New Pride

The first sign of trouble between Kratoville and the volunteers who make up Pride, Inc.'s Pride Committee surfaced last October, when the 11 members of the committee signed a letter to the Pride, Inc. board of directors demanding both Kratoville's resignation and a financial audit of 1995's celebration.

That letter was accompanied by a packet of eight additional letters, which outlined specific concerns about Kratoville's performance. From those letters and from interviews conducted last winter, it became clear that committee members had serious worries about sexism and the loose handling of money.

* Committee member Stephen Burdick wrote, "In general, meetings were sprinkled with Kratoville's sexist and homophobic comments (`no more slash-your-wrists-lesbian music') and anti-transgender (`we're not dealing with that this year') comments, that we would never stand for from anyone outside our community. It's not a question of political correctness, but integrity and respect. . . ."

* Sabrina Taylor, one of the co-chairs of this year's Pride, wrote: "The Chair of Pride has exhibited extreme prejudice and discrimination towards Lesbians and women in general." She added, "Financially, Pride '95 may have been the most lucrative Pride ever, but it was not as profitable as it could have been. I, as well as several other Pride Committee members, heard the comment, `If Kratoville is still in charge . . . NO!' "

* Michael Thibert, who produced the Thursday-night event on the Esplanade, estimated that his show raised "between $6000 and $8000." Yet John Affuso, the Pride Committee's treasurer at the time (he has since resigned), maintained last winter that just $1200 was collected at the event.

* And Kris Alden, a Pride Committee member who catered a post-Pride party for the committee at Kratoville's apartment, said that she agreed to do the event at cost -- until she realized that Kratoville had made arrangements with a neighbor to turn the Pride party into a personal one.

"I agreed to donate my catering fee to Pride and provide a buffet and wine and beer for the agreed-upon $500," Alden wrote in a May 20, 1995, letter to Kratoville. "If the party has now grown into a larger event with both you and your neighbor inviting additional guests, I cannot do the event for $500. I would need to charge you for the additional liquor and for the cost of my staff person."

Those additional charges came to $276, according to a copy of Alden's invoice. Kratoville paid Alden $100, she said. When Alden billed him for the additional $176 and didn't receive payment, she brought the matter up at a Pride meeting. There, she was paid -- when Affuso wrote her a check from the Pride account.

During a recent interview, Kratoville declined to comment on the letters and the complaints raised in them except to say, "I just want to wish the committee very well."

As for his decision to resign, he noted that he stepped down because of family illness and that the board had voted him in as chair again. "I'll tell you something: I would have done Pride again this year," he said.

During interviews last winter with board and committee members, additional questions about Kratoville's judgment came to light. Kratoville refused to deal with the organizers of the Dyke March, who were planning a separate parade for women the morning of Pride. When it became clear that a separate march for women would indeed take place (it would merge with the general Pride parade once it reached Copley Square), Kratoville said that he assigned two women, board member Adrienne Benton and committee member Kris Alden, the task of dealing with the Dyke March organizers. "It would have been better that a lesbian handle it, you know," he said.

In the meantime, Norm Hill, a board member of Pride, Inc. who is also the Boston Police Department's liaison to the gay-and-lesbian community, contacted Suzi Hart and Susan Trotz, the Dyke March organizers, and tried to discourage them from holding their march. "I didn't understand why Norm Hill called me . . . because we had not even called the city yet," Trotz said last winter. "He did not identify himself as a [member of the Pride, Inc. board]."

In an interview last winter, Hill maintained that he had called Trotz because a letter from Trotz and Hart requesting a permit had landed on his desk. He also maintained that he never tried to hide his affiliation with Pride, Inc. from Trotz and Hart.

But Kratoville did.

A copy of a June 4, 1995, letter to Hart from the Pride Committee shows a space in the letterhead where Hill's name normally appeared. According to Alden, who signed the letter, Kratoville had demanded that Hill's name be deleted. Jen Brusic, a member of last year's committee, as well as Pride '96 co-chairs Sabrina Taylor and Gregg Fraker, all say that Kratoville did have Hill's name removed from the letter.

When asked about it last winter, Hill said only that he had never asked for his name to be put on the letterhead in the first place. And, during a recent interview, Kratoville denied that incident took place. "I never would have whited out anybody's name," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, all board correspondence went out with everybody's name on it."

Yet Peter Brennan, a board member who resigned last February in part because of his frustration with the apolitical nature of Pride, said that some members of the Pride board didn't want a separate march for women. "The interesting question is, why was the Pride Committee so afraid of them?" he said. "We should be endorsing that kind of thing. We should be encouraging it."

Since the letters and demand for Kratoville's resignation were sent, five board members -- more than half the Pride, Inc. membership -- have resigned. But questions about money remain. No one has answers about why the sole winner of a fundraising raffle last year has yet to receive her award, and why names were never drawn for two other donated raffle prizes.

Of three trips donated to Boston Pride last year by Five Star Travel, just one, a trip to the gay festival Hotlanta, was awarded. Sue Carey won the prize during a Pride event last June at Club Café. Although she was told at the time that she would receive her trip itinerary from Five Star Travel, she never did.

Five Star Travel, meanwhile, was never notified that anyone had won any of their prizes: the trip to Hotlanta, a trip to Amsterdam, and a stay at a gay resort.

Last winter, board president Vin McCarthy, who resigned April 29, promised that Carey would be reimbursed for the value of her prize in accordance with state law. Around the same time, Kratoville told Carey that he would make sure she received her prize -- or its equivalent, given that the event had passed.

"Jim Kratoville was the last person I spoke to," Carey said. "He told me he was resigning from the board and he would get me reimbursed for the trip."

Carey's still waiting for the check. "Just out of principle, I'd like to see something happen," she said. "I don't want to go anywhere. I travel enough on business. I would be happy to even donate the money to a worthy cause."

According to a Joe Elie, a spokesman for the Attorney General's office, it's not uncommon for raffle tickets to be sold and prizes not awarded. But it is against the law. "Under the statute, Mass General Laws Chapter 271 Section 7A, if tickets are sold in a raffle, a prize must be awarded," he said.

New board president Laura Sachs, unanimously voted in when McCarthy resigned, and Brennan expressed surprise when asked about Carey's still-to-be-awarded raffle prize, as did Taylor and Fraker.

"I thought this had been resolved as of last November," Sachs said, adding: "The current board is aware that there are issues left from last year and will be dealing with things so that a) they will be resolved and b) these kinds of things won't happen in the future."

Five Star Travel has again donated three fundraising raffle prizes to Pride, Inc.: a trip for two to London, a trip for two to Hotlanta, and a vacation for two to a gay resort. Taylor has promised to take out an ad in the gay press after Pride is over to announce the winners. "And every winner will be given their prize," she added.

Like Sachs, Taylor and Fraker said that there is some cleaning up to do from last year's event. They've promised to publish a full financial account of Pride '96 in the gay press within a month of Pride's end, in addition to the names of raffle prizewinners.

Kratoville, though, predicted that Fraker and Taylor would soon be faced with the same questions about money that he had faced. When you're dealing "with cash" that's what happens, he said.

"My advice to [Taylor and Fraker]," said Kratoville, "is do the best job that you think you can do and skip the rest, because there will always be one person in the crowd who will say, `I didn't like this.' My philosophy was, if you want to complain about it, then join the committee."

That's exactly what Taylor, Fraker, and others did. And when they didn't like what they saw, they complained -- and installed new leadership at Pride for the first time in a decade. To date, they've invited the Dyke March organizers to join the committee (they declined), and they've changed the official name of the parade to the Boston Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Allies Parade. They've raised approximately $30,000 in cash and an additional $20,000 in in-kind contributions. And they still have the lucrative Thursday-night event, two boat cruises, and the parade itself, which puts them on track to raise even more money than last year. According to the annual reports on file with the Division of Public Charities, 1995 was, by far, the most lucrative year: $77,454 raised, as compared to $37,569 in 1993 and $37,669 in 1994.

How smoothly the June 8 parade and festival goes, though, will be the real test of the new leadership. In the meantime, Taylor and Fraker -- and Kratoville -- are busy planning for the big day. Taylor and Fraker are pinning down sponsors, negotiating with the Dyke March organizers, and overseeing their committee of volunteers while Kratoville (who is admittedly "missing my baby right now") is mapping out his Pride Day schedule: "I'll be sitting on a roof deck on the corner of Dartmouth and Tremont having my margaritas and enjoying myself for once."