A salute to pioneering radical queer activist Patrick Haggerty, who died this week. A friend and one-time member of the Freedom Socialist Party, Patrick launched the first out gay country band, Lavender Country, in the 1970s. He enjoyed a late-life musical career when he was “discovered” by a new generation of queer music fans. He wrote the funny, foot-stomping “The Ballad of Clara Fraser” as a way to support Fraser’s fight against political and sex discrimination at Seattle City Light in the 1980s. Listen to that song at this link.
Learn more about that story and the inimitable socialist feminist leader Clara Fraser in “High Voltage Women: Breaking Barriers at Seattle City Light” and “Revolution, She Wrote,” collected writings of Fraser. Both are available at www.RedLetterPress.org.
