In a virtual webinar hosted by GenPride, a packed online room gathered for the kickoff of the organization’s 2025 programming under what staff called the “Queering Intersectional Aging Framework” — a mouthful, organizer Pamela Nassar Altabcharani admitted, but one rooted in a simple idea: challenging harmful norms, honoring overlapping identities, and treating aging as an ongoing, living process — not a finish line.
“This is a tool for us to use to think outside of harmful systems,” Nassar Altabcharani told attendees, describing the series as an intentional effort to build safer, more affirming spaces for LGBTQ+ seniors — not just in Seattle’s traditional LGBTQ+ hubs, but across King County and beyond.
Then she introduced what she called a “really fantastic lineup” of Black LGBTQ+ community voices and elders: Sherry Harris, Howard Russell, Deacon Paul Green, Rochelle Hazzard, and moderator Seattle City Council President Joy Hollingsworth.
And when Hollingsworth began the panel, she set the tone with humor, warmth — and urgency.
“We’re super excited to have you,” she said. “And want to thank GenPride also for creating the space for us to gather.”
“I didn’t realize I was trailblazing”
Former Seattle City Councilmember Sherry Harris reminded listeners what visibility looked like when she ran for office more than three decades ago — at a time when being openly gay in politics wasn’t treated as incidental, but as the headline.
Harris told the audience she was elected 34 years ago, becoming the first African American woman elected to the Seattle City Council and the first openly gay person to run and win for that body. Her career, she said, centered affordable housing, economic empowerment, and “ideas and principles that unite us.”
But later, when asked what risks younger candidates might not fully appreciate today, Harris returned to something more personal: the loneliness of starting with little support.
“I got nothing,” she said, describing early conversations with political power-brokers. She built anyway — while juggling life realities like childcare and campaign logistics — and only fully grasped the historic nature of the moment years later.
“When you’re in the middle of doing it, you’re just working,” Harris said. “It wasn’t until I look back… [that I] acknowledged… how significant it was.”
In 1991, she said, reporters repeatedly pressed her about her sexuality even when she was trying to talk about housing policy.
Fast forward to today, Harris noted, and it’s shifted: younger candidates — including Hollingsworth — often don’t have to fight to be heard through their identity before they can speak about the issues.
“Am I really aging that badly?”
Howard Russell, who also performs as LADIE CHABLIS, brought the room laughter — and then a warning.
Russell, a longtime community leader who sits on multiple boards (including GenPride), said he’s been doing drag for 27 years and hosted Seattle’s longest-running drag show for 22 years.
When he got the call to join a panel on aging, he joked he had to look in the mirror and ask: “Am I really aging that badly…?”
But his message quickly sharpened: visibility isn’t just being seen — it’s ensuring stories don’t disappear.
“My biggest fear… is that as we get older, some of our stories get lost,” Russell said.
He pointed to Pride celebrations as an example: the energy is huge, he said — but too often the history isn’t widely known.
“If you… ask somebody, what does Pride really mean and how do we get here? They could never tell you the story,” he said. “And I believe that’s our fault because we don’t share that story.”
Russell also spoke about the challenges of being a Black entertainer in LGBTQ+ spaces — a reminder that even inside queer community, racism can shape who gets support, safety, and platform.
And he described a learning curve that comes with time, too: adapting to evolving language and pronouns across drag and trans communities — naming respect and patience as a two-way obligation between generations.
“We have to be respectful for the older generation, because we are just learning,” he said. “We have to be respectful for you, so we need to learn.”
Faith, survival, and the right to dignity
For Deacon Paul Green, the panel’s conversation about aging and visibility came with a spiritual lens — but also a blunt assessment of the forces that make aging harder for Black LGBTQ+ people.
A longtime community leader and church figure, Green spoke of the overlapping pressures many Black LGBTQ+ elders carry: “race, poverty, health inequities, housing discrimination, faith, trauma, HIV history, chosen family, and systemic exclusion.”
He emphasized that harm in religious spaces doesn’t land only on individuals — it ripples into families and communities who love them.
And he challenged churches to move beyond a transactional relationship that welcomes LGBTQ+ people in the pews but denies them full belonging.
“It’s not okay… where a member could pay their tithes, but can’t… be married in the sanctuary,” Green said.
For him, visibility at 72 is inseparable from legacy: telling the story while there’s time, pushing for a dignified life, and living openly — not waiting for permission.
“Aging is no joke,” he said. “I really want to get busy and live who I am.”
“If I wouldn’t invite you to my house for dinner…”
Rochelle Hazzard, GenPride’s Program and Services Manager, described herself as a longtime nonprofit worker who never hid who she was — even in earlier decades when that came with real risk.
When asked about learning in midlife, Hazzard said aging has taught her patience — with her body, with her pace, and with the ongoing work of becoming.
“It’s such a privilege,” she said, describing getting older as both gift and responsibility — especially as younger Black women look to her for guidance.
She shared a simple litmus test she uses now when confronting judgment — one shaped by years of navigating racism inside queer spaces and queer identity inside Black spaces.
“If I would not invite you to my house for dinner,” she said, “I don’t care about what you think anymore.”
Her reflections landed hard because they named a reality many in the chat recognized: the sense of being forced to “choose” which part of yourself gets to lead in different rooms — and the relief of finally refusing the choice.
The call for community memory
During audience Q&A, attendee Andre raised a question that echoed Russell’s earlier warning: should Seattle’s LGBTQ+ community build stronger systems to document history — not just broadly, but within sub-communities like Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous LGBTQ+ communities?
Russell responded that some historical work is underway — including a project tracking Seattle’s LGBTQ+ bars across decades — but he agreed that Black LGBTQ+ history in Seattle remains under-documented and under-led.
“We just haven’t found people to be the leaders… and help put that together,” he said. “Things are going to end up being lost if we don’t… start doing things about it.”
Hollingsworth, for her part, offered a concrete path forward: if community partners organize around the need, she said she’d be open to exploring city support — even referencing the possibility of a future budget action.
A story about protection
As the conversation closed, another audience member, Trinity, shared a story about Angela Davis attending a Black lesbian retreat years ago — and the community’s commitment to keeping parts of her life private, safeguarded, and undisclosed.
The lesson Trinity offered was quiet but pointed: sometimes safety and love look like visibility; sometimes they look like protection.
And in many ways, that was the arc of the entire afternoon — elders speaking publicly, on purpose, about what it costs to be seen, and what it takes to keep each other whole.
“What can you take out of the session?”
Before wrapping, GenPride returned to its “Commitment to Change” practice — encouraging attendees to name one action they’ll take based on what they learned, a requirement tied to how the organization sustains funding for its work.
Then Nassar Altabcharani previewed the next event in the series: “Across the Spectrum, Celebrating Women,” scheduled for Wednesday, March 25 at 2 p.m. (virtual).
But the takeaway from Feb. 25 wasn’t just the calendar. It was the reminder embedded in nearly every answer: Black LGBTQ+ elders aren’t a sidebar to Seattle history — they are the history. And if the city wants a future that’s safer, more joyful, and more honest, it will have to keep making room for their voices — not only to be applauded, but to be acted on.
