Interview with Liz Bradbury
Item
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Title
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Interview with Liz Bradbury
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Interviewer(s)
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Mary C. Foltz
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Interviewee(s)
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Liz Bradbury
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Date
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2020-07-13
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Description
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Liz Bradbury opens the interview with a discussion of organizing to support the amendment of the Allentown anti-discrimination ordinance to include LGBTQ people as a protected class with PA-GALA and Felix Molina in the 1990s. She discuss using Voters’ Guides to document support or lack of support for the ordinance and lobbing for the ordinance with local politicians, city council hopefuls, and city council members. She also describes starting the Valley Gay Press during this period. The activist work of Felix Molina on behalf of the ordinance and to start the Puerto Rican Day parade is described in detail. As momentum grew to pass amendments to the ordinance, Liz discusses working with Mara Kiesling to write the revised text, which importantly included gender identity and was ultimately used to change the ordinance in 2002. The interview provides lots of details about City Council politics and races in Allentown, opposition to the ordinance (by figures like Frank McVeigh), and names of a number of key organizers who made the amendments possible. The interview also discusses the aftermath of the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the ordinance, including attention from national anti-LGBTQ organizations and failed organizing by anti-LGBTQ Allentown residents to remove protections for LGBTQ people.
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Rights
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CC BY-NC 4.0
