community Center.

Tell us about The Center‘s role in the history of AIDS in NYC.

The Center was founded in 1983 in the midst of early AIDS organizing. When the city decided to put the old school on 13th Street up for auction to a non-profit, it presented an opportunity to fulfill a dream that was articulated after Stonewall: a community center for the LGBT community. The energy to seize that opportunity came largely out of the extraordinary organizing to combat the AIDS epidemic. One of The Center’s founding directors, Paul Rapoport, was a co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Part of the advocacy to the city to sell the Greenwich Village real estate to a brand new non-profit was the promise that the building would house services for people with AIDS. In fact, the Community Health Project (now Callen-Lorde) came into being and took a month-to-month lease with the city before The Center even owned the building so that they could provide volunteer-delivered health services to people with AIDS.

Then comes the fabled story of ACT UP, which began in March 1987 when Larry Kramer appeared at The Center’s Second Tuesday speakers series and literally stirred up a new organization. For years afterward, ACT UP met every Monday in The Center’s first floor assembly hall and had countless other activities at The Center, from committee meetings that led to the formation of other organizations, to poster-making parties and civil disobedience trainings in advance of public actions, to fundraisers.

And in the mix were other groups that formed in response to the epidemic, all meeting at The Center, such as Body Positive and ACRIA, to name a couple.

Simultaneously, as The Center grew and began to develop its own programming, HIV/AIDS was always a prime concern because so many of the people who were coming here for help with issues in their lives, such as substance abuse, coming out and bereavement, were also infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. So, from the beginning to now, The Center has battled the virus in many ways.

Our visionary founding president, Irving Cooperberg, used to say that we were building for the generation after AIDS. We are not there yet, so The Center will continue to be part of the community of organizations and individuals that help people avoid infection or deal with the challenges of being infected themselves or being close to someone else who is infected.

How is The Center addressing HIV today?

In 2013, The Center dedicated $2.3 million to HIV and AIDS services. We connect people living with HIV/AIDS to medical providers, housing and public assistance, medication assistance, counseling, support and so much more. We encourage people to empower themselves and know their status with our free HIV testing and referral services, and we offer extensive HIV/AIDS education and prevention through our Center Youth program. The Center will remain dedicated to the fight against HIV/AIDS and supporting those who live with the disease until the day that we can say AIDS no longer exists.

What excites you about NYCAM’s mission?

I’m really excited about the project coming to fruition. Sadly, we are in danger of people forgetting about our past or not seeing that we are still in the midst of the epidemic. We talk to our youth program participants a lot about this. It will be so helpful to have a daily, physical reminder of what came before, the people who fought and died, and the people who are still fighting. To me, this feels like the right place for the Memorial; it’s home base for AIDS activism. So much of what happened early on is in this one-block radius. Its proximity to both The Center, where people came for help and to organize during the AIDS crisis, and St. Vincent’s, the city’s first AIDS ward where so many sought treatment, feels especially appropriate and poignant.

Who or what will you be remembering at the Memorial?

I will think about people I never met who were at the forefront of the epidemic, as well as people I have loved and lost to AIDS. I will also be thinking of the people I see everyday at The Center – staff, board members and clients – who are living with HIV and continuing to act up and fight AIDS for future generations.

Tell us a little bit more about what’s happening today at The Center.

The Center continues to be a place for connection, community and celebration of LGBT people and culture. We offer vital services and programming to address the LGBT community’s most pressing issues and needs, such as substance abuse, mental health and wellness, family planning and support and LGBT youth services. We’re currently undergoing a $9.1 million renovation made possible largely through a combination of city and state grants, complemented with private contributions, to upgrade our facility and make it the bright, vibrant home that our community deserves. We’ve always been a place to find support and camaraderie, and with the renovation we’re seeking to further fulfill our founders’ dreams of creating a place that the generation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people living beyond AIDS will be proud to call “home.”