Most people meet Urvashi Vaid in 1990, standing with her sign at a presidential speech (Talk Is Cheap). Her work on AIDS started years earlier, in a place few people were looking: America's prisons.
The National Prison Project
After law school at Northeastern University in Boston, Vaid went to Washington in 1983 as a staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. The project, on P Street and led by Alvin Bronstein, took the conditions inside jails and prisons to court.
The AIDS epidemic was only a few years old when Vaid started the National Prison Project's work on HIV and AIDS in prisons.
A trace of those years survives in the federal government's own files. On July 15, 1986, the National Prison Project testified before the new United States Sentencing Commission about alternatives to prison. Its letterhead, filed with the Commission's records, lists the project's staff counsel. One of them is "Urvashi Vaid."
Carrying it with her
In 1986 Vaid moved to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, first to run its press work and from 1989 as its executive director. She did not leave prisons behind. On June 12, 1989, at the national convention of CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants), a prisoners' rights group meeting at the Harrington Hotel in Washington, the 9 a.m. panel was called "AIDS in Prison." Among the speakers, according to the printed program, was "Urvashi Vaid, Esq., National Gay and Lesbian Task Force."
The head of a national gay rights group was on a panel about prisoners.
Remembered for it
When Vaid died in 2022, the chair of the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, Representative David Cicilline, began his tribute with this part of her life: "From her work addressing HIV and AIDS among incarcerated individuals to leading the National LGBTQ Task Force and founding Vaid Group, Urvashi was at the forefront of fighting for justice and equality for LGBTQ+ people and all marginalized people."
Sources
- American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, National Prison Project, testimony before the United States Sentencing Commission concerning sentencing options, July 15, 1986, Records of the U.S. Sentencing Commission (National Archives, NAID 221150939).
- CURE national convention program, Washington, June 10–13, 1989, Records of the U.S. Sentencing Commission (National Archives, NAID 318641389).
- Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, "Equality Caucus Statement on the Passing of Urvashi Vaid," May 15, 2022.
- Wikipedia, "Urvashi Vaid" (her years at the National Prison Project, 1983–1986).
- University of California, San Francisco, Archives: Nancy Stoller Papers, folder "AIDS and Prisoners, 1985-1988," which holds a letter addressed to Vaid at the National Prison Project (finding aid).
