Joe Pressley, 62, is a proud Black homosexual man from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with greater than three many years of expertise in public service. And retirement? That’s nowhere on the horizon.
“I like my metropolis. I like Brooklyn,” he stated. “New York retains me younger and wholesome.”
Pressley at the moment serves as vp of public coverage and authorities relations at Amida Care, the biggest Medicaid Particular Wants Plan in New York Metropolis. The nonprofit well being plan serves greater than 10,000 New Yorkers, 90% of whom are Black or Brown.
“Care is about prevention,” stated Pressley, whose work now focuses on advancing the well being of New Yorkers. “About 3,800 of Amida Care’s members establish as transgender or nonbinary.” The plan additionally serves these experiencing homelessness and the kids of enrolled members, no matter HIV standing.
His profession in advocacy and public coverage started on the New York AIDS Coalition, the place he labored as director of neighborhood organizing and later as govt director. From there, he went on to carry management roles at Harlem United, the New York Metropolis Council, the Division of Homeless Providers, and the Hetrick-Martin Institute, the place he served as CEO.
“What drives me is the necessity to serve,” he stated. “Serving is a part of my DNA.”
That dedication to public service was instilled early. Pressley’s mother and father fled Jim Crow-era South Carolina within the Sixties, settling in Brooklyn. His father usually instructed him, “you’ll be president,” a phrase that formed Pressley’s understanding of management, neighborhood care, and chance.
He recalled sitting in the lounge with tears streaming down his face in Fort Greene when Barack Obama was elected the primary Black president in 2008. He needs his dad had been alive to see that second.
Pressley’s path to training was non-linear. He started school in 1980 and accomplished his bachelor’s diploma in 2008 by the CUNY Baccalaureate Program at Hunter School. He later earned a grasp’s diploma in city coverage from The New Faculty.
“I’m a Black homosexual man … I’ve been chased by the police, I proceed to face racism and homophobia,” he stated. “And I’m happy with how numerous my household is — from these nonetheless in South Carolina to these within the larger New York space. My household afforded me the chance to succeed in so many individuals.”
One formative reminiscence got here at age 15, when Pressley met former Mayor David Dinkins at a municipal constructing. “How are you, younger fellow?” he recalled Dinkins asking. Years later, Pressley was a Revson Fellow at Columbia College, the place Dinkins was one among his professors.
“If the legislation ever modifications,” Dinkins instructed him, “I need to marry you and your associate.” Simply weeks after New York legalized same-sex marriage, Dinkins fulfilled his promise.
Pressley’s work at Amida Care is targeted on advocating for AIDS training. Pressley emphasizes the nonprofit’s dedication to push again in opposition to assaults on gender-affirming care and “combat cuts to Medicaid on each stage,” particularly beneath this second Trump administration. He stated Amida is powered by a employees that’s 80% individuals of coloration, devoted to defending these most susceptible from these assaults, including that enrolled members are a part of its advisory council and have direct affect on coverage and advocacy efforts.
“We’re doing every little thing we will in opposition to these draconian measures,” he stated, calling the efforts “mean-spirited, homophobic, transphobic, and racist.”
Amida Care has joined coalitions of advocates, media allies, and grassroots organizers to withstand federal cuts and discriminatory insurance policies. Pressley stated the stakes are particularly excessive for Black and Brown New Yorkers who rely upon Medicaid to obtain HIV remedy and well being care protection.
“We live in unparalleled instances,” he acknowledged. “However we’ve to face robust, notice the victories we’ve had — and those we’ll proceed to have.” Pressley attracts from his ancestral line and the members of the family of his who survived slavery, sharecropping, and Jim Crow.
