STANDING Brooklyn’s Biggest Booster
LGBTQ hero honored for advocacy
BAY RIDGE
He’s an LGBTQ leader!
Three cheers to activist Jerry Allred,
who will be honored at this year’s
Gay City News Impact Awards on
March 28 for his lifelong advocacy for
the LGBTQ community.
The Bay Ridgite is one of the founding
members of Kings County’s fi rst
pride march back in 1997 and founded
the Brooklyn Community Pride
Center in 2008.
If that wasn’t enough, he also joined
the now-famous New York City Gay
Men’s Chorus in its inaugural year
in 1980, where he channeled his love
for choral singing.
The Brooklyn
Pride Parade,
which has brought
the rainbow colors
to Park Slope for
more than two decades,
was a brainchild
of Allred’s,
along with three
of his friends who
gathered in Manhattan
in September 1996 and decided
that Kings County deserved a march
of its own.
“We had the parade in Manhattan,
and then I’d heard about the Queens
pride parade,” he said.
He and his friends spread the word
and got the permissions from police
and the Parks Department to run the
parade along bustling Seventh Avenue
to huge success.
“We didn’t know if anyone would
come, or if we had enough money,” he
said.
Three years in, they shifted the
event to 7 pm, making it the only nighttime
LGBTQ parade on the East Coast,
Allred said.
Over the years, the gathering has
attracted notables from Borough
President Adams to Mayor DeBlasio,
who didn’t have to venture far
from his Park Slope home to join in the
mirth.
Allred says the event is a space for
people to feel like themselves and meet
other people they can bond with.
“It is a place for people to come
and meet and see if they are the same
as other people. I’ve had people come
up to me and just thank me,” he said.
“They would say, ‘Thank you so much,
I get to meet other people like me here.
I used to think I was the only one and
now I can meet other people like me.’”
The Brooklyn trailblazer has since
retired, but says that he’s happy to have
made way for the next generation.
“A good leader passes the torch on
to the next group,” he says.
His number one advice to budding
young activists?
“Get involved. Try it out, you might
like it,” he said. — Kevin Duggan
PROSPECT LEFFERTS–GARDENS
Ending Alzheimer’s
Three cheers for the Alzheimer’s
Association, New York City Chapter,
for presenting the Alzheimer’s
Association International Research
Grant to SUNY Downstate
Medical Center’s Alzheimer’s Center
of Excellence.
The staff of the Alzheimer’s Center
accepted the $25,000 grant on Feb. 22,
on behalf of Dr. Carl Cohen, director
of the Alzheimer’s Center.
With the grant, the Alzheimer’s Association
is furthering the important
work of ending the disease in Brooklyn
and throughout the world.
“The Alzheimer’s Association is
COURIER L 24 IFE, MARCH 15–21, 2019 PS
committed to reaching our goal of a
world without Alzheimer’s by investing
in research,” said Dr. Anafi delia
Tavares, senior director of programs
for the Alzheimer’s Association, New
York City Chapter. “Supporting the
work of SUNY Downstate Medical
Center’s Alzheimer’s Center of Excellence
is a part of a broader Alzheimer’s
Association effort to nurture a robust
pipeline of fresh ideas that will lead
to more effective prevention, diagno-
DOWNTOWN
Three cheers for Kings County
Court, which celebrated Black
History Month with a Health and
Wellness Seminar on Feb. 14.
The event was one of 13 organized
by the court to commemorate
the month, and focused on promoting
healthy lifestyles among people
of color, said one of the featured
speakers.
“As you saw by some the questions
and responses, people from
all walks of life can benefi t from
education about the importance of
self-care and prevention; particularly,
in communities of color where
most chronic illnesses are preventable,”
said Irene Treadwell,
the president of New York’s Black
Nurses Rock chapter.
Treadwell joined other local leaders,
including Borough President
Adams, who spoke before the crowd
during the public event inside the
Kings County Supreme Court building
at the corner of Jay and Johnson
streets.
The seminar highlighted the
need for a better sense of community
as it relates to health and wellness,
said Treadwell.
“We all know that it takes a village
to raise a child,” she said. “It is
also important for that village to be
around throughout a child’s life.”
Standing O salutes the court and
the seminar’s organizers on a successful
event! — Aidan Graham
DOWNTOWN
Passing on knowledge
Standing O salutes the legal
eagles who trained other offi cials
in the jury selection process at a
Downtown event last month.
Hon. Ruth Shillingford, acting
justice in Kings County Supreme
Court, and Hon. Sylvia
Ash, justice in Kings County Supreme
Court, convened their fellow
judges and attorneys at the
Remsen Street headquarters of
the Brooklyn Bar Association,
which co-sponsored the Feb. 7
event alongside the Judicial
Friends Association, an organization
of judges dedicated to promoting
diversity within the fi eld.
Shillingford and Ash spoke to
the more than 50 attendees about
the differences between judges’
involvement in picking juries for
civil and criminal cases, according
to the president of the Brooklyn
Bar Association, which organized
the event.
“The idea behind it was to
bring an idea of a judge’s perspective
on the relevant law for the
selection of jurors,” said David
Chidekel.
Judges are generally much
more involved in picking the
dozen jurors for criminal trials
than they are in picking the
half dozen for civil trials, because
they want to ensure that jurors
are independent when they
are deciding a defendant’s fate,
Chidekel said.
“In a criminal trial a person’s
liberty and freedom is at
stake, and they don’t want lawyers
inadvertently prejudicing
jurors or committing errors that
deny people a fair trial,” he said.
— Julianne McShane
sis, and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.”
The Alzheimer’s Association is the
largest nonprofi t funder of Alzheimer’s
research in the world, having awarded
more than $410 million to fund more
than 2,700 scientifi c investigations.
The Association is currently investing
more than $110 million in nearly 400 of
the best projects in 19 countries.
For more information on the Alzheimer’s
Association, visit its website
www.alz.org/nyc or call the 24-hour
helpline at (800) 272–3900.
CELEBRATING HEALTHY CHOICES: Borough President Adams, center, smiled with
Irene Treadwell, center right, after the health-and-wellness seminar at the Kings
County Supreme Court on Feb. 14. Photo by Caroline Ourso
It’s a ruling in favor of good health
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