The Gay Activists Alliance Collection, 1971-1972
New York: Gay Activists Alliance, 1971-1972. Mimeograph. Nine 8 1/2 x 11 in. flyers, one 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 in. handbill. One sheet with soiling and creasing throughout, loss at top edge; all other items very good or near fine, with some small closed tears and creasing. Item #10326
Collection of ephemera from the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), the pioneering gay rights organization, including documentation its campaign to pass the first legislation in the country banning discrimination against gay people, and of its earliest “zaps,” a direct action tactic later utilized by Lesbian Feminist Liberation, ACT UP, and others.
In disagreement over the broad revolutionary political goals, New Left-inspired militancy, and decentralized organizational structure of the earlier Gay Liberation Front, around a dozen members--including Jim Owles, Marty Robinson, Arthur Evans, Arthur Bell, and Kay Tobin Lahusen--split from the GLF in January 1970 to form the GAA. In contrast to the GLF, GAA solely focused on issues that explicitly or exclusively affected the gay community. In farther contrast, GAA had an organizational structure that included officers, committees, and sub-committees, rather than autonomous cells.
A major locus of GAA’s organizing from 1970-1974 was a New York City Council bill that would ban discrimination against gay people in New York City, known as Intro #475; it was the first bill of its kind introduced in any legislative body in America. The pressure campaign mounted by GAA on strategic City Council Members is illustrated by three flyers and a handbill that alternately make the case for the legislation and condemn dilatory and oppositional Council Members; one flyer announced a protest at a Council Member’s home in response to his delay in holding a committee vote on Intro #475. GAA’s political strategy of pressuring and organizing elected officials to build support for the use of state power to improve the lives of gay people is also demonstrated by another item in the collection: Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm’s GAA candidate questionnaire for her 1972 presidential campaign.
Of particular note in the collection is a 1971 informational sheet describing GAA’s structure, political goals, and the strategies and tactics to win them. The organization’s committee structure allowed groups of people united by different criteria and purpose to participate in campaigns in different ways. This collection illustrates the numerous bodies within GAA working towards the political goals outlined in the informational sheet: included is a statement released by the Third World Sub-Committee condemning William C. Thompson, a Black Council Member who voted against Intro #475; a program for a workshop production of Jonathan Katz’s groundbreaking play, “Coming Out!”, presented by the GAA Arts Committee; a subcommittee created for the purpose of forming a GAA presence in the Bronx; a schedule of events at the GAA Firehouse on Wooster Street, GAA’s headquarters that housed myriad other gay rights organizations, including Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), Lesbian-Feminist Liberation, and Gay Men’s Health Project, for the week of February 3, 1972; and a flyer for an action, or “zap,” targeting Alcoa, a landlord that refused to rent to gay couples.
GAA is credited for popularizing the tactic of zaps-- rowdy public demonstrations, often with an artistic component and props, meant to embarrass and pressure powerful individuals and organizations who contribute to the oppression of gay men and women; the famed grassroots organization dedicated to ending the AIDS epidemic, ACT-UP, made zaps a key tactic of their political strategy.
Overall, a collection of exceedingly rare flyers and handbills from the peak of GAA’s political activity that illustrates the wide range of focus and creative activity from one of the first post-Stonewall gay rights organizations.
“Bring your lover or come and find one. Admission free. No RSVP... Just be there.”
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