GMHC Unveils New Campaign to Combat HIV/AIDS Among Young Men of Color

*published on 21 Feb 2012 in The EDGE

Gay Men’s Health Crisis on Valentine’s Day unveiled a new public awareness campaign designed to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS among young men of color.

GMHC launched its “Kiss and Tell” campaign on Valentine’s Day.  (Source:Mike Ruiz)

The “Kiss and Tell” campaign features a series of photographs of young gay and bisexual men of color talking honestly about the value, benefits and strength derived from open discussion with their friends and partners about the virus. Fashion photographer Mike Ruiz, who was on The A-List, shot the images that the campaign features.

He knows the challenges that these young men face intimately.

“I moved to [New York City] from Montreal as a teenager and I had no direction or guidance and I learned things the very hard way,” Ruiz told EDGE. “I finally got on track and created a reality for myself; I want to share that with the younger generation.”

He said the campaign empowers young black and Latino men who have sex with men.

“We want to take away the stigma,” said Ruiz. “We want to encourage the conversations and not brush things under the carpet. That will perpetuate the epidemic.”

An estimated 1.2 million Americans live with HIV/AIDS. And while epidemiologists note that the epidemic has stabilized in the United States in recent years, it continues to disproportionately impact young people of color.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data shows that the rate of new infections among black MSM between the ages of 13-29 increased an alarming 48 percent between 2006 and 2009. Given this steady increase, GMHC created CLUB1319 to reach out to MSM of color between the ages of 13-19. The group meets on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 4 – 8:30 p.m. It offers a variety of community forums, workshops, health fairs and other events every three months.

The “Kiss and Tell” campaign came about through a series of CLUB1319 community meetings.

“The young men were reacting with humor to the Army’s ’don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” said GMHC spokesperson Krishna Stone. “They wanted the opposite, open honesty.”

GMHC CEO Dr. Marjorie Hill feels that some of the most valuable learning opportunities emanate from what she described as “organic campaigns” that come from “the experiences of the target audience.”

“We are looking for many innovative ways to remove some of the stigma in the black and Hispanic community surrounding sex, homosexual liaisons and HIV/AIDS,” said Hill. “”Kiss and Tell” is a testing, prevention and educational campaign that encourages partners to discuss their sexual history and HIV status.”

She added that the campaign also allows GMHC to be even more visible to the community.

“Yes we embrace and serve people living with HIV/AIDS, but we also want to prevent the disease,” she said. “We are concerned with people who are not yet infected, and we would like to reach those people via a positive and sexy message. That is the “Kiss and Tell” campaign.”

Log onto www.club1319.org for more information.

Unreachable Eden: theatre review

*published on Feb 13, 2012 in the EDGE

Barbara Kahn can be referred to as an historical playwright. For decades Kahn has penned deeply researched plays often portraying the plight, ascent, or convolutions of Jews, gay activists or other under reported historical figures. Her most recent work“Unreachable Eden” is an extension of an initial work, “The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams” also mounted at the Theater for the New City, where she brings an annual work to the space on the Lower East Side.

Rudy (Robert Gonzales Jr) warns Hella (Gusta Johnson) and Eve Adams (Steph Van Vlack) that they must separate as the Germans invade Paris in 1940 in “Unreachable Eden”  (Source:Joe Bly)

Eve Adams nee Chava Zloczower, was a Polish, Jewish lesbian who ran a tearoom in Greenwich Village in the late 1920’s. The tearoom held salons featuring poetry, music, and frank sexual discussions where illuminati like Henry and June Miller, poet Maxwell Bodenheim, and others came to mingle and marvel.

Adams was set up in a sting by a homophobic policewoman who alleged that Adams “made unwelcome advances,” which was a charge of “disturbing the peace” and further that Adams disseminated obscene literature, as she offered her book “Lesbian Love” for sale.

These charges unleashed a concatenation of misery and tragedy on Adams. She was deported to Poland, then found her way to Paris where, as an independent bookseller, she encountered Anais Nin, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and the Millers again, found love and finally fled to Nice, in the south of France in a failed attempt to escape the Nazis. Eve was captured, returned by transport to her native Poland, to Auschwitz and murdered on arrival.

Sometimes historical works can become bogged down in their own wonderful research and this is one strike against “Unreachable Eden”. At a tad over 90 minutes, with an intermission, the piece, comprised of vignettes from Eve’s life, often consisted of her reading what I assume to be actual letters penned while pining to return to America and the hubbub of her beloved Greenwich Village.

Author Kahn is rightfully proud of the access afforded her by the family of Adams and she attributes her work in the program in a full and nearly academic fashion, but this does not make captivating theater. Prolonged readings of letters, transcripts from deportation hearings, or police logs need to be artfully, not just faithfully integrated to be riveting.

And then there is the music. Composed by Arthur Abrams, the music — and I can’t really fathom why this material was set to music — is too simplistic and often upbeat in the way that TV themes are. One number, “I’ll be your Friend” sung by the Henry Miller character in a New York accent that seems as if he is impersonating Woody Allen, could literally be a cut from “Children’s Television Workshop,” and this is serious important historical work.

On occasion, songs from the era were sung and that seemed to lend a more authentic note to the play. If the musical idea was to punctuate this often-tough work with a lighter note and show off the cast’s talents, historical music might be a better choice.

On a positive note, the actors were for the most part wonderful and Steph Van Vlack, who embodies the brave Eve, is brilliant as is her sweetheart Hella, played with great musical chops by Gusta Johnson. The costumes by Carla Grant gave an air of authenticity to the era, which helped create the time on a small stage.

We don’t get to see enough work about women like Eve Adams; I just want her to have a presentation that matches what seemed to be a brilliant, vivacious mind and spirit.

“Unreachable Eden” runs through February 26 at Theater For The New City, 155 1st Avenue. For info or tickets, call 212-254-1109 or visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net

Created Equal: theatre review

*published on Feb 10, 2012 on the EDGE

“Created Equal” is a full evening of six one-act plays revolving around current political issues produced by The Red Fern Theater and presented, where they are in residence, at the Theater at the 14th Street Y.

“What the Wall Does” by Rob Askins, part of “Created Equal”   (Source:Steven Williams)

First some back story, which I found fascinating regarding the mission of one of the newer non-profit theaters on the downtown scene. The Red Fern was founded in 2006 and “strives to provoke social awareness and change through theatrical productions.” To further this ideal, Red Fern partners each production with a philanthropy whose work can be advanced both through information sharing and a portion of the ticket proceeds.

For this undertaking, the artistic director Melanie Williams announced that in order to avoid the taint of partisanship, Red Fern had partnered with Materials for the Arts, an excellent service organization that has been around for decades and recycles all manner of stuff, making it available for free to artists. This both keeps landfills a little less full and allows designers, painters, directors to “shop” for free in the materials warehouse.

In “Created Equal”, each of the six plays is by a different writer and director, and only a few actors overlap, meaning the program is huge and 21 actors all bow for the final curtain call. Impressive. These six plays were not created equally, but rather ranged over the political landscape with pathos, humor (both black and frothy), and even had a musical twist to them.

The actors were for the most part talented, all had great creds and endless education, making me sad that part of our political commitments do not extend to valuing, educating, and employing artists they way other countries and cultures do. But that was my internal digress as I read nearly every bio at what seemed like an interminable intermission.

The first piece, “Occupied” written by J. Holtam and directed by Julie Foh was a pithy joke on the Occupy movement. Five actors argue about what they will present as their one-off for the afternoon protest rally. They utilize the hand signals of the Occupy gang and fight about whose rights are at the top of the tally ticker: women, gay, global warming, income, or gender inequality. I didn’t love this play, as there was too much showing and shouting rather than being and occupying the space.

The next was “Pull” with a subtitle of Emma’s getting married if her family doesn’t shoot him first, written by Anna Moench and directed by artistic director Williams. The three actors in this play were great. Pepper Binkley as the about-to-be bride, her Montana gun-toting sis played with swagger by Dana Berger, and the vegan, mouthy, tech-addicted, super reality, loud -speaking Debargo Sanyal was beyond perfect.

The short of it is that the two sisters change as one moves east and is now engaged to a guy who would never have been natively seen in Montana. The gals go skeet shooting but end up shooting the fiance’s cell phone, as he is so annoying. In between, there are great bits of banter, which illuminate the need for compromise based on the fact that people aren’t perfect.

The third, “Equal Time”, (which in the program is listed as the second, and they were wise to change the order), is a mini-musical. It is so smart, beguiling, and almost politically necessary that the non-partisan League of Women Voters, might consider producing it and running it all of “silly season.” I believe that was Obama’s moniker for the lead up to the elections.

Written by a mother/daughter team of Kristen Lee Rosenfeld for music and Luanne Aronen Rosenfeld for lyrics turned out a mini jewel which asks the question, “Can political debate be more than just song and dance?” There are a mere two candidates in this debate; a fictionalized pretty-boy Harvard grad (Jonathan Todd Ross) who grins manically and finds the light, and an African American woman (Cicily Daniels) in an ill-fitting suit who keeps getting her dander up when her opponent pushes her easily visible buttons.

As the candidates begin to answer questions that seem to have been plucked from real debates with pat answers, the campaign managers begin to sing over them with an internalized dialogue. “If your opponent’s record is spotty, point out that the opponent’s naughty.” Maybe it’s not the Gershwins, but in the end it hit what many of us are bemoaning — the false nature of politicians. The campaign managers who did the heavy lifting in singing and dancing are played by Kirsten Hopkins and Brian Charles Rooney, and were excellent, as were the candidates. I hope to see the full-length version of this work.

After intermission there were three more works: “What the Wall Does” by Rob Askins, directed by Dominic D’Andre is basically about the depraved sex cravings of certain elected officials. There is a red wall with two holes. There is a governor, wonderfully and evilly played by Lou Liberatore, there is his assistant Debargo Sanyal, completely different from his first role and equally compelling. Scott Rad Brown and Anna Van Valin administer oral ministrations from behind the wall. It is a tough, dark play that does manage to point up the slimier side of politics.

“Lex Before Marriage” by Jen Silverman, directed by Jessi D. Hill, explores an impending lesbian wedding where the favorite boy cousin David Jackson (who is great as a disaffected confused youth), and the bride Erin Buckley, all prim and uber-wise, discuss what it means to agree to disagree and still remain loving family.

This play would not be as compelling without a bouncing-off-the-wall character played to insane perfection by Parker Leventer. Leventer morphs from virgin farm girl to experimental bondage lesbian, to wife, to voyeur. She seems to embody the range that human sexuality can assume and her perambulations with a character named “the lesbian” (played with gusto by Stacey Raymond) take the short work to the edges of experimentalism while still parsing gay marriage in a linear format.

In the final play, “America, You Kill Me”, a liberal becomes a nihilist after a horrible accident. And it’s a comedy! Written by Joshua Conkel and directed by Scott Ebersold, it was too gory for me in an up-close-and-personal theater. As one of the more than 50 million Americans without insurance, the thought of a car accident is terrifying for me. I can’t readily travel to the edge of dark humor to decode the potential hilarity in an insured drunk decimating and murdering two college kids and not calling 911 because he can’t go back to jail.

The girl, wonderfully played by Nicole Beckwith, asks her cell phone “Siri call hospital” but the drunk, Tom Butler, crushes it under his big foot. The other student, trapped under rubble and realistically having paroxysms due to shock, is played well by Will Seefried. People did laugh. I did not. I wanted out of the scene of the accident. Do not sit close if you are bad with simulated gore, blood, convulsions, and the lack of recourse for so many of the uninsured.

In all it was exciting to see six new authors, directors, and a host of talent in a new theater. I wish what we were seeing was more uplifting, but then most of us desire equal pay, marriage for all, health care, and public services like education and housing aplenty so we can create and contemplate without the attendant fear. Alas.

“Created Equal” runs through February 12 at The Red Fern Theater, presented in residence the Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th St. For info or tickets visit www.redferntheatre.org

 

 

Stopped Bridge of Dreams: a review

*published on January 30, 2012 on EDGE

John Jesserun has been making theater which incorporates text, movement, architecture, film, video, images, sounds, amazing actors and non-linear wonderment for long enough that the MacArthur Foundation has noticed his gleam and awarded him a coveted “genius grant.”

Preston Martin and Black-Eyed Susan in Stopped Bridge of Dreams  (Source:Darien Bates)

Jesserun’s back story is intriguing enough to warrant a diversion here, as I believe it sets him apart from many of the perennials working in the downtown or experimental genre. In 1976, he began as a content analyst for CBS TV and then went on to work for Dick Cavett, really one of the smartest people ever to grace the boob tube.

In 1982, he began his iconoclastic serial called “Chang in a Void Moon” which was performed at the Pyramid Club. This was where I first encountered the work, the spirit, and the mind-blowing edges of Jesserun’s art. “Chang” continues now in its 80th episode. His works have been marveled at all over the world from Frankfort to Tokyo, the big apple to the mini-apple. Wherever experimental works reign supreme, Jesserun’s plays and film are seen.

The works are often difficult to explain, there is no clear Act 1 synopsis moving toward an Act 4 dénouement, rather it is dreamscape with story telling woven throughout. In “Stopped Bridge of Dreams,” the work opens with a conversation between a man, in this incarnation Preston Martin and a woman who may or may not be his mother, played by the ever perfect Black-Eyed Susan.

We learn that the table and chairs they sit in, and the projections where we see them from 360 degrees are all on an airplane, which houses a flying brothel. Susan play Madame X, yes the Madame whose voice never rises above a whisper in rage, sweetness, fear, or sadness, and this sotto voce nature draws the audience and cast members in as they literally lean to catch the nuance of every word.

Susan and Martin fight over everything. Is he her son Hiroshi, how many abortions has she had, is he the one who survived, is he kept as a serf on board to service a non-specified clientele who strategically steal his kimono after every song? We learn that Hiroshi, played with a hollowed-out sleaziness by Martin, wants to get off the plane and start a life, whatever that may be.

Films and videos and still images play on the enormous video screens, which bisect the theater presenting mirror images depending on if you are seated to the east or west in the huge cavernous LaMama Annex theater (now renamed the Ellen Stewart Theater after the founder who passed away a year ago).

Sometimes we see close-ups of the actors as they bemoan or change clothes, nap, or wander the halls of the airplane. The rooster unfolds to us; there is the very ripe, beautiful Claire played by Claire Buckingham. She has a waterfall of strawberry blond hair, a lean body, and an un-selfconscious way of stepping in and out of clothes that make it seems as if she really was a sky-locked courtesan.

In fact much of the dialog about the “floating world,” the Japanese moniker for the sex trade, emanates directly from “The Life of an Amorous Woman,” written by Saikaku Ihara in 1686. Before I read this note in the program, I was shocked by the dialog and text, as it seemed as if it came from many different voices. In fact it did, but there were many diverse personages portrayed on the plane and in the play.

Sanghi Choi, Olive Dawley, Ben Forster, Ikechukwu Ufomadu and finally the barista, Daniel Pinheiro, all contributed perfectly to populating the flying brothel of the “floating world.” I love entering a parallel universe and in order to attend this performance I had to tear myself away from Haruki Murakami’s “IQ 84″, a massive novel about two Japanese worlds in juxtaposition, one 1984 and the other IQ84, where different heavenly bodies populate the skies and personages move between worlds, acting as agents listening to voices.

I almost felt as if “Stopped Bridge of Dreams” was an extension of the upheaval of the novel as it asked me, and the audience to further suspend belief in the worlds we know to exist and to open ourselves to all the other contrivances and possibilities orbiting along side us.

If this seems too cerebral, ponder this. I invited two French house guests to the play, a photographer and his young assistant. One spoke good English, the other, not so much, but they both were so excited to have experienced the work. They loved the theater itself — well, nearly everyone does — and we discussed the play long into the night.

For a work which lasts less than 90 minutes — my perfect timeline for experiments as it mirrors a few REM cycles — this piece worked its way into my own dreams and has me thinking about how we connect, give pleasure, and extricate ourselves from difficulty; A great set of grist for my mental mill.

John Jesserun’s “Stopped Bridge of Dreams” runs through February 5 at Ellen Stewart Theatre at LaMama, 66 East 4th Street. For info or tickets call 212-475-7710 or visit www.lamama.org

Tom Judson – Man of Many Talents

Tom Judson is a 51 year-old man with a body for days, and for each muscle delineation he possesses a concomitant skill.

He is a composer, an actor, a musician who plays at least a dozen instruments from accordion to trombone, a rower, a former male escort, a writer, a world-class chef (please pass the apricot scones), and a home renovator.

Wait did I forget to mention adult film star? How could I not, especially since he won performer of the year in 2005 when he was 40-plus years old.

I know Tom Judson; I mean really know him, No, not in the Biblical sense although we did share a room in Hollywood when I went to cover the Gay Porn Awards. I walked the red carpet with Tom and was standing next to him at the ceremony, where he was nominated for five awards and kept losing one after another. I was there when he bowed his tall, lean frame over to me to whisper, “I am the Susan Lucci of porn.”

’The Susan Lucci of porn.’

This is Tom Judson, he is funny, he is spontaneous and he is self-effacing as only a very bright person can afford to be.

According to Judson, “I took an unusual path and it seems I followed ever diversion my life led me on. When I first stared working in theater in 1980 at places downtown like LaMaMa, I was exclusively a writer of words and music. But back in the day we would all be in each other’s shows as favors. No one was being paid so we leapt in to fill in the blanks. So I started performing because it was hard to get others to perform for free. People seemed to think I had something going on as a performer.

“But I always stayed a musician, I play a dozen instruments: winds, brass and keyboards, it was a hobby to learn new instruments, little did I know that my autodidact obsession with diverse instruments would take me to Broadway as an actor, but it did.”

Tale of our times

In 1988, on a lark, a friend dragged Judson to an audition of Sam Mendes production of “Cabaret” where all the actors played instruments on stage. He won a role. In Judson’s one-man show “Canned Ham,” he has a hilarious retelling of his klutzy inability to dance and his manic counting as he moved across the stage, amazed every night that he succeeded.

The one-man show had a run downtown at Dixon Place and in Provincetown, LA and Key West. This poignant, funny, honest tale of the man of many hats is unfolded often wearing nothing but a musical instrument and socks. It is a tale of our times detailing the loss of his husband Bruce to AIDS and the rebuilding of his life.

There is bravery in all of what Judson does. He discloses, details and delights in equal measure and does seem to evince a fearlessness that most lose in the their 20s. After his husband’s death, Judson was touring in the musical “42nd Street,” and was in Minneapolis and went out to a gay bar after the show.

TO CONTINUE READING PLS GO TO     http://www.edgeptown.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=culture&sc2=features&sc3=&id=129077

Instinct at The Lion Theatre

*Published on January 22, 2012 in The Edge 

Matthew Maguire, the two-time OBIE award winner and co-founder with partner Susan Mosakowski of the Creation Company, a longtime fixture on the experimental circuit, has undertaken to pen a straight play. To other denizens of downtown theater, this means the play is about the words, the actors, the sets, the direction, and the flow of the text.

Maggie Bofill and Amirah Vann in “Instinct”   (Source:Gerry Goodstein)

It is not embellished with film, revolving stages, undercurrents of past lives, mythological beings, indigenous musical scores, slow-motion, or choreography; in short all the things I reveled in when I first saw The Creation Company’s work in the late ’80s. Maguire has grown into a playwright who is secure in his ability to tell a story in words utilizing strong characters as his mouthpieces.

“Instinct”, produced by the Creation Company, is the tale of two scientist couples — one straight, one lesbian — both attempting to parse and dissect their relationships and a virulent strain of the communicable disease, SARS.

It seems as if author Maguire spent a great deal of time learning lots of scientific back story; the science was sometimes baffling, the way science is to outsiders, but always enthralling. The piece was originally commissioned by Emory College’s Center for Creativity and the Arts Strategic Initiative and it pits and partners epidemiologists Mara and Daniel, played with gusto and commitment by Kim Blair and Jeffrey Withers, with (and sometimes against) vaccinologists Lydia and Fermina.

I loved the performances of Maggie Bofill as Lydia, a Russian scientist repatriated to Atlanta and addicted to pain killers and in love with a fiery Dominacana, played with equal force by Amirah Vann.

We meet the scientist couples on New Year’s Eve in two sequential scenes played out on a simple, workable set by Ben Kato. Some screens and cubes allow for all the action to unfold in a lab or apartment without the need of deep physical grounding. The opening shows us Maguire’s skill at pithy banter as the couples prod and preen before us, making promises for the coming year, which involve groundbreaking research and love making.

As Mara attempts to seduce Daniel into conceiving a child she utilizes a great scientific argument, “My genes are so good, it would be a shame to waste them.” Daniel is unconvinced. He wants to be a scientist first and fears the world he sees through his microscope. This provides the ongoing tension between this couple even as they are forced to work together to stop an epidemic, which we are told is in danger of becoming a pandemic.

The scenes shift to Lydia and Fermina, who have isolated a new vaccine created by actually cloning one strain from another, if I correctly absorbed the science in between the drugs and their similar fights about whether they would have a child.

Farina is all-in, while phlegmatic Lydia is full of doubt. The dialogue is quick and cinematic, filled with scientific metaphor. Dialogue like “Language can not live without a host so therefore it is a parasite”, made me pause and reflect on the skill of the author. But I often wanted more action.

Finding this urgency onstage is difficult, as we have been spoiled by so many action movies on the same theme — “Contagion” being the most recent — where scientists run and race, fight, and finally win the battle over a virus, alien, or meteor that will destroy the earth. It is a tough call to create this tension with only language, a small set, and very present actors.

Each scene change is punctuated with the duration of the outbreak and the number of casualties: Day 1/7 Dead, Day 28 /978 Dead. There are many scenes in between where the scientists debate rushing to hasty cures or following the slow pace of science.

During this time the scientists grow more and more tired, which draws attention to a silly detail: although they are exhausted, the lesbian couple clings to wearing three-inch heels throughout the exhausting month portrayed on stage.

I would love to know what costume designer Christina Bullard had in mind when she concocted these gals in their gray and red heels toiling endlessly, popping pills, and fighting about commitment and emotional intimacy. At least Mara is wearing sensible flats as she becomes more and more tired, banishing Daniel to the couch and resorting to artificial insemination, and getting pregnant all during this one hellish month.

Sometimes this kind of detail can distract me, and maybe other audience members, from the finer points being unleashed. And perhaps director Michael Kimmel, who did a fine job moving the players and exhorting emotional performances from them, might have taken a slight reality check in the final rehearsals to see what reduces reality and thus force from “Instinct.”

In the final analysis I was wrapped up in the characters and dialogue, but kept seeing it as a movie. Maybe that will emerge from this showing. Imagine a great stage writer giving film actors some meaty, bright text with which to pepper an action movie. Please pass the popcorn.

“Instinct” plays through February 4 at The Lion Theatre, 410 West 42nd St. For info or tickets call 212-239-6200 or visit www.creationproduction.org or www.telecharge.com 

A Gay Small Town N.Y. Mayor Runs for Congress

*published on Jan 18, 2012 on EDGE

Wappingers Falls Mayor Matt Alexander is certainly not shy about the fact that he is gay.

Gay Wappingers Falls Mayor Matt Alexander hopes to unseat first-term Congresswoman Nan Hayworth in November. (Source:Mike Fricchione)

He has a committed partner who helps with his fundraising and stands right by his side, but Alexander is not just a gay politician. He is quick to point out he believes it is time for people to be elected on the basis of their work ethic, education and ability to get jobs for unemployed Americans.

“Families are struggling and we have a Congress who is delivering for the wealthy and special interests but not for working families,” said Alexander. “We feel that in the Hudson Valley and we know that we need all levels of government working together to set families back on track and bring jobs back to our communities. I believe that the federal government should work more closely with municipal officials to identify local needs. With the right investment, local governments can be the incubators for job growth-but that takes federal representatives who acknowledge their responsibility and step up to the plate. We all have a role to play.”

Wappingers Falls, a village of 5,000 people in Dutchess County, has seen a dramatic revival under Alexander’s mayoralty.

“I originally came to the Hudson Valley when my father was hired to work at West Point,” said Alexander, who earned his Eagle Scout ranking at the military college after he transferred from his original Boy Scout troop in his native Alabama. “I loved it up here, I graduated from Cornwall High School and after finishing college at Notre Dame, I was drawn back here.”

Alexander holds an accounting degree and is a certified public accountant who worked at Deloitte and Touche in Manhattan. He left this work because he found it “unsatisfying and unrewarding.”

“I wanted to use my accounting skills to help small businesses,” he said.

Alexander used his experience and turned around several small companies-including a Cornwall paper recycling mill that was about to close. He then opened an antiques store on Main Street in Wappingers Falls.

“It was from the business on Main Street that I got called to public service,” said Alexander. “I watched the stores be shuttered more and more each week and I wanted to do something about it. Year after year nothing gets done and the area was becoming more depressed. Then one day I said to myself enough. And so I decided to run for mayor and I won. I have been here for seven years now and the town is on an upswing.”

Alexander has worked with the Hudson River Watershed Alliance and now heads the Wappinger Watershed Inter-municipal Council. He hopes to use a bi-partisan approach in his effort to unseat first-term incumbent Republican Congresswoman Nan Hayworth in November and represent New York’s 19th Congressional District on Capitol Hill.

Alexander, who has received endorsements from both Democrats and Republicans in his mayoral campaigns, noted he has worked with the Wappingers Falls Civic Association the Greater Southern Dutchess Chamber of Commerce and other business and revitalization groups.

“The federal government should be working together with localities to identify needs, bolster economies and create jobs,” said Alexander. “I have an opponent… who believes that the federal government’s only job is and this is a quote, “interstate highways and defense. This leaves too many smaller communities to fend for themselves and to flounder. I want to help.”

Retiring Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Edward Albee, Estelle Parsons and other luminaries have already backed Alexander’s campaign. Frank and Maloney will host a fundraiser for Alexander in Tribeca on Thursday.

“Growing up in Alabama I never imagined that someone gay could be in Congress and now Barney Frank is doing an event for me,” said Alexander.