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Tommi Avicolli Mecca
(1953 - living) U.S.A.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca

Writer, activist

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Tommi was born in Filadelfia "Little Italy", Pennsylvania, from southern Italian parents. He was an early LGBT-rights activist in Philadelphia, one of the founders of the city's Gay Community Center and the Gay and Lesbian Arts Festival (GALA), and a pioneering activist for the rights of the trans community. Tommi remains a queer rights activist in San Francisco. He helped organize the first gay pride march in Philadelphia in 1972.

He was co-founder of Radicalqueens and helped produce its magazine, and a member of Gay Liberation Front/Temple until its demise in 1974. He served as president of Gay Activists Alliance (1975), Associate Editor of New Gay Life magazine (1976-9), and reporter/editor for the Philadelphia Gay News (1981-91). He founded the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Archives (now part of the library at the William Way Center in Philly), and the first multi-racial LGBT theatre troupe, Avalanche (1986-1991).

He has continued to fight the good fight since moving to San Francisco, where he is now a prominent tenants rights and queer activist. He was an organizer of three shelters for homeless queer youth in the Castro in the late 90s, a weekly food program and a shower project. He was one of the founders of the Tom Ammiano write-in campaign that made international news when Ammiano, a gay man, made it into a runoff against incumbent mayor Willie Brown in three weeks' time. Tommi's poetry has been published in a wide variety of journals, and the book, Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time . His website is: http://www.avicollimecca.com.

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Sources: http://lgbt-history-archive.tumblr.com/ & https://gayhistory.wikispaces.com/

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