Gary Schiff

Gary Schiff (born February 3, 1972, as Gary J. Schiffhauer) is an American politician and activist who represented Ward 9 on the Minneapolis City Council.

Schiff was born Gary J. Schiffhauer on February 3, 1972, and grew up the youngest of six children in Western New York State.

In 1990, the American Civil Liberties Union represented Schiff after he graduated from Lewiston-Porter High School in his hometown of Youngstown, New York.

According to The Buffalo News, Schiff had painted a mural along the school's stairwell that referenced "drugs, safe sex, AIDS and racism" in the style of artist Keith Haring.

In September of that year, the school's superintendent, Walter S. Polka, decided that parts of the mural's text were objectionable.

The American Civil Liberties Union became involved in an extended legal fight over the constitutionality of Polka's censorship, and a New York Supreme Court Justice sided with the Lewiston-Porter School Board.

In 1991, the school board voted 5–1 to paint over the mural.

The board cited Schiff's involvement in a recent ACT-UP demonstration at the school—where demonstrators gave condoms and safe sex literature to students—as a major influence on their decision.

As part of a transition that included moving from Youngstown to Minneapolis to attend college at the University of Minnesota, Schiff shortened his name from the original Schiffhauer as a result of his parents' shame and refusal to acknowledge his sexuality in the small conservative town of Youngstown NY where the family attended church in a conservative Roman Catholic Parish (St. Bernard's, Youngstown, NY).

However, Robert and Rita Schiffhauer, Gary's parents, soon joined the PFLAG Chapter in nearby Buffalo, NY in order to understand and support their son which they continued to do throughout their lives.

Schiff's official public statement is that he shortened his name in an effort to move the memories of bullying that he said made his youth "an act of survival".

In October 1992, he and six other students protested against the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and its compliance with a longstanding ban on homosexuals in the military.

The seven protesters interrupted a meeting of the University Board of Regents, demanded the expulsion of the ROTC from campus, and handcuffed themselves to the Regents' chairs.

Wearing signs that read "$old," suggesting that their human rights had been traded for Federal grant money, Schiff and the six other students were arrested by University Police and each charged with misdemeanors.

From 1993 to 1995, Schiff directed the Progressive Student Leadership Exchange (PLSE), a program modeled on the Civil Rights Movement's Freedom Summer.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) took interest in the program, and invited Schiff to direct it as the newly named "Youth College for Campaign Training" in Washington, D.C. The HRC-funded program invited people aged 18–24 to participate in workshops, and sent the participants to "target states" where they worked in groups as campaign staff members.

After graduating in 1994 with a B.A. in women's studies, Schiff moved to Washington, D.C. to work with the Human Rights Campaign.

He returned to Minneapolis to work with Progressive Minnesota, "a grassroots group focused on community organizing and electoral politics."

In December 1997, he became involved in a fight to save the Shubert Theater, a former vaudeville house on "Block E" in downtown Minneapolis, after the Minneapolis City Council approved a redevelopment plan that called for the theater's demolition.

Within days, Schiff organized "Save Our Shubert," a grassroots effort to preserve the theater.

After eight months, during which time Save our Shubert acted as a media contact, lobbied the city council, and "kept the Shubert in the public eye", the Minneapolis City Council voted 9–3 to move the theater to a space adjacent to the Hennepin Center for the Arts at a cost of $3.9 million.

A member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), he was first elected in 2001 and re-elected in 2005 and 2009.

Prior to his political career, Schiff was involved with a variety of activist groups and causes ranging from human rights with the Human Rights Campaign, to historic preservation with Save Our Shubert.

During his city council tenure, Schiff worked to ease ordinances prohibitive to small businesses, especially microbreweries, and strongly advocated against a publicly funded stadium for the Minnesota Vikings.

Schiff, at the time working as a teaching assistant in the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs on his way to earning a master's degree in urban planning, took a leave of absence to run for a seat on the Minneapolis City Council against Michael Guest and Kathy Thurber in 2001.

He won unanimous DFL endorsement on September 11, 2001 and, in a race that was overshadowed by the 2001 terrorist attacks, he ran against Lucky Rosenbloom, an African-American Republican.

Schiff received the endorsement of the Star Tribune, which noted his "first-hand knowledge" of light rail systems in other U.S. cities.

Elected by a large majority in November 2001, Schiff became one of seven newly elected members on the 13-member city council, joining two Green Party members, two other openly gay council members, one African-American council member, and four women.

He was sworn into office on December 17, 2001, earlier than his fellow councilmembers, when Thurber resigned from her seat to assume the position of deputy director of Perpich Center for Arts Education.

In his first term, Schiff sponsored and cosponsored numerous legal reforms to the Minneapolis Zoning Code that reduced bureaucratic obstacles for small businesses and housing developers, including a measure that permitted sidewalk cafes to use permanent outdoor furniture and a change in city zoning code that facilitated the construction of denser and more affordable housing.

He also sponsored an ordinance to add domestic partnerships to the Zoning Code's definition of "family" in terms of housing.

In 2003, with colleagues Barbara Johnson and Sandy Colvin Roy, Schiff developed a last-minute plan to restore $2 million in proposed cuts to the Minneapolis Fire and Police Departments, following a $26 million cut from Local Government Aid by former Governor Tim Pawlenty.

That same year, he sponsored an ordinance that effectively blocked police officers, city inspectors, and other city employees from inquiring about a resident's immigration status.

The ordinance forbids police officers from arresting a suspect solely on the grounds of a suspected immigration status violation.

The program was still in operation as late as 2006.

In January 2013, Schiff began a campaign for mayor of Minneapolis in the 2013 election but after an unsuccessful DFL endorsement convention, dropped out of the race and backed eventual winner Betsy Hodges in mid-June.

His third and final term on the City Council ended in January 2014.

Schiff took over as president of the Council on Crime and Justice the following July but he was dismissed from the organization the next year.

The organization closed abruptly following his termination.

Schiff again ran to represent Ward 9 on the City Council in 2017 but lost to incumbent Alondra Cano.