Hyperallergic, January 21, 2019

Interference Archive Hosts an Evening of Gay Liberation
Originally published in Hyperallergic on January 21, 2019, at https://hyperallergic.com/480771/interference-archive-hosts-an-evening-of-gay-liberation/

This Thursday, Interference Archive will host “an evening of Gay Liberation” with Flavia Rando and Perry Brass, “two of the gay activists who used the Alternate U as a meeting place for organizing as well as a liberated space hosting the world’s first public gay dances, including women’s dances.” After the Stonewall riots in 1969, Alternate U became a regular meeting place for gay activists to mobilize, and The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) published the first issue of Come Out! A Newspaper for the Gay Community in 1969 from Alternate U.

Rando and Brass will discuss their personal experiences during that time, as they worked towards gay rights in New York. The two will talk about the ways in which GLF became a militant movement and how the underground paper they published worked to promote “gay rights, lesbian feminism, and anti-sexism within the Movement and beyond.”

Rando is an art historian teaching Lesbian, Women’s, and LGBTQ studies. She is also the coordinator for the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Brass has published 19 books, encompassing poetry, fiction, science fiction, and advice. In 1972, he co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast. It still exists today as the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center.