Shawn Lang, tireless advocate and voice for the marginalized, dies: ‘Generations to come will benefit from her advocacy’
The Connecticut activism and LGBT communities are grieving the sudden death on Sunday of Shawn Lang, a longtime advocate for state residents living with HIV and AIDS, as well as those with opioid addictions, survivors of domestic violence and people experiencing housing insecurity.
No cause of death has been determined.
Lang was 65 years old and lived in Hartford. She leaves a son, Corbett, who is 24.
A memorial service will be held on Sunday, Oct. 24, at 5:30 p.m. at the Pond House Cafe in Elizabeth Park on the Hartford-West Hartford line, Corbett Lang said. All are welcome.
Until recently, Lang was deputy director of AIDS Connecticut, where she started working in 1991. In that capacity, she was the organization’s point person with Connecticut lawmakers on matters of public policy.
On Monday, many of them mourned her passing. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal called her a friend, saying “Shawn Lang’s passion and courage were boundless, and her impact endless, as a leader and advocate for fundamental human rights. She stood up and spoke out unstintingly and ceaselessly for so many who are demeaned or disregarded, inspiring others to do the same.”
Gov. Ned Lamont said Lang “made a lasting impact on Connecticut” and that he was grateful that “generations to come will benefit from her advocacy.”
Jeff Currey, deputy majority leader of the Connecticut House of Representatives, worked with Lang since 2016 on issues affecting the LGBT community.
Currey said from the beginning of his tenure in the legislature, “it was very obvious that with regards to LGBTQ matters, especially in the health realm, that Shawn was someone to sit down with, get to know, to have by our side to move the needle forward as regards protections and rights.
“When she spoke, you heard the passion and the love and the grit and the determination. You could see everything she had ever gone through. It was behind her eyes,” Currey said.
Corbett Lang said his mother “would always stick up for the weakest person, no matter what the situation was.” He described one encounter when he was 7 or 8 years old.
“We were just walking to her office. Some grown man hit a girl in front of both of us, in front of her and in front of me. She completely confronted him. She said she was going to call the police and told him, you better get out of here, and she comforted the woman,” Corbett Lang said. “She wouldn’t let anyone get abused in front of her.”
Lang was a native of Norfolk, Massachusetts, one of five children in an Irish-Italian family. Lang started her career in caring for others after high school. She worked as a nurse’s aide, preparing patients for surgery. In a 2016 interview with Hartford Magazine, she said she left that job “because I couldn’t stand the hierarchy.”
After that, she studied sociology and women’s studies at University of Lowell. She was attending college and active in the campus gay rights’ group just as AIDS was beginning to make its appearance. “I found my people,” she said in the Hartford Magazine interview. “I found a niche around organizing and agitating.”
William J. Mann, coordinator of the LGBT center at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, said Lang’s personal memories of the height of the AIDS epidemic were an invaluable addition to his “History of AIDS” classes. He brought her in frequently to talk to students too young to remember the day-to-day terror of those days.
“Shawn told the story in a way students can relate to. She stood up there and said, ‘look, my friends were dying all around me and I knew I had to get out there and do something’,” Mann said.
“She will be remembered as one of the greats in Connecticut LGBTQ history.”
After moving to Connecticut after college, Lang worked at a Middletown shelter for domestic violence survivors. She later moved to AIDS Connecticut, focusing on health issues affecting the LGBT community. She became a giant in that community, later expanding her passionate advocacy to help those struggling with opioid addiction and homelessness.
Lang’s position, deputy director, was eliminated in summer 2021 in an organizational restructuring.
John Merz, who was Lang’s supervisor, is CEO of the organization now called Advancing CT Together. Merz said Lang, who was “5-foot-2 if even that,” was “the biggest person in the room.
“She was forceful and opinionated. ... In many ways, she would call herself a warrior for what she called her brothers and sisters who had fallen from AIDS or who were battling the disease.”
That warrior spirit started early in her time in Connecticut, but her passion was mixed with humor. Steve Gavron served with Lang on the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights starting in the late ‘80s. They gathered with other activists for organizing meetings at the now-closed Reader’s Feast. Lang and Gavron also became comedy partners, doing standup together.
“She had a wicked sense of humor. She always liked the quote ‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution’ [by turn-of-the-century activist Emma Goldman]. We had to have sarcasm and fun in our protests. We thought we were funny and if other people did not, that was not our issue,” Gavron said.
Their goals were serious even though their approach was often light. “We would tell the public health department ‘we are going to protest you this afternoon,’ and then we were very in-your-face,” Gavron said.
Their crowning achievements as activists were successfully pushing for the 1990 passage of a hate crimes bill that included mention of sexual orientation and a gay rights bill. The gay rights bill, which passed in 1991, added mention of sexual orientation in all Connecticut laws that banned discrimination.
That serious but caring approach carried over to her legislative work with AIDS Connecticut. Merz described Lang’s legislative work as that of a warm-hearted consensus seeker — “hugging legislators as if they were old chums” — but he recalls one time when Lang could not hold in her fury at a proposed policy.
“Very early on when she was here, there was a call for name reporting of people with HIV or AIDS. There was a big outcry against that, the sense that it was violating people’s confidentialities,” he said. “She really went to bat for that and expressed outrage. That was one of the few times I can remember her being antagonistic.”
In addition to working with AIDS Connecticut, Lang was a board member of the National AIDS Housing Coalition and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University in New Haven. She sat on the CT Alcohol and Drug Policy Council and founded the Statewide Opiate Overdose Prevention Workgroup.
In 2017, Lang was named a Champion of Change for Advancing Prevention, Treatment and Recovery by the White House, nominated by then-Gov. Dannel Malloy.
State Attorney General William Tong honored Lang’s contribution to state policy in a statement issued on Monday. “Shawn was a fiercely devoted advocate for our state’s most vulnerable people. ... She was a force to be reckoned with and her tireless dedication to LGBTQ rights impacted and inspired many people in Connecticut. Today we grieve the loss of a champion and remember with profound gratitude Shawn’s many efforts to create a more just and equitable society,” the statement read.
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
