Interview with Carla Wallace, August 24, 2012

Amber Duke: This is Amber Duke interviewing Carla Wallace on Friday, August 24, 2012 at the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville. Carla thank you for your time today.

Carla Wallace: Thank you for talking to me Amber.

AD: For the recording can you acknowledge that you signed and understood the consent form I gave you?

CW: Yes, I understand the consent form and I signed it.

AD: Great. Can you say and spell your name for the record?

CW: Carla French Wallace. C-A-R-L-A Middle initial F. W-A-L-L-A-C-E

AD: Can you tell me when and where you were born?

CW: I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, March 3, 1957.

AD: And Carla I just want to note for this recording that you have been interviewed extensively about all of the years of your life that you've devoted to social justice work. I would refer any researcher who wants to know more about your biography to those interviews completed by myself, Cate Fosl, Tracy 1:00K'Meyer, many other researchers that are deposited at the University of Louisville archives.

During this interview in particular, I'm interested to explore fair housing issues. And particularly the protected classes of sexual orientation and gender identity. To help contextualize this conversation, can you give me your definition of the terms sexual orientation and gender identity.

CW: So I guess the way I would see it is sexual orientation has to do with sexual attraction to the opposite gender or same gender or both genders. So it would be homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality. Whereas gender identity is 2:00how we present gender to the world. There're very, I guess I would say stereotyped aspects of what people consider feminine and masculine. And gender identity has to do with how you present masculinity and femininity to the world. We believe there is discrimination against people who don't present in what's considered the feminine or masculine norm. For a woman who might present more masculine or a man who might present more feminine that has to do with their gender identity. And that is a point of discrimination.

AD: And though we're going to talk about those terms and they're named in Louisville's civil rights law, I believe they are terms that are changing or 3:00terms that have been updated. Do you want to say a little bit about that?

CW: I know for instance when we first start the struggle around housing and employment and public accommodations discrimination based on sexual orientation we didn't even have the words gender identity, we didn't know what that was about. In fact, bisexuality was not included. I think -- Fairness the struggle around these issues took place over a couple of decades and so as the movement that was pushing for these laws changed and the voices of folks who identified as bisexual or as transgender or transsexual came more to the floor, those of us 4:00less informed about it learned. I would say that the protections that we struggled for were very much framed by the developed of the movement on the ground.

AD: Well the sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes are part of local housing law here in Louisville and they became part of local housing law because they are in addition to Louisville local civil rights law. I want to take a considerable amount of time for you to describe in detail the process of getting what is known as the Fairness ordinance or Fairness passed.

CW: For me, my involvement started in the mid '80s. I myself identified initially as heterosexual, but I believe very much in the issue of equality 5:00across the board and for me this was one more marginalized group of people who were not being fully protected under existing laws. I had come out of the struggle for racial justice and to me the issues are interconnected and so this was one more piece.

I was also going through my own process of deciding well I guess it wasn't really deciding, coming out as a lesbian. [Laughs] Although I seem very heterosexual before and it changed. But that changed in the course of the struggle. In any case, probably where I got involved was 1984, '85, at that 6:00point there was no legal protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the cases of housing or public accommodations or employment. The effort to educate the community to that fact had been started by a group called Greater Louisville Human Rights Campaign. And that group had been going to the then Board of Aldermen of Louisville and saying this discrimination exists. They were pretty much getting turned away fairly easily. Told that they needed to do more education and that there wasn't support on the Board of Alderman for that kind of law.

The group realized that if they were going to be able to make a good case to at city hall they needed to get the enforcement body for civil rights laws on our side. And that was the Human Relations Commission. At that time the Human 7:00Relations Commission had a broad grouping of folks on it. Some of whom who were supportive, most of whom were not aware that the issue was a problem. And I came in around that time and I can remember several very continuous hearings where gay or lesbian folks very few would speak from behind a what are those things called where you, you know where you hide behind it to change your clothes.

AD: Like a screen.

CW: A screen yes, spoke behind a screen. Because people were afraid of losing their jobs.

AD: Were these Board of Alderman hearings?

CW: No, these were hearing with the Human Relations Commission. I don't remember what building it was in but it wasn't in City Hall. What I do remember in particular and several of us myself, Pam McMichael, David Lott, who were involved all were, especially David Lott and I, but also Pam came into that too, were involved with the Kentucky anti-racist movement. With the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression. I have been very involved with the Jesse Jackson campaign. I had come to know and respect Dr. Joseph Millen, Lyman Johnson; both of them were on the commission at the time. We had sat down with 9:00them talked about the issues it was definitely, let me see -- I think both Dr. Johnson and Dr. McMillan would say and did say, "Okay this is a learning curve for us. We haven't had this issue come up as a civil rights issue or hadn't seen it that way necessarily." What Dr. Johnson said in front of the commission it was incredibly powerful that as a black man he knew what discrimination was and this sounded like what it was.

Who came out to oppose the commission taking a positive stand on recommending to City Hall that these groups be protected were the same conservatives that had opposed equality for black Louisvillians. And Dr. Lyman Johnson saw that. Dr. 10:00McMillan saw that, they named it. I think at one point Dr. McMillan said something about, and so did Mattie Jones, it's the same people, just without the hoods. It got pretty intense, I would say if it weren't for voices like Dr. Johnson's and Dr. McMillan and Dr. McMillan was not seen as a liberal, he was very strongly Black Nationalist at that time. He and I had a number of talks about that. He said, "You know I just hadn't seen that many white people who really stood with us and stayed, you know." So that's always been my position, but in the work relationships were built around anti-Klan work and the Jesse Jackson campaign and some of that started shifting. Bill Allison was key in our 11:00conversations with Dr. McMillan too and had been part of the Daryl Owens campaign. That's when I first met Dr. Mack, was campaign for black mayor. In any case those hearings were really important; finally the commission decided its discrimination and made a recommendation in writing a resolution that the Board of Alderman should pass amendment to the civil rights legislations to include sexual orientation in its protected classes.

AD: How long was that process? That particular process?

CW: My memory was it took about a year or something like that. There were some other folks; I think that Suzie Post may have been on the commission at that point. Maybe James Chatham, although that might have been a little later. I know 12:00Eleanor Love was on, but that might have been later, do you know her name?

AD: mmmhmm.

CW: Okay. I'm trying to think of some of the other people might have been. I'm sure there's a list. But anyway, once that happened, the GLHRC was taking that to the Board of Alderman and still being told, well you know you need to go educate the community. And so for some of us who are more newly involved in the - at that time, called Lesbian and Gay Equality Movement, we came from a kind of 13:00different school of thought on the issue of social change. And that's social change does not happen because we have the right arguments or because justice is on our side. It comes because we build pressure and we push the power makers to do the right thing.

One of the first things we helped organize and this was kind of seen as -- people would talk about it in the lesbian and gay community, oh those are the political lesbians and gays. Mostly lesbians. So we decided there needed to be a march for justice would be the first time people were marching openly in the street. There was a pretty serious divide within the gay and lesbian community on whether or not that would be a good idea. There were more moderate voices that said we were putting people at risk. In fact we had gotten death threats from a guy who had been violent who had been locked up by the police; he 14:00threatened the mayor at the time, Jerry Abramson. He threatened by one of the key pastors at Metropolitan Community Church which is a gay -- mostly serving gay community church. And others that would march.

We had a very contentious meeting within the community. It was very emotional. I remember feeling somewhat illegitimate because I was barely out, if that. I felt like oh gosh, I haven't earned my stripes here. One of the things we argued was if they can tell us, if they can get us not to march because they threaten us then that will always be the tool of choice, the weapon of choice from the other side. What we said was, we will commit to the folks with concerns, with 15:00legitimate concerns, that we will have peace keepers who are also heterosexual and we will communicate with the police about who this person is, ask them to circulate a picture of who the threatening person was. And that they would commit to arrest him if he came, he ended up getting arrested in the course of the first march. He showed up.

One thing that was really significant about that first march, I remember besides the fact that folks with no protection were willing to march was that the ally relationships that had been built in the course of broader social justice work before the gay and lesbian stuff, outside of the gay community. For instance 16:00with the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, with Fellowship and Reconciliation and the ACLU, so we had heterosexual folk. I remember Antonio Wycliffe, Howard Owen, others who put on the orange vest. Howard tells this great story where he said, "Well wait a minute, people will think I'm gay if I'm a peacekeeper at the march." But then he saw Antonio was stepping up. And Howards says, "And I thought, well Antonio's not gay, he's about the machoist guy you can get. If he's going to wear the vest, then I need to wear the vest and these people are getting threatened." And Bob Cunningham was one of those voices.

It was a great example of how the ally situation could really work and allow that march to happen. I think if that march had not happened the history of the Fairness effort probably would have been changed. Because it would have encouraged those folks, well-meaning within our own community believe that 17:00social community get changed behind closed doors. And with just talking to a few people in power. For those of us who ended up launching the Fairness Campaign we believed it needs to be yes lobbying and yes, all that kind of thing, but it needs to be out in the street and visibility and testimony.

So in any case, that whole piece we marched for about - maybe, the first march was in '86 or '87 and the Fairness Campaign -- in that period we were marching and JLHRC's work had kind of tapered off a lot, in fact they were pretty much close to not continuing because they kept being told you've got to go educate by the powers that be, the elected officials.

AD: I want you to say a little bit more about that. Were the elected officials 18:00saying this is something we support but our constituents don't know about this? When they were saying they need to educate the public, what were they saying?

CW: Part of what we discovered was that it was largely only a couple of members of the board of alderman that JLHRC had the main conversations with. One of the main supporters was Melissa Mershon and she was president of the board. She supported it in theory, but she didn't believe politically she could get her colleagues to come on board. In a way she was right, the public didn't understand. When you do a campaign that is that doesn't build enough community 19:00support it's very hard to make a case in front of city hall. I've never found that city hall does the right thing because it makes sense. It's always been because it's pressure, one way or another. They may get up and say, "Oh my goodness I realized this is really needed." But it's pressure, even the good folks. Because it's hard being an elected official and being the only one supporting social justice.

So in a way we understood, we thought well okay they are right, in a way. There is a lot more public education that needs to happen. But we also do that we needed to balance that with pressure to do the right thing. When we launched the Fairness Campaign it was very much in a framework that we are going to create an 20:00atmosphere in this community in which politicians who are with us and those who are not have to do the right thing. From the beginning we launched Fairness came out of March for Justice and especially folks who had been involved in broader social justice efforts; we knew it had to go beyond that. Included some folks from broader social justice efforts like Jane Hope who was a member of Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays, PGLAG, she was actually the only straight person at that point in the room it was a small group of us. I think we were meeting in Pam McMichael's living room, and what we discussed was if we are going to expand civil rights protection to include protection based on sexual orientation we want to do it broadly, we want to do it as a broad justice coalition that doesn't only isolate the gay rights part of it. We wanted the 21:00issue of racial justice to be very much central to the struggle and honor those battles that had gone before. And we wanted to bring in folks from what was seen as the less political part of the gay community. If we were going to be successful because it was quite a division at that time for the march for justice and what was called the pride committee.

The pride committee was mostly white and male and organized the picnic, volley ball games and other events for pride week. The March for Justice got out in the street, even at that time our March for Justice chants were, "Racism, Sexism, we say No. Homophobia has got to go!" It was very much an intersectional approach 22:00to the issues. We marched saying, "Money for AIDS not for war." It was seen as kind of radial in the 'LGBT community. We knew we had to bring those pieces together. We would launch a series of one on one, two on one conversations with other folks in the broader gay community that we did not know. One of my first jobs was to go meet with a guy, I had never met name Ken Herndon who headed up the Pride committee, we figured if he could organize the Pride Committee, he had moved it from a secretive place in -- oh what's the park the city sold recently or closed way down --

AD: Otter Creek?

CW: Otter Creek. If he could move the picnic from Otter Creek to the Water Tower 23:00then that took some organizing ability. We knew we wanted people who were like on it, who could organize. We met with a guy named Jeff Rodgers who organized the volley ball games. We thought if he can organize volley ball games he knows what it means to bring people together and to plan things. We met with the head of The Letter, Humphrey Marshall who was the editor of the gay paper. I'd never met any of these people before. We met with the minister at MCC church. So just this range of folks. We also met with allies, I had to go with Anne Braden and tell her I was going to be focusing on this. And initially Anne said, "What does this mean? You're not going to be at the Kentucky Alliance Against Racism anymore?" I said, "Anne you told me we need to go find more white people. What if we can do this in a way that we can win more white people for the racial 24:00justice struggle?" She said, "Well, I don't know about that." Years later she came back and said she was wrong about that and we had indeed she said brought quite a number of people in who were white folks.

But anyway, that was our starting of the Fairness Campaign. Now when we meet with people, we told them about what we wanted to do, that we wanted to do a broad all-out effort to try to win this law. A lot of folks said to us, it's impossible, you can't fight city hall, this place is too homophobic, it's not going to happen in Kentucky. These are gay folks, mostly white gay men. Who said it's not's going to happen. But you know some lesbians too. What we were doing 25:00is not asking permission, we were saying, we are going to do this, we would love to do this. Whether or not you support us or not we want your input. Thoughts about what would be effective. What has worked or not worked in the past? We did it with the intention to be inclusive of people whether they wanted to come or not. We were also very strategically looking at who could be leaders of this campaign. So that was another part of it. So we were recruiting certain people because we knew if it looked like it was only March for Justice folk that was not going to bring the whole community.

I can remember staying up late into the night, drawing these graphs of like, okay and then we can have a Friends of Fairness organization. My partner at the 26:00time was involved in leadership as well. We had a Friends of Fairness and Friends of Fairness was going to be people that didn't have to come to all the meetings, but they could support the work, they could give their name. Folks in Friends of Fairness included people like Lyman Johnson, folks from the Presbyterian Headquarters, Nick Wilkerson who was a local business person. Members of various labor unions. I mean this was a list -- actually we called it the Advisory Council, the Fairness Advisory Council.

And then - so there was the coordinating committee that was the working team. There was the Advisory council which was very much representative of the community. Broad, diverse. Then there were Friends of Fairness which were organizations that we lobbied to come on board. That ended up being a list of hundreds of organizations. But when we started that work, groups that you would 27:00never think were saying, wait a minute too controversial do we want to take a position on that. The only groups that came on right away were groups like the Kentucky Alliance, FOR, ACLU. Then you had the all these broader groups, peace groups. Presbyterian Peace Council, Jewish Committee for Social Justice I think it was called, Jewish Women's Group. All of those were like it's too controversial -- League of Women's Voters. We had to go to all over those groups and it was only over a period of years that we eventually won their support. We continued with the Friends of Fairness building, it started with you know maybe we had like twenty groups on there. But we built, built, built throughout the year. That was an ongoing process.

We had a speaker's bureau where folks would go talk to these groups to get them on. We reached out to neighborhood groups. I remember one of the first groups to come on board were the Toonerville Trolley Association and I was like, "Who on earth are Toonerville Trolley people!" It was Old Louisville, a group in Old Louisville. Then the Cherokee Triangle Neighborhood Association oh no, I don't think if they ever came on. Which was so interesting and one of the things I loved was kind of the way that the work broke the stereotypes of who was for and against this legislation. There was which I think is partly due to racial prejudice, an assumption non the part of a lot of white gay people that the black community was opposed, well the Courier-Journal did a very early poll and they did that several times over the course of the struggle for Fairness that showed our highest support was in the West End and it was because of people's 29:00experience of discrimination.

In the South End it wasn't widely popular; it had more support than people thought it would get because of the struggle around unionization. Basic working class, a work place fairness. I remember when we went later we went door to door, and people would say to us, they would say to us in the South End, "Well I don't care who the guy's sleeping with but if they can discriminate against him they can discriminate against me." It was just that core understanding of fairness in the workplace.

We - the campaign was many pronged we had lobbying we had building the Friends of Fairness, we had I think eventually after we lost the vote the first time we 30:00started going door to door we had a yard sign campaign which was kind of un-heard of it had only been done once by Kentucky for the Commonwealth. But that was a ballot initiative in the state of Kentucky about the unmined minerals tax and it was called Save the Homeplace, there might be a picture up about it. It was about the mining companies trying to take people's land. And that initiative was one. Well looking at that I thought, "Huh, so if that was so effective at building public awareness what if Fairness does a yard sign campaign." And people were like, "We only do a yard sign campaign if the voters get to vote." And we were like, "But yeah, what if we do it to build public support." So even if it were city hall people who had to vote, we were able to 31:00have these conversations on people's door steps on would you be able to take a yard sign or not. The first one, I think it was called, no it wasn't Fairness does a city good that was a second one I think. No, no that was our first one. The next one -- anyway we did two yard signs, "Fairness Equals Everyone" was the second one I think. It was the one we did.

But anyway, back to the Board of Alderman, what we did was -- some of us had just come out of a congressional campaign in which we supported Paul Bather for congress.

AD: Can you just mention a year at this point?

CW: This was '91, the very beginning. So Paul Bather had just run for Congress, some of us had supported him in that campaign, based on that relationship. We 32:00went to Paul and we said "Paul, some of the other Aldermen kept saying we have to educate. And we know that we do, but we also need the supportive aldermen to put their name out there otherwise it looks like we have no support at all. Will you help us get some of the other alderman?" At the same time we were talking to Paul we were talking to Melissa Mershon and saying look you support this, but if you won't do so publically it's going to look like nobody supports this. So we ended up getting seven people and there's only twelve Board of Alderman people to say we will put, and this was because we were agitating we had done our broader social justice work, we were bringing relationships and that kind of agitation to the floor. So Paul definitely played a key role in helping to get Melissa to step up, in helping to get Tom Owen to step up. We had two aldermen, 33:00Jerry Clyer (sp?) and Tom Denning who had lost their recent elections so they were going to be going out in January. And we talking that would have been of January of '92 they would have gone on. We were launching it in '91 so we wanted to have a vote on the legislation before they went off the board. Jerry Clyer was famously one of the only South End Alderman, to support open housing -- white south end aldermen to support open-housing. In trying to persuade his colleagues on the nights of the first alderman vote so in the end of 1991, one of the things he did he found the flyer that had been sent to him, which said "nigger lover" because of his support of open-housing and he distributed that 34:00and said, "Hate is hate and we need to stand on the side of opposing bigotry." At that meeting.

Just to back up a minute, one of the most critical battles leading up to the Fairness formation was the battle around hate crimes. There had been a number of crosses burned. The Marshall family in southwest Jefferson County had their house bombed, fire bombed. And I was on the Board of Kentucky Alliance at that point, we had an anti-Klan campaign, we had an anti-racist violence campaign going on. We were approaching city hall about passing a hate crime ordinance, and Paul Bather was the leader of that. So on the same night that and this was a broad civil rights effort and I remember that the anti-Fairness folks went to 35:00Paul Bather and other black alderman, Reggie Meeks and others that were supporting hate crime law. And said if you take sexual orientation out we'll you know help you pass this. And Paul and Reggie and the others said, "No. we won't because you know its discrimination and it needs to be there." And I'll always appreciate Paul for standing strong in that moment. Because, it was such a significant, for those of us in Fairness it just lifted up how important those relationships were across racial lines and across struggles, and that we had built in the racial justice struggle that folks felt like we're all in this together. It was really, really meaningful to people.

It also sent a message to predominately white gay community that this was; it kind of shattered their attitudes about the stereotypes of who was with us and 36:00who wasn't. And for a lot of those folks they didn't have any relationship across racial lines and had not done anti-racist work because like most white people didn't see race as our issue. It wasn't because they weren't gay they weren't involved with the anti-racist stuff it was because they were white; they weren't involved in anti-racist work.

So in any case that was like a really pivotal moment and what we asked of the alderman, and I can't even believe we got them to agree to this. We're going to pass the hate crimes law on such and such a night and we want to introduce the legislation to include sexual orientation in existing civil rights law to protect in the areas of housing, public accommodation, and unemployment. For most folks who know city hall they say it's impossible. You couldn't get them to pass hate crime legislation, much less to introduce another controversial piece of legislation because just over the hate crimes law the homophobes came about 37:00of the wood work. This is going to be dangerous for children, how can you include homosexuals in protections. Homosexuals are criminals and all this kind of stuff. In any case, they agreed to introduce the Fairness ordinance and we ended up having our first vote, I think it was in '92. I'm pretty sure. There is a great timeline that has all of these, and I will email that to you, all of these points. I think it was in '92 we had our first vote, we used the period between the launching of Fairness and that first vote to do community education. To recruit volunteers, to build leadership, to work on ally relationships, to 38:00build the Friends of Fairness, all of that kind of thing. The first press conference in launching the Fairness Campaign included a representative of ASME (sp?), a business representative, a representative from the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and a couple of folks out of the gay community. From the beginning we wanted the visual and the reality to be a broad community standing together on this.

And so by the time we got to the first vote, several things had happened, we lost Jerry Clyer and Tom Denning, because they lost their seats. So we were faced with a situation where we only knew that we had five for sure. And that is 39:00not or was it four for sure, no I think it was five -- and that's not a winning hand on the Board of Alderman. The history of the Board of Alderman is they never vote on anything unless they are pretty sure they can win it. For us to convince them they had to vote anyway and they were like, "But you're going to lose." We said, "That's not the point, we need to go on record. We need the anti-people to go on record because that will help us build this campaign." What happened was a very conservative investor in Bank of Louisville who name is Al Schneider, he was a major holder, he was the one who began the Galt House, the Galt House family, all of that. Incredibly homophobic. He went to the Bank of Louisville which was Paul Bather's employer and said, "You need to tell Paul Bather he is not allowed to be for the Fairness amendment or his employment will 40:00be in jeopardy." Paul at the time at two sons, I don't know if you ever met them, great young men. I met them again at Paul's funeral recently and they're grown up. [Laughs] They were smaller at the time; he's putting them through school. It wasn't okay with us, but Paul changed his vote to an anti-fairness vote. It was incredibly devastating with us because of the relationships we had built with Paul. He didn't say that's why, but we found out because somebody working at the Bank was handed a memo that if people ask about Paul Bather's support for Fairness you need to tell them not to worry, he won't be a supporter.

So what we did was we called the press and we said, would you all be willing to participate with us, we can tell you this is happening, but unless you find it out for yourself, you're not to believe us. So the press ended up having a couple of people, I can't remember which channel it was, actually go into the banks and say, "I'm really upset about Paul Bather's stance on this Fairness thing," And they were handed this thing that Paul Bather won't be supporting -- so it blew up in the press. We felt the real evil was the Bank of Louisville that had done this to Paul that had given into this Al Schneider pressure. Unofficially activists who were not acting officially of the Fairness campaign. We put stickers in all the deposit - we created deposit slips, in all over town 42:00in the Bank of Louisville. Where you get your money out people would get a Bank of Louisville banks on bigotry. And it would talk about what it was. Needless to say they were not happy about that, but it was their own fault.

Anyway loosing Paul's support was huge, it gave other's cold feet and we lost that vote, that vote went down. And it was a really devastating loss. Never-the-less it was helpful for our own community to learn that these things don't come easily. I remember Mattie Jones came and talked to Fairness folks and said, "How long did we as black folk have to fight for this? You don't just have this handed to you." I think the Fairness, the predominantly white character of the campaign especially initially, played into that idea, well if this is a 43:00democracy they should just be doing the right thing. Those are our representatives, we pay our tax dollars. You know that kind of attitude that the system works. For some of us it was an incredibly important lesson for folks to learn. No, the system does not go around handing out equality to people. Folks have had to die and blood, sweat, and tears, and fight for everything that protects human rights in this country. In a way it taught folks that this is going to be a longer struggle than we thought. And people came to the floor willing to do more. Allies stepped up farther willing to do more.

It only strengthened the campaign, I say the loses were the best things that happened to us. Because the campaign came back stronger. After the first loss was when we decided we needed to start going door to door. We launched Project Fair Vote; in our strategy conversations we knew we were going to have to challenge some of the Board of Alderman for their seats. We knew that we didn't 44:00alone did not have the capacity for that. So we worked with allies, some of the candidates who stepped forward were not the strongest candidates but what we found out what that people who are in office don't want to run against anyone. So even running against a candidate that wasn't going to win, put the fear into these elected officials, oh do we want them on our heels. When we launched Fairness we also launched a PAC, a politically action committee that could raise and give money to candidates and to organize for candidates. Electoral was part of it from the beginning.

After we lost that, we needed up in that next period through the door to door 45:00work and through building our kind of electoral network, specifically supporting some candidates that promised us that if they got in they would support Fairness. That included a candidate names Scotty Green who ran in the Crescent Hill neighborhood against someone named Russ Maple who later became a strong support of ours, but in the beginning was very hedgy about it. Scotty was new in town and he should not have won that race and it was clear to the Courier and everyone else that the reason he won it is because he was pro-Fairness and we got behind him. So that started that idea that we might have some clout. What went less noticed and again I think that's because of the skewed racial lenses of the media, was our support for an activists, grassroots at that point, grassroots activists named Denise Bentley, who we had met because she worked at 46:00Kentucky Fried Chicken and we had joined Rev Louis Coleman's challenge of racism at Kentucky Fried Chicken. She had been asked to fire a gay -- who worked at the window --

AD: Drive through.

CW: Yes, yes. She refused. We found out about this, we were already involved in the KFC protest, but this allowed us to argue to more gay folk that they should join in, it's like "Look there is homophobia and racism happening!" We got attacked nationally by some of the gay organizations. "Kentucky Fried Chicken has a policy protecting folks for sexual orientation." And we said "Okay, what are they doing about racism?" They sent us all this horrible stuff about Louis Coleman, you all shouldn't trust him. Assuming we didn't have a relationship with Louis Coleman we were just like, "Reverend, guess who we got today?" And then they wanted to negotiate with us and we said, "We won't negotiate with you 47:00because the leaders of the protest are not us. It's Rev. Coleman and the Justice Resource Center. If you want to negotiate with us about ending the protest at KFC you would need to talk to them." We wouldn't even have the conversation. Which again some of the nationally predominately white gay groups were like, "Well this corporation wants to talk to you, shouldn't you at least talk to them?" But for us, the ally relationships mattered more than whether we were going to make some deal with KFC.

So anyway out of that struggle we developed a very strong relationship with Denise Bentley and she ended up running. And when the Courier did their analysis of races to watch, Denise was running against a long term sitting alderman, Bill Wilson, who had been in forever, a black alderman. Beating an inducement, no way. The seat Scotty Green got happened to be an open seat, so that was one story. But to beat an incumbent. Fairness was very involved in supporting 48:00Denise's campaign. She was leading that, the community she came out of was leading it but we said in what ways can we help? We helped raise money; we helped with volunteers and that kind of thing. And she ended up winning that race. And the Courier totally missed it, like what? And then in an upset kind of thing.

So we got a couple of new alderman on which was very important and it created a -- the idea in the community that we had some ability electorally and I tell you what, elected officials care about nothing else except that. They do. Its like does somebody have electoral clout or not. We had people and we were raising money for them. So it was the both and. Little by little more candidates started 49:00saying, "I'll be pro-Fairness." It's funny, I'm not on our - its called Commission for Fairness and Individual Rights, I'm not on it anymore, but now candidates fight for the Fairness endorsement. It gets quite ugly. We get threatening letters, "If you don't support us!" Judges. One of the untold stories is how many judges we helped, especially women and folks of colors, not elected, but helped elect. People don't pay attention to judges raises. Folks are like there's their picture and their family. Who are they what do they stand for?

But anyway, back to the battle, specifically we started from the beginning it needed to be jobs, housing, and public accommodations. In the second vote, we agreed that the supporters of Fairness said we want to try getting the employment piece only. We were very hesitant about that. But it was interesting 50:00because what had come up, was landlords who felt like they were going to be forced to rent to people who were gay or lesbian. And they didn't want to have too. The realtors were putting big time pressure on the Board of Alderman so some of the Board of Aldermen were like we don't need this battle, let's just win employment first. We ended up having one loosing vote on employment only. After, I remember you know Suzie Post and others were like, "What you're taking housing out?" We don't want to take housing out, but they are saying they won't push this for another vote unless we do. [Whispers] Can I go to the bathroom? [Laughs]

AD: Of course, let's take a break. Starring again after a short break, the last thing we were talking about was the vote, which was a losing vote on employment only.

CW: I think one of the things we learned in the course of that is that is shouldn't be for us to compromise what we want. That the elected officials may not give us everything we want, but we need to ask for everything we need. And I think that was an important learning, I know that's how I felt after doing the employment only. We shouldn't agree to leaving other pieces out. We had gotten reports of housing discrimination, I remember taking a report myself once from a woman who lived in Old Louisville. She was renting and was just beside herself about that her landlord was going to out her if she didn't agree to have sex with him. And it was -- she felt that she was in jeopardy in her apartment; she 52:00was low-income, that she was going to lose this place and she was being threatened by him. He was clearly using the vulnerability around her being afraid she would lose her job if he outed her to put pressure on her.

We had cases where folks had gone to get apartments and if they asked for a 1BR and they were two men then they would be turned away, they would ask questions, why do you only want 1 BR? Which created a financial situation because it meant couples who could only afford 1BR had to stretch and get 2BR even though that's not what they wanted. It was clear to us that it was mainly around rental but we knew that it might come up in a more subtle way, even around realtors showing houses you know in certain neighborhoods to folks. To me it meant the issue of 53:00discrimination based on sexual orientation at that point, we were still doing sexual orientation, had a real class edge to it because it was lower income folks who were facing the discrimination based on what rentals were available to them.

And you know in a large part that was also true although the employment discrimination concentrated itself in lower paid jobs. We did have a couple of high profile cases of folks who were higher up in their business echelon who had been discriminated against. But in many cases it would be you know like the guy working at the window at KFC. Who happened, you know, that story carried a lot 54:00of weight for me because what ended up coming out was not only was this guy going to be fired because he was gay. Denise was told to fire him. He was also a young African American man, so to me it made the point to our own Fairness base of how intersectional all of this is. We can't -- what are we going to say, "We're representing his gay self, but not his black self." If we had negotiated a way the KFC protest.

In any case, so the housing discrimination reports, some of those may be in the records, but it was very real. And when we went back for the next vote, we knew we also had to build a case about the housing discrimination. In some ways it was more subtle because on the job we had more cases of people saying they had 55:00been discriminated against on the job. A lot of times same gender couple would leave an interview for an apartment saying, was it because we're gay, was it not? Was that a look, was it not? We wanted to capture it, so we engaged one of the TV Channels and again I'm so bad at knowing which ones they are. We did an undercover, we got people both straight and gay to step up and be couples. We had mixed gender couples and same gender couples go respond to advertisements for apartments -

AD: Same race? Biracial groups?

CW: I think we were only trying to deal with the gender thing because we didn't want to run into okay now they are discrimination against because of the biracial couple. So it would have been same race, but heterosexual - perceived 56:00heterosexual couples. We had one couple who were both hetrosexual men, but they were posing as partners. Doug McGee was one of them I think, who is still really involved in housing stuff. We got caught on tape, the person, maybe three instances saying, "Oh no." in one case the woman says "Oh no, we don't rent to your kind." It was very out there. We ended up having a hearing, not a hearing, but a meeting with Board of Alderman members where we showed that tape and even though -- I think one of the news stations helped create it, it became news itself that we had done this. That this had been exposed. For the aldermen that 57:00were trying to deny there was discrimination it made it harder for them to do so.

Again I believe it was always about the pressure, but also had to present people who were being discriminated against. Here's the testimony. We had a catch-22 for the people giving testimony. They were often people who were not engaged publically, were vulnerable as far as race, class, economically. We had to give their testimony for them. That would not stand up in a court of law, but we got the Board of Alderman to agree that based on the circumstances, somebody else would give the testimony. We did have a number of folks who were willing. Once we started asking in the Fairness base it was like, oh here's one, here's one. Diane Moten (sp?) she told her case of discrimination. Another who happened to 58:00be the volunteer coordinator at Fairness had a situation. One of our other leadership people at one of the hospitals had had a situation, so those folks were willing to tell their own stories. But for people who were vulnerable and not engaged politically and were afraid of being marked for their next job or their next apartment, we gave their testimony for them. We had people read their testimony.

What would happen with testimony nights was that the alderman who were introducing the legislation could say, "We're going to have a hearing on this" and of course the opponents wanted the hearing too so they could bring in their evidence about how we're all sodomites. They actually gave testimony, public official testimony, that gay people have their first experience with barnyard animals. That we shouldn't be allowed to have cars because we have more 59:00accidents. That we go around effecting people with AIDS, molesting children. It was horrendous. It was so horrendous that KET that filmed all of the Board of Alderman meetings had to take some of it off the record because the other side was so nasty. We would always say, "Who are the perverts here, they are the ones talking about sex all the time!"

Our cases had to do with cases of discrimination. Friends of Fairness, allies stepping up, you know testifying about why this was important. You know legal issues. We developed a binder that probably weighed about 30 lbs. of facts and testimony and if you want to see that- and statements of support and all this and we would haul these huge binders around. They started this big, but by the time we got to the Jefferson -- City Hall and the county, the county battle, the 60:00book had gotten you know up to about 30 lbs. It's funny because Melissa Mershon, I just ran into her the other day and she said, I mean I would turn to my colleagues and I would say, "Have you ever had a group come in this prepared? Every factoid we could ever need is already here in the binder!" She loved our binders. [Laughs] We felt like we had to prove our case, it was all backed up by community support which was the pressure part.

It probably was, I would say in the mid-'90s that the issue around gender identity started coming up and we started learning about what that means. I want 61:00to give huge credit to trans-gender activists who taught and pushed anyone in Fairness who was hesitant on the issue of why this needed to be included. And in a really important gathering we had gone through another round of electoral, no I think it was the same time that Denise get elected, George Unsel got elected and that was very important. But in any case when we decided gender identity was going to be in the law, we went to the Courier-Journal, we had been periodically meeting with their editorial staff. In the '80s they were actually not supportive, early '80s of this legislation. They ended up coming around and being fabulous supporters of Fairness. We would meet periodically with editorial staff, update them on our strategy, this is what we are doing, and this is what we think the challenges are. We didn't tell them what to write, but we informed them.

We also from the beginning, both with TV and the written word, we took very seriously the relationship with press. We do not call them if there is not a 62:00story. We do not waste their time, we give them the correct information, we make it worth their while because they have to go back to the station manager and argue for why their footages should be shown. So we've continued that relationship -- it got so good that we would get called by the TV, "Are you doing anything? Is there anything we can cover?" I mean it got to that point, which was great. And they would use -- when they would give a newscast on television they would put our logo. You know how they put something behind the head?

AD: [inaudible]

CW: Yes, the Fairness logo. So in the public mind, the equating Fairness and this issue was critically important. One thing I've learned in doing politics is a lot of Americans have a gut feeling that things should be fair. They have that 63:00story on the playground of the bully and it's just not fair. We could equate this issue that was very controversial and that the other side wanted to make all about sexual perversion with basic fairness and then that would be a win. So it was great when the media would do that. But what was I saying with that? Oh, that we had a, oh that the gender issues.

AD: Right.

CW: So we went to the Courier-Journal and told them that this time around we were going to be including gender identity, I mean you could have seen them, they all back in their chair, "Wait a minute, wait a minute! Louisville's just getting used to sexual orientation." I remember Betty Biasen (sp?) "Wait a minute, wait a minute you're going to have to educate me on this!" And then she was like, "Okay we're talking, I know the guy in my choir!" You know it was kind 64:00of like okay, yeah that's what it is." But they were resistant, the Courier-Journal. But we said well we understand that but it's about discrimination and this is about our whole community, so this is what we are going to do. We were a little nervous we didn't want them to push back on this gender identity thing. We knew we had to do some education on gender identity and we knew we had to do it with our supporters of the Board of Alderman. Because there were Board of Alderman who were key supporters who said, we're going to go explain what to the Board of Alderman? Transgender and transsexual and cross-dressing and gender identity? No way! And so we held Gender 101 at the Fairness office. We invited the supportive alderman down the office. Transgender leaders held court and the rest of us who didn't identify as transgender but were fairness leaders left the room and went and stayed in the front office and they talked about the discrimination they faced as transgender folks. Very 65:00multi-racial. Don Wilson, Monica Roberts a number of other folks were key in that. Once they had done telling the discrimination stories the rest of us from the Fairness the leadership came and joined with a strategy session with the Aldermen about how we were going to move this forward. And some of them were just hemming and hawing, these words are going to send up red flags on the Board of Alderman, the cross dressing. I remember George Unseld leaned back in his chair; you've met him right, you remember how tall he was. He was also very quiet, a very reflected man. He leaned back in his chair and said, "I want to say something." He said, "You know, I may spend the rest of my life trying to understand what all these words are, I may never understand this. But as a black man what I do understand is discrimination. That gender identity is going into 66:00law." And I'll tell you that shut up the others that were hesitating in the group and everybody was like okay, alright.

So gender identity was in it. It was contentious in our own community. Some folks said if you include that we're not going to win. The leadership and the core activist base of Fairness had decided if it took longer, it just took longer, but we were going to include gender identity. At national gatherings we got pushed back, don't include gender identity. We laugh now because some of those cities are still waiting to include gender identity because they left people out and telling them we'll come back for you. Well that's very hard when you have elected officials who don't like controversial issues.

So, we got up until the passage of Fairness the first time it passed in 1999, one of the key alderman who had been absolute opponent of Fairness was now helping lead the charge to pass Fairness because he had been convinced over time 67:00through pressure and education, that he needed to support Fairness, call two nights before the vote on it and said if you take out gender identity we can get a couple of more votes. And we said, "Absolutely not." And we won it, we didn't win it by a huge margin, but we won it by enough. It's one of the few laws - in fact, John Yarmouth brags about it to Barney Frank in Massachusetts and others on the congressional floor he did a whole testimony about Fairness that here in Louisville we have gender identity and some of these other cities that are more supposedly progressive are still trying to be more inclusive. We had ours before New York; in fact gender identity before New York.

In any case, when we finally did win, one of the things I think is really 68:00significant is the community claimed it as a community win. It wasn't the gay people won, it was really seen as a broad win for the community and an advance in equality and it included housing public accommodations and job discrimination. And it included the gender identity and sexual orientation. We then had to go win it in the county, which took another I think year or two years. By then we were perceived as -- and I mean we as the broad coalition -- were seen as more powerful. So it didn't take you know, the whatever, 10 years or 15 years.

AD: That is what I was wanting to ask you about you haven't said this directly but as you all were working in Louisville and working the Board of Alderman you mentioned you were also in the south end knocking on doors. Though you were 69:00engaging, you were simultaneous engaging the city and county?

CW: Yes. Well, at first most of our door knocking was in the city limits, but because of the overlap of course. Remember the county had the overlap, it was like when we looked at the map, we were like okay, there are the other areas that we really haven't gone into. Then we had to broaden it. The great thing is again, based on broader social justice relationships, I had known Daryl Owens forever. I met him in '84 -- '85 and was the key person in his mayoral campaign. Delores Delahante (sp?) you know later, she was a supporter of women's rights and equality. Russ Maple learned the hard way and he hadn't really moved on the issue of his credit, so he was a supporter. We had Rebecca Jackson who was not a supporter.

But at that time it was, Daryl Owens, Joe Corradino, who was infamous for 70:00representing the city to throw people out when they put in the new airport. He was hatch-man for Mayor Abramson and there was a lot of dislike of him. We had to convince him and we did end up convincing him, Daryl, Russ Maple and Joe Corradino at that point, and Rebecca Jackson. And we got the three of them. So that was a battle. Then merger - as part of merger, Fairness was opposed to merger and was part of the Anti-Merger Coalition for a couple of main reasons. One of them was the undermining of black representation in the city and the 71:00other was all the laws including the Fairness laws were unset. Meaning we would have to do the battle all over again, which was outrageous. I had moved back to town at the tail end of the first merger battle in the early '80s. I saw it as an effort to dilute progressive, working class, and black community support in government because the city limits included more working class people. More people of color, more students, more progressives. I was so against merger; I said we could elect Harold Washington here in Louisville if we can keep the city. But when they diluted it into the county, became whiter. Black representation went from 35 percent to 17 percent. Working class support was 72:00diluted by a lot more wealthier people in the east end. So anyway we were opposed to merger for a number of reasons, but we were able to convince a lot of the Fairness base to be against merger because the Fairness law would sunset. And also, teach the about the other issues that were important.

We were in a bazaar coalition with the Kentucky Alliance and the County police. We were all in there together. It was bazaar. I remember having conversations with the -- and I love coalitions like that because I just thinking amazing things happen. I remember talking afterwards with a white county cop. I said, "What are the guys saying about you being in this coalition?" He said, "Well--" I know what they're saying, "What are you doing in there with the blacks and the queers?" And he said, "Well, yeah that's kind of how they say it." I said "Well, what do you say?" "I tell them we're all in this together and if we don't stick together we're not going to win in." And here I was part of the police abuse coalition and the Alliance and CAPA was in there, Coalition Against Police 73:00Abuse, so it was a bazaar coalition. So anyway, we did not win. Partly because the elite in both parties, the Republican and Democratic party had made a deal to pass merger based on class interest, white and class. We had even overheard someone on the Chamber of Congress say, "This time around we're not letting the blacks," He said it differently than that, "the queers" and I think they included labor in there or something, "stop us this time." He didn't think anyone was standing there that would report it to us and of course they did.

That was a whole ugly period. We lost, it was the same time we were supporting Eleanor Jordan for Congress and she got undermined by the white part of the 74:00Democrat party, the wealthy elite. Abramson wouldn't so commercials supporting her even thought she was a Democrat because he said it would confuse his merger message to appear with a black woman. Anyway that was all gross, all of that was all gross. But because we lost on merger we had to redo the battle for Fairness again and had to win it on the Metro Council which was now a much more broader and conservative body. We extended our door to door, intensified our door to door. We targeted in areas, we even targeted Kelly Downard Republican head of the Metro Council. Ended up voting with us, because we reached into his base and showed him we had support in his area. Ended up having a pretty overwhelming pro-Fairness vote. Much different situation than in the beginning when we were seen as pariah politically.

AD: What years was the second passage?

CW: I think it was in 2005, but all those dates you should check? [Laughs]. I think I have that so you can send me an email and say here's some pieces do you have them. I also did ask Laura if she can track down that video, the housing video. She is trying to find out if that has already come over to the archives or not.

AD: Perfect.

CW: So yeah -- and then because there were slight differences in the law that had been based on the Board of Alderman and the law that had been passed in the county we had to have a vote to make those the same. And then another vote to pass that. It was just a very arduous process, but again, every one of those battle built the community stronger. They won the law in Lexington in a very different way, more behind closed doors. And they had a couple of key supporters 76:00like Ernesto Scorsonie (sp?), but here in Louisville we feel if it's ever threatened we'll be more able to defend it because we battled -- we have broad support. And we were able to go on and use the support that we built to help pass the first living wage for city employees in Louisville. And we were able to pass a long fought battle for civilian police review board. Now they got rid of both of those things in merger and the coalitions were not able to keep either of those. For a moment there it was like, we had this progressive coalition and we were doing a lot of gender setting. And I mean the big we -- down at City Hall so that was pretty exciting. And I'm sure it's one of the reasons, not 77:00because of us, that merger has been in used in cities to block - to make sure a pro-business agenda is precedence. It's no accident that in every one of the merger battles around the country, and we studied Indianapolis and others. It was the Chambers of Commerce's that were the main supporters and funders of merger battles. The Courier was big time pro-merger. That was difficult.

AD: I want to focus on this housing piece a little bit more. You gave some examples of the discrimination reports that came in, but I wanted to just ask if you had anymore examples of housing issues that were then or if you are aware of 78:00any now that LGBTQ people are facing. I just also want to say, we have talked about the inner sections within this interview of being very mindful that people are discriminated against for the totality of their being as you were saying with the KFC example we can't just represent one part of this person and not his race.

CW: One of the things about the discrimination, because there was not protection, discriminators could be very free. In a way it was more obvious because somebody would say, "We don't hire queers here." People would be told, "Oh we found out you are homosexual, clear your desk on Monday, you're out of here." It was very overt. The cases that came to us that were not overt; we had 79:00to say to people, "If you don't have explicit language that was used. Something written. If you don't have witnesses we can't count this as based on sexual orientation." Because as you say it could have been something else, were you late one day, are you a woman, are you black. So we really pushed people to what was the part -- I was just meeting with someone yesterday about discrimination against immigrant children in the schools. She was telling her story about something that happened and she kept saying all this insulting language and this abuse. I said, "You know what you mean by that, but if you can't tell us explicitly what part of it made you think this child is an immigrant." Then she got down to the teacher was joking, "I don't know Spanish, you should know 80:00English." That kind of thing starts coming forth.

So back in those years we pushed, what was it that made you think you're gay? It can't just be I'm sure that's what it was; it had to be more explicit. And the testimony we used in front of the Board of Alderman was very explicit. So the cases of housing discrimination would be cases where folks were looking for an apartment and as soon as they said we want a one bedroom and that was very prevalent in the housing stuff. They would say, "No I have another for you, you can rent a two bedroom" or "You know I'm a Christian landlord and we don't have that kind of thing there." That's the kind of thing that would come up. And it would be abuse around tenants' rights based on someone's fear they could be outed like their landlord. Like the one of pressure for sex, that was one of the 81:00more extreme ones in housing, in exchange for being able to keep your apartment and them not outing you. It could be something like I'm going to raise your rent. If you don't like it, I happen to know you are homosexual, you think you are going to be able to find something else once people know. A lot of it was fear of people's need to stay in the closet if they were going to have jobs or whatever, that was manipulated. That could be manipulated in the case of; there were a lot of cases of LGBT people who never asked for a promotion or raise because they didn't want to rock the boat. The same kind of thing could be in insisting a raise in rent, or insisting the place be painted, like all the other tenants got it painted when they moved in. You know those kind of things something that could be used against people as long as there wasn't anti-discrimination protection.

AD: Kind of moving, I mean I still want to stay with this theme, but broadening out to talk a little bit more about housing in general, fair housing. Are there governmental laws, acts, rules, regulations, or common practices that you see as an impediment to fair housing choice here in Louisville?

CW: One of the ones and Fairness is part of the coalition to restore felon voting rights; we are part of that effort. When you look at the prohibitions in public housing to former felons. That is a real problem, even though there has been a ruling come down from HUD that municipalities can choose not to continue that prohibition.

AD: It's a recommendation.

CW: It's a recommendation right. There still has not been the political will within the housing community here to change the policy locally and I think that is a real problem. It's a problem that affects people who are folks of color; among those are folks who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. There is a very high intersection between folks who are trans-gender and issues of criminality because for a lot of trans-gender folks, especially trans-gender folk of color who are in more vulnerable positions and in maybe doing things whether it's street walking or whatever that end up getting arrested and 84:00mistreated. And if folks end up being felons, now only are you trans-gender but now you have a felony record. But luckily there are protections because they are trans-gender but then the person will be kept out because they have a felony record.

I think there are serious problems on the emphasis put on homeownership and on when there are so called redevelopments happening that they want to offer up apartments at market rate that continues diminish the number of affordable, accessible, places to live for people. The income statistics on folks who are 85:00LGBT and especially for lesbians as lesbians but also as women and then if you add as women of color, means that we are going to have more folks fall within low income and vulnerable populations. That means that's a group has a higher need for affordable accessible housing. So any housing policies that tend to cut down on the number of rental units or the number of subsidized housing, affordable units, will have a disproportionate impact on the more marginalized sectors of the LGBT community.

AD: I want to ask the same question but about private organizations, businesses, citizens, this I think sort of gets into the NIMBY issue especially when we are talking about affordable housing. A couple of cases here recently folks want to build affordable housing, they want to build apartments, multi-family units and 86:00you know you have that classic situation on television where everyone in the neighborhood is at the meeting saying, "We don't want them here." Are there any other examples of that you can think of?

CW: I think it's a real problem what's been happening in Louisville where they are passing, I don't know if they are policies or laws -- when a building has apartments it can be continued as apartments, but if somebody renovates it to a single family it can't ever go back to apartments. That's a real problem, it's like right there in a single building you might wipe out six rental units in the interest for someone having a big mansion. It's happening in Old Louisville, the 87:00Highlands was one of the first places where that passed. Very intentionally, who do we want living in this neighborhood? That's what the hearing sounded like on one of those issues was who do we want living in these areas. If know that more margainzlized folk tend to be part of low income then rental units, affordable units are really, really important. So policies like that go directly I think go against the availability of affordable housing. To me it only ends up enabling gentrification. For instance in Old Louisville my understanding is that is there too, you can't take a building; there are a lot of buildings for sale right now. So if somebody wants to take a building and say, "I want to develop it into two 88:00or three rental units." If it is already a single family it can't go that way. Yet if you have rental units, it can go toward single family. I think that is clear discrimination in favor of single family homeowners and it's been devastating in a neighborhood where that is being pushed forward. We feel it disproportionately, I would argue, disproportionately impacts lower income people, LGBT people. If you look at incomes what has been popularized is this idea that gay people are wealthier, there was this study done that unfortunately some people in the national gay community thought was helpful. It's like if we can convince businesses that we have money and we take lots of vacations and buy big houses and boats, they will like us better and they will pass laws to protect us. Outrageous backfire, and good for the other side, the homophobes, 89:00they grabbed it and said, "Gay people are rich, white, and take lots of vacations and they aren't a working slob like you are, so let's be against them." They used the class thing where in fact if you look at income levels, gay people disproportionately actually make less money because of homophobia. The fear asking for a promotion, the fear of being your full self at the job. The fear of challenging unfair work conditions. For women, for lesbians, the double whammy of being lesbian and female. Or being lesbian, female, and women of color or transgender. All those extra ways that employers, even with the laws, or realtors can use to do what's more silent discrimination now. It's like okay well that person had three strikes. They might not say it out loud anymore. But 90:00we are a hire and fire at will and if you can't prove discrimination it's incredibly difficult to prove.

I think that's one of our challenges right now, with all due respect and appreciation to the Human Relations Commission. That organization that used to be an organization that fought on the side of folks who were discriminated against. By a very intentional re-engineering under Mayor Abramson, that commission was weakened so that it has become now more an arbitrator between business and people who have been discriminated against. It used to have some terrific civil rights advocates on it like Joe McMillian and Suzie Post and other wise, and they passed through Metro Council, something that seemed to make lots of sense, oh we're just going to have representatives throughout the city 91:00instead. They used it to get rid of some of the strongest voices on that commission. Because business felt it was too pro-employee and too pro-those who had been discriminated against. That has gone on, that weakening over the past twenty, twenty-five years.

AD: I wanted to go back sticking with this theme of talking about private organizations or businesses that impose impediments to fair housing and I wanted to go back to the realtor piece you spoke about earlier about realtors' kind of lobbying the Board of Alderman behind closed doors to not support Fairness. Can you say a little bit more about that?

CW: We found they were doing it through the Chamber of Congress that has a lot of business people. We got work that the Realtor Association was against the 92:00Fairness law because they didn't want to have to rent to people they didn't want. Specifically there were land owners who had units of like two or three, expressed the fear that if they had to rent one of those units to a gay couple they could potentially lose their other tenants or have a hard time renting the other units. It was interesting because in the Courier-Journal polling one of the questions they asked I don't know if they continued asking it, but they asked it in the first poll, was "Would you rather live next to a" they might have used the word, "homosexual couple or a member of a cult?" and we just ahead [inaudible] [laughs] Distasteful with cult. But when we saw that we were like 93:00yeah, we can use this poll as a benchmark as we make progress to show how attitudes are changing.

That was part of the whole realtor thing, how am I going to rent my building if there are undesirable in the buildings. That was the same thing they used when they said they didn't want to rent to a black family. Because other people won't want to live here, property values would go down. Blah, blah, blah. It was the same kind of argumentation. In fact it was proposed to us at one point that units under a certain number would be exempted. It was also proposed that teachers would be exempted; because of course the vulnerable children. We knew that to each of those we couldn't give into the argument because that legitimized an argument of pedophile or that gay people were somehow bad tenants.

AD: I want to talk a little bit about the sales piece, but just in the sales 94:00market, were there examples, just thinking about as far a race, a lot of things come up with steering. You know African American families looking for a house and the realtor steers them to this neighborhood instead of that neighborhood. Is there any of that?

CW: I don't know of any specific cases, but I did note from early on, there were gay realtors who very much catered to gay people who were looking for houses, in talking about that, I remember asking one of them a questions they said that's because people are afraid that a realtor might be homophobic and they won't give them the right treatment when they are looking for a where they want to live. Whether or not that was real or a perception, I don't know. From early on at first they were quiet about it and just go to certain circles, and you know later, gay realtors getting very prominent after the passage of the Fairness law 95:00to actually advertising themselves in the letter and you know that they have a rainbow on their card or whatever that they were specially catering to gay people looking for housing.

AD: That's interesting. Since obviously one of the things we are talking about since they're weren't protections the discrimination was overt. Now that's its illegal people can report these things. In some senses people are more aware, there is training for realtors and landlords in fair housing and these things. On the one hand you know there is less discrimination because it is the law. On the other hand you also probably know discrimination possibly changes because it's illegal, and then it became harder for people to report. Was is this or was 96:00it that kind of thing?

CW: Exactly.

AD: Keeping that in mind, I want to ask you if fair housing discrimination in Louisville is getting better or worse?

CW: I think in a way it's becoming more institutionalized. You know, at a certain point it was like somebody could have a homophobic attitude and not want to or a racist attitude and not want to rent to somebody. Before civil rights laws were passed, they could get away with it, because it wasn't legal. Now because business protects business. They figure out more -- it's almost like it becomes more insidious in the structure. I would argue with the prohibition against former felons is one example of that. So it's like they can say, but 97:00it's not based on race. But if felon's are disproportionately poorer than people of color than it becomes a defacto impact on that class of people. So I think it's like, it isn't subtle in its impact at all. Some people say well it's more subtle. I think the attitudes are more subtle, because people think it's less ok to be -

We laugh now because it's like you know there are so many heterosexual people who want to have like gay friends, because it's like more cool now. It's like okay a good thing. I mean friends of color told me after Obama's election, oh my god have you -- another white person wanting to be my friend because now it's like we have a black president so like now I want my black friend. You know that kind of garbage that happens. Or maybe it doesn't happen, but it's the perception. The system figures out, over and over again, how to protect the things that benefitted and unfortunately, discrimination has a benefit to 98:00business and a benefit to the system, because people with power want to make the decisions unfettered by whatever laws are supposed to protect the more vulnerable person on the other side of the desk. The system makes accommodations for we pass the laws and we can still discriminate.

With the Fairness law, I think yes, it's much more difficult to discriminate openly and my guess is for gays with more privilege there's a lot less discrimination based on that. For folks who are much more vulnerable, in their housing search or their job search, the combines issues of being queer without 99:00economic power or with color and with a disability, still allow discrimination to happen. You see it in the ways, you know even in the way money for housing development. The city will not dare demand that when developer get city money, they have to have a certain number of affordable units. That should be policy. If we have a need for affordable housing, then part of what the goal should be in this community is how do we expand affordable housing. Who could we do that with? Oh, people who develop housing! They should have 20 percent, 30 percent something designated as affordable housing, if they are going to get our tax dollars. That may not be a law, but it happens in the policies around the how money expenses are decided. It happens in the policies around who's going to be denied entry to public housing. That kind of thing.

You know the way that laws around whether you're married or not for public 100:00assistance you know, that is used in such horrendous ways that you have a woman saying you know I'm sorry, I love you, but you can't live here with me or my benefits will get cut for poor couples sometimes. Well, you know those situations can come up around gay people not being able to marry where you might get a better arrangement or deduction or better whatever, if you could show you are married and you can't.

I think because I feel like business really has an enorment amount of power in this society, despite our struggle is still skewed toward them. So the work is still not finished to keep fighting to make sure fair housing. If we had fair housing in Louisville we would not have a list of thousands, and thousands, and thousands of people waiting to get on Section 8 or waiting for affordable 101:00housing. Having to go through a two year process as having to seen okay to get into a homeownership project.

AD: You mentioned ideas for mandate for developers, to develop affordable housing units. Do you have any other ideas for housing initiatives that could be positive?

CW: You know I'm a supporter of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I think it's outrageous that it's been sitting there this long and they haven't figured out a way to fund it. I would love to see a tax on realtor fees. You know realtors are a very powerful group in this community, developers reign, all that kind of thing. They also make a tremendous amount of profit, a tax on that. Possibly a tax on hotel tourism to fund -- a hotel is a temporary room so it does relate to 102:00housing for a night or two. There making tremendous profits off of rooms that they rent for a night or two. So what about a tax on the hotel industry that could help fund affordable housing. I think that would be really important.

I think we need to relook at how we keep rents low in this community, you know in places like New York where there are still a few rent controlled apartments and people sit on them forever because they are so valuable. It's like wow! What about reopening a conversation that this is just not up to landlords to raise rents as they see fit. You know, people would be like "oh my god!" It's like if we are going to solve the issue of affordable housing we have to very seriously 103:00look at everyone coming to the table. I believe in accessing the profits in different sections of our community and say okay, you're making money off of this sector, here's how we need you to help cut back. And the city can argue this is going to help their revenues which allow them to fix the roads in front of the houses that the realtors want to rent. To me and Blaine Hudson said this once, it's not the lack of the possibility to do this, it's the lack of the political will to do it. We have the resources to do it; we do not have the political will to do it. To me a lot of it is going to come from the pressure from the grassroots because folks in power are going to go on and do their daily business and don't want to have to deal with issues where they are going to have contending sides.

Fairness battle ended up you know, I mean we're sorry to have been the ones to 104:00have brought it in, but that's why there are metal detectors in City Hall now. They instituted those, that kind of searching people in that kind of thing during the Fairness battle. I feel bad that happened, but it's the fear of real democracy, uh-oh here come the people. [Laughs]. It supposed to be what government is all about; they work really hard once we get organized to keep us out of there. Its hopeful to me that when we can build progressive power, we can make real changes. We do have to anticipate that the system will keep trying to hold tight to the ways that it's involved discrimination in equity exclusion. We keep having to go after them and I think that's why the whole Michelle Alexander piece on the criminal justice system is so relevant for whatever arena people 105:00are working in. Because of the core of her thesis is the way that the system has reinvented ways to use race as an exclusionary, and thus divide people, white, black, and brown who should be standing together. If we were all down there together at City Hall saying we demand affordable housing. And we had white, and black, and brown standing together out there. They would have to do more for affordable housing. If you look around the country at the cities that have more progressive legislation, it's tied to what people have been able to build on the ground level. Places like Oregon and other areas even in New York; it's been all about pressure.

AD: Is there anything else you want to mention that you haven't had a chance too?

CW: [laughs] No, but it's always great to talk to you.

AD: Thank you Carla.

CW: No this is excellent; I get going a bit so I hope this is okay.

End of audio.