Kate, June 9th Arrest, 2025.

ICE Out of NYC. Rise and Resist weekly Immigration vigil. Photo by Diane Greene Lent https://www.flickr.com/.../gree.../albums/72177720330332198/

Woke up Sunday, thinking about the things that happened the night before, the dancing, the gossip, the too much we talked about, the rain, the fall feeling in the air.

“People are like lice.” Do you remember that passage from TOCancer, asked Savitri.

Read a few more chapters.

Biked to Judson, where the city was in full motion, plans for a show with Yoko Ono in December.

And Says ARTnews:

"Judson Memorial Church Is Fighting Fascism by Remaking a Famed—and Controversial—Art Show About the US Flag," write Maximilíano Durón on November 10, 2025 "Exactly 55 years ago this week, three artists—Faith Ringgold, Jean Toche, and Jon Hendricks—came together to mount “The People’s Flag Show” at Judson Memorial Church in New York’s Greenwich Village. The exhibition was meant both to protest the Vietnam War and to think through the meaning of the US flag at a contentious point in history. The exhibition was directly inspired by 1967 arrest of gallery owner Stephen Radich, who was charged with desecration of the US flag. His case was heard in front of the US Supreme Court the month “The People’s Flag Show” full of experimental art, most notably in the form of the Judson Dance Theater. The show ran for a week in November 1970 and included some 150 artists who submitted work via an open call. Among those who exhibited were Ringgold, Yvonne Rainer, Kate Millet, and the Guerrilla Art Action Group. On November 13, the day before the exhibition was to close, Ringgold, Toche, and Hendricks were all arrested, charged with flag desecration, and fined $100. Their case was eventually dismissed after being taken on by the American Civil Liberties Union. This week, Judson Commons, the nonprofit arts arm of Judson Memorial Church, will mark the 55th anniversary of the original “People’s Flag Show” with a new version of the exhibition that takes up the mantel of the original exhibition..."

After service, I explored the show.

We walked East, down St Marks Place, talking about old friends, demos, missed meetings, lifetimes of greetings, courage, coming, goings, disappearances, the AIDS carnage that robbed us of far too many lives, dovetailing into COVID, the struggles, shadows from epidemic to pandemic, the crusades, lifetime passions we see here, to free medications, save a community center, to save gardens.

Fall in motion, with brown leaves, meeting at the Temperance Statue, people out in Tompkins, conversations everywhere.

Chris Flash here, Dana not at his usual park bench.

Colin there, stopping for a coffee with me at Pause Cafe on Clinton, comparing notes about the night before.

And off to a zoom meeting full of bad news, another legend on the precipice, a star who spoke out and showed courage like few else (see Kate Blog at the end of this for full story). Mark was one of the inspirations for the new book, for years and years and actions. Still around and in the struggle, but his grip, our grip tenuous.

You know whats coming, but then hearing it hits hard.

Listenning to Mark, I walked West to Stonewall to see my arrest buddy Ryan perform. Hadn’t been here since I saw Tim and Mel in the philosopher’s club, before the pandemic. Now they are gone, their stories still lingerring through the room. Ryan recalledbeing hurled from a building... the cruelties and abuses police ignore, because this is, "What Happens to Boys in Chelsea...":

"Acclaimed solo play by performer/activist Ryan F. Casey returns for a limited engagement. Sunday, November 16 at The Stonewall Inn Ryan F. Casey will present their acclaimed solo play WHAT HAPPENS TO BOYS IN CHELSEA in a monthly residency at The Stonewall Inn.

In 2006, Foster Lawrence set out on the town for a night out with friends. He ends up in a stranger's home. And then splattered, clinging to his life, on the New York City asphalt. Ten years later Foster sets out on the town once more -- to find out what happened that night. We follow Foster navigate the New York City terrain and New York City Police Department as he begins to understand his trajectory juxtaposed to queer history, societal constructs - and as per the NYPD - WHAT HAPPENS TO BOYS IN CHELSEA."

Beyond moving, Ryan told a story of our lives, his life, bodies flying through the air, police sirens, official neglect, everyone crashing about, from city to city, orphan Andy in the Tenderloin, others on the bus to Port Authority, telling stories about what happened here, running into friends, Son, then Eric, then Ryan, then dinner with Baby C, toasting to the last few hours of 55, on a magic night, making it back home to the Tropic of Cancer.

I woke up in the morning to Kate’s blog.

In her Observations of An Activist, Kate Barnhart wrote a note, called simply “Mark”, on Nov 17:”

“Ben and I were sitting next to each other when an email came in on my old, rarely used yahoo account. It was from our activist friend, Mark Milano, who I have known for 35 years, summoning us to an "extremely important" zoom call, tpic unspecified. I showed my phone to Ben, and he and I both had the same immediate reaction - whatever this was, it was not going to be good news. The call was scheduled 4pm on sunday, wedged in between a Board meeting and our sunday dinner program, but when Mark facebooked me early on sunday to confirm I would be there, I told him I planned to step away from my work to do it. I think it was 1999 when we decided to target the US Trade Representative about US police preventing countries like South Africa from producing their own, affordable HIV medications. We went to DC and I dressed in my most femme, non-activist outfit and signed in to use the library on the ground floor of this federal building. I went to the bathroom and pulled a ton of folders and papers out of my bag, walked towards the security desk, and pretended to trip on the carpet, using a theater class trick of hooking one foot behind your other ankle. As I fell, all the papers went flying everywhere, and unintentionally, so did my classes. So while security was bent over helping me up and picking up the papers, nine activists ran in the front door and up the stairs and took over the US Trade Rep's office. At the same time, ACT UP Philly, always a scrappier, lower budget org, put a ladder on the outside of the building and got on the balcony for a banner drop. I later heard the ladder was too short and they had to jump onto the balcony. I was originally going to join everyone upstairs, but when I saw the Federal Protective Service rushing in with their helmets, and heard the security guard telling them "she called herself falling!" I decided to disappear. I don't know how it didn't occur to us that this might involve a more serious legal situation, but when I reappeared at the courthouse to do support, it quickly became clear that things were not headed in a good direction. I started scanning the room with my gaydar, picking out attorneys to approach for info and help. As it got later and it became clear people were not being released that evening, we called New York and asked for more people to come help with support. Eventually, everyone was released the next day, and we all gathered in a sort of hippie restaurant. I could see some of the guys were irritated with Mark and they told me that he, a white man,had sung we shall overcome in the DC jail packed with black men. Since we had called more people to come, we didn't have enough car space going back to NYC, so I, having inherited a love of trains, offered to take amtrak. I could see that the guys needed a break from Mark, so I invited him to take the train back with me and off we went. We settled into our seats on the train, and I though Mark might rest after his night in jail. Instead he talked, with his ability to project, so useful for things like the singing he loved, and things like interrupting Al Gore, ensured that everyone in our car could hear him. What he decided to talk to me, a young queer woman, about, just a few years past the peak of AIDS deaths, was bare backing while HIV+. I did a lot of talking about sex those days, teaching people how to reduce their risk, but this was not the time or the place for that conversation. Years later, word went out among the activist community that Mark, who had been diagnosed with AIDS in the 80s, was not facing anal cancer and needed an experimental treatment to save his life. His insurance company, conveniently loated in midtown, had denied the treatment. We quickly printed up matching shirts that said something like "dying for health care" and about 13 of us stormed into the ground floor lobby of the health insurance company, blocking the revolving doors and the turnstiles that led further into the building. We were hauled away by the police, but we created enough bad press for the insurance company that the treatment was speedily approved. Later on in court, a young judge upheld our lawyer's rather shaky argument that we weren't trespassing because it was a public lobby. So Mark survived, again, well served by his combination of scientific education and research contacts and his willingness to go out on a limb. But now, on the call, with his family and his activist friends listening with concern, he was taking us through his whole medical history in the same informative tone he used to teach thousands of workshops about understanding your lab results and making decisions about your HIV treatment. He started at the very beginning, describing how his history of abuse led him to the many sexual partners that were common in gay culture at the time. He described his AIDS diagnosis at a time when AIDS was almost universally fatal, as well as his sarcoidosis. He talked about the anal cancer diagnosis, and then the game of medical whack-a-mole they placed as it popped up in different places, removing it from first one lung and then the other. How the cancer showed up in his kidney and nobody wanted to remove that until he reached out to Anthony Fauci, who found a doctor who would do it. Then he talked about how unbearable he found dialysis and his decision to udergo a transplant with his brother's kidney, even though some doctors warned that the immunosuppressive treatment required to protect a transplant would create an opportunity for his anal cancer to come back after 12 years. He explained how his oncologists and he were confident that the anal cancer was gone, but now, a year after the transplant, a spot had appeared on his biopsy. He took us through the process of assessing the spot, blow by blow, scans and then a failed biopsy. Then, as we all watched with intense concern mirrored on all the faces in the little boxes on the zoom screen, he told us about reading his PET scan report, which showed cancer all over his body. We didn't need the exact details, people were weeping in their little boxes and I turned my camera away so nobody could see my whole face, but Mark went through it with his usual precision, a spot here, a spot there, the liver met tripling in a couple of weeks. He hasn't made his decision about how to proceed yet, if there is anything out there, he may well try it like he has so often before, but he made it clear that he wanted to shatter our image of him as a perennial survivor, and ask for our support in this last stage of his life. "If you need us to get arrested anywhere, just let me know," I typed in the chat, a joke I have shared with him at other tough points. Other people pledged their support and shared their love. Off screen, Ben texted me one word, "brutal." I had four minutes to dry my face and switch into work mode before we opened the front doors to the clients waiting for dinner, so I swallowed my feelings like the bitter herbs dipped in salty water at Passover, grabbed my computer, and bolted down the stairs, landing in my seat just as the first client came though the doors.”

In between client intakes and a pile of cats, she’s rescued, Kate says it better than I could.

It had been this kind of a last few weeks.

A few highlights for the first weeks of November

Nov 5.

Elections reflections:

We are not afraid to stand up to Trump, says AOC. I've had two terms of Guiliani, three of Bloomberg, three terms of dems who worshipped developers, now a socialist, who rode in on the same pro development agenda. Talking to voters tonite, people said that they believed we could get a rent cap, maybe stop gifted and talented and improve all schools, support green spaces, immigrants, #stoptheWilliamspipeline, beat back ICE, support workers, educators, hire teachers. #saveElizabethStreetGarden. Onward nyc. I welcome the backlash to the backlash. No gods, no masters. I support community gardens and want a socialist mayor. Don't let us down. We are in the crosshairs of Washington. But this is a democracy. Thousands of volunteers knocked on doors and rejected Islamophobia. Embraced unions and teachers. #savethegardensavethecity

Nov. 6

Out to the Magician on Rivington with the gang:

C talks to V as we wait for the train, where you were the night before, what you thought might happen, or did happen, the next pitcher from the night before, the election, who's gonna be able to do what. Rent freeze, education, unions, new days old days, third administration fighting for the garden. Be happy guys, says V. And we walk home into the night. New city,old city, new problems, old.

Nov. 7

"Stop the deportation machine" and other messages from the @RiseandResist silent vigil at 26 Federal Plaza.

Says Rise and Resist: "Join us outside the Federal Bldg. where the Immigration Courts and DHS/ICE offices are located. We have some new signs directed at ICE Agents, and more ICE Out Of NYC signs. Please come if you can, and dress warmly. There has been a noticeable increase in NYPD presence around the building, but we have been able to protest without incident so far."

Nov 8th

"Freedom to teach, freedom to learn!" we chanted at the demo outside Marc Rowan’s office at Apollo Global Management on 9 w 57th street. No loyalty oaths. Faculty, students, alumni, and all defenders of higher ed met to send a message to Marc Rowan, the billionaire behind Trump’s compact for colleges and universities. Defend the freedom to teach, learn, research, and speak out without government coercion or censorship. Reject racism, transphobia, anti-immigrant hate, and the suppression of political dissent, history and science that the Compact threatens to bring to our campuses! #citytech #psccuny

Back home and out with Baby C, a stroll on the Gene after Bar Belly snacks on Orchard Street.

The Gov caved, approving the Williams Pipeline. Puke.

Nov 8th

Woke up thinking about a lost mug I got in Ireland that broke in my dream, wondering about the ability to mourn, drinking a cup of coffee in it, reading and getting ready for the trip up state past New Paltz, talking with Al and Andy about picking up Allan Ginsberg up here, and Van Clinurn at Juilliard, on the way to Blue Herron bookstore where @Jayboy organized a public conversation for the next leg of the #OnActivismFriendshipandFighting fall tour. Jean welcomed us. And LESC comrades Alice and LAK were there. LAK and Jeremy will be having a conversation there next month, New friends old, Al and Jay talking about Bobby and Blood Sweat and Tears and a histories of the borsht belt, wondering if they are going to start book burnings, recalling Martin's novel and the lost ties and parents from the old country, meeting Andy over fries at Dennys, back down the Pallicades, over the George Washington Bridge, home to holy Brooklyn.

Nov 9

Most people quit desserts, said Mom. You're not a quitter, i said, watching Mom, diving into a sunday, celebrating 88 loops about this strange place. The orbits are many, so are the things to be greatful for. So are the years of Sundays together.

Finishing seeing mom, I wanted to walk, to stroll through the East Village, running into friends, talking with Susan about Charas, Bill about Loose Change, the show at at C Squat, looking at Bat's painting, gossiping, though the park, to Village Works, talking with Joe, taking it all in, by the Cock, back home in the rain, on a rainy Sunday.

Nov 11

With pipelines planned in the Rockaways, thanks for ignoring your constituents Gov H, and a third administration bound to fight over the Elizabeth Street Garden, there's a lot on the table. I know many people say the new mayor can be moved, let's move. There's a lot going on. i hope his supporters are engaging and educating him around this i really do.

I made some calls.

Later that night, I posted:

Kates always there for everyone. Lets be there for Kate. Support New Alternatives for LGBT Youth. Fundraiser tonight. Andy Humm writes, "Hope you will join us on Tuesday, Nov. 11th at 6:30 PM for a benefit for New Alternatives for Homeless LGBTQ Youth (where I'm president of the board) as we honor our founder and longtime executive director Kate Barnhart as she turns 50! I've worked with my comrade Kate since she was a high school AIDS activist and I was at the Hetrick-Martin Institute and we were agitating (successfully!) for explicit AIDS education in the NYC schools. She has dedicated her life to serving the most vulnerable members of our community--homeless LGBTQ young people trying to survive on the streets of our City as Kate and her crew and our many volunteers provide them with counseling, advocacy, group meals, and access to housing, employment, and health care. The event is at the church where we rent space at 410 W. 40th Street. Tickets start at $50. Hope to see you but if you can't come please consider making a donation to help our work. Thank you."

Nov 12

Kate turned 50. Charactors from throughout the city showed up on 40th Street to celebrate, former New Alternatives clients, Church Ladies, social work interns, all there to celebrate Kate's decades of service to the most vulnerable homeless queer kids, now migrants, many queer, political punching bags. Andy recalled the zaps at the board of education, the sit inns in congress, fighting fir services. Thank you Kate. Thank you new alternatives. #newalternativesforlgbtyouth

At the fundraiser for New Alternatives, Andy Humm, the head of the board for the group, noted:

"First of all I want to introduce our Board Members, each of whom works ten times as hard as I do to make New Alternatives a success--our forever Treasurer, Jeffry Mummert, Secretary Amy Raspatello, and our board members Michaela Murphy, Jenna Tine, and Grant Woolfolk.

"Congratulations on your milestone birthday, Kate. You made it!

"I’ve only known you for 35 of those years--before our wonderful singer tonight [Tony Award winner Lauren Patten] was even born. When I was working at the Hetrick-Martin Institute and among those pressing for the NYC Board of Education to adopt comprehensive explicit HIV/AIDS education with free condom availability in 1991, it was a titanic fight making front page news. This was before there were effective treatments for HIV. And the on the front lines of that campaign was Kate Barnhart, a student/youth activist with ACT UP—leading an indispensable group of young people demanding this program to help save the lives of young people. Remarkably, the Board passed it. She and we made it happen.

"Ever since then Kate has been all about saving young lives--starting at the Neutral Zone on Christopher Street. Her work at Sylvia’s Place shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth was tireless. She then founded New Alternatives and has been at it ever since.

"Kate is an incredible activist and you can see her at all the demonstrations against fascism. But she does a lot of work sitting down.

"Sitting here at New Alternatives doing counseling and case work.

"Sitting with a client in the hospital until they get the treatment they need.

"Sitting in a police station until a client is released from custody.

"Sitting in a courtroom when a client is on trial.

"And you can see her during this terrible time sitting in in the halls of Congress or in Trump Tower and getting arrested to protest the insane assaults on health care and funding for human needs.

"But most of you know all this because you’re here. You’ve been comrades of Kate since she was that high school activist. And we at New Alternatives are grateful to you for being her core supporters who keep our scrappy organization going.

"So here is to Kate, who has brought us all together and inspires us every day. Many happy returns!"

Meanwhile, many of us were talking about the Democratic Socialist Mayor Elect, who had committed to bulldozing our Elizabeth Street Garden.

Elizabeth Ruf Maldonado writes "I’m really excited that we’ve got a new mayor, a socialist who won on a platform of working towards economic equity and affordable housing. We once dismantled the false debate that Affordable Housing is incompatible with Community Gardens. This is our chance to educate generations who benefit from the green community arts of the victorious Community Garden struggle by sharing our struggle’s foundational philosophies and realities! There are plenty of existing units suitable for affordable housing as well as unused lands suitable for building affordable housing. Don’t demolish community gardens. Listen to Haja Worley of the NYC Community Garden Coalition speaking in 1997. One struggle, one fight!"

The Conference on the Planet takes off with indigenous organizers rushing the conference, battles over landuse and climate from Brazil to New York…

Nov 13

Man of the people or developers? Why would anyone oppose a deal to save public space and create five times more affordable housing in a vacant lott nearby, an alternative site nearby? To be clear, affordable housing is not being shelved in the deal to turn Elizabeth Street Garden into Parkland. The media has done a terrible job telling this story.

There is 5 x the affordable housing planned with the alternate site identified by council member Marte and the Garden and supported by the administration. ESG is not optimal. Destroying it for housing creates less housing. And destroys a community space for creativity and mental health and sustainability. Housing Vs Gardens is a developer ploy. I'm sorry the mayor elect is playing into this language. Check the ESG know the facts flyer attached.

Says the Daily News: "Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, in a departure from his typically optimistic outlook, said Thursday it will be "nearly impossible" for his incoming administration to complete a long-stalled affordable housing project in Manhattan's Elizabeth St. Garden in light of outgoing Mayor Eric Adams' latest move to block it."

https://www.elizabethstreetgarden.com

https://www.nydailynews.com/?G2I_ActionId=135664... #saveelizabethgarden #CommunityGardensAretheFutureofCities

Between classes, I jumped on my bike ride to

ICE Out of NYC. Rise and Resist weekly Immigration vigil.

Nov 14

Elizabeth Street Garden posted a note:

“Preserving the Garden through the Parks Department has been in discussion since before Zohran Mamdani was elected. The claims that this transfer was done as a last minute attempt to hinder Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s housing agenda are not true. What is true is that the plan that saves ESG also provides 5x the amount of affordable housing which will be permanently affordable, unlike the housing that would destroy the Garden. We will be issuing a full statement soon so please stay tuned in. Thank you all for your continued support!”

The Department of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Louis Molina said in a letter, “By this notice, the City unequivocally and permanently dedicates this property to public use as parkland.”

Nov 15th

In and out of Brooklyn, out to Princeton, through the cycles of streets, looking at the city. New buildings and old on Bond Street, throughout Lower Manhattan. Off to a protest. Conversations with Mom, talking about her garden, the buildings of Budapest. No one who hasn't been to the East knows how beautiful it is, she says, looking at an old postcard. She recalls being a little girl reading Little Women. She was always Beth. Watching movies that night about CS Lewis and his wonderment, lost and found and lost. Wondering about the shadowlands. Bodies become frail. Still, she plans her flowers for her garden.

We recalled her reading The Magicians Nephew with us when we lived in Atlanta, all those years ago. There, C.S. Lewis wrote:

“But please, please - won't you - can't you give me something that will cure Mother?'

Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

'My son, my son,' said Aslan. 'I know. Grief is great.”

Had coffee with Mom and drove home to prepare for the evning birthday party.

Nov 15/16th

Spent the day prepping red lentils and seafood gumbo. A few friends swang by acknowledging another loop about this orbit. Haven't seen everyone for a while. But I'm glad they came. We'll most everyone. Only one clock was broken. Only one guest ended up passed out on the couch. We talked about pipelines. And novels. All fours and friendship. Heart and arteries. Beer goggles and future parties. Some stayed all night. Some didn't come at all. Gene spun records all night long. Flowers and fucking the pain away. Nico inspected the dj booth. The DJ was magnificent. So we're the guests. Well, most. Appreciate you all.

Nov 17

Movies and dreams of Paris, Breathless and the Tropic of Cancer

“Everything is endured -” writes Henry Miller, in Tropic of Cancer, “disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, …And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest..”

Nov 18th

Delegates,

Soon after the AAUP won in court against the Trump administration's effort to defund Harvard, another major litigation win arrived on Friday. Led by the AAUP, AFT, and other academic labor unions, the decision in AAUP et al v. Donald J. Trump prohibits the Trump regime from defunding the University of California on ideological grounds and denies the effort to extract a $1 billion payout from UC. The introduction to the decision is worth reading.

These decisions are important companions to the AAUP/MESA report published earlier this month about the weaponization of civil rights law to repress campus speech on Palestine, a landmark investigation. The NYU AAUP chapter will host a panel about the AAUP/MESA report on Dec 1 at 5pm, open to all, info attached, registration required.

An excerpt from coverage of the UC decision is pasted below. Hard as the struggle is, together we can overcome the forces of repression!

James

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/us/trump-university-of-california-funding.html

Judge Lin had already ordered the government to restore millions of dollars in grants that it had stripped from the system. But her order on Friday, coming in a separate case brought by labor groups, went beyond rote matters of dollars and cents.

Writing across 80 pages of court filings, Judge Lin said that the government was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge” certain viewpoints from American universities, and that “the undisputed record” showed that Trump administration officials had “engaged in coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the First Amendment and the 10th Amendment.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The effects of the government’s tactics, Judge Lin said, were already bubbling up on campuses.

“Numerous U.C. faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the U.C. system,” Judge Lin wrote. “They describe how they have stopped teaching or researching topics they are afraid are too ‘left’ or ‘woke’ in order to avoid triggering further funding cancellations.”

The judge added, “These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what defendants publicly said that they intended.”