Features
Joan Gardner is World Powerlifting Champion
Queer Community Project in Windham Co.
Queer Community
Project of Windham County
by
Lindsay Cobb
At
the Boys and Girls Club in Brattleboro, GBLT teenagers tell harrowing
stories of the harassment they’ve faced in high school, express
the desire to “get straight people together and tell them what it’s
all about,” and imagine a GBLT space in town that could offer counseling
for themselves and education for straight adults.
Similarly, attendees at a gathering of elder
GBLT folks, at the Front Porch Cafe in Putney, raise issues of health
care, legal rights, and the pros and cons of a GBLT space - preferably
wheelchair accessible - where they could look up local gay and lesbian
friendly health and legal resources. (They particularly bristle at the
word queer.)
And at small house parties throughout Windham
County, queer people confess to feelings of isolation in this rural corner
of Vermont, and express the desire for some way to connect with one another,
both socially and in times of crisis.
In their midst, a group calling themselves
the Queer Community Project (QCP) are taking notes and making plans to
meet these people’s needs and wishes. The QCP is the brainchild
of Alex Potter, an HIV prevention specialist for the AIDS Project of Southern
Vermont, and Mark Melchior, chair of the board of directors of the AIDS
Project.
Potter and Melchior had been discussing
the idea of an organized network for cross-generational, cross-gender,
same-sex community that was separate from the AIDS Project and, by definition,
could attract and serve a wider spectrum of the queer community than the
AIDS Project’s successful Men’s Program.
In November 2005, with an $8,000 grant
from the Unity Project, Potter was able to set in motion a process to
assess the needs of Windham County’s GLBT community, and assess
what form an organized network would take. (The Unity Project was a joint
venture between the Samara Foundation and the Vermont Community Foundation.)
Says Potter, “I don’t have a
grand vision of a physical center, so much as a crystal clear vision of
a very visible and strong, happy community face.”
Potter hired Adrienne deGuevara, a
massage therapist and owner of Padma Healing Arts in Putney, to work as
events coordinator of what became known as the Queer Community Project.
Potter and Melchior had met deGuevara at a conference on queer community
organizing in 2005, and judging by the enthusiasm and initiative she had
shown at that time, she seemed the right person to organize the QCP. August
of 2006 is her tentative deadline for coordinating six fact-finding events,
but deGuevara says it may total more than six, because each event so far
has cost less than its budgeted amount.
At first deGuevara did the organizing herself:
she hosted a house party, visited a Men’s Program potluck, sat in
on the aforementioned LGQBT youth/Gay Straight Alliance meeting, and organized
the “Discussion on Aging in the LGBT Community,” at which
Bob Woolf, board member of R.U.1.2?, was a guest speaker.
DeGuevara has subsequently formed a volunteer
advisory committee of ten people - including Potter, Melchior, and others
from the local GBLT community - to help make decisions and organize events.
These will include another house party;
a Pride Party cosponsored by the Men’s Program and Active Lesbians
of the Monadnock Area (ALMA), scheduled to coincide with the opening night
of the Brattleboro LGBT Film Festival; and a culminating “Queer
Town Meeting,” perhaps held at a local grange hall or other public
space. These events are the next steps toward defining the QCP’s
mission in the community, as deGuevara and her committeelisten to the
voices of queer folk and discern how the QCPwould meet their needs - and
even if they’ll keep the word queer in their name.
And what are folks looking for? “The
main thing I’ve heard, over all, is social events that are specifically
queer,” says deGuevara. Talks, movie nights, and dances topped that
list: events where GBLT people could meet other GBLT people. After that,
folks have talked about a place or network where they could find support
against defamation and harrassment, support around gay parenting, and
other educational topics. Other folks have brought up the idea of an archive:
“a place where youth could go,” says deGuevara, “and
read about Stonewall, or find out what some of the queer elders have done
in the past.”
So it would seem that, whatever else the
Queer Community Project learns, people may indeed be looking for a physical
center from which to organize events, or to go to for information.
DeGuevara says, “When I had a party
at my house, several people said to me, ‘It was so nice to be in
queer space.’ There are plenty of places for people who identify
with being straight, and there isn’t any really for queer people."
Lindsay Cobb is a freelance writer who lives and works in Brattleboro.