This past Wednesday, Executive Director of the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders Lee Swislow spoke to a small group of Brandeis students and faculty in the Mandel Reading Room about GLAD and her journey through feminism and activism as a part of Feminist Coming Out Week.

Swislow first gave a brief background of her early life. "I was fairly conventional," she said as she explained her decision to leave her hometown in the Chicago suburbs for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967 because of its high male to female ratio.

Swislow had always viewed feminism as extreme, and only discovered feminism and activism while doing research for a class. She explained how she quickly embraced the concepts of feminism, non-violent activism and gay and lesbian rights. She described how much of the early anti-Vietnam war movement was organized and led by men. "All the anti-war chapters were led by men ... and there was just lots of macho-ness going on."

During an activist meeting, one of Swislow's friends and a leader within the feminist movement stood up and said, "This is ridiculous; this is not how we make change and this is not the society we want." Swislow described this moment as transformative; she realized the value of non-violent solutions toward achieving peace as well as the importance of the feminist movement.

She described coming out as a lesbian, another transformative event in her life affecting her activism in the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer community. Wanting to do more for the community, Swislow went back to school to get her nursing degree. She worked at Boston City Hospital, now a part of Boston Medical Center. "After being there for a few years, I was the head nurse of the cancer clinic in the mid-80s and that's when we started seeing a lot of people with AIDS, who were coming in with AIDS-related cancer. Boston City Hospital started their HIV/AIDS Clinic in 1986 and I was the first head nurse of the AIDS clinic there."

Swislow discussed the powerful nature of the gay community as they sought to prevent HIV/AIDS transmissions, "demanding access to treatment, [and] access to clinical trials." She noted her continual support for those who fought for compassionate use from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration when the AIDS drug AZT was shown to have beneficial results for those with HIV and AIDS.

Swislow later worked as the chief operating officer and chief nursing officer at the Cambridge Alliance, monitoring clinical operations and support services. She also worked as executive director and vice president of health services for the Sidney Borum, Jr. Health Center, which operated under the authority of the Justice Resource Institute. During her time at JRI, she worked primarily with adolescents and young adults, but also provided special services.

In 2005, Swislow became Executive Director of GLAD. Though Swislow has asserted herself as a proud feminist, she argued that advocacy for prominent community issues such as HIV/AIDS is more than feminism. "It's a community issue," she said.

Swislow closed with an emphasis on community outreach programs, and asked them to get back to combatting HIV and AIDS in the general community. "I think it's critically important that we embrace [HIV/AIDS activism]. In Massachusetts, where we've had good access to health care for HIV for years, and especially now that we have health care reform, new infections in Massachusetts have dropped over 70 percent. What that says is, we could dramatically reduce the number of new infections in this country if everybody had access to healthcare."

Swislow explained that the brunt of the work done by GLAD is through litigation and public education. While GLAD is limited in its lobbying abilities due to its 501 nonprofit status, it nevertheless has attempted to bring key legislation to Capitol Hill, including and introducing public accommodations into the Gender Nondiscrimination Act.

GLAD was founded in 1978 in response to an aggressive sting operation by the Boston Police Department. Taking place in the Boston Public Library, the sting involved male plainclothes officers soliciting men for sex. After 103 men were arrested on charges varying from indecent exposure to "open and gross lewdness," the gay community revolted against the increasingly anti-gay responses of law enforcement.

In response, John Ward, a young attorney in Boston, created GLAD. A year later, in 1979, Ward filed Doe v. McNiff, the first case filed by GLAD, charging the library and the police force with civil rights violations, namely entrapment. While the case took nearly a decade to resolve, eventually ending in a settlement, the case nevertheless set a precedent for GLAD's work within the LGBTQ community.
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