Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders addressed a crowd of about 100 people in The Center’s auditorium May 31, as part of the second annual GLBT Health Fair, sponsored by The Center and Priority Pharmacy.

“Crack cocaine wasn’t an epidemic until it got to suburbia and Jennifer got arrested for buying it, said City Councilmember Charles Lewis, introducing the first African-American to serve in the position of surgeon general. “Joycelyn Elders said, ‘Lets take a look around, lets look at all the issues; I don’t think that it’s just happening in the black community or brown community, because AIDS affects everybody.”

“You have two councilmembers here this morning,” noted Elders of Lewis and Toni Atkins, who sat in the audience with Center board member Jennifer LeSar. “That says a lot about what this GLBT organization means to this community, because I can assure you that if they didn’t think you were important, they wouldn’t be here…. They are concerned … not just about the health of the GLBT community, but the health of all the citizens in this community.

“We have 44 million people who have no health insurance [in this country],” said Elders. “We know that people who don’t have health insurance tend to be sicker…. We know all of these things and we pay the bill…. Why not take care of them and keep them healthy?

“We have the best sick-care system in the world,” Elders summarized. “The sicker you are the better we’ve got….. We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not provide universal access to health care…. We spend 14 percent of our gross domestic product on it and we can’t provide healthcare for everybody.”

Elders also decried the Bush Administration’s attempts to promote abstinence as the only means of sex education and HIV prevention.

“We can’t afford in this day, in this time, in this country to not be able to talk about sex openly and honestly,” she said. “We lied to our youth and we did not talk to them and we did not sit with them and accept their sexuality even in the face of knowing that 10 percent of our young men and women are gay. We still have a community that says ‘Oh, we don’t have any LGBT members’ and we have preacher, in my community, … who stands up and talk about how it’s a sin. We need to educate our young people to respect their sexuality. I am not talking about what we do or don’t do, or any of those things, but that they have healthy sexuality. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t forget to address all of the issues that are out there, not the ones that we choose to address.”

In other Center news, the organization recently received CDBG (Community Block Development Grant) funds from the City of San Diego, allowing them to begin work on an ADA ramp and accessibility work on the front patio as soon as July. “We are extremely grateful to each of the council districts and the mayor for understanding how important it is that our front entrance be completely and easily accessible to all in our community,” said executive director Delores Jacobs. “We are especially grateful for the incredible support our community received from council district three and councilmember Toni Atkins. Their funding will make possible not only an accessible patio, but also the conversion of the basement space into useable and fully accessible program space.”

The CDBG allocations included $20,000 from district one, $45,000 from district two, $200,000 from district three, $4,500 from district five, $15,750 from district six, $15,000 from district seven, $9,000 from district eight and $8,000 from the Mayor’s Office. Although approximately 30 percent of the youth at the Hillcrest Youth Center are from district four, it was the only district that did not contribute. (Charles Lewis is council representative for that district).

“I assume those districts support The Center because they have LGBT citizens in their districts they hope to support,” said Jacobs.

Nevertheless, The Center has had the support of nearly every district since at least 1996.

The Center requests CDBG funds from each city council district based on the percentage of individuals from that district who use The Center and its programs. The percentages are calculated from aggregate zip code data, which gives a good approximation of the number of district residents using Center services — according to that data, only 50 percent of those using those services live in district three. The districts evaluate the request and respond accordingly, and while they are not always able to the amount requested, they sometimes give more.

These CDBG funds are all bricks and mortar funds, which means that they are stipulated for use in renovating, rebuilding and enhancing buildings and property occupied by eligible organizations. The Center plans to use them to finish Phase I renovations.

“Our particular projects are the front patio and complete, enhanced accessibility [and] improvements to the basement that will allow it to be used for programming space,” said Jacobs.

Although The Center is still about $30,000 short of the amount needed to complete the enhanced entrance project, Jacobs is confident that work will begin later this summer. “The community has made it clear they want appropriate enhanced access in front,” she said, “and together we will raise funding for that.”