THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Urvashi Vaid

October 8, 1958 – May 14, 2022

“I want a movement of all kinds of people—black and brown, rich, middle class and poor, gay and transgender and straight, bi and multiracial—all kinds of people who believe in making a more just economy and a real democracy.”

Activist, Attorney Author. Expert in gender and sexuality law, shaped progressive issues, including AIDS advocacy, prison reform and gay rights, fighting for gender, racial and economic equality. Staff attorney, National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), initiated the organization’s work on HIV/AIDS in prisons, 1983-1986. Led National LGBTQ Task Force (now, National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force) as media director, 1987; executive director (1989–1992) and as director of its Policy Institute think-tank, the NGLTF Policy Institute, 1997-2001. Founder of LPAC; first lesbian Super PAC. Founder and President, The Vaid Group, a social innovation firm that advances justice and equity, 2000s. Award winning author, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995); Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012). Co-editor, Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (2000). Out magazine named her one of the 50 most influential LGBT people in the United States, 2009.

Photo. Urvashi Vaid was ejected for protesting at a 1990 speech on gay rights by President George Bush. (Credit, National LGBTQ Task Force)