By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

Three activists who worked in the groundbreaking administration of the late Mayor Harold Washington told an audience at Gerber/Hart Library Nov. 4 that the gay and lesbian community benefited, like all Chicagoans, from Washington’s commitment to fairness.

“That really came out of who Harold was,” said Washington advisor Jackie Grimshaw. “That issue of fairness was his guiding light.”

Grimshaw served as director of intergovernmental affairs under Washington. She shared her insights and memories as part of a panel that also included David Ostrow, the first chair of the Chicago Area AIDS Task Force, and Kit Duffy, who Washington appointed as the first-ever mayoral liaison to Chicago’s gay and lesbian community.

Duffy recalled that it was a heady era, as Washington fought to make city government more responsive to residents’ desires and concerns.

“The one thing that really struck me throughout the time I served as liaison to the community was the way that process paralleled what Harold was trying to do for the entire city,” Duffy said.

Prior to Washington’s election in 1983, Duffy said, in the gay community, just as in other communities in the city, people’s access to City services was dictated by who they knew. In the gay community, she said, a small group of business owners had the ability to solve City government- or police-related concerns for people. But, Duffy said, gays and lesbians who didn’t have access to those power brokers were out of luck.

Duffy said that mirrored the “Chicago way” of doing things that was tied to jobs, patronage and machine politics in communities throughout the city.

Washington, she said, was determined to change that and give everyone equal access to City services and power.

“It was certainly time for that to change,” Duffy said. “We were flying blind, but with a complete commitment to fairness.”

The panelists all said that it was Washington’s desire to have the people of Chicago, at the most grassroots level, generate the agenda for City government. One of her first actions as liaison, Duffy recalled, was to arrange an open-ended meeting between all City department heads and a wide-ranging group of gay and lesbian activists and leaders.

“That was very symbolic of what Harold was trying to do for the whole community,” Duffy said. “‘Here are the people who are here to serve you.’ …The one thing that distinguished his administration from all the previous administrations was that it was a bottom-up administration.”

Washington’s term, from 1983-1987, also paralleled the emergence of the AIDS epidemic in the gay community. By the time he was elected mayor, Ostrow noted, the first AIDS task force had already been set up in Chicago. Problems later arose in how the Chicago Department of Public Health responded to AIDS because of Washington’s appointment of a CDPH commissioner, Lonnie Edwards, who was quickly at odds with the mayor.

“The problem in the Health Department…stemmed from the appointment of Lonnie Edwards,” Ostrow said. “He was mentally unstable.”

Ostrow and Duffy recalled that they cringed every time Edwards went to speak at a public event about AIDS because no one knew what he would say. Duffy said when Edwards was eventually removed from his office, Chicago police sent a SWAT team to evict him because he locked himself in the office with a shotgun.

Despite those problems, Ostrow said Washington’s sudden death from a heart attack in November 1987, just after he’d won a second term and secured a working majority on the City Council, deprived Chicago of a golden opportunity for more lasting change.

“The bottom line is if Harold had lived wonderful things would have happened in his administration,” Ostrow said.

The panel was organized by Gerber/Hart President Karen Sendziak and University of Chicago doctoral candidate Timothy Stewart-Winter, who led off the discussion with a slide show presentation on the history of Washington’s administration and his relationship with the gay and lesbian community.

Among the notable accomplishments of Washington’s administration, aside from his appointment of Duffy, was his appearance in Chicago’s Gay Pride Parade, the first time a sitting mayor appeared in the parade. Stewart-Winters also detailed Washington’s constant battle to pass an ordinance banning employment, housing and public accommodations discrimination against gays and lesbians in Chicago.

“What’s even more important is that he calls it part of the larger struggle for civil rights that he’s worked for all his life,” Stewart-Winters said, noting Washington’s remarks to a group of black ministers opposed to the “gay rights ordinance.”

“This is not a ‘gay rights ordinance,’” Washington said. “It is a civil rights ordinance. I have supported civil rights from day one. If people have trouble with the English language it’s not my responsibility.”

Washington’s backing of the ordinance, along with a continued push by gay and lesbian activists after his death, eventually paid off—the ordinance passed in December 1988.

Like many who worked for and with Washington, Duffy said there’s much to be proud of when recalling his administration.

“I just felt an enormous satisfaction,” she said. “I cannot tell you how privileged I felt and feel.”