Welcome to The Gayest Generation, where we hear LGBTQ older adults speak for themselves. Every episode, we sit down with a different member of the LGBTQ community who laid the foundation for the freedoms we have today. Their stories make noise where there is silence and that silence has lived for far too long. 

In this episode, we speak with Laughing Womyn Ashonosheni. We discuss queer spirituality, how to mend broken relationships, and the act of naming oneself.

As part of Ann Arbor 200, the Ann Arbor District Library and 7 Cylinders Studio (7CS) have produced a documentary film about the closing of Ann Arbor's Jones School. In 1965, the Board of Education closed the majority-Black school. Ann Arbor joined a nationwide trend of school desegregation during the Civil Rights Era. But for these young students, the loss of a neighborhood school foreshadowed changes to their close-knit community. Gentrification came to Ann Arbor on the heels of desegregation.

Video extra from the feature-length documentary Welcome to Commie High from 7 Cylinders Studio.

Welcome to The Gayest Generation, where we hear LGBTQ older adults speak for themselves. Every episode, we sit down with a different member of the LGBTQ community who laid the foundation for the freedoms we have today.

In this episode, we speak with Curtis Chin. We discuss his childhood growing up in Detroit’s legendary Chung’s Restaurant, “The Gay Agenda”, and what it’s like to meet Vanna White (and the Obamas).

Terry Swartzberg, a Jewish “Ethical Campaigner” who has lived in Germany for 45 years, speaks with us from his home in Munich Germany. Terry Swartzberg became a reporter for the International Herald Tribune. Terry talks about the time he met with Presitent Vladimir Putin and the profound effect the invasion of Ukraine is having on Germany.

How retired automobile executive Susan Schooner is helping young women reach their potential—and how that work has helped her find herself.

Derrick Miller is the Executive Director of the Community Action Network in Ann Arbor Michigan and he felt he had to do something to help the people of Ukraine.  The experience was intense, to say the least, but it was also highly impactful.  While he was there he was assisted by Nataliya Starak who has fascinating and heartwarming stories to share with us.

Our guest on Conservations will be Alan Levine, one of a trio of pro bono heroes who scored a $26-mln verdict against Charlottesville rally organizers.

Hear the inspiring story of how he spent 4 weeks in “a bubble of hate and violence” as he cross examined the white supremacists that organized and led the antisemitic and racist violence that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer and the injuring of dozens of others, including seven of the plaintiffs in the suit.

“When somebody says to you ‘You can’t get anything done in Washington, I don’t know why you try’…just say, ‘thank you, Heather.'”

– Senator Elizabeth Warren

Don’t miss the interview with Heather Booth, the founder of JANE, an underground abortion service in 1965, before Roe v Wade. She is the most influential person you’ve never heard of.