Regular updates on different social justice events and topics both in CBST and beyond, including Koleinu, our Congregation Based Community Organizing initiative, as well as our exciting work in building a Jewish LGBTQ movement.

Living History: Imagining an AIDS Memorial Park

11/30/2011

Alana Krivo-Kaufman

Today, the City Planning Commission heard testimony on a proposed development in the West Village, which

would include a public park at 7th Ave and 12th St. I testified on behalf of Rabbi Kleinbaum in support of integrating an AIDS Memorial Park and Learning Center into the planned development of a public park. CBST is a Coalition Member of the New York City AIDS Memorial Park campaign, and we are excited to welcome co-founders Christopher Tepper and Paul Kelterborn at services this Friday for World AIDS Day Shabbat.

I testified for CBST amidst an array of community voices, including moving testimony in support of the AIDS Memorial Park, supported by CB2, the LGBT Center and Jean Cameron Mitchell. This testimony was mixed in with poignant personal stories and concerns about the larger residential development, which raised crucial issues facing the West Village, including lack of access to acute medical care following the loss of St. Vincent's Hospital, the need for affordable housing to maintain the character and economic diversity of the neighborhood, and concerns around retail and residential space.

Read on for a full copy of CBST's testimony this morning:

Congregation Beit Simchat Torah: Testimony to the Public Planning Commission, Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

On behalf of Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the LGBT Synagogue in the West Village, and the largest LGBT synagogue in the world, I would like to thank you for your time and for the opportunity to testify.

Congregation Beit Simchat Torah strongly supports the AIDS Memorial Park and Learning Center, on the “Triangle Site”, as a living memorial to the HIV epidemic and vital role of St. Vincent’s hospital The HIV epidemic has shaped our city through the lived experiences of destruction and loss, as well as support and survival. As a public institution, St. Vincent’s Hospital served as a crucial resource from the beginning of the epidemic until it closed its doors in 2010, a day which marked a tragic loss of care and access for lower Manhattan. Walking through the streets of the village, this history is invisible.

Over the course of the epidemic, our congregation lost between a quarter and half of our male membership to HIV. In our first decade, CBST experienced only nine deaths, but in our second decade, the death toll from AIDS had risen to over 100; by time new medications succeeded in slowing the disease, another 50 had died. The deaths of lovers, family, and friends multiplied these losses many times over.

At CBST we take time to honor the lives lost, the lives lived, and the community support. Every service incorporates the voices of people living with HIV along with our own AIDS quilt, and every year we mark World AIDS Day Shabbat. We have integrated the history of the epidemic into our physical space and our community practice. We ask that this City Planning Commission approves steps for New York City and Greenwich Village to do the same, through creating a living memorial central to the Triangle Site park, near the historic site of St. Vincent’s, the City's first major AIDS care center, and the LGBT Community Center, where much of the early community organizing to fight the epidemic began.

The HIV epidemic has been marked by fear, a lack of information, and systemic homophobia, combated by a strong history of community resistance and mutual aid. This history has shaped New York City; and deserves public acknowledgement along with integration into our collective conscience and our public space. Marking a struggle against stigma and government neglect is a fitting honor for the over 100,000 New Yorkers lost to HIV and the workers, community members and institutions which rallied in response to the crisis.

This AIDS Memorial Park and Learning Center serve as a space for recreation and sustenance for neighborhood residents, while also nourishing and honoring the lives and work of neighborhood residents, past and present. The opportunity to turn the 10,000 square foot basement into a center for community education should be actualized, to make this a living memorial, which can teach and guide us as we continue to tackle the presence of the HIV epidemic in NYC.

We support his project as a much needed community resource and historical recognition, and as a catalyst to attention to the realities of the HIV epidemic which are still with us. In our community, as in communities across the city and the country, people are growing older with HIV, and facing a growing number of medical needs and services. Every night there are 1,600 homeless LGBTQ youth on the streets of New York, all of whom are at high-risk for HIV due to living with compromised options. And HIV continues on as an epidemic, with women and gay men of color disproportionately affected.

A memorial has a multi-faceted purpose, to honor and remember lives lived, to provide a physical moral compass, and to create a community space to continue the work of struggle and community support. Please join us in supporting the New York City AIDS Memorial Park, in remembering, and in continuing this fight