Joan Nestle
Founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in 1973, Nestle is a champion of the oft-forgotten cause of community. The Archives contain thousands of pieces of individual lesbians’ personal histories, started at a time when gay bars were raided nightly. At that time, Nestle opened her apartment to every woman who wanted entry—the doors of 215 West 92nd Street, Apartment 13A were always unlocked. “’The ladies in 13A,’ as we were known, started something new in the world: a place for public lesbian memory,” Nestle wrote in 2002, when she and the Archives were forced out of her rent-stabilized apartment to make room for richer tenants. Now living in Australia, and the Archives now living in a Park Slope building paid for by thousands of donations, Nestle, at 66, a two-time cancer survivor, refuses to judge today’s young people for often embracing the very same individualistic values she fights. “You’re living in a time of the privatization of community…when it’s so difficult to find a job that’s not corporate, and a place to live that you can afford. All I can do is tell them ‘This is what gave me joy.’” –MW
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