Urvashi Vaid: The influential lesbian and civil rights activist
After fighting for more than four decades for LGBTQ rights, Urvashi Vaid, a well-known LGBTQ activist, lawyer, award-winning author, and researcher, has died at the age of 63.
Vaid died at her home in New York City. According to friends on social media and leaders of various LGBTQ groups, the cause of death was cancer.
Surviving Vaid was her long time partner, political humorist Kate Clinton, and her niece, activist and performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon.
From 1989 to 1992, Vaid was the executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, then known as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Tributes for Urvashi Vaid
The National LGBTQ Task Force called Vaid as ‘one of the most influential progressive activists of our time’ and said her passing had left them devastated.
Kierra Johnson, the Task Force’s executive director, said, “Her leadership, vision, and writing helped shape not only the Task Force’s values and work but our entire queer movement and the larger progressive movement.”
Meanwhile, Kevin Jennings, CEO of Lambda Legal said, ““Urvashi Vaid was a visionary whose leadership and analysis inspired a generation of LGBT activists, including myself.”
Jennings added that Vaid’s death was a an “enormous loss” for the LGBQ community.
Los Angeles LGBT Center CEO Lorri L. Jean, said, “I admired her leadership and all that she accomplished, both within and outside of our movement– for queer people, for women, for people of color and against poverty.”
The journey of an activist
Born in New Delhi, India, she and her family to Potsdam, New York, in 1966 when her father got a teaching position at the state university.
A graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Vassar College, Vaid began her journey as a lawyer and as an activist as a staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.
As part of this project, she initiated the group’s work on HIV and AIDS in prisons. She then spent ten years at the Task Force in various positions including as its executive director.
However, she gained prominence when she disrupted a press conference wherein President George H.W. Bush was giving a speech on AIDS in 1990 with a sign that read, “Talk is cheap, AIDS funding is not.” .
The Task Force said Vaid’s time with them “saw her bring all aspects of queer life and struggle into the public eye.”
Urvashi Vaid as change-maker
Aside from heading the Task Force, Vaid cofounded the group’s Creating Change conference, which is now in its 33rd year.
From 2001 to 2005, she became the deputy director of the Governance and Civil Society Unit of the Ford Foundation. She also served on the board of the Gill Foundation from 2004 to 2014.
From 2005 to 2010, she was the executive director of the Arcus Foundation, a global funder of LGBTQ social justice and great ape conservation.
And in 2012, she launched LPAC. As the first lesbian super PAC, this group has invested millions on candidates that are committed to bring social justice through legislation.
Lastly, she became the president of the Vaid Group, a social innovation firm that works with global and domestic organizations to advance equity, justice, and inclusion.
Through her own words
In an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered in 2018, Vaid said activists had a role in pressuring Bush to take actions to help the LGBTQ community, like signing the Ryan White CARE Act.
She said that while they had made progress to build social services and fight discrimination, “I think what could have been done was done because of the activism.”
Speaking on LPAC, she said that she wanted “to create a fresh politics, one in which the lives of ordinary working women and men, LGBT people and people of color matter.”
She added that “I believe lesbians must step up and lead in solving our country’s challenges.’