As Lower Manhattan’s elected representative for 35 years, Deborah Glick has been a leading advocate for civil rights, reproductive freedom, animals and environmental preservation, the arts, and tenants’ rights. Glick was the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the State Legislature when elected in 1990 and a leader in the fight for marriage equality. She fought to pass the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA). which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), which protects transgender and gender nonconforming New Yorkers from discrimination. Glick chaired the Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation and served on the Ways and Means, Rules, and Governmental Operations Committees. Highlights from Glick’s oral history include memories of her family’s Village-based printing and stationery business, discussions of navigating electoral politics as an out lesbian, and recollections of the Village’s vibrant gay cultural and nightlife scene. 

In late 2025, Glick announced that after three-and-a-half decades in public office, she would retire at the end of her term this year, making this oral history an especially timely document. 

Village Preservation maintains more than 70 oral histories with figures who witnessed, participated in, or made significant history in our neighborhoods, including Jane Jacobs, Penny Arcade, Wolf Kahn, Jonas Mekas, Marlis Momber, Edwin Fancher, Margot Gayle, David Amram, Matt Umanov, Merce Cunningham, Joan Davidson, Richard Meier, Ralph Lee, Mimi Sheraton, John Guare, Calvin Trillin, and Chino Garcia.