Family

Walking amongst the old sod and whalebone houses on the edge of the Bering Sea, it’s easy to let the world around you fade away. We’ve come to Point Hope, Alaska, one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

The barrier between the old abandoned town site and the new community is the airport, which sees multiple small-plane departures and arrivals each day, though today is a bit different. Today a pearly white plane is parked on the runway. On the side it reads “United States of America,” which feels like a million miles away from where we are.

The official aircraft came all the way from Washington DC to made good on a request from local. Leonard Barger, Transportation Director of the Native Village of Point Hope, wrote to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert McDonald, last year requesting a visit to honor the community’s veterans.

Barger explained the importance of McDonald’s visit to the 49^thstate. With the highest number of veterans per capita in the country, even the most remote communities throughout Alaska have vets. Along with Point Hope, Barger acknowledged the veterans in communities like Barrow, Point Lay, and Unalakleet. “All these people in Alaska, they’re going to Afghanistan,” Barger said, “they’re leaving their family, but they’re serving their country, they’re sacrificing their lives for us.”

Along with visiting Point Hope, McDonald also held a listening session that day in Kotzebue. It took Walter Sampson, a Vietnam vet living in Kotzebue, 11 years to get serviced by the VA in Anchorage, a 500-mile journey and a $600 plane ticket away from home. Sampson made sure to remind McDonald of the unique challenges that many of Alaska’s vets face in accessing the benefits they’ve earned.

“Remember that we’re in bush Alaska,” Sampson said, “We’re in roadless communities.” While Fairbanks and Anchorage have the clinics, the VA officers, and the hospitals, he stressed that, “for bush Alaska we’ve got nothing at all.”

Without the VA facilities and representatives, information has a hard time reaching vets in bush Alaska. Sampson expressed a feeling that many vets seemed to share. “As a veteran, do I really know who [the] VA is?” Sampson asked himself. “What benefits does it have for me?

Sampson is frustrated by the convoluted nature of the VA support system, which often requires multiple phone calls, website logins, and, in the end a system too complex for its own good. McDonald was quick to acknowledge those inefficiencies.

“Walter’s right,” McDonald admitted, “we’ve got too many 1-800 numbers, it’s too confusing.” With over 900 1-800 numbers and 14 websites that require different usernames and passwords, many vets get lost in the system before they ever get help. “We’re going to go to one 1-800 number, we’re going to go to one website,” McDonald promised, “it’s just too complex, we’ve got to simplify it, that’s what we’re working to do.”

But a simplified system is only one step towards getting vets throughout Alaska the benefits they deserve. With McDonald gone and many questions left unanswered, the support system that seems the most promising comes from within the state.

Chester Ballot, another Vietnam vet in Kotzebue, was trained in Anchorage as a tribal veteran representative and now works to sign up fellow vets to the VA. The Alaska VA also sent two representatives to both Point Hope and Kotzebue to sign up and inform vets of their benefits. So far the Alaska VA has sent representatives to 39 of the state’s nearly 300 villages.

Although McDonald is back in DC, Leonard Barger hopes this will not be his last visit to Point Hope. Barger and other community members encouraged him to return in the spring to take part in a whale hunt, one of the many benefits of living on the edge of the Bering Sea.

Alaskans voted in 1998 to define marriage in the state constitution as only between a man and a woman. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated that definition, Alaska and the entire country has marriage equality.

To some it may seem like things are changing fast, but Alaska’s fight for gay rights began half a lifetime ago.

In the course of Alaska’s legislative history, there have been six bills to outlaw sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. In Anchorage, there have been at least three ordinances.

They’ve all failed.

The fight may have begun in 1975, when the Alaska State Human Rights Commission took a formal stance that sexual preference should be included in the state’s non-discrimination policy.

House Bill 125 was introduced in 1987, during the AIDS epidemic. The commission director, the attorney general and the governor all supported the bill.

“[It was] just something that seemed to me, it was time to make some noise about it,” says former Democratic Gov. Steve Cowper.

He introduced the bill less than two months after taking office. He had served in the Vietnam War and made a friend who was gay.

“They served just as well or better than other people,” Cowper said.

Cowper can’t remember why exactly he introduced the bill, but cites that personal experience as a possible reason. Old files also suggest commission Director Janet Bradley asked for his support.

“But as a general principle, people shouldn’t be discriminated against any more than you should be able to discriminate for racial reasons,” Cowper said.

Cowper’s friend died from AIDS years later. HB 125 never made it out of committee.

Janet Bradley left the Human Rights Commission in 1988. During the last decade of her career, she had taken an aggressive approach to more inclusive legislation.

After she left, Paula Haley became the commission’s director. She’s still the director now and she hasn’t touched the issue.

In 1989 through an LGBT advocacy group, researchers Melissa Green and Jay Brause published a statewide survey documenting the experiences of Alaska’s lesbian and gay community, including issues of discrimination and health.

Janet Bradley ended the report’s forward with a call to action: “This report then becomes our challenge; for if we believe that our vision of Alaska is marred when discrimination exists, we must commit ourselves to eliminating sexual orientation discrimination.”

In 2012, Green published her final report on a survey on LGBT discrimination in Anchorage through Identity, Inc. It was a few weeks before Anchorage voted on Proposition 5, a sexual identity anti-discrimination measure that failed. She says the report received a lot of criticism.

“It has important things to say. I hope that people might still read it, but I’m done. I’m done. I’m off on my own life,” Green said.

She’s burnt out and says she’s kind of bitter.

“It ate up a lot of my life and a lot of my time, and it had, I wouldn’t say exactly zero impact, but pretty close to that,” Green said. “Nobody really cared— outside of the [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community, nobody really cared.”

In 1986, the Anchorage Daily News interviewed a gay man working at Identity, Inc., an advocacy organization. He was collecting violent and homophobic voice mail the office received for a research report on gay and lesbian discrimination.

That man’s name was Jay Brause.

“Through the AIDS crisis we started finding out how important our relationships were,” Brause said.

“We started finding out we had no rights. We were denied in so many ways.” Brause said.

He said he knew of couples who’d been together for decades and if one of them would become ill or die, often their relationship meant nothing when it came to hospital visitation, burials, military honors and home ownership.

“How do you explain that to people? It’s a potent, virulent form of discrimination,” Brause said.

During the same year the ADN published the story, he interned with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in D.C.

Brause and his now-husband Gene Dugan applied for their marriage license in 1994. The controversial act eventually led to the 1998 constitutional amendment defining marriage.

He paid for being a prominent gay figure in the 80s and 90s in more ways.

“I felt the prejudice and the discrimination very personally and directly. In a way, you don’t know if you’re hiding or you haven’t disclosed (your sexuality),” Brause said.

Like his friend Melissa Green, he’s disillusioned about his fight and American liberties. His reaction when Alaska got marriage equality?

“I did not have the person-in-the-street’s reaction. No, not even a smile,” Brause said.

In 2006, he and his husband moved to England, where he has dual-citizenship. In September, he’ll travel back to Anchorage to clean up to the last few bits of his life in America before leaving for good.

“Thank you to every single one of us who took on that work as activists, who took chances to make a difference, and believe me, there’s more to be done.”

State Legislative Reference Librarian Jennifer Fletcher researched legislative files. This article could not be produced without her assistance.

Editor’s note: This story and audio have been updated. The number of Anchorage anti-discrimination ordinances that have failed has been qualified; there have been at least three. Also, Identity, Inc. published all three reports. Jay Brause and Identity, Inc. volunteers authored One in Ten, Brause and Melissa Green authored Identity Reports, and Green authored the LGBT Anchorage Discrimination survey report. Volunteers and community members assisted with all three of the studies. 

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Bibliography 

1975-76, Senate Bill 60, (Files 1, 2, 3, senate floor tape)

1983-84, House Bill 364 (File 1)

1983-84, Senate Bill 406 (Files 1, 2)

1983-84, Senate Bill 77 (Files 1, 2)

1985-86 House Bill 194 (Files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

1987-88, House Bill 125 (Files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Alaska Gay and Lesbian Community Center

“One in Ten,” report published by Identity, Inc.

“Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska,” published by Identity, Inc. 

Jay Brause & Gene Dugan v. Alaska Dept. of Health and Social Services

1998 Alaska Ballot Measure 2

Jerry Prevo,  June 6, 2009 sermon against Anchorage Ordinance 64

Jerry Prevo, March 25, 2012 sermon against transgender rights and Prop. 5

Identity, Inc.’s flag burns, article by Alaska Dispatch News

U.S. EEOC, July 2015 ruling on sexual orientation discrimination

U.S. EEOC rulings on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination

Anchorage Municipal Mayor Ethan Berkotwitz’s 2015 transition report

Aug. 12, 2005 interview with Gov. Bill Walker

2015 Anchorage Ordinance on city’s non-discrimination policy

The lack of child care in Juneau has been a shock for Abigail Capestany and her 19-month-old toddler.

“My husband and I moved here about a month ago and we’ve been on a waiting list since February, with no end in sight,” Capestany said Monday. 

She moved from Louisiana where, while she was pregnant, she signed up for child care at a big, church-run center. She says the day care even had webcams so she could check-in on her son remotely.

“So then coming here, it was like, oh, there’s very limited options,” she said.

She told the Juneau Assembly that if she knew it would be this hard to get child care, she and her Coast Guard husband probably wouldn’t have come.

That could change soon. As the Assembly went through the motions to unanimously adopt an ordinance significantly relaxing land-use restrictions on child care facilities, Israa Kako-Gehring was beaming in the audience with a huge grin, fists clenched in quiet victory. It was an ordinance she began lobbying for months ago, after her plan to open a nursery school was stymied.

“Currently in the code, schools and churches are allowed to operate in any residential zone, but day cares are not,” she said. 

She and her husband had bought an old church to convert to the nursery school.

“We weren’t allowed to operate. And we wanted to change that, so I called the Assembly members,” she said. 

That was back in November. When the ordinance she lobbied for goes into effect in 30 days, the key land-use restriction that blocked her will be out of the way.

Kako-Gehring already has business cards made up that say “Gehring Nursery School.” She handed me one, which caught Abigail Capestany’s eye. She asked for one, too and then asked if she was taking applications for toddlers. 

After two recent shooting deaths of local teenagers, more than 60 people marched through the rain in East Anchorage Sunday afternoon to raise awareness of violence in the community.

The crowd sang “Keep calm everybody, and put your guns away. Stop the violence!” The sentiment was echoed on their matching black t-shirts as they marched near the site where 19-year-old Preston Junior Clark Perdomo was shot dead last week.

Among the crowd was resident Allie Hernandez, who moved to Anchorage in 1997 because it was a safe place to raise her kids. She says now, she’s scared.

“This is why we’re walking,” she says between deep breaths. “We have a lot of parents here walking because we’re scared for our kids. We don’t want to see them dead. We don’t want to bury our kids no more. So if we have to walk five miles or six miles, even though I’m not in shape, girl, we’re doing it!”

Summer Yancy walked wearing a set of charms representing friends and family who were impacted by violence. She said Anchorage is so close-knit that everyone is affected by the recent shootings. One way to stop it is to speak candidly with youth about gun violence.

“Let’s have real scenarios of what this looks like when you’re in a real situation,” she said. “With[in] a group of kids and there’s one person in that group that wants to be irresponsible with their gun and all the sudden everybody is sucked in … it can happen to very good kids as well.”

Nineteen-year-old Brennan Gregiore-Girard said he grew up on the east side of town and gun violence doesn’t faze him.

“I mean when I hear about it, it doesn’t shock me anymore, which is sad to say because we shouldn’t be in an environment where kids should feel that way, but it’s the sad truth,” he says.

He said he thinks kids need to take responsibility for their actions and for the situations they place themselves in.

“I’ve always felt like I could talk things out. My mom raised me that way and my dad raised me that way. And I’ve always wrestled and done combat sports, so it’s not one of those things where I’m scared and all that,” he explained. “But why should I put my hands on someone to stop the violence? Because when you kill someone, you’re not only killing them.” You’re killing a piece of everyone they knew, he said.

The community group We Are Anchorage organized the walk to show a unified front for saying no to violence. They hope to encourage people to start actively watching out for their communities and speaking up.

Last Tuesday, Netflix announced it would begin offering employees who are new parents unlimited paid leave for a year, allowing them to take off as much time as they want during the first twelve months after a child’s birth or adoption.

The news drew praise from people who said it would be good for working parents, and would help America catch up to most other developed nations, where paid time off for a new child is mandatory.

But soon, questions arose. Would “unlimited leave” not be as effective as defined time off, if workers felt pressured to take off as little time as possible, to prove they weren’t slackers or taking advantage of the generous policy? And how many Netflix employees would really take a full year off, considering that most of its workforce affected by the new policy are men?

There’s also criticism over who the new policy leaves out. As we reported last week, the policy only applies to “salaried streaming employees,” and doesn’t cover workers in the company’s DVD distribution centers, where the work is usually lower-paid and more physically demanding. NPR estimates that distinction will ultimately leave out between 400 and 500 Netflix employees.

In response, one Netflix fan launched an online petition urging Netflix to extend its new leave policy to all employees. “It’s wrong for Netflix to create two classes of employees,” Shannon Murphy wrote. “Already, there’s a divide between higher income earners (especially in the tech industry) and low wage workers in terms of access to important benefits like parental leave.”

As of Monday afternoon, the petition at coworker.org was just a few hundred signatures short of its 6,000 signature goal.

Tim Newman, campaigns director at coworker.org, told NPR that 20 signers of the online petition identified themselves as Netflix employees. Several of them indicated that Netflix’s new leave policy also excludes employees in the corporation’s customer service department, not just the DVD distribution center. An employee who works for Netflix in one of their call centers told NPR that she is in fact excluded from the company’s new year-long unlimited leave policy, though she wished to remain anonymous.

Netflix has declined multiple inquiries into the details of its leave policy for new parents, and which employees are left out.

Joan Williams, director of the University of California Hastings Center for WorkLife Law, tells NPR that when it comes to Netflix’s leave policy and who it excludes, they may be getting too much criticism. “This is the drawback of handling parental leave at an enterprise [business] level, which by the way, no other industrialized economy does,” she told NPR. “If you handle parental leave at the enterprise level, the incentives for the enterprise are to give a rich benefits package to highly valued, high human capital workers and not give it to hourly workers.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily fault [Netflix],” she continued. “That’s just a structural reality, if you don’t have what every civilized, industrialized country in the world has, which is parental leave financed at the national level. The reality of relying on the market to deliver what should be a basic benefit of citizenship is that hourly workers end up on the short end of the stick.”

Williams also pointed out that people who are blasting the new policy because of how it treats lower-income Netflix employees might be hurting progress for professional women. “I think it’s problematic to say you can never do anything … that enhances the chances for professional women, unless you address the entire structure of income inequality at the same time,” Williams said. “That is a recipe for never doing anything to help professional women.”

Each July and August, dozens of Bristol Bay residents take to the berry flats. Some are casual gatherers, picking handfuls here and there. Others set out to harvest enough salmonberries to rival the year’s salmon harvest.

Kim Williams, her sister-in-law Liz Johnson and aunt Judy Samuelson are the latter.

Around 9 a.m., the three women embark on their tenth day of salmonberry season. Williams says it’s been a good haul so far.

“How many bags you put away?” she asks the group. One says 37; another says 40.

They load plastic buckets and quart-sized Ziploc bags onto their four-wheelers. Williams leads the group onto the tundra, picking her way between swampy patches. She’s heading toward one of their closely guarded berry spots.

“We have spots that we regularly look at beause we’ve been [going] there for at least 30 years,” She says. “We have spots that we go back and check. Some years they’re there and some years they’re not.”

Last year was an off year with no salmonberries to be found. Williams says heavy wind and a late frost killed the delicate blossoms.

“These berries are really fragile,” she says. “They’re a white blossom – a lot of rain can knock the blossom off [or] the wind … a lot of things can happen so they don’t berry.”

This time around the conditions were right and the berries early. Williams says they started scouting for June 9, more than a week earlier than usual.

“We always know that when you hear the cranes out on the berry flat, berries are ready. And when the fireweed is blooming, berries are ready. That’s the sign to tell you to go look,” she says.

Today’s destination is a prime berry spot the ladies have visited before. We arrive to find the flats thick with the big, bright orange berries that Williams says they favor.

“We want them big. We leave the small ones,” she says. “We don’t like them white, we don’t like them with black dots, we we don’t like them hard so you have to clean ‘em … they have to be just right.”

These flawless berries could sell for $100 a gallon or more, but Williams says they won’t put them on the market.

“We never sell. I did sell one year, my old ones, when I had like 80-some bags,” she laughs. “We’re not hoarders!”

William’s says her berries will go straight into her father’s freezer. Her family will enjoy a year’s worth of akutaq, a dessert made with berries mixed into shortening and sugar.

“Usually for my family we take out two bags when we’re going to have a meal of salmonberry akutaq, and I take blackberries or blueberries and I add it and it stretches it,” she says. “Now auntie Judy, she likes just strictly salmonberry akutaq. But she’s a picking fiend!”

The three women pick the area for several hours, with a light breeze keeping the bugs off. Before leaving for new territory, they try to tally up their haul from this one spot…

“Forty-four!” she exclaims. “Eleven gallons! That’s really good! … That’s lots, no wonder our backs are hurting!”

By late afternoon, they’re running low on Ibuprofen and freezer space, making it about time to call it the end of a successful salmonberry season.