GLAA Announces 2005 Distinguished Service Awards
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GLAA Distinguished Service Award Recipients 1990-Present


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Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC
P.O. Box 75265
Washington, D.C. 20013


For Release:
Monday, February 7, 2005

Contact: Rick Rosendall
202-667-5139


GLAA Announces 2005 Distinguished Service Awards


The Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC is pleased to announce its 2005 Distinguished Service Award recipients. GLAA presents awards to local individuals and organizations that have served the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community in the national capital area. The awards will be presented at GLAA's 34th Anniversary Reception on Wednesday, April 20. (Location and other details to be announced.)

GLAA's 2005 Distinguished Service Award recipients are former Whitman-Walker Clinic executive director Cornelius Baker, fundraising charity Brother, Help Thyself Inc., D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp, Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King, and lesbian cultural trailblazer Jane Troxell.

Cornelius Baker has been one of the AIDS service community's most successful organization builders and a highly effective advocate for people with AIDS. He served as Executive Director of Whitman-Walker Clinic from 2000 until his recent retirement. He was Executive Director of the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) from 1996 until 2000. He has served on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services panel on clinical practices in HIV treatment, the U.S. Public Health Service/Infectious Disease Society of America's Working Group on the Prevention of Opportunistic Infections, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS. He has served as an aide to D.C. Councilmember Carol Schwartz; as Confidential Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the National AIDS Program Office; and as Director of Public Policy for NAPWA. He is also a former president and fundraising chairman of Brother, Help Thyself.

Brother, Help Thyself Inc. (BHT) is the nation's first united gay and lesbian fund for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and AIDS organizations. Since 1978 they have donated in excess of $1.7 million to non-profit organizations in the Washington and Baltimore areas. BHT was formed by Leather/Levi Motorcycle Clubs to help prevent the closing of the Washington, DC Gay Men's VD Clinic due to the lack of funds. The Clinic survived and grew into what has become one of the nation's largest lesbian and gay health providers—the Whitman-Walker Clinic. BHT dispenses direct and matching grants, acts as a clearinghouse for donated goods and services, and serves as an information resource to the community. BHT is an all-volunteer organization, allowing them to operate with very little overhead and maximizing the benefits to the community.

Linda Cropp has been a highly effective and non-partisan D.C. Council chair. At the start of each Council session, she has resisted calls to reserve committee chairs for Democrats only, which would have cut out two of our most effective government reformers on the Council. At the beginning of the current session, she successfully proposed a restructuring of the standing committees that took oversight of the Department of Health out of the Committee on Human Services and placed it under a new Committee on Health. GLAA had recommended this change after experience demonstrated the unwieldy nature of the previous Committee on Human Services, which oversaw fully 25 percent of the District budget. The new committee, chaired by Councilmember David Catania, will provide better oversight of the city's health-related services. GLAA was also impressed by Cropp's assertiveness when she quickly and publicly corrected Mayor Williams at a Congressional hearing in 2002 after he made an incorrect statement about the costs of domestic partnerships. As Council Chair she has also skillfully shepherded legislation through the full Council once it has been marked up at the committee level; the most recent example is the First Amendment Rights and Police Standards Act of 2004, which was supported by GLAA and ACLU, and which was the target of a lengthy series of weakening amendments introduced from the dais by then-councilmember Harold Brazil. The bill emerged largely unscathed, and was passed by a 12-1 margin.

Colbert I. King, a longtime op-ed columnist for The Washington Post and a member of its editorial board, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for what the Pulitzer committee cited as "his against-the-grain columns that speak to people in power with ferocity and wisdom." He has eloquently defended the rights and dignity of gay citizens and their families in such columns as "When the Archbishop Calls," 8/16/03; "Fix It, Brother," 5/22/04; and "A Test for Tolerance," 1/1/05. In his capacity as deputy editorial page editor, he has also helped prepare a series of strongly pro-gay unsigned editorials, including: "Gay Marriage Games," 2/13/04; "What's the Problem?" 3/20/04; "An Insulting Waste," 3/29/04; "Kill This Amendment," 7/14/04; "Until Courts Do Us Part," 8/16/04; "A Vote for Inequality," 11/5/04. In opposing a proposed anti-gay ballot initiative, King questioned "whether D.C. voters want to get in bed with forces at loose in America that want to exploit religious and cultural differences for their own narrow, selfish, political interests." In opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment, he wrote, "The combination of this proposal's radicalism and its consideration in the middle of an election year commands a strong rebuke from those members who retain enough shame to oppose a constitutional amendment whose express purpose is to deny equal treatment to U.S. citizens."

Jane Troxell is a pioneer in the advancement of women's literature. In 1987, four months after coming to Lambda Rising as a sales clerk, she was promoted to women's book buyer. She has edited the Lambda Book Report, helped inaugurate the Lammy awards for GLBT literature, and has served as Executive Director of the Lambda Literary Foundation. She is perhaps best known as one of the owners of Lammas Women's Books and More, which was not only an independent bookstore but a social outlet for Washington's lesbian community as well. Following some years as a small business development volunteer with the Peace Corps, helping women in Paraguay improve their farming businesses, she returned to Washington where she recently served as store manager of Lambda Rising.

A list of previous award winners can be found on the GLAA website at www.glaa.org/resources/awardshistory.shtml.

Founded in 1971, the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington (GLAA) is an all-volunteer, non-partisan, non-profit political organization that defends the civil rights of lesbians and gay men in the Nation's Capital. GLAA lobbies the DC Council, monitors government agencies, educates and rates local candidates, and works in coalitions to defend the safety, health, and equal rights of gay families. GLAA remains the nation's oldest continuously active gay and lesbian civil rights organization.

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