Carmen
Vazquez, gay rights advocate
 Carmen
Vazquez, the Executive Director of Empire State Pride Agenda,
has never done anything the usual way. She quips that when
she was born in Puerto Rico in 1949, she “came feet first—never
did anything traditional, including my birth.”
This radical viewpoint is one
of her defining features. A City College grad, class of 1972,
Vazquez was part of major student protests there in 1969
to retain open admissions, create Black and Puerto Rican
Studies departments, and require education majors to learn
Spanish. Having come to New York City at age 5, these causes
held a particular resonance with her and the protest was
successful in creating the new departments and retaining
the college’s open admissions program.
Vazquez completed her masters in education at CUNY in 1973, and after a brief
stint working for the Consortium for Bilingual Counselor Education, she left
for California.
When she returned to New York
in 1994 after years of working in California, she had a reputation. “It was fabulous to be able to come back
to New York,” she said, “as an out queer and as a fairly notorious one, and be
in the middle of all the queer stuff.” Arriving to work as the director of public
policy for the Lesbian and Gay Community Center, she embarked on a seven-year
project to make the center more inclusive. Vazquez fought for transgender inclusion
as well as to include trans and bisexual people in the name and organizing of
the group.
Another group Vazquez worked
to include in the Community Center was LGBT families. She
began a group called Center Kids, which gave queer families
with children a place to create community. Such concerns
would become even more central in her later work.
While working
with the Lesbian and Gay Community Center, Vazquez also partnered
with Empire State Pride Agenda, with whom she developed "The
Network," a New York State LGBT Health and Human Services
Network. The Network continues as a coalition of nonprofit
organizations and support groups focused on the needs of
LGBT people, ranging from basic healthcare to homeless youth
services to substance abuse prevention.
One of Vazquez's
most remarkable coalition projects is called Causes in Common.
This initiative focused on the links between reproductive
rights and LGBT liberation. Vazquez has also been involved
in death sentence inequality policy and, during her tenure
with the Community Center from 1994 to 2003, pushed for an
increase in diversity and attention to issues of race.
While
her work today with Pride Agenda has a focus on equality
for families within the marriage debate, Vazquez’s other
concerns have never been set aside. Of her work now, she
says, “finally, I feel, you know, after 30-some years, I’m
a bride and I’m a translator. I can move between communities
and try and facilitate dialogue that hopefully moves us all
forward.”
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