A Neighborhood Divided: Community Resistance to an AIDS Care Facility 9781501720826

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A Neighborhood

Divided

The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues A SERIES EDITED BY

ROGER SANJEK A full list of titles in the series appears at the end of this hook.

A Neighborhood

Divided Community Resistance to an AIDS Care Facility

Jane Balin

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright© HJfJD by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1999 hv Cornell University Press First printing. Cornell Paperbacks, 1999 Printed in tlw United States of America LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Balin, Jane. A neighborhood divided : community resistance to an AIDS care facility. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN O-K014-:360fi-O (doth: alk. paper). -ISBC\1 O-K014-K.579-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) l. AIDS (Diseasei-Patients-Hospice care-Social aspects. 2. Nursing hcll!ll's-Location-Social aspects. I. Title. RA644.A25B335 1999 :362.1'969792056-DC21 98-.36506 Cornell University Press strives to usc cnyironmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based. low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that arc recycled, totally ch lorinc- hee. or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Cloth printing Paperback printing

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For Michael and his family

Contents

Acknowledgments

lX

1. The Neighborhood and the Sociologist

1

2. West Highland: From a Colonial Village to an Urban Middle-Class Neighborhood

12

3. AIDS Moves into the Neighborhood

2.5

4. Taking Sides

.59

5. Status Group Conflicts, Symbols, and Politics

76

6. The Sounds of Silence

99

7. AIDS and Community: Some Polic:c Proposals

and Conclusions

14:3

159

Index

[vii]

Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time in the making. Over the years, many people haYc shown an incredible ability to sustain their belief in my bringing this research to its final conclusion. To these individuals I owe a world of gratitude. First and foremost, I am forever indebted to Harold Bershady for his incomparable wisdom and insight and his unwavering commitment to me and this project. I am also grateful for the invaluable contributions to this study of Elijah Anderson, Charles Bosk and Michelle Fine. Thanks also go to Nancy Reis, Candice Kirschner, John Noakes, John Encandela, Karen Walker, Andrew London, Lisa Ratmanskv, Sarah HaqJster, Jane Carr, and Josephine Gullo. Their helpful feedback and tireless encouragement will m~,·er be forgotten. The editors at Cornell University Press, particularly Peter Agree, Nancy Winemiller, and Margo Quinto worked in earnest to make the telling of this story lucid, consistent, and accurate. For this, and their affirming and guiding spirit I am eternally thankful. For their intellectual and financial support, Frank Furstenburg, Carole Joffe, and Jane Menkin also deserve heartfelt thanks. To Ricki Goodstein, Kathleen Davis, and all the members of my Ltmily, thank you for keeping me alive and well during the years I researched and wrote this book Finally, I am grateful to the neighbors of West Highland f(Jr opening their homes and hearts to me. I hope my gratitude for all they have taught me is apparent in the f(>llowing pages.

[ix]

A Neighborhood Divided

[1] The Neighborhood and the Sociologist

It was in the fall of 1988 when the residents of West Highland" first heard that a forty-two bed nursing home for people with AIDS (PWAs) was going to open in their neighborhood. Located on the northwestern outskirts of a large Northeastern city called Park City, West Highland was a middle-class community nationally renowned for its progressive politics and its long history of racial and ethnic integration. The sponsors of the AIDS nursing home, a Lutheran organization known as the Lutheran Complex, and many of Park City's top-ranking government officials believed that the liberal, tolerant, and socially conscious nature of \Vest Highland made it an ideal community to host an AIDS care facility. The neighborhood had a Victorian atmosphere, with large brownstone houses set far back from the street, some on considerable acreage. Its walkways were lined with large old oaks, maples, and pines, and it had many well-kept parks. Those features were all thought to provide a scenic and potentially restorative environment f()r PWAs. The fact that the building to he used for the AIDS care facility had previously been a nursing home for the elderly, called Elder Homes, was also considered an advantage. No significant zoning problems were expected. The "Lutherans," as the neighbors referred to them, were now calling the building Chaver. Chrzver is a Hebrew word meaning "a friend." "'v\'cst Highland is a pseudony1n, e1s are the names of residents, the nursing home and its sponsor, and the city in which these events occurred.

[1]

A Neighborhood Didded

Of course, the president of the Lutheran Complex, Emery Schmidt, and the newly appointed president of Chaver, Mark Johnson, also expected some community opposition to Chaver. After all, the slow and often hostile responses of federal and state agencies to FWAs, the infectious and terminal nature of the HIV virus, and the highly stigmatized groups associated with the disease, had, by the late 1980s, made AIDS patients the lepers of our day. Indeed, previous efforts to establish nursing homes for PWAs in other parts of the nation had consistently met with community opposition and hostility. For instance, at the same time that the Lutherans were making plans for Chaver, the residents of a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia, were mobilizing to stop the opening of a six-bed AIDS care facility, 1 and in New Hope, Pennsylvania, next-door neighbors had already organized to stop the opening of an eight-bed group home for PWAs. 2 In fact, since the drive in the 1960s to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill, efforts to place any kind of institutionalized patient population in smaller, less-impersonal care facilities located in residential settings had invariably met with community opposition and controversy in this county. 3 Nevertheless, because of West Highland's liberal reputation, and the fact that it was known as the home of the city's most prominent social workers and political activists, the two presidents felt confident that community opposition to Chaver would be insignificant and fleeting. They believed that with an extensive AIDS education program the well-educated and broad-minded residents of West Highland would rapidly come to accept Chaver. Emery l. These neighbors appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the fall of 1993. 2. Melissa Dribben, "Fearing a Home Near Their House," Philadelphia Inquirer, .'vfetro Section, 7 December 1992, p. l. See also, "AIDS Group Home: Anywhere But Here," The Intelligencer, July 1992, p. 2. Other AIDS care facilities that faced similar community controversies include the following: an AIDS care facility to be established in Martinville, Quebec, where neighbors suceessfiJlly prohibited its opening: see, Alberto Manguel, "There Goes the Neighborhood," SaturdayNight, June l9il9, 33-39; a New Jersey nursing home for PWAs nm by Continental Affiliates of Englewood Cliffs, where plans were dropped because of opposition from the mayor's office and the City Council: see, "40-Bed AIDS Facility Planned in New Jersey," (Newark) Star Ledger, ll April 1988; and the Wanaque Convalescent Center in Wanaque, New Jersey, which provides 120 skilled-nursing beds f(Jr PWAs and successfully overcame challenges from residents in vVanaque and the neighboring communities of Bloomingdale, Pompton Lakes, and Ringvmod: see "Wanaque Says It Has Legal Grounds to Bar AIDS Care at Nursing Home," (Newark) Star Ledger, 7 April1988. 3. For reviews of community responses to residential care facilities, see Steven P. Segal and Uri Aviram, The Mentally Ill in Community-Based Sheltered Care: A Study of Community Care and Social Integration (New York: Wiley, 1978); Michael Dear and S. Martin Taylor, Not on Our Street: Community Attitudes to Mental Health Care (London: Pion, 19il2); David L. Cutler, "Community Residential Options for the Chronically Mentally Ill," Community Mental Health Journal22, no. 1 (1986): 6]-7.3; and Gregory H. Wilmoth, Starr Silver, and Lawrence J. Severy, "Receptivity and Planned Change: Community Attitudes and Deinstitutionalization," Journal of Applied Psychology 72, no. 1 (1987): 138-14.5.

[2]

The Neighborhood and the Sociologist

Schmidt and Mark Johnson expected a "quick and smooth" opening for Ch,l\er. Much to the two presidents' distress, however, West Highland did not respond to the idea of Chaver as expected. Once the Lutherans had informed the neighbors at several community meetings of their plans for Elder Homes, a bitter and prolonged neighborhood battle ensued, as some residents organized to support the nursing home and others organized to oppose it. In the local papers and at neighborhood meetings the opposition declared Chaver to be a potential "leper colony," "flophouse," and "infectious disease sanitorium." They described the PWAs who would eventually be cared for in the facility as the "bottom of the barrel of the underclass," "crack whores," "drug addicts," and "welfare queens." The Lutherans were denounced as "liars and scoundrels" and the residents who supported the facility as "knee-jerk liberals with social worker mentalities." In response, neighbors in support of Chaver publicly accused the opposition of being "Nazis," "racists," "bigots," and "white trash." With great disdain, the supporters depicted the opposition as "yuppies, people who care only about money and their housing values," people who are "newcomers" to the neighborhood, and whose "values run counter to the progressive politics that made the community what it is today." Although the neighbors who supported Chaver were well organized and quite vocal, those who opposed the facility nevertheless managed successfnllv to delay the nursing home's opening for three years. The opposition mobilized resistance to funding for the nursing home among city, state, and federal politicians; challenged the f~tcilitv's zoning license; and on several occasions registered charges of building-code violations. As a result, instead of opening its doors in the winter of 1989 as originally planned, Chaver admitted its first fifteen patients in the winter of 1992. And even then, many residents in West Highland were still fiercelv opposed to the AIDS nursing home. The "quick and smooth" opening the sponsors of Chawr had imagined did not come to pass. During the initial months of the AIDS nursing home controversy in \Vest Highland, I was finishing my fifth year of graduate school in sociology. I heard about the facility from one of my advisers, a long-time resident of West Highland who liYed three doors down fi·om Chaver. He and another one of his graduate students were taking notes at all the neighborhood meetings about Chaver, and he wanted to know if I was interested in joining the research project, maybe doing a full-fledged community study as my Ph.D. thesis. Although immediately intrigued with what I was hearing, I had to turn the imitation down because I was already doing research with two other faculty [3]

A Neighborhood Divided

members. Over the next two months, however, I kept thinking about the Chm·er controversy and particularly the sociological importance of studying such an event. First, as a medical and community sociologist, I was well aware of the need to study the various ways U.S. communities were responding to IIIV and AIDS. The stigma revolving around AIDS was having a major impact on the way PWAs were being treated. Disturbing reports were coming from all quarters of the nation: Hospital workers were avoiding contact with people with HIVIAIDS; the government was ignoring the plight of PWAs; physicians and other health care providers were refusing to treat PWAs; employers were firing PWAs; prisons were isolating PWAs; public schools were denying entrance to children with AIDS; neighborhoods were shutting their borders to P\VAs; our national boundaries were closed to foreigners with AIDS; public officials were lamenting the innocent victims of AIDS (children and adult hemophiliacs) and castigating those who bore responsibility and guilt for their disease (gays and IV drug users); religious leaders were describing AIDS as God's punishment for the society's tolerance of homosexuality and IV drug use; and the scientific and public health communities along with the media were creating a language and etiology about the disease that reflected the racist, sexist, and homophobic nature of our society. 4 Discrimination, avoidance, and their ideological justifications had come to characterize many of our responses to AIDS. In light of these frightening 4. For more detailed descriptions of such responses, see Cindy Patton, Sex and Germs: The Politics ofAIDS (Boston: South End Press, 1985); Dennis Altman, AIDS in the Mind ofAmerica (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1986); Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St. ~1artin's Press, 1987); Allan M. Brandt, "AIDS and Metaphor: Toward the Social Meaning of Epidemic Disease,"' Social Research 5.5, no. 3 (1981)): 413-432; Dmid L. Kirp, L!?arning by Heart: AIDS and Schoolchildren in America's Communities (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Manguel, "There Goes the Neighborhood"; A. Jonsen, "The Duty to Treat Patients with AIDS and HIV Infection," in AIDS and the Health Care System, ed. Larry Costin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Michael Kirby, "A IDS and Law," in Living tcith AIDS, ed. Stephen R. Grauhard (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), :379-400; J unc Osborn, "Public Health and the Politics of AIDS Prevention," in Living with AIDS, 401-422; Aran Ron and David E. Rogers, "AIDS in the United States: 1'atient Care and Politics," in Uving with AIDS, 107-124; Peter Arno, "Housing, Homclessness, and the Impact of HIV Disease," in The AIDS Reculer: Social, Political, Ethical Issues, ed. Nancy F. McKenzite (New York: Meridian, HJ91), 177-189; :'-Jicholas A. Christakis, "Responding to the Pandelllic: International Interests in AIDS Control," in Living with AIDS, 329-:352; Larry Kramer, "The Plague Years," in The AIDS Reader, 113-121; Julia Epstein, "AIDS, Stigma, and Narratives of Containment," American Imago 49, no. 3 (1992): 29.3-310; Alan Sears, '"To Teach Them How to Live': The Politics of Publ;c Health from Tuberculosis to AIDS," Journal of Historical Sociology 18, no. 2 (1992): 61-83; and Carol Levine. etl., Taking Sides: Clashing Vines on Controversial Bioethical Issues (Guilford, Conn.: Duskin Publishing Group, 1993).

[4]

The Neighborhood and the Sociologist

developments, understanding the roots of our attitudes toward P\VAs and examining from a local aml ethnographic perspective the actual social processes gi\ing rise to those attitudes seemed especially important. My interest in examining what was happening in \Vest Highland in terms of Chavcr was also deeply connected to my own personal experience with AIDS. By 1988, two close friends had already died from the disease, and several more were struggling with the various opportunistic infections that accompany the human immunodeficiency \irus (HIV) thought to cause AIDS. Although most of the AIDS patients I knew were lucky enough to have friends and family willing to provide all the necessary outpatient care PWAs demand, some were not. Because of the scarcity of nursing home beds available to PWAs in Park City,~ I had become acutely aware of the terribly lonely and difficult existence that PWAs with few support networks Liced. A nursing home facility such as Chaver seemed to be an ideal alternative to such dismal circumstances. Furthermore, having grown up in a modern Jewish suburb of Park City approximately eight miles to the north and east of West Highland, and having lived in West Highland during my years as an undergraduate at the university, I had always thought of West Highland as a very special place, the kind of neighborhood in which I might want to buy a home and settle down in someday. As a small child, I had always felt as if I had entered an enchanted kingdom whenever my family and I drove through West Highland. The large Victorian houses seemed like castles to me, and I often imagined that if I looked hard enough I might catch a glimpse of a dragon or a knight peering out from the dense woods running along the streets. As a young adult, I became aware more of the social diversity of West Highland. The neighborhood is not composed of only white people or only African Americans or people of only one religious group or another. That was the kind of residential homogeneity I had become accustomed to, but West Highland was a middle- to upper-middle-class community that was home to many different types of people. Within its borders lived white and African American neighbors who were from a wide array of religious backgrounds, including Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, 5. By 191:>1, the Park City Nursing Home, a publicly funded htcility prmiding care fur the elderly, had opened up sixteen beds for PWAs. Because of staff shortages, however, in 1989, the state barred the ±>scrihed as "humble backgrounds," had become by the early 1970s upwardly mobile and ablP to afford homes in middle-class suburban settings. As one of the only suburban communities that welcomed African American families, West Highland, more specifically, the ULAC with its "affordable, but ultramodern homes," became their neighborhood of choice.

From Integration to Defense The West Highland of the late eighties and early nineties was a stable middle-class community struggling with the hv-proclucts of a cleindustrialized and service-oriented regional economy. For the most part, West Highland had remained a community attractive to middle-class home buyers. Furthermore, the neighborhood had maintained its great social diversity. The community was approximately 46 percent African American and 54 percent white. Living within its borders were Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presh:terians, and Jews.\ Vhereas \Vest Highland had managed to maintain its social diversity and middle-class standing, many of the surrounding communities, including East Highland and Green Village, had fallen into powrty and dt>spair. The movement of industry, now not only out of the city but also out of the region, and the concomitant emergence of a service-oriented econom:' with a two-tier labor market -with one tier prmiding high-paying managerial, legal, and financial positions and the other offering only menial labor at the minimum wage-were at the root of this uneven dewlopment among the older street car communities of Park

[22]

West Highland

City. Neighborhoods such as West Highland, with large spacious homes and proximity to the city, remained attractive to young couples employed in the lucrative sector of the service economy; other neighborhoods on the city's fringe, particularly those \vith older smaller houses, had lost much of their middle-class citizenry to the northern and western suburbs, which offered greater security and economic opportnnity. 12 The abandonment of these communities by their middle-class residents and the financing institutions, businesses, and industry that had originally spurred their development had left their poorer and primarily African American residents stranded in decaying and dilapidated housing with few options for gainful employment. This was the urban geography of West Highland during the Chaver controversy. Surrounded by encroaching poverty on its southern and eastern borders and no longer focused on the racial and ethnic expansion of its social borders, \Vest Highland had become a neighborhood defined by constricting and defended boundaries. And, although many of the social institntions developed during the fifties and sixties continued to exist in the neighborhood, loug-time residents explain that they no longer played the pivotal roles they once had in hwilitating racial integration. Most notably, the integrated public school that once provided a major arena for African American and white parents to get to know one another was now integrated only up to the third grade. Once comfortable and politically committed to sending their children to integrated public schools, many parents now feared, as one neighbor explained, "the negative influences on their children, like drugs and crime, from kids coming from poor environments like East Highland." As a result, many white parents and some wealthier African American parents sent their children to the integrated neighborhood public school during the earlier grades and then pulled them out by the third and fourth grades and sent them off to area private schools. The Neighborhood Walk and Talks, another social institution that had encouraged interaction between African American and white neighbors in earlier years, had all but disappeared. Instead, West Highlanders, if they participated in any community activities, walked and talked within their neighborhood watch organizations. As crime had increased in the community so had neighborhood surveillance; watchful neighbors and police patrolled the neighborhood, and most residents had car alarms and home security svstems. With its social institutions of integration supplanted by organizations of defense and with the continual influx of young families who had never experienced the ciYil rights movement or the momentous achievements of racial 12. Bradburn eta!., Side by Side; Aclams et al .. Philadelphia

[23]

A Neighborhood Divided

integration in the neighborhood (newcomers who many older residents called yuppies), West Highland had become, as one long-time resident put it, "more insular." Concluding their descriptions of West Highland's shifting character over the previous two decades, two other residents, one who had lived in West Highland since 1955 and the other since 1964, had this to say: I think today we all live in our own houses and we all mind our own business. I mean we used to have block walk and talks, where the neighbors got together once a month, but that has pretty much died. And the public school, well, they had nice picnics and that was a lot of fun, but that has died too. I think we may have been closer years ago, but like everything else in this country we have all kind of grmm apart. [African American Episcopalian man] Today there's not as much socializing among the young people as there used to be. Twenty-five years ago when I moved in, there were a lot of families with young children and there was a lot of social mingling and getting together. In those days, once a year in the summer we had a block party, and people would come from all over Highland, and you could just go from block to block and everybody had their own ethnic foods, and it was a very nice thing. But that has petered out. The Stewart School and the School Association had some of the most successful affairs every year-social functions that raised thousands of dollars and that petered out because kids started coming hom poorer sections of East Highland and would just dismpt the fairs. One year they came and just dismpted everything; everybody got scared. Blacks as well as whites. And that was the beginning of the end of those fairs. It's the kind of thing that no longer exists in West Highland. But, also for many, their children have gro\\11 up and they are no longer involved anymore, or not involved on the same level they were twenty-five years ago. And the newer pPople moving in. they're just not the same. [Jewish woman] In sum, although West Highland, because of its racial and ethnic diversity and history of racial justice, continued to be an attractive community to politically active, liberal citizens, it had also become home to many families who viewed the community as primarily a convenient, middle-class "bedroom community" of Park City. As the surrounding pockets of poverty continued to spread closer and closer to \Vest Highland's boundaries many of the residents of the community had come to perceive West Highland as a threatened neighborhood whose borders demanded continual surveillance and strong defenses. It was in this stage of its evolution that Chaver was introduced to the neighborhood of West Highland.

[24]

[3] AIDS Moves into the Neighborhood

The Reverend Emery Schmidt was surprised to see so many people gathered in Harvey Gelb's living room. Recalling the phone call he had received from Harvey Gelb several days earlier, Emery Schmidt said that he had expected the meeting to be "a small informal gathering of concerned neighbors, but it was a group of more than forty people!" He also remembered that his first impulse on hearing Harvey's imitation had been to tell Harvey about the communitywide meeting sponsored by the Regional Interfaith Council (RIC) at the Jewish Center, where he and Mark Johnson intended to discuss their plans for turning Elder Homes into a forty-two-bed AIDS care facility. But, as their phone conversation continued, the Reverend Schmidt decided not to mention that meeting. He "found Harvey to be very warm and engaging and felt that no harm would be clone to meet informally with a small group of neighbors." In fact, once he and Harvey had hung up, the Reverend Schmidt concluded that a separate meeting with a small group of neighbors who lived closest to Elder Homes could be beneficial. It would give him and Mark Johnson "a better idea of the neighborhood's concerns about the opening of an AIDS facility in the community" and would help the two men "better prepare for [their] subsequent meeting with the entire community at the Jewish Center." Initially, Mark Johnson was not as optimistic as Emery Schmidt. When Emery told Mark about his phone conversation with Harvey, Mark's "antenna went up immediately." But, as he had done "time and again," Emery convinced Mark "to look on the bright side" and reminded Mark of his "ini-

[25]

A Neigltburhoud Divided

tial misgivings about the Lutherans establishing an AIDS facility in \Vest Highland and how none of [Mark's] concerns had come to fruition." Before he had accepted his position as president of the AIDS care fa(;ility. Mark Johnson had been the director of social work at Inner City Hospital. Located in the heart of the city's gay community, the hospital had a gay physician on staff who was fast becoming the "expert" on HIV/AIDS treatments. According to Mark, by 1986, Inner City Hospital was "seeing more than its fair share of people vvith HIV-rclated diseases or full-blown AIDS." Mark was hm·ing tremendous difficulty finding nursing home care for the many patients he was seeing, many of whom no longer needed acute care in a hospital setting but still rPquirecl around-the-clock professional health care services. \Vorking closely with the citv health department, Mark tried pressuring tlte Park City Public Nursing Home (PCPNH) to take some of his patients, but the facility was not accepting PWAs (people with AIDS) in 1986. It was not untill9HI that the PCPl\'li accepted P\VAs. and, as Mark noted, "even then they only had sixteen beds for AIDS patients! Sixteen beds isn't even a drop in the bucket, really." During the same period that Mark and se\'eral of the deputies at the city health department were searching in vain for nursing home beds for PWAs and coming up against what Mark described as "tremewlous bigotry and fear from the administrators and providers of these facilities," Mark spoke with Emery Schmidt about whether the Lutheran Complex would be willing to provide nursing home sen-ices to P\\As. Mark first met Emery iu the summer of 191:>6 at a church ceremony celebrating Emery's arrival in Park City and his new position as the president of the Lutheran Complex, a large geriatric fi1cility located in \Vest Highland on Divide Avenue. Emery's installation services took place at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, also located in West Highland, directly across the street from the Lutheran Complex. Although Mark lived in a neighboring state, several years before, he and his lover, Paul, had joined St. Matthew's because "of its acceptance of gay and lesbian members": St. Matthew's is one of the most supportive of the Lutheran churches when it comes to gavs and lesbians. Mam in the congregation, along with the head minister, Jane Schultz, strongly support gay rights and the dignity of gay people and the dignity of people with AIDS. The church is known for its tolerance of cliffC'rence, just like the surrounding neighborhood. Mark recalled that, at Emery Schmidt's installation ceremony, Emery had told the congregation that "he felt strongly that it was the Lutherans' mission

[26]

AIDS Moves into the Neighborhood

to care for those in society who are in the most need." During the reception that followed, Mark decided to challenge Emery by asking what services the Lutheran Complex could provide to PWAs. Mark's professional and personal experiences with PWAs had led him to believe that AIDS patients were "in fact, currently, in most need in American society." Knowing very little about Emery Schmidt, but recognizing that Emery was facing the challenges and obstacles that iuvariably come with any new professional position, Mark was "somewhat surprised" at how open and rPceptive Emery was to ~I ark's AIDSrelated questions and thoughts: Emery listened very attentively to the issues I raised and talked about what his experience had heen with some of the people he knew who had AIDS, and he was verv invoked in the conversation and what the Lutheran Complex could do. I was a little taken aback at lwwinvolved he became in the conversation because I knew he had just moved here and had just stepped into the president's position, and I really thought that these first few months would be a bit difficult for him. So, I didn't really expect him at our first meeting to be so "gnng-ho." In fact, a week after .\lark's conversation with Emery, Erncry called Mark at Inner City Hospital to tell Mark that he had "contacted someone to look into the extent of the need and the extent of the issues that were involved in caring for PWAs and expected a full report by early 1987." The speed and urgency with which Emery was tackling the idea of providing nursing home care to PWAs also impressed Mark because of what Mark described as "the indelible stain of homosexuality on AIDS in the United States." Mark explained that, although at first he did not "really know where Emery stood in terms of gay issues," he was concerned about the local Lutheran Synod's response to the idea of being associated with AIDS as \\'Pll as about the :"Jational Church's reaction. Even though St. Matthew's attracted a liberal Lutheran community seemingly accepting of gays, Mark's experience had lccl him to believe that "that certainly [wasn't] the case with all Lutheran Churches." Furthermore, "there was no telling how the elderly clients at the Lutheran Complex would respond to the idea." They, of course, would hear about the Complex's involvement with an AIDS nursing home, and "at this early stage of the game" Emery was "not talking or real!:, thinking about exactly where he imagined providing care for PWAs." It was quite possible that many of the clients might "imagine that PWAs would be living on the Lutheran Complex campus." Mark feared that this expectation would cause a "real uproar":

[27]

A Neighborhood Divided

It's not just the gay issue we are talking about when it comes to living near P\VAs, but also the association of the disease with death, infection, disease, illness. There's a whole constellation of fears, uh, hysteria hovers over AIDS. Let's be honest; PWAs have become the new lepers in our society. Mark's concerns were not unfounded. Several of the Lutheran ministers in the area had AIDS; at least three had already died. One of the ministers, Kenneth Foreman, was provided care at Inner City Hospital, and Mark was his social worker. Mark had learned from Kenneth that none of the ministers afflicted with the disease had told their congregants, fearing "social retribution and ostracism" if they did so. Kenneth Foreman, however, after being diagnosed, did tell his congregation that he was gay and had AIDS. In response, many of his flock left the church. As Mark described it, "Foreman's congregation became very split. ... Some ... were very angry, felt betrayed, and left Kenneth's church. Others were extremely supportive and did wonderful things to help Kenneth." As a result of these experiences, Mark's overriding concerns in the early stages of his own and the complex's involvement with an AIDS nursing home had much more to do with the potential resistance he and Emery would face from the local and national Lutheran Church and the board of the Complex than from the neighborhood oHVest Highland. Mark characterized Emery's anxieties as the same: I had anticipated when I came on the staff here that our fights would be inside the church not out in the neighborhood. And Emery and I had talked about this, and he had perceived it that way too. I mean we also thought we would have lay people who would want to withdraw their support from the Lutheran Home and withdraw from the chnrch.

Once Mark and Emery began formalizing the complex's commitment to establishing a nursing home for P\VAs, however, Mark was "really surprised at the amount of support" he and Emery "received from the local Lutheran congregations and regional and national Lutheran clergy and officials." The bishop, Mark stated with an astonished although contented look on his face, "was exceptionally supportive." Mark, Emery Schmidt, and Kenneth Foremen met with the bishop early in 1987 to discuss their thoughts about the Lutheran Complex's providing nursing home services to PWAs. After listening to the three men discuss what the issues and problems might be in establishing AIDS health care services, according to Mark,

[28]

AIDS Moves into the Neighborhood

The hi shop became more and more aware of the discrimination issues revolving around AIDS and how the church, even though it was not contrilmting directly to it, was indirectly contributing to the cliscrimination that was going on especiallv because of its silence about gays and gay rights. This was the first time the bishop had really seriously considered AIDS issues other than reading about lthem] in Time magazine, so it was very sort of impactful. As a result he became very open and public and in support of gay rights and the dignity of people with AIDS. It was really quite remarkable. So, by the last months of 1987, Mark and Emery had tackled what they thought would be their primary obstacle in establishing a nursing home for PWAs: the bigotry and ignorance about gays and AIDS among the laity and church officials of the local and regional Lutheran church. During the same period, Emery also heard supportive news from the city health llepartment along v.ith the accounting firm that Emery had hired to do a feasibility study assessing the current nursing home needs ofPWAs in Park Cit:·. The feasibility study indicated that, although in 1986, the year the study was done, there was no immediate need for nursing home care for PWAs in the city, by 1988 there would be a tremendous demand for such services. Having collected similar statistics, the city health department communicated to Emery that they were quite eager for the Lutheran Complex to establish a care facility for PWAs in the city: "The health department was beginning to feel pressed to develop programs for PWAs. By late 1987, they had offered a considerable amount of money per person if we could open a facility right away. They wanted something yesterday. so to speak." With the support of the church behind them and the city health department's encouragerncnt and fervent promises of financial support, Mark and Emery "began to feel an urgency to do something rather qnickl:." And although, as Mark noted, "there was no way to have an AIDS facility up and running in '87," by February of 1988 Emery and Mark had formed a board of advisers and by the end of March the board was formally incorporated. "Sometime in April," once the board had begun negotiating to buy Elder Homes, Mark was asked to be president of the AIDS facility that would eventually be called Chaver. Having significant experience dealing v.ith the psychosocial and health care needs of PWAs, and ha\ing worked as a top administrator in a well-knmvn and respected hospital, }.1ark was the natural choice to head up the AIDS care facility. Tired of working down in the city, and extremely excited about his involvement v.ith what he described as "a really different and exceptionally important care facility for PWAs, and, at

[29]

A Neighborhood Divided

tlw time, the only one of its kind," Mark was "honored to be asked to be the president of Chawr and was eager to accept the position." Elder Homes came on the market at about the same time that the board was formed, in early 1988. Once a facility for the elderly, Elder Homes closed dovvn in October of 1987. At the time, the htcility was owned and operated by the husband of the head of the Lutherans' school for emotionally disturbed children, located in a county east of Park City. Mark understood that the facility had been closed "because they needed to clean out the asbestos in the building, and in order to do so in a cost-effective way, as well as to raise funds, they needed to expand the facility.'' But the neighbors were "dead set against the facility expanding, and raised all kinds of trouble." Mark explained that after several months of fighting with the neighbors, the owner and his partners "gave up and threw in the towel." Of course, knowing of the contentious relationship between the neighborhood and Elder Homes gave Mark and Emery reason to be concerned about the opening of an AIDS facility in West Highland. Furthermore, as Mark noted, when he first saw Elder Homes and especially the surrounding neighborhood he "immediately thought 'we will never do this in this neighborhood."' Really, it was like a knee-jerk reaction. I saw all of these lovely old brownstones and noticed how quiet it was in the area, and I couldn't help but think "there's just no way." I mean, here was a quiet and clearly middle- to uppermiddle-class community. Why would they be accepting of a facilit\ that would house highly stigmatized, and as far as I had experienced, hated and feared patients when they couldn't even deal with a geriatric facility?! But Mark's initial misgivings about the surrounding neighborhood's acceptance of Chaver were "drowned out" by what Mark, in an almost mystical, and certainly spiritually inspired way, described as the "perfect timing" of everything in the early stages of establishing Chaver. "It all carne together as if it was supposed to be." \i\'ith a timbre that bespoke of absolute Ltith and a knowing smile he explained: You know, evervthingjust fell into place in early 1988: everything just came into being. Here we were, concerned about the church responding negatively, but they didn't. We were anxious about money, but the city was encouraging us. We weren't certain of the need for such a facility, but again the city and the feasibility study reassured liS. We didn't know where exactly to prmide care to P\VAs and the complex just wasn't an option, and then Elder

[30]

AIDS Moves into the Neighborhood

Homes opened up to us. Even our initial meetings with community leaders in West Highlund went smoothly, I mean really smoothly. It all came together so neatly that you couldn't help hut feel that it was all meant to be. Such auspicious beginnings also led Mark and Emery to believe that a quick opening followed by some comnmnitywide education ahout AIDS would quell potential neighborhooJ objection to the use of Elder Homes as an AIDS nursing home .... The educational strategies we were employing to introduce the basic issues revolving around AIDS and HIV seemed to be really effective in the church, so I figured they'd be effective in the neighborhood. \!lark concluded his thoughts by adding that "Emery's un)ielding optimism also contributed to allaving" many of Mark's initial concerns about establishing Chavcr in West Highland. Once the Lutheran Complex bought Elder Homes in the fall of 1988, Mark, Emery, and the remaining members of Chaver's board expected a fairly swift opening for the AIDS home. Their goal, according to Mark, was to "do a few renovations to the building and reopen the nursing home very quickly. We had projected a three-month period, so by January of '89 or early February we intended to reopen." With Elder Homes squarely in the hands of the Lutheran Complex, the next step was to introduce the idea of an AIDS nursing home to the community of West High land. Mark and many members of the board imagined that this introduction of the idea would he simply a matter of information sharing and education. The first step Mark and Emery took to inform the neighborhood of their intentions to turn Elder Homes into a forty-two-bed nursing home f()r people with AIDS was to meet with the executive committee of tlw neighborhoml's chic association, the \Vest Highland Neighbors Association (WHNA). The two men had thought it best to hm e the neighborhood association sponsor their initial meetings with the neighbors because it was representative of the entire community. But, after hearing about the Complex's plans for Elder Homes, Mike Carr, the association's president, and Janet Blane, the head of the organization's zoning committee, explained to Emery and Mark that because the facility was already zoned as a nursing home ''it wasn't really a concern for the association to deal with." Mark described both his and Emery's reaction to the association's seeming lack of interest in Chaver as one of"total surprise."

[31]

A Neighborhood JJicidcd

Emery and I didn't expect Chaver to rais( · zoning concerns, but we thought the association would want to at least be involved in introducing Chavcr to the community. After all, they are supposed to be representatives of the neighbors. We were really baffled by their response to our plans. They seemed to want to have nothing to do with Chaver. Mark was later to learn from a neighbor that the executive committee of the neighborhood association, and particularly Janet Blane, "had just recently gone through an especially harrmving time with the neighborhood over the opening of a group home for the retarded on Winding Way Drive.·· As :\1ark ex-plained, "the executive committee supported the opening of the facility while the neighbors who lived closest, most of whom are black, were in opposition. Since the committee is mostly white, it turned into a realngly situation, where everyone was accusing the committee members, and especially Janet Blane, of being racist." With the WHNA's unwillingness to sponsor a meeting with the neighborhood. Emery aml \lark turned to the RIC. As Mark explained, he and Emery chose to go to the council because it was a neighborhood organization that had access to a variety of different people throughout West Highland, and that was the primary thing we wc~re looking for. RIC is a consortium of religious organizations in West Highland and other neighborhoods in the northwest corridor of Park City. It was started in the sixties, I think Their offices are over in the basement of Mountain Peak. The council includes both cleq.,ry and lay representatives from Jewish, Catholic, and a host of different Protestant denominations. Since its inception, the council has provided services to the elderly in the area and to low-income people in need of housing and legal assistance. That's how we knew about them. And, like I said, we wanted a group representative of all the various populations in West Highland that could sponsor an informational meeting about Chaver. The meeting at the RIC went "fabulouslv," according to Mark: 'All of West Highland's religious leaders were at the meeting, along V\'.ith a number of neighbors who are members of RIC, and all were exceptionally supportive." So, \\'.ith everything seeming to "just fall into place," Mark could not help but agree with Emery that maybe he '\vas heing a hit too paranoid about Harvey Gelh's meeting." As Mark and Emery entered Harvey Gelb's home, their focus had been on the controversy that sponsoring an AIDS facility might stir among the Lutherans, not upon West Highland's reactions. Armed with what would later turn out to be an unwarranted sense of confidence and

[32]

AIDS Moves into the Neighborhood

certainty, products of their positive experiences with the local and national Lutheran Synod, the financial commitments the city health department had made to Chaver, the approval they had received from the select group of West Highlanders they had met with at RIC, and their strong religious faith that somehow Chaver was "a part of God's plan," the two men walked into the neighborhood gathering feeling, as Emery Schmidt put it, "rather cocky."

Contagious and Terminal Neighbors Harvey Gelb greeted Emery and Mark and then showed them to the front of the audience of forty or so neighbors sitting in his living room. :tvlark and Emery sat down in chairs facing the neighbors, and Harvey Gelb asked for everyone's attention. Harvey began by explaining to the audience that, although there would be a larger cornmunitywide meeting at the Jewish Center later in the month, this gathering "was for those neighbors living in a three-block radius of Elder Homes [neighbors who would come to be known as the Near Neighbors] to speak of their concerns and ask any questions [they] might have about the opening of an AIDS home in the neighborhood." He went on to introduce the Reverend Emery Schmidt and Mark Johnson and then took his seat next to the two men. Emery Schmidt, looking, as one neighbor put it, "quite commanding" in his black snit and white collar, followed Harvey Gclb's introductions by describing tlw Lutheran Complex's plans for turning Elder Homes into an AIDS care facility. He explained that the nursing home would prmide "stateof-the-art" inpatient and outpatient care to people living \\ith AIDS. Although there would be a few beds in the facility for patients "li\ing out their last months," the primary goal of the facility, according to Emery, would be to "prO\ide rehabilitative care so that patients could return to their communities and live productive lives with AIDS rather than die from the disease." \Vith great enthusiasm, Schmidt went on to say, Chaver will be a nursing home in the truest sense of the words, not simply a hospice. It is the Lutheran's mission to provide care to the neediest in our societv. Chtwcr \viii therefore be a life-affirming facility, helping people to live life fully as opposed to being defeated by a severe illness. Schmidt concluded his brief introduction by inviting the neighbors to volunteer at Chaver and also reassured them that the Lutheran Complex and the board of Chaver would be "sensitive" to the neighbors' "concerns" and "wei-

[33]

A Neighborhood Divided

comed any suggestions" they had for the hlcility. He then opened the meeting to questions. The first neighbor to raise her hancl was Mary Torelli. Mary Torelli lh eel directly across the street from Chaver with her husband, Jim, and one of their three sons, Chris. Mary had lived in West Highland "in the same house for thirty years." The Torellis had heard about ChaYer and the current neighborhood meeting from Harvey Gclh. Harvey had heard about the AIDS f:tcility from Jmwt Blane. Harvey had been "the chair of the zoning committee for the WHNA for several years." He had known and worked with Janet Blane for even longer. Although Janet had told I larvey that the Lutherans were planning to meet with the community at the Jewish Center, Harvey had decided to organize a meeting of his own. According to l\Iarv Torelli, Han ev felt that the Jewish Center meeting was "too far off in the future" and he did not want the "Lntherans blindsiding the neighborhood by getting a head start organizing the community in support of their plans for Elder Homes." Harvey, as Mary explained, "didn't trust the Lutherans." When Harn~y came to invite the Torellis to the meeting at his home, he told told them that he "had a terrible experience with the Lutherans, especiall:· with Schmidt, whell they wanted to expand their geriatric complex up on Di,ide Avenue.·· Haney told Mary that ·'Schmidt gave the neighbors living near the complex very little time to organize. He let them know about the expansion plans the day before he had to." Harwv's distrust of the Lutherans made Mary auxious about the AIDS care facility, especially because, ''if the Lutherans weren't to be trusted, how wou kl they manage the sewer problem between Elder Homes and [her] home?" Mary said that "for years" the sewer from the home had leaked into her basement. As .\1ary Torelli addressed Emery Schmidt, her husband, Jim, sat looking quite indignant, making clear his disdain for and distrust of the two presidents. Mary, seeming rnore anxious than angry, began hy explaining to Emery Schmidt and Mark Johnson that during the past fifteen years she and Jim had "pleaded" with the city health department and the citv public works department to fix the sewer system that undergirds the nursing home "because it was leaking into [their] basement." Growing more anxious with every word, Mary went on to say that, although "the men from public works have been out to our home and Elder Homes. they have never adequately addressed the problem." And ·'now that they arc going to turn this thing into a home ror AIDS people, well, Jim and I arc just terrified we will become infected with the disease." \Vith a concerned look on his face, Emery Schmidt responded to Mary

[34]

AIDS Moves into the Neighborhood

Torelli by telling her that "he would have the Lutheran complex engineers look into the problem right away!" He reassured her that, although he "of course understood her upset and concern," neither she nor anyone else in her horrw was in danger of infection: "HIV can onlv be transmitted through the sharing ofbodilvfluids. Once the virus hits the air it dies rather en Villagt> Jt>wish Center. She said that she belit>wd "that there are ways to screen for current IV drug- using habits." She wt>nt on to explain that she was a social worker and had been the executive director of a drug rehabilitation center for the past ten years. She said that she had "worked with many drug addicts, many who now have AIDS, and you know when they are using and when they are not, believe me." Furthermore, ginm her "knowledge of the Lutheran Complex's reputation in other neighborhoods," Beth was "certain that the Lutherans [would] do all that they could to maintain the safety and securitv of the neighborhood." ''But," Beth added, "David and I live across the street fi·om Chawr, only three doors down. How will the opening of Chaver affect the value of our home?" What about the security of our property values? The fact is, 1 might not he worried about currently addicted IV drug users in the bcility, hut, dearly from the reactions we've already heard tonight, others aren't as well informed. People don't want to buv propertv next door to people they think art> drug addicts or contagious. Beth concluded by emphasizing that though she was curious about the effects Chaver would have on her property values, she wanted to "make it perfectly clear to ever:mne" at the meeting, that, ·'regardless of the answer" to her question, she and David "support the opening of Chaver; for us it's a [43]

A Neighborhood Divided

moral issue." David Cohen, who had been sitting pensively as his wife spoke, then added: "Yes. In our tradition, trying to extend human life is very strong. Life is dear, it's precious. If you can add a day to a human being's life that's a mitzvah, a commandment that God requires of us." Emery Schmidt, now sitting back in his chair and nodding his head in approval of Beth and David Cohen's expressions of support fst Highlanders. The~' sent l. Of conrsc, that munber includes only those who took puhlic stands on the nursing home. Of those neighbors. I interviewed rorty-five: twenty-two Near ?1/cighbors. rourteen lTJ ,AC residents, and nine non-Near Neighbors.

[67]

A Neighborhood Diuided

letters to Lutheran churches throughout the nation condemning the Lutheran Complex's handling of Chaver. They pleaded for the National Lutheran Synod to oppose the opening of the AIDS care facility on the grounds that it would "bring IV drug users into a quiet middle-class family-centered neighborhood." And they worked tirelessly to keep their concerns about Chaver in the area newspapers and on local radio and television broadcasts. The EHNA lost many of their battles against Chaver. For example, the city zoning board agreed \vith the Lutherans that Chaver was appropriately zoned as a health care facility; the National Lutheran Synod continued to support the Lutheran Complex's efforts to establish Chaver in West Highland; and a county to the east of Park City granted the Lutheran Complex a bond as start-up capital for Chaver. However. the EHNA's opposition tactics did successfully delay the nursing home's opening for three years. Instead of opening its doors in the vlinter of 1989 as originall:· planned, Chaver admitted its first fifteen patients in the winter of 1992.

The Support Camp Organizes Karen Jackson was "outraged" after the Near Neighbors met at her home: "How could that man [Harvey Gelb] sit in my li\ing room and talk about how, if the AIDS center opens, property values are going to drop. People acting like, 'Oh my God they're coming, the neighborhood is going to deteriorate!'" Karen Jackson's backyard bordered Chaver's. A retired nurse, she, and later her sisters, Shirley and Jean, had moved up to West High land in the late fifties, when the neighborhood was just beginning to open up to a grmving middleclass African American population. As Karen proudly explained, they "were one of the first black families to move into West Highland." Karen Jackson remembers all the "unjustifiable justifications" neighbors expressed about keeping African Americans out of the community and how enraged she and her sisters had become by such exclusionary sentiments. Now she '\vas hearing the same kinds of remarks being made about the patients in Chaver." Karen "was angry to hear such views" expressed by her neighbors. According to Karen, she and many of her neighbors had worked diligently during the sixties and seventies to make West Highland "a tolerant and caring community, a place where anyone would feel welcome," a neighborhood that had in fact become one of the few, perhaps the only one in the country, to achieve and sustain racial and religious integration. 'What was happening in the community? How could [her] neighbors be so ignorant?!" Karen concluded from her experience of the Near Neighbors' meeting at her home that Harvey Gelb

[68]

Taking Sides

"and the others giving the Lutherans such a hard time" were "acting like Nazis." The~ were "homophobic, racist yuppies and white trash!" When the neighbors left her house that evening, Karen called Kathy Denny. Kathy Denny had originally been frightened about Chaver's opening in the neighborhood. She said that, "after all, I am a mother first and foremost, and the thought of my children being exposed to a potentially infectious and lethal virus really touched my parental-maternal instincts." Karen Jackson had been impressed by "the cool and calm manner with which [Kathy Denny] questioned both the Lutherans and Harvey Gelb." Karen also liked "the way Kathy told Harvey Gelb that he didn't speak for everyone in the neighborhood and that it was precisely because of West Highland's reputation as a socially conscious community that she [Kathy] had mm·ed to West Highland." Karen had never met Kathy Denny before the evening "they all met at Harvey Gclb's house," but she felt that she and Kathy were "kindred spirits." Kathy Denny bad lived in West Highland since the "middle senmties." She and her husband, Jim, had chosen West Highland "to settle down in, because [they] wanted [theirl children to go to an integrated public school and grow up in a neighborhood where they would meet children of all races and creeds." Kathy "had just graduated from social work school and [they] had just had [their] first child" when they moved to West Highland. As Kathy explained, "In the seventies this place was like heaven to us. Everyone was really committed to the ideals of the time, racial justice and integration, progressive political action, you know, community organizing, setting np co-ops that sold things like whole f(JOds, public education, and really getting to know each other." Also, "Jim, was only twenty minutes from the office downtown [Jim was a city planner], and I was close to where I worked too." Kathy Denny no longer works as a social worker; she now m,vns a small linen shop in Blue Heights. Also, she and Jim "began sending the kids to Green Village Friends," because, as Kathy apologetically explained, "the public schools, with all the strikes and the busing of kids from less advantaged neighborhoods, went downhill." Kathy adamantly stated, however, that she and Jim were still "really sixties people." So, when Kathy heard Harvey Gelb's "tirades about Chaver and property values, and not wanting sick, poor people coming into the neighborhood" she "couldn't help but feel offended." She also, "really liked Reverend Schmidt:' noting his "compassion for the neighbors' concerns, integrity, and sincere commitment to helping others." According to Kathy, "Emery Schmidt has the same kind of vision of West Highland that we do": I became very supportive ofChaver after listening to Emery Schmidt speak about the Lutherans' reasons for opening Chaver. He reminded me of the

[69]

A Neighborhood Divided

reason we moved up here in the first place. I agree with Emery that Chaver will provide one more way to add diversity to the communi tv. I think \Vest Highland is a compassionate community. So does Emery. I would like to sec Chaver draw volunteers from the neighborhood. I think people here are comfortable with gays. They are comfortable with difference. When Karen Jackson reached Kath:· Denny that e\·ening, the two women "really hit it off," according to Denny. They agreed that they needed to he proactive in organizing the neighborhood to support the opening of Chaver. Both, as Kathy Denny said, "were excited at the prospect of doing some real grassroots organizing again." "Within minutes," the two women had put together a list of neighbors they felt were or would be supportive of Chm·er. They divided the list, and the next day they started making phone calls to in\ite "only neighbors identified as potential supporters to a real informational meeting about Chaver." There they would also "discuss strategies for supporting Chaver's opening." Kathy and Karen also agreed that they "should invite Emery Schmidt and Mark Johnson'' to their meeting, which would be held at Kathy Denny's the follmving week. Beth Cohen was "greatly relieved to hear from Kathy Denny" the night after the meeting at Karen Jackson's. Beth was "horrified hy the way Haney Gelh dominated the meeting at Karen's." She "couldn't believe how he was speaking as if he was the sole representative of the neighborhood's interests." She also did not like "Harvey's and others' tone" when they spoke about the AIDS patients for whom they imagined Chaver would prm ide services. Beth Cohen felt that some of her neighbors' "negativity was about gays and not wanting poor black people in the neighborhood." Beth pointed out, however, that "They'd never actually say it that way, especially with Karen Jackson there and Joan and Amy [a lesbian couple who were Beth's next-door neighbors] sitting in the room." Beth felt that "Emery Schmidt and Mark Johnson had made a terrible mistake presenting Chaver to the neighbors as a fait accompli, ignoring the fact that \Vest Highland is a professional community that needs process, that needs to feel a part of decisions that affect the community." Beth felt deeply "that supporting Chaver was a moral issue." Echoing her husband, Rabbi David Cohen, Beth explained to me how important it was "for Jevvs to support anything that supports life." Beth also noted that, as a drug rehabilitation counselor, she had begun to see PWAs at her place of work and recognized the need for Chan'r. Beth was glad Kathy Denny had "taken the lead to organize the neighbors." With great enthusiasm, Beth described Kathy Denny as "a terrific organizer." She recalled their days working with low-income communities in

[70]

Taking Sides

Park City while in graduate school together and their current actidties working to elect Janet Halpern as West Highland's representative to the state legislature. (As it turned out, Janet Halpern, who came to he an important ally of the Lutherans and a strong supporter of Chavcr, ran against Jack McVaugh, the EHNA's primary contact in the state legislature, the following fall and heat him. During the election, one could immediately tell whether a West Highlander supported or opposed Chaver by whether the person's yard had an election poster for Janet Halpern or Jack McVaugh.) Beth added that she had also seen Kathy "do some marvelous things to raise money for Green Village Friends," where one of Beth Cohen's sons was enrolled. Beth Cohen agreed with Kathy Denny that it was important to "get to those neighbors" who had not attended any of the meetings about Chan'r "before Harvey Gelh did!'' Beth was helping David prepare for the communitywide meeting about Chaver at the Jewish Center. She "did not want them to come full of misinformation conjured up by Harvey Gclb, before they had even had a chance to listen to the Lutherans' talk about their plans for Elder Homes." As they ended their conversation, Beth offered to help Kathy Denny and Karen Jackson contact neighbors and "alert them to Harvey's hate campaign against Chaver and the Lutherans, and to inform them of the meeting at Kathy Denny's." Karen Jackson reached Martin Levi several days after the meeting about Chaver at her home. Karen had known Martin Levi and his wife, Carole, from the "days when the neighbors organized to kick blockbusting realtors, back in the early sixties, out of the neighborhood." She also knew him through the "block Walk and Talks." Martin had been at Karen Jackson's meeting, and, according to Karen, seemed "really burned up by the neighbors' opposition to Chavcr. especially the Torellis." A labor organizer and teacher at Inner City University. t\Iartin Levi lived one door down from Chaver. Like many in attendance at Karen Jackson's, though still "a bit leery of the Lutherans," Martin was "alarmed by the lame excuses" he heard his neighbors giving at Karen's for opposing the opening of Ch