Urvashi Vaid

Early life and education

Urvashi Vaid was born on October 8, 1958, in New Delhi, India to writer Krishna Baldev Vaid and poet and painter Champa née Bali Vaid. One of three daughters, Vaid lived with her grandparents in India while her parents attended university in the US. She moved to Potsdam, New York in 1966 after her father took a teaching position at the State University of New York at Potsdam. She was politically active at a young age, writing letters to Richard Nixon in support of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, participating in anti-Vietnam War marches, and giving speeches during George McGovern's presidential campaign.

Vaid graduated from Potsdam High School in three years, in 1975, and attended Vassar College, where she studied English literature and political science. At Vassar, she was active in a variety of political and social causes, including co-founding the Feminist Union on campus (in the context of Vassar's recent transition to coed), starting the November 12th Coalition to protest sexist admission policies, co-organizing the Feminist Union Socialist Symposium, and participating in activism against apartheid. She graduated in 1979. After graduating from Vassar, Vaid moved to Boston, where she interned briefly at the Women's Prison Project and worked as legal secretary before beginning law school at the Northeastern University School of Law. She was politically active while living in Boston, co-founding the Allston-Brighton Greenlight Safehouse Network, a neighborhood anti-violence project, as well as the Boston Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance with Eric Rofes. She was also involved with Lesbians United in Non-Nuclear Action (LUNA), the Boston Food Co-op, the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), and the Boston Pride March committee. While attending Northeastern, she also worked as a writer at the Gay Community News. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Northeastern in 1983.

Career

From 1983 to 1986, Vaid was staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she initiated the organization's work on HIV/AIDS in prisons. For more than ten years, Vaid worked in various capacities at the National LGBTQ Task Force (NGLTF), the oldest national LGBT civil rights organization; first as its media director, then as executive director (1989–1992), and as director of its Policy Institute think-tank. While executive director, Vaid disrupted a presidential press conference being held by President George H. W. Bush with a sign "Talk Is Cheap, AIDS Funding Is Not". She also co-founded the Task Force's Creating Change conference.

Vaid spent ten years working in global philanthropic organizations, serving as executive director of the Arcus Foundation (2005–2010) deputy director of Governance and Civil Society Unit of the Ford Foundation (2001–2005), as well as serving on the board of the Gill Foundation (2004–2014). She was the Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School from 2011 to 2015. The project focused on the way tradition is used in movements for gender and sexuality to inform, enable or limit the movement.

Vaid was the founder of LPAC, the first lesbian Super PAC, which was launched in July 2012 and, , has invested millions of dollars in candidates who are committed to legislation promoting social justice. She was also founder of The Vaid Group, a social innovation consultancy that advises individuals and organization working to advance equity, justice and inclusion globally and domestically.

At the time of her death, Vaid was president of the Vaid Group LLC, which worked with social justice innovators, movements, and organizations to address structural inequalities based on sexual orientation, gender identity, race, gender, and economic status.

Political activism

Vaid believed that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality will occur only when the larger institutions of society and the family are transformed to be more inclusive of racial, gender, and economic difference. Her book Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) won a Stonewall Book Award in 1996.

Vaid became executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in 1989. Vaid left NGLTF in December 1992 and wrote Virtual Equality (published in 1995). She returned to NGLTF from 1997 to 2001 as the director of its think tank, the NGLTF Policy Institute. Vaid worked for five years at the Ford Foundation, and served as executive director of the Arcus Foundation. She served on the board of the Gill Foundation from 2004 to 2014. Upon the death of former president George H.W. Bush in 2018, Vaid, who had been executive director of NGLTF during his presidency, commented on the Bush's legacy regarding AIDS, saying: "If one was being charitable one could say it was a mixed legacy, but in truth it was a bad legacy of leadership ... He did not lead on AIDS."

Vaid was a staunch sexual liberationist. As Richard Burns, who had been the managing editor of the Gay Community News prior to becoming Vaid's classmate at Northeastern recalled, "If I told her about a sex club, she wanted to go, too," Burns said. "And then we did, and then we were thrown out when they discovered she was not a guy. More than once." A co-worker at the National LGBTQ Task Force remembers in article in the New Yorker, "In 1990, Urvashi gave us a fisting demonstration at our Task Force staff meeting, raising her hand in the air and creating the proper form."

In April 2009 Out magazine named her one of the 50 most influential LGBT people in the United States.

Vaid's book Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012) critiques the racial and gender bias of the mainstream LGBT movement and continues her argument that engagement with social justice is what will enable all parts of the LGBT community to realize equality and justice. Vaid told Curve magazine that her biggest fear was that LGBT communities would get preoccupied by the wins in the fight for marriage equality and slow down their movement. She argued for a more inclusive movement, one that would encompass everyone regardless of race, class, ethnicity, age, or ability.

Vaid hoped that the future of LGBT communities will accomplish two things. "One is to take care of the parts of our community that are less powerful. That means low-income LGBT people, transgender people and our community's women, whose rights are getting the crap kicked out of them, parts of our community across the board—kids, old gay people" and "The second thing I would love to see happen is for the LGBT community to use its political power and access to create a more just society for all."

In a conversation between Vaid and Larry Kramer in 1994, Vaid made an argument for intersectional solidarity within HIV and reproductive issues: "What if we tried to identify how [H.I.V.] treatment issues connect with racism…It’s going to express itself differently in your life than in mine . . . . That’s the issue of reproductive choice. It was never about men should march with women because they support women. It was more that men should march for reproductive freedom because we’re marching against the power of the state to tell you and me what to do sexually . . . If the state can say you can’t have an abortion, the state can say you can’t have sodomy."

In an article written in 2014 for the Journal of Lesbian Studies, Vaid called for a greater activist response for and by people with breast cancer. "There’s a clear need for an ACT UP type direct action movement organized around diagnosis, treatment, and care for breast cancer," she wrote. "But they are not organized to mobilize the anger and energy of breast cancer survivors and our families to pressure and demand an improvement in diagnosis technologies, in drug development, in standards of care and treatment, in health insurance coverage, for example."

Shortly after her death in 2022, Vaid was added to the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at Stonewall Inn.

Personal life

In 1988, Vaid met political comedian Kate Clinton at a war conference of gay rights activists in Warrenton, Virginia, and the couple married in 2013. She shared homes with Clinton in Manhattan and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Vaid died at her home in New York from breast cancer on May 14, 2022. She had previously been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Vaid was the aunt of Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender non-conforming writer, performance artist, and media personality.

Awards

• 1996: Stonewall Book Awards
• 1996: Lambda Legal Lambda Liberty Award
• 1997: Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund Civil Rights Leadership Award
• 1999: City University of New York, Queens College of Law Honorary Degree
• 2002: American Foundation for AIDS Research Honoring With Pride Award
• 2006: National Lesbian and Gay Law Association, Dan Bradley Award
• 2008: Gay Men's Health Crisis Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2010: Services and Advocacy for LGBT Elders Ken Dawson Advocacy Award
• 2010: CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies Kessler Award for LGBTQ Studies
• 2013: American Library Association Over The Rainbow project award for Irresistible Revolution
• 2014: 33rd Winter Roundtable, Columbia Teachers College, Columbia University Social Justice Action Award
• 2014: GLAD Spirit of Justice Award
• 2015: Honorary Degree Kalamazoo College
• 2022: National LGBTQ Task Force, Susan J. Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement

Works

• Vaid, Urvashi. (2012) Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics. Magnus Books.

In popular culture

Her name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic".

References

References

1. Ring, Trudy. (May 14, 2022). "Urvashi Vaid, Legendary Activist for LGBTQ+ Civil Rights, Dies at 63". The Advocate.
2. Gessen, Masha. (May 24, 2022). "The Prolific Activism of Urvashi Vaid".
3. Smith, Harrison. (May 16, 2022). "Urvashi Vaid, forward-thinking rights activist, dies at 63".
4. Risen, Clay. (May 17, 2022). "Urvashi Vaid, Pioneering LGBTQ Activist, Is Dead at 63". The New York Times.
5. Wayne, Tiffany K.. (2014). "Women's Rights in the United States: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Issues, Events, and People". [[ABC-Clio]].
6. Recchio, Tom. (May 18, 2022). "Urvashi Vaid, Tireless Fighter for Gay Equality, Dies at 63".
7. "Urvashi Vaid Biography". American Immigration Law Foundation.
8. Burns, Kate. (2005). "Gay Rights Activists". Lucent Books.
9. Stein, Marc. "Urvashi Vaid: The Vassar and Boston Years, 1975-1983".
10. (August 20, 2010). "About | Urvashi Vaid".
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22. "Urvashi Vaid's Irresistible Revolution". Curve Magazine.
23. (October 17, 2014). "Urvashi Vaid Talks Future of LGBT Equality and Being Honored by GLAD (AUDIO)". Huffington Post.
24. Vaid, Urvashi. (January 2014). "Chemo Killed the Small-Talk Gene". Journal of Lesbian Studies.
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31. (February 9, 1997). "Benefits". The New York Times.
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34. (2007). "2006 Dan Bradley Award Acceptance Speech". Tulane Journal of Law and Sexuality.
35. (January 9, 2009). "GMHC 2008 Savor".
36. "Urvashi Vaid, Recipient of the SAGE Ken Dawson Advocacy Award".
37. "Excerpt from Urvashi Vaid's Kessler Lecture: 'What Can Brown Do For You? Race, Sexuality and the Future of LGBT Politics'". CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies.
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39. "Social Justice Action Award". Teachers College, Columbia University.
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41. (May 14, 2022). "GLAD Mourns the Loss of Friend and Visionary Urvashi Vaid". [[Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders]].
42. (June 10, 2015). "Kalamazoo College Commencement 2015 Will be Held June 14 at 2:15 on the Quad".
43. Flanders, Laura. (May 26, 2022). "Urvashi Vaid, 1958–2022".
44. Oler, Tammy. (October 31, 2019). "57 Champions of Queer Feminism, All Name-Dropped in One Impossibly Catchy Song".