Miriam Friedlander, Early City Council champion of gay rights represented Lower East Side for 18 years
President Barack Obama said during his campaign for president that he would be a “fierce advocate” for LGBT rights. He needs to study the life of Miriam Friedlander, who served in the New York City Council from 1974 to 1991 and died October 4 at age 95, to see just what ferocity in the cause of justice looks like.
Veteran gay activist Allen Roskoff recalled Friedlander coming to the Gay Activists Alliance’s legendary Firehouse community center at 99 Wooster Street in Soho to seek the group’s endorsement for her first run for the Council in 1973, when she ran against and defeated Sheldon Silver, now the State Assembly speaker. “She worked harder than any Council member to secure passage of the gay rights bill,” he said, sponsoring it and agitating for it until it finally was enacted in 1986. “She was a total lefty.” An unapologetic socialist, Friedlander was a lifelong advocate for the oppressed. Her brother Paul died fighting Franco in 1938.
Jay Kallio, an early member of Lesbian Feminist Liberation, worked on Friedlander’s 1977 campaign. “Miriam was the liberal’s dream of an elected official,” Kallio wrote. “There was zero doubt as to where her heart lay and, if anything, she was more to the left than her staunchest supporters. Her utter devotion to LGBT rights and feminism was spectacular and relentless.”
Friedlander told this reporter in a 2001 interview that she was proud of the way her constituents overcame their fears and made room for the housing of people with AIDS, the disabled, youth, and the homeless. “Most of them became positive and working neighbors,” she said.
In the 1986 hearings on the gay rights bill, Friedlander served on the General Welfare Committee and challenged the defamation of LGBT people by some. “One opponent screamed a particularly filthy series of words at a testifier, and I lost it,” she said. “I stood up and yelled at him, ‘Out!’ And the guard removed him.”
AIDS activist Jim Eigo, who has lived on Avenue A since 1978 and was represented by Friedlander for 12 years, recalled that the city was not allowing demonstrations in front of City Hall under Mayor Ed Koch in 1987 when ACT UP was getting started, “So we contacted Miriam. Her solution: she invited several hundred of us onto the steps as her personal guests. On a glorious late fall evening, ACT UP— with a beaming Miriam in attendance — held its first (though hardly its last) gloriously noisy action on the steps of City Hall.”
Friedlander’s 112-vote loss after redistricting in 1991 to Antonio Pagan, a gay man far to her right, “was an early signal of the degree to which Alphabet City had gentrified,” Eigo wrote,” adding he is “afraid that her breed to New York politician — endlessly active, socially committed, communitarian — has now passed from the scene.”
Out lesbian Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, who represents Friedlander’s East Village district now, worked for her losing campaigns in 1991 and ’93. “I consider myself lucky that I got to know her, campaign with her, and get her support,” Mendez told the New York Times. Gay activist John Magisano recalled Friedlander speaking at a rally in 1986 after the infamous US Supreme Court Hardwick decision upholding anti-sodomy laws thundering, “We can defeat the bigots, the Noach Dears, and we can defeat the Supreme Court!” Dear, the Council voice against gay rights, is now a judge in Brooklyn.
Friedlander had “total commitment to women’s rights,” former NOW-NYC president Barbara Rochman wrote, working with her on saving the Women’s Advisory board every city agency was required to have in the early ’80s and on the Chancellor’s Task Force on Sex Equity. Friedlander was the first chair of the Council’s subcommittee on women. Alan J. Jacobs, a neighborhood and gay activist, wrote that he once “put out a broadside blasting Miriam for failing to do anything to stop the criminal takeover of our street. I got a small group together in my one-room apartment. Miriam showed up, waving my broadside, stormed into my apartment, and got us to start organizing street events to take away the spaces where the dealers thrived. It was the beginning of the end for the dealers. She always showed up at our events.”
Author and lesbian/AIDS activist Sarah Schulman wrote, “I remember many, many times over the years trudging out to the subway in the winter, and there was Miriam standing alone handing out leaflets to her constituents. We had to go to work in the snow and she did, too.” Former Stonewall president Tom Smith called her “the straight godmother of the LGBT movement.” He wrote, “She always had more energy than people half her age.” Gay and anti-war activist Bill Dobbs said, “She did her political work with great gusto that we just don’t see very often, like Bella [Abzug] did.”
Miriam Friedlander is survived by her son, Paul Friedlander, a professor of music at California State University at Chico.
Read entire article at Gay City News
Veteran gay activist Allen Roskoff recalled Friedlander coming to the Gay Activists Alliance’s legendary Firehouse community center at 99 Wooster Street in Soho to seek the group’s endorsement for her first run for the Council in 1973, when she ran against and defeated Sheldon Silver, now the State Assembly speaker. “She worked harder than any Council member to secure passage of the gay rights bill,” he said, sponsoring it and agitating for it until it finally was enacted in 1986. “She was a total lefty.” An unapologetic socialist, Friedlander was a lifelong advocate for the oppressed. Her brother Paul died fighting Franco in 1938.
Jay Kallio, an early member of Lesbian Feminist Liberation, worked on Friedlander’s 1977 campaign. “Miriam was the liberal’s dream of an elected official,” Kallio wrote. “There was zero doubt as to where her heart lay and, if anything, she was more to the left than her staunchest supporters. Her utter devotion to LGBT rights and feminism was spectacular and relentless.”
Friedlander told this reporter in a 2001 interview that she was proud of the way her constituents overcame their fears and made room for the housing of people with AIDS, the disabled, youth, and the homeless. “Most of them became positive and working neighbors,” she said.
In the 1986 hearings on the gay rights bill, Friedlander served on the General Welfare Committee and challenged the defamation of LGBT people by some. “One opponent screamed a particularly filthy series of words at a testifier, and I lost it,” she said. “I stood up and yelled at him, ‘Out!’ And the guard removed him.”
AIDS activist Jim Eigo, who has lived on Avenue A since 1978 and was represented by Friedlander for 12 years, recalled that the city was not allowing demonstrations in front of City Hall under Mayor Ed Koch in 1987 when ACT UP was getting started, “So we contacted Miriam. Her solution: she invited several hundred of us onto the steps as her personal guests. On a glorious late fall evening, ACT UP— with a beaming Miriam in attendance — held its first (though hardly its last) gloriously noisy action on the steps of City Hall.”
Friedlander’s 112-vote loss after redistricting in 1991 to Antonio Pagan, a gay man far to her right, “was an early signal of the degree to which Alphabet City had gentrified,” Eigo wrote,” adding he is “afraid that her breed to New York politician — endlessly active, socially committed, communitarian — has now passed from the scene.”
Out lesbian Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, who represents Friedlander’s East Village district now, worked for her losing campaigns in 1991 and ’93. “I consider myself lucky that I got to know her, campaign with her, and get her support,” Mendez told the New York Times. Gay activist John Magisano recalled Friedlander speaking at a rally in 1986 after the infamous US Supreme Court Hardwick decision upholding anti-sodomy laws thundering, “We can defeat the bigots, the Noach Dears, and we can defeat the Supreme Court!” Dear, the Council voice against gay rights, is now a judge in Brooklyn.
Friedlander had “total commitment to women’s rights,” former NOW-NYC president Barbara Rochman wrote, working with her on saving the Women’s Advisory board every city agency was required to have in the early ’80s and on the Chancellor’s Task Force on Sex Equity. Friedlander was the first chair of the Council’s subcommittee on women. Alan J. Jacobs, a neighborhood and gay activist, wrote that he once “put out a broadside blasting Miriam for failing to do anything to stop the criminal takeover of our street. I got a small group together in my one-room apartment. Miriam showed up, waving my broadside, stormed into my apartment, and got us to start organizing street events to take away the spaces where the dealers thrived. It was the beginning of the end for the dealers. She always showed up at our events.”
Author and lesbian/AIDS activist Sarah Schulman wrote, “I remember many, many times over the years trudging out to the subway in the winter, and there was Miriam standing alone handing out leaflets to her constituents. We had to go to work in the snow and she did, too.” Former Stonewall president Tom Smith called her “the straight godmother of the LGBT movement.” He wrote, “She always had more energy than people half her age.” Gay and anti-war activist Bill Dobbs said, “She did her political work with great gusto that we just don’t see very often, like Bella [Abzug] did.”
Miriam Friedlander is survived by her son, Paul Friedlander, a professor of music at California State University at Chico.