The Lesbian Community Cancer Project (LCCP), later renamed the Lesbian Community Care Project, was honored with a tribute wall April 13 at Howard Brown Health’s (Howard Brown) Halsted Clinic in Lake View. In 2007, LCCP merged with Howard Brown.
The tribute wall, designed by local graphic artist Desiree Fuller, features the names of all the honorees on individual leaves of a tree with blank ones so other names can be added in the future.
LCCP was founded in 1990 by queer women who provided support and services for other queer women with cancer and their families.
The April 13 event brought together LCCP founders and supporters to unveil the installation on the third floor of the Halsted Clinic. Initial funds were provided by activists and philanthropists Nan Schaffer and Karen Dixon, who gave matching gifts.
Windy City Times Owner and Co-Founder Tracy Baim, who spearheaded the LCCP tribute wall, said this has been a dream that she and Howard Brown Vice President of External Relations Katie Metos have worked on for a year and a half. She recounted her history covering LCCP since its first public meeting.
“It was so necessary to have something that was very specifically lesbian-identified back then and it still is today,” said Baim. “Back then, it was even more important as lesbians were doing so much work on HIV and AIDS, and there just wasn’t enough happening to help those who were struggling with cancer.”
Baim told the story of how Schaffer and Dixon came to be the tribute wall’s primary donors and their roles in keeping LCCP going when it was its own entity. She also spoke about the importance of LCCP’s research endeavors and how vital Columbia University College of Nursing Professor of Behavioral Sciences and LGBTQ Health Researcher Dr. Phoenix Matthews’s work was with those efforts.
LCCP co-founder and self-defense training expert Nancy Lanoue said she helped start the organization because her life “was touched by cancer. My partner got cancer and passed from it. We felt like we needed solidarity with other lesbians going through this kind of thing, and it turned into something so much bigger and so much more important than what we had originally conceived of.”
Lanoue said the service component of LCCP was especially important. She added that they created a buddy program for newly diagnosed women to help them weather their journey with cancer, which she primarily worked on. Lanoue also spoke about the advocacy work they did to enlighten people in health care about lesbians’ healthcare needs and concerns.
Matthews said the work LCCP has done over the years has been “invaluable to the health and well-being of so many people … When women came through the doors of LCCP they knew that they were coming to a safe place. They knew that they had a home to help support them to their cancer journeys.”
They spoke about their role as a volunteer clinician with the support groups and hearing those women’s stories and especially the anxiety, fear and frustration they were feeling. Matthews said these stories made them curious as to why so many lesbians were developing breast cancer, what the impact was from not feeling safe seeing a health care provider and what supports these women needed, among other questions. They said their experience at LCCP shifted their life’s work towards health equity research which they have done to this day.
Matthews added that the queer/trans community is “faced with some of the same challenges that we were facing during those early days, with this [current] administration cutting off funding for LGBTQ research and programs—making it very clear that they weren’t going to continue to support organizations like LCCP here at Howard Brown. One of the things that this administration misjudged was [that] we’ve been fighting for a long time … That we have strong foundations in our community organizations, and for that, I’m forever grateful.”
Schaffer reminded the audience that, “They are looking for us, pointing us out and we need to fight back,” so everyone needs to “get out of bed” and inspire others because they are coming for the entire LGBTQ community. She spoke about meeting former LCCP Executive Director Jessica Halem and how Halem changed her entire life. This included how Schaffer first met Dixon.
Dixon then recounted more of the story about her and Shaffer’s first meeting, and the importance of LCCP’s work. She added through tears that “we have sadly come full circle” because Shaffer was just diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer. Dixon also called for Halem’s induction into Chicago’s LGBT Hall of Fame for her years of work on behalf of the queer/trans community in the city.
“We stand on the shoulders of Barbara Gittings and Del Martin, and other lesbians who knew from the ’60s and ’70s that doctors were [the problem],” said Halem. “That medicine was the problem, not us. They were wrong, not us. We were not diseased … It took a very, very long time to get to a place where we could even talk about that. LCCP was founded on the premise that we know what’s best for ourselves, and we have something to teach them.”
Halem spoke about how proud she is of the work LCCP did over the years to provide free cancer screenings and other services and said that the tribute wall “is not just a legacy. It’s not just an honoring, it’s the fuel” to keep this work going into the future. She said LCCP is known as the first place to develop cultural competency trainings that were funded by the CDC. Halem added that they traveled across the country with other lesbian feminist cancer organizations to train oncology and public health departments.
“LCCP was the first major lesbian organization to proudly announce that we were trans inclusive,” said Halem. “We did the work, and we helped to create more trans-inclusive places like Howard Brown. We were doing trans-inclusive work before FQHC’s like Howard Brown, because we knew that gender played an incredible part in how doctors treated you … We knew that gender, gender expression and gender identity played a major role in the lesbian community … These days are very difficult, but I am unafraid because of all of you. This wall gives me strength.”
Metos said when LCCP joined with Howard Brown they had 5,000 patients and now they have 40,000 patients. She added that she first started working with Howard Brown just as LCCP was influencing Howard Brown’s function and structure. She spoke about Schaffer and Dixon’s friend Eric Jorgenson, who was also in attendance, for his input when her team got stuck on the design of the tribute wall. Metos then called on the community to suggest more names that can be added to the wall to fill up the blank leaves.
Howard Brown is still accepting donations. Gifts of $500 or more will result in the donor and honoree being placed on the donor wall. Schaffer and Dixon will match donations up to $50,000. All donors and their honorees will be recognized in Howard Brown’s annual report.
