Thomas Martorelli's For People, Not for Profit tells the story of Fenway Health's growth from a small, volunteer-run walk-in clinic to an international leader into an international leader in care and research for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and people living with HIV/AIDS. It is also the story of the tremendous societal changes that drove and affected that growth. The community activism and volunteer collectives of the 1970s; the devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic which emerged in the 1980s; the LGBT civil rights movement that gained strength and momentum through the 1990s; and the advances in research and advocacy that have brought so many health care and civil rights victories in the 2000s - it's all there. At the same time, Martorelli tells us Fenway's story through the voices of the people who were and are still a part of this incredible organization - from the early ups and downs through Fenway's growth into one of the largest LGBT health organizations in the world.
FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT
A History of Fenway Health's First Forty YearsBy Thomas MartorelliAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Fenway Health
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4772-1701-6Contents
DEDICATION...................................IVACKNOWLEDGMENTS..............................VIFOREWORD.....................................IXINTRODUCTION.................................XIOverview.....................................2Care.........................................26Education....................................44Advocacy.....................................51Leadership...................................60Overview.....................................68Care.........................................92Research.....................................123Education....................................146Advocacy.....................................160Leadership...................................171Overview.....................................204Care.........................................214Research.....................................238Education....................................256Advocacy.....................................265Leadership...................................276CONCLUSION...................................288END NOTES....................................293APPENDIX.....................................303
Chapter One
THE 1970S
"The Health Center didn't have one parent, or one anything. It's like the Mississippi River. It had a lot of different people doing a I of different things all over the place, which ended up being a river. But the river has a lot of tributaries from places you really would never expect, exactly." —David Scondras, a Fenway Community Health Center founder
In its earliest days, Fenway Health was more a project than an organization. A group of Fenway residents, students, medical professionals, political activists, and a Catholic nun were in charge. Today we might call them the original Board of Directors, if only to help us impose a sense of orderly progress on a time when no such structure existed or was even desired. Beginning in the late 1960s, this group, almost all of them under the age of 25, volunteered to take on the task of creating a local response to a number of local residents' needs, looking for problems that demanded solutions, and injustices that cried out for remedies. Consistent with a national rebellion against authority that was then called "the movement," they created a neighborhood safety net to change things for the better. They were innocent enough to believe that they could accomplish their goals through their own collective action. They saw the struggle for social change as a battle against the establishment," which they defined as anyone over 30, and believed that poverty, hunger, war, and sickness were caused as much by oppression as anything else. By their logic, if the neighborhood's, or the country's problems all had a common cause, the challenge of solving them would be a common struggle. Solving things one at time was missing the point. Collective action was their method of choice, and collective decision-making was the way they governed themselves.
They formed FIG, or the Fenway Interagency Group, as an umbrella organization where collective decision-making could be made, with representation of the many smaller groups that were active in the neighborhood at the time. These organizations included: the Tenants Action Group (TAG) to fight for tenants' rights and affordable rent; the Fenway Civic Association (FCA), to clean local streets, maintain parks, and protect residents from crime; the Edgerly Street Playground Association, to build and manage this resource for local children; The Fenway Free Life, a community newspaper; the Boston Center for Older Americans (BCOA), to improve the lives of older neighbors; and a local chapter of the American Friends Service (AFS), a national Quaker organization open to people of all faiths devoted to service, development, and peace programs throughout the world." The Fenway Community Health Center, as a member of FIG, had roots in the neighborhood while it was also affiliated with the fledgling social movements of gay liberation and feminism.
Many of the same individual community activists were involved in all of these organizations. They would simply meet and move from one project to the next, planning and then acting on their plans. Initially, there was no selection process for service. Once someone showed up for three meetings, he or she was a member, and could participate fully in governance. But showing up meant more than just debating and brainstorming. The same people who planned the playground went out and brought in sand, swings, and slides. After they decided to start the food coop, they staffed it, buying and distributing canned goods and staples to their neighbors. Some of these individuals also provided lunches to the elderly through the BCOA's Meals on Wheels program.
Together, the Fenway Interagency Group started and re-started a food cooperative, succeeding on the third try, and launched a newspaper, The Fenway Free Life, which took only two. They formed a tenants' rights organization and opened a playground on a vacant lot across the street from the Health Center's second location at 16 Haviland Street. On weekend evenings, they hung sheets from an adjacent wall to show children's movies they checked out from the Boston Public Library. They hosted social programs for seniors at the Boston Center for Older Americans (BCOA), whose 236A Huntington Avenue headquarters were located in office space rented from the Christian Science Church. They held many of their meetings in the Westland Avenue Community Center, a neighborhood haven for the movement. There, in 1970, Fenway neighborhood activists began a medical referral program using the Center's telephones. They collaborated with the fledgling Homophile Community Health Services, perhaps Boston's first gay health organization, and with the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, which had produced a mimeographed health education program called Our Bodies, Ourselves. When they determined that local residents were experiencing roadblocks to health care, such as gay people seeking respectful, confidential care; young college women seeking medical services without the risk of having it reported to their parents; or the elderly having difficulty navigating the streets to get to one of the city's hospitals, they launched a free medical clinic. Across the city of Boston, other community health centers were forming in response to their own issues regarding access to care, whether they were language barriers, cultural mores, the mental health needs of people in the neighborhood, or the problem of drugs on the streets.
When it came to the Health Center, Fenway's volunteers solicited equipment from an elderly doctor in the Back Bay, who willed the contents of his office to them when he died, and moved it into the clinic's original location at the BCOA's 236A Huntington Avenue offices in 1971. They recruited volunteer doctors and nurses to staff the clinic one night per week (on Thursdays) and served without pay as intake workers. Fenway Health's founders acquired the clinic's 16 Haviland Street location shortly thereafter, readying it for its opening in 1973 by volunteering their own labor to construct a number of features-the flooring, front door, and raised basement window bars—that still exist today. The clinic's waiting area was furnished with seats salvaged from the old Fenway Theater on Boylston Street, an...
