April 1, 2022
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. Karen started volunteering at AVP at the ripe age of 68. After retiring from a lifetime in the suit-and-tie sector of Wall Street, her passion for the LGBTQ+ community brought her to AVP after she researched many organizations, trying to find where she might best spend her time. AVP’s work culture and engagement with trans communities are what made her decide to get involved. “You[...]
March 15, 2022
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Cindi Creager, CreagerCole Communications (646) 279-4559, cindi@creagercole.com New York, NY - The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) celebrates the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization Act of 2022. VAWA creates and supports responses to intimate partner violence/domestic violence, sexual assault dating assault, and stalking. The legislation, signed i[...]
March 14, 2022
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. As the current Chief Operating Officer of the renowned Center on Halsted in Chicago, Kim Fountain knows that her community and advocacy work there stems from her start as an AVP staffer doing everything from legislative visits, Pride events, bullhorning protests alongside people like Tish James and Sylvia Rivera, to coordinating numerous hotline and other trainings. “I am privileged[...]
March 9, 2022
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. Victoria Cruz started out the way many at AVP do — as a client. She decided to get involved because her experience working with AVP’s kind and nonjudgemental coordinators left her feeling transformed. Much of her work now is dedicated to giving queer and trans and black and brown people their power back. Cruz, known by her colleagues as “Miss Vicky,” was one of eleven children[...]
March 7, 2022
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. When there were no formalized LGTBQ+ domestic or intimate partner violence (IPV) services in New York City or the State, as Domestic Violence (DV) Program Coordinator, and later as the Director of Client Services at AVP, Diane Dolan-Soto, LCSW, provided representation for the LGTBQ+ community and collaboratively worked to make formal and lasting changes. When did you first start work[...]
March 2, 2022
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. Shay Huffman is many things, but foremost, she is a profound storyteller. Her abilities led her to the incredible advocacy work she’s done with AVP, from fundraising to policy work, to event planning. But sharing her story was not just something that helped clients, it was also a mode of healing “that was really the way to shed a lot of the shame.” Huffman is a survivor of intim[...]
February 23, 2022
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. Emerging activist and writer, Melania Brown, has been pivotal in the fight to end solitary confinement. Brown’s life was changed forever when her sister, Layleen Extravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, a 27-year-old Afro-Latinx trans woman, died in a Rikers Island solitary confinement cell after suffering an epileptic seizure. Since then, with the help of AVP, she has mobilized to demand #Ju[...]
December 9, 2021
This week, a Long Island man accused of sending dozens of violent threats to New York metro area LGBTQ organizations and the NYC Pride March over several years was arrested by federal agents. These threats have terrorized many in our community and are part of the increase in hate violence impacting LGBTQ New Yorkers. At the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), we know that hate violence against LGBTQ individuals and communities remains ramp[...]
November 30, 2021
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. Bea Hanson has been an advocate for victims of violence for over three decades. She served as AVP’s HIV-Related Violence Program Coordinator in the 1990’s, and later worked as the Chief Program Officer for Safe Horizon. Later, she served as the Principal Deputy Director of the United States Office on Violence Against Women for six years. Currently, she is the Executive Director o[...]
November 24, 2021
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. Sharon Stapel served AVP for seven years as its Executive Director, steering the organization through the recession of 2008 and growing programs, including overseeing the launch of AVP’s Legal Project in 2013 and our programming geared to serve transgender and gender non-conforming people. A lawyer, activist, and professor, Sharon was a leader in the fight for an LGBTQ-inclusive re[...]
November 23, 2021
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. A former member of the first neighborhood-based gay and lesbian group in New York City, the Chelsea Gay Association, Arthur Goodman was one of AVP’s founders in 1979. He holds a Masters of Public Administration from CUNY Baruch College, and currently provides financial planning services, specializing in the LGBT community and unmarried opposite sex couples through Good Man Financia[...]
November 18, 2021
This interview has been shortened and condensed for clarity. In 2019, Stevin Bonifacio, a New York City Anti-Violence Project’s client, reached a settlement with the City of New York Department of Homeless Services for anti-transgender discrimination he experienced in the city’s homeless shelter system. His complaint, filed through the City Commission on Human Rights, included financial compensation and important trans specific policy chan[...]
