48 Gay City News Impact Awards 2020
HONOREE
KRISHNA STONE
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY RELATIONS, GAY MEN’S HEALTH CRISIS
Krishna Stone is the director of community relations in the Communications
Department at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), where she has been
involved for 34 years. Krishna originally connected with GMHC in 1986
when she walked in the fi rst annual AIDS Walk New York. She soon
began volunteering with the group.
In 1993, Krishna joined GMHC as a staff member. Her wide-ranging
responsibilities include coordinating staff interviews with media outlets and developing public service campaigns and
promotional materials. She is also engaged in an endless round of organizing community events — rallies, candlelight
vigils, non-denominational gatherings, press conferences, local, state, and national conferences, dance parties and other
fundraisers, trainings, and site visits to GMHC for people from all over the world.
Krishna was one of the heroes of AIDS activism profi led in Victoria Noe’s 2017 book “Fag Hags, Divas and Moms:
The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community.” In a guest post on Noe’s blog this past May, Krishna recalled the
commitment and grief that spurred her work with GMHC, fi rst as a volunteer and then as a staff member.
“During the 1980s and 90s, when I was volunteering and then becoming an employee at Gay Men Health Crisis, visiting
with friends who were living with AIDS and then attending memorial services for those who had died of AIDS, dancing was
a substantial coping skill,” she wrote.
She then memorably set a scene that will resonate with so many who lived through the worst of the plague years.
“I would go to the clubs, largely for gay men, and dance to extraordinary Disco Classics music, played by immensely
gifted DJs,” Krishna continued. “Before I would start on the dance-fl oor, I would ask myself who was I dancing for that had
died of AIDS. Then I would dance for hours, while crying for my friends, singing out loud and screaming when the DJ would
play a specifi c song — ‘Oh my Goddess! That’s my song!’ Pure rapture and joy mixed with sorrow.”
Krishna’s ubiquitous presence on the frontlines of the AIDS battle has earned her widespread recognition.
For the past 21 years she’s been a volunteer announcer along the route of Manhattan’s LGBTQ Pride March. In 2017,
Krishna was among the event’s four grand marshals. On that occasion, Governor Andrew Cuomo bestowed on her a
proclamation “in honor of her dedicated service and continuing contributions to our great State.”
In 2014, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene honored her on World AIDS Day with an award in
recognition of “her outstanding dedication to combatting the spread of HIV.”
Among her many other volunteer activities, Krishna has forged a close relationship between GMHC and the Gay Offi cers
Action League, bringing LGBTQ law enforcement offi cers into the fi ght against AIDS. Last year, GOAL honored her with its
Sam Ciccone Community Service Award, named for a co-founder of the group who passed away in 2015.
An ordained non-denominational minister, Krishna is the proud mother of a 25-year-old daughter, Parade.