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- Pauline Park is an important transgendered activist. She was
instrumental in the passing of a transgendered rights bill in New York
City. She is the co-founder of the New York Association of Gender
Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)and the Gay Asians & Pacific
Islanders of Chicago (GAPIC) in 1994. She also founded Iban/Queer
Koreans of New York in 1997.
TRANSCRIPT
Frank Copeli: Where are some of
the places you have
lived in before coming to Jackson
Heights?
Pauline Park: I have lived in 10 different cities in five
different countries on two
different continents. In brief: Milwaukee, WI; Madison, WI;
London,
England; Chicago, IL; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Berlin & Regensburg,
Germany;
Brussels, Belgium; Paris, France; and finally, NYC.
FC: How long have you lived in
Jackson Heights? Why did you move there?
PP: I moved to Jackson Heights in January 1997 from Staten
Island, where I
had been in a temporary housing situation and needed to find a new place
rather quickly. Manhattan was too expensive, and even some of the
more
desirable neighborhoods in Brooklyn were getting expensive, even back
then.
So I looked in Queens, mainly in Astoria and Jackson Heights.
FC: What kind of home do you
live in (house, apartment, coop)?
PP: I live in an apartment in a very large courtyard building.
FC: Jackson Heights is/was known
for being a gay-friendly neighborhood.
Has this changed in anyway over the
past few years?
PP: Jackson Heights is the nexus of the lesbian, gay, bisexual
&
transgender (LGBT) community in Queens; if anything, it has only gotten
more LGBT-friendly in the last few years. In my building alone,
several
gay men (including a few gay couples) have moved in recently.
FC: If JH is very gay friendly,
why do you think it is?
PP: The area of western Queens that includes Jackson Heights,
Woodside,
Sunnyside, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst and Corona may well be the most
demographically diverse spot in the United States and possibly even in
the
world, according to a recent demographic study. That ethnic
constellation
alone helps increase appreciation for diversity. But Jackson
Heights is
also the home to more gay bars than any other neighborhood in Queens;
only
Astoria comes close. Most of these bars are on or near Roosevelt
Ave.
between 69th & 78th Streets. The Queens LGBT Pride Parade
marches down
37th Ave. in Jackson Heights each June. So Jackson Heights has
been the
nexus of the LGBT community in Queens for at least 10 years. The
neighborhood may be particularly appealing to LGBT people because it is
so
easy to get into Manhattan, ironically enough. From the Roosevelt
Avenue
station, it's only a 20-30 minute ride on the EFV or R lines into
midtown
or lower Manhattan (about a 40-45-minute trip, door-to-door, during the
day
on a weekday; and about a 50-60-minute trip, door-to-door, late at
night on
the weekend); you can also catch the #7 train from 74th St.Broadway
(which
is the same station, upstairs). And the proximity to Manhattan is
attracting LGBT people to move here from Manhattan as rents and real
estate
costs continue to rise in that borough.
FC: What kind of interaction
exists within the gay community of Jackson
Heights and the other ethnic
communities of the area?
PP: It is important to point out that the LGBT community in
Jackson
Heights reflects the full ethnic diversity of the neighborhood, which is
about half Latino (predominantly Colombian and Ecuadorian) and a quarter
Asian (Chinese, Korean, Filipino and South Asian). In other
words, LGBT
people in the neighborhood are also predominantly Latino and Asian, just
like their non-LGBT neighbors. You can see this in gay bars in
Jackson
Heights, which draw a large number of Latino men. So it's not a
case of
gay white men somehow existing in isolation from straight Latinos or
Asians; we're all mixed in together.
FC: Do you feel that gay or
transgendered individuals are more or less
welcome in Jackson Heights than in
other neighborhoods of New York City? (I
would imagine that this is a very
important question for a transgendered
person to make when deciding on a
place to live.)
PP: Transgendered people in this society face pervasive
discrimination,
harassment, abuse, and violence, and so the choice of a neighborhood to
live in has very serious consequences for personal safety. I
chose Jackson
Heights in part because I had heard that it had the largest visible LGBT
community in Queens, and I have seen transgendered women walking around
the
neighborhood from time to time or sitting in one of the neighborhood
cafes.
Still, the overwhelming majority of openly LGBT people here, just as in
Manhattan, are gay men. Jackson Heights has the largest LGBT
community in
NYC outside of Manhattan, with Park Slope in Brooklyn being the third
largest such community.
FC: Tell me about NYAGRA in
terms of Jackson Heights. I found an interview
with you where you said the following:
"As a short-hand we describe NYAGRA
as a transgender organization, but our
larger project is challenging the
sex/gender binary."
PP: The New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
is the first statewide transgender advocacy
organization in New York. Our office is actually at the Latino
Commission
on AIDS in Manhattan, but of course, I live here in Queens. Being
a
statewide organization, our focus actually extends even beyond the city
limits. We use 'transgender' as shorthand to describe what we do
through
NYAGRA, but our work goes well beyond one small segment of the community
(most people tend to read 'transgender' as referring only or primarily
to
transsexuals -- those who seek or have obtained sex reassignment
surgery --
but our mission is to advocate on behalf of all transsexual,
transgendered,
and gender-variant people. Ultimately, our mission is to
transform the way
society understands gender, and that involves challenging the sex/gender
binary, which is the artificial division of the human race into two
sexes
and two genders and the rigid regulation of gender identity and
expression
through social codes and even laws. We are committed to creating
a society
in which everyone has freedom of gender identity and expression.
In
practical terms, that means getting legislation passed that helps
protect
transgendered and gender-variant people from discrimination and
violence.
NYAGRA is best known for having led the campaign for Int. No. 24, the
transgender rights bill passed by the New York City Council in April
2004
by an overwhelming vote of 45-5 (with one abstention). I am
delighted to
say that every single member of the Queens delegation, except for Dennis
Gallagher (a Republican who represents Ridgewood and other
neighborhoods in
central Queens), voted for the bill, including Helen Sears, who
represents
Jackson Heights in the Council.
FC: Is this something that you
see is especially necessary in Jackson
Heights? If so, how can this be
achieved?
PP: There is a need to educate the public on an ongoing basis,
even in a
relatively diverse and LGBT-friendly neighborhood such as Jackson
Heights.
That is one reason that NYAGRA does transgender sensitivity training for
community-based organizations, corporations, and government agencies
throughout the city. NYAGRA has actually sponsored or
co-sponsored a few
events at Queens Pride House, a center for the LGBT communities of
Queens,
which opened its site on Woodside Avenue in
Woodside in May 2001. I am actually secretary of the board of
directors
and a founding member of Queens Pride House, which was founded in
January
1997, the very month I moved to Jackson Heights. In fact, one of
the
reasons I moved to Jackson Heights was to take part in the founding of
this
important community institution. I should also
mention a third
organization that I was involved with co-founding here, the Guillermo
Vasquez Independent Democratic Club of Queens, an LGBT
political club that formed in July 2002. GVIDCQ was named for an
openly
gay Colombian AIDS activists who lived in Jackson Heights. The
Vasquez
Club serves a borough-wide constituency (just like Pride House), but
most
of the members of the executive committee live in western Queens
(Elmhurst,
Sunnyside and Jackson Heights).
FC: Thanks a bunch.
PP: You're very welcome!
back to the top
- Dr. Jeff Maskovsky (PhD Temple, 2000) is Assistant Professor of
Urban Studies at Queens College. He joined the department in the
Fall 2002. He is a cultural anthropologist whose areas of of
specialization include U.S. urban poverty, the anthropology of social
movements, and globalization and inequality. He is co-editor of the New
Poverty Studies: the Ethnography of Power, Politics and Impoverished
People in the United States (NYU Press) and is currently at work on a
book on poverty and politics in post-industrial Philadelphia. His most
recent publications also include "The Anthropology of Welfare 'Reform':
New Perspectives on U.S. Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era" (with Sandra
Morgen) in Annual Review of Anthropology 32:315-338 2003.
Maskovsky has collaborated with community groups, non-profit
organizations and health policy experts to found several
innovative community health and HIV treatment education programs
targeting youth, sexual minorities, low-income people, and people
of color. He currently serves on the board of directors of
the New York-based CHAMP (Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization for Power).
TRANSCRIPT
Frank Copeli: What is your sense of
the integration of Jackson Heights?
Jeff Maskovsky: My sense is that Jackson Heights is spatially
integrated but socially
segregated. I haven't lived there long, but so far my sense is
that people
of different races and ethnicities do not have deep social ties with
each
other, even though they may encounter each other frequently on the
streets,
in shops and in restaurants in the neighborhood.
FC: How long have you lived in Jackson
Heights?
JM: Since March of this year.
FC:
Where are some of the places you have lived before coming to Jackson
Heights?
JM: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Madrid, Spain
Manhattan (Upper
West Side)
Manhattan (Lower East Side)
Beijing, China
Taiwan, China,
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
FC: Why did you decide to move
to Jackson Heights?
JM: It is an affordable, racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood
that is
close to public transportation.
FC: Have you done any work or
research in Jackson Heights? If so, what is the
nature of the work you have done
and what were your findings (in brief, of
course)?
JM: I have not done any of my own research in Jackson Heights.
Everything I
know about Jackson Heights I have learned from secondary sources
and from
my own personal experiences in the neighborhood.
FC: What kind of residence do
you live in (house, condominium, co-op)?
JM: Co-op apartment
FC: Would you call Jackson Heights
a model of polyethnic cooperation and
interaction?
JM: No. Although I believe that there are plenty of residents
who work hard to
make connections across racial and ethnic lines, I think that
a pattern of
political exclusion exists that favors white residents over people
of color
in the neighborhood.
FC: Do you know any good places
to eat in Jackson Heights?
JM: Jackson Diner
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