Good morning, Keeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with me your Girl, Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, it is the first full week of Pride and we are continuing our Pride coverage here on wok F all month long, bringing you really important conversations on the issues that are facing the LGBTQ plus community as well as you know how we're staying joyful at a time of so many, so many horrendous attacks. And today I'm really
excited to bring a conversation more local. Right. We have a lot of headline national conversations on WOKF, and every once in a while, I really want to bring in a community perspective, a localized perspective on what we're facing right, and the reality is I've brought in two guests today, Peter Yacabelli and Steve Arrington, both of whom head up
respective prides in their states. Peter is the executive director of Out Montclair in Montclair, New Jersey, and Steve Arrington is the head of Black Pride as well as the executive director of the Bayard Rustin LGBTQ Center in Akron, Ohio.
And just being able to speak with both of these men about the work that they are doing and about the issues you know that they are facing, from funding to recognition, to how to stay hopeful, to how to continue to intertwine education, and you know, and understanding both within the LGBTQ community, how we understand ourselves during this month of Pride, but all year long, and really understanding the history of how we got to a place where we were having pride in the first place, and to
continue to intertwine both our present day reality with our ancestors that helped to get us to this place. So that conversation is a really good one and I hope
that you all enjoy it. But before we had there, you know, I do want to say this with regard to just, you know, the news of all of these Republicans, you know, announcing their presidency and Nikki Haley, you know, using her time with the failing network CNN in her presidential town hall to attack the transgender community, particularly to attack trans girls. There is no moderate within that bunch. They are telling you exactly who they are, exactly what
they stand for. And when you have someone like Nicki Haley use a mainstream media outlet to spread outright lies that increase violence towards the most marginalized among us. I don't know how the fucking mainstream media gets away with referring to her as moderate.
She is not.
She is a liar, and she is just as hateful as Donald Trump. Just because what she wears traditional feminine clothing and wears makeup, we think that what she's not as vile and disgusting. I mean, thankfully, you know, what Nikki Haley is really doing, like many of the people that are in the field right now, is auditioning for Donald Trump, who remains the heavyweight front runner right now.
But when you look at even who is in second place, which is Aron DeSantis, and the hateful measures and policies and climate that he is enacting in Florida, you have to think to yourself, is this what we want nationalized? Do we want to mainstream homophobia and transphobia, misogyny, racism
right in our country? Is that what we want? We want to go back to the days where these people who were forced out onto the margins for their racism, for their Islamophobia, for their homophobia and transphobia are now just credited with being, you know, just having differing opinions.
I don't fucking think so, and so I think that it's important, as you know, we are watching the mainstream media make the same mistakes that they made in twenty fifteen, make them all over again because it's quote unquote good for ratings, or as CNN is trying to do, just both sides everyone to fucking death. It's really important to recognize what is happening, and it is to normalize hey
right to say, oh, you're okay, it's it's fine. You know, you don't know a trans person, So let me tell you about this boogie person that I'm trying to create. Let me make up a story and create this monster and then have you, you know, rely on the fact that I can just spread lies because we refuse to actually leave our communities and get to know each other and the person down the street, which makes it so easy right for the right wing to be able to
spread the kind of bullshit that they do. So it is really important that we go back to community, that we stop looking so far outside of ourselves for the solutions to the problems that we're facing. And I think that this conversation today with both Steve and Peter and the localization of pride and local solutions and community solutions is exactly where we need to be, Folks. I am very excited to welcome to ook F Daily for the very first time. We're doing a duo for our interview
today during the month of Pride. I'm excited to welcome the executive director of the Bayard Rustin lgbt Q Center, Steve Arrington, as well as the executive director of Out Montclair and Montclair Pride, Peter Yacobellis. Thank you to the both of you to making the time to join WOKF. And I'll start and I'll direct the first question to you, Steve, what does pride mean to you this month of June but also under kind of the cloud of attacks that the LGBTQ community has been facing over the last year.
Thank you for that question, and it's a good question. Pride means to me something totally different, I think than what it is to the mainstream white gay pride community. Being African American openly gay man, it's always been a struggle and so we have never been involved or one embraced by white gay prides. So when we decide to do African American black family pride. We're bringing in our culture.
We're bringing in things that make us rifle. Mostly black gay men and lesbian women are in the church choirs. We bring it in our food, We're bringing in our house, our ball dancers. It's more of a cultural event for us than just a party in the park or a party on the street. We celebrate our struggles that we have as black LGBTQ plus people. We celebrate the good times, the bad times. We celebrate our ancestors, and we celebrate the term on the principles of Kwansa with is self determination.
So my pride that I'm celebrating this year is the self determination to move forward. And in doing that, and during that self determination, we take an assessment of what is needed in our community, what are the struggles, what are some barriers that we can address. In our pride. For the last seven years, we've always gave scholarships away, and so this year it'll be ten thousand dollars in scholarship so far that we've gave away to some people in our community that are trying to struggle to go
to college. That's a pride event, and we just don't have one event. We do three major events across the sections. We're going to have a house Mecha Valley, a ball night, We're going to have our scholarship luncheon, and we got our stone so picnic in the park and it brings together through different genres of people across our community.
Wonderful Steve, thank you so much. And Peter, similar question to you with being the executive director of aut Montclair. You know, what does pride mean to you, particularly during this obviously what is often a celebratory month of June, but again under this cloud of consistent attacks that we've seen against the community across the country.
Yeah, so it ebbs and flows, you know, like at some points in my journey, I've been you know, rioting and for pride and advocating and and other points celebratory. We've had a lot of change over the last two decades, and unfortunately we're in one of these cycles now where certain elements in our country are deciding to circle around and come on the attack again and try and strip us of rights and trying to e raise us from
curriculum and library books and all of that. And it's really quite scary because I think the people who are doing it know better, and they're doing it anyway, and they're doing it to divide. So Pride for me this year is about being a contrast and setting up something like Montclair Pride is about contrasting places all over the country that are marginalizing and targeting people for discrimination, and we want to be the anecdote for that. We want
people to be welcome here, to be themselves. Our tagline is be you be Heard. You're a family friendly event. We are a majority people of color event. We're really really proud of what we've been able to create here in Montclair and like to serve as a contrast related to what's going on in so many other places around the world.
You know, the thing that I think is most important, you know, for those people that actually are outside of the LGBTQ community, you know, they have often seen Pride as you know, an event with glitter and floats and music, and don't really understand necessarily the origins of Pride Pride being as Peter you alluded to, initially a riot right in nineteen sixty nine outside of Stonewall in in New York, where I am located, and the importance of the LGBTQ
community led by black trans women at that time, pushing back against police brutality, pushing back against you know, the forces that sought to oppress them, and so can the both of you speak to and Peter, I'll start with you with this one. You know why the his understanding the history of pride is important and how you work to interweave that with joy and celebration in your locality.
Well, for me, you know, the symbol and the flag has obviously evolved over the years, but the Pride flag was a literal signal for safety, especially when I was younger. Finding the place in New York City that had the flag meant that I could be who I was and I would be safe there. And that's really the space that I think a lot of us try to create with our festivals and our events, is this is a place where you can come be your authentic self and
you will be safe. If you are a cisgender white, you know, straight male in America, you really probably never have felt unsafe as a result of your identity. Right, So, when we see the pushback on pride, people saying well, why don't we have straight pride? I do try to have a conversation with people around that. I see that as an opportunity because I try to assume positive intent
and assume misunderstanding before something more malicious. And often when I do have that conversation with individuals, they don't realize that it is about safety, that it is about overcoming struggle, that it's about overcoming discrimination and marginalization that we've all
experienced in our lives. And so I think it's so important that we keep things like this going because there are constantly, obviously new people who are coming out and figuring out who they are, and we need to make sure that they have safe spaces to be themselves.
Thank you for that And see for you, you know again, being in in Ohio, being in you know, the Midwest region of the of the country. For you, what does pride at this at this local level, and black pride specifically, you know mean? And why is it important to interweave the history right into the content of understanding how pride has evolved over the course of time.
It is very important to weave the history from which we came a lot of the young people that we see at our drop in center know very little about black gay history. In our facility, we got posters hanging all through the facility of famous people who are African American that came before us and that were LGBTQ. Audrey Lord with a story about who she is, and we share that knowledge on an ongoing basis as we talk about Stonewall. I'm always sharing with our youth that Stonewall
was a people of color issue. Stonewall was where we stood up to be accounted for. Stonewall is our beginning and our pride. Well, they go to visit Stonewall. Now it's been regenrified to a white, gay, upscale community. But that's our pride, and so our pride is identify as
Peter said, to struggle and celebrate the struggle. And if we don't knowledge the struggle that we have and even still going half today and educate the young people behind me, they wouldn't know nothing about it because it's not taught. Being here in Ohio, being black and gay is more than a nocean. I mean to get us to point where we got black gay pride and this is our seventh year was not embraced at all, and it was like, oh, you don't need that. We all together, No, we're none.
Because when I tell you about my culture that I need to bring to the table being part of his pride. You tell me that's not pride. So that's my pride. It wasn't your pride, and it wasn't accepted, it wasn't embraced. So now after seven years, they're coming around and say, oh, well, we want to fund you to help you give us
some money. And I use this analogy when the mainstream Pride can raise over two hundred thousand dollars for a six hour event, a party in the street for six hours, and we have not even raised over twenty thousand dollars for a three day event, including scholarships, including Keno speakers, including an educational component, and we've never received that kind
of money. So it tells you right there that there is a divide because we go out and solicit funds to sponsor our pride just as well as mainstream Pride, and we don't get it. We might have an institution that would give us five hundred dollars while they gave mainstream Pride five thousand dollars, And we see that and we keep track of that because it lets us know that our struggle is still still relevant at this time. So when I hear the joy of pride. What is
my joy right now? My joy is that we're sustaining and we're able to pull off the seventh year. That is my big joy, that we're here. It hasn't folded up. And I'm hoping that when you know, I'm not a young a no more. So, I'm hoping when I leave here, that someone steps up behind me and say, let's carry this on. Who's going to do the next exect director? Be pride, create an institution here in the LGBTT black community,
something that they can be proud of. I mean our dropping center last year, we had five hundred and one people just dropped through here. And these eighteen to twenty four year olds homeless, subs abuse, and a whole lot of mental health issues. So when you see eighteen year old people sleeping on your front porch of your building facility because they have nowhere to go, there's still a struggle. It's still a struggle and there's very limited resources for them.
So you know, our focus and our agendas are different. And as you say, as he said, a white male or white female don't even know, don't even know the burden that we have to carry so I always amazed at that word joy. What does joy mean? If I was back in the church, I would say joy, joy, deep down in my heart. Oh yeah, it's in my heart. But what is that joy? When I leave that church?
They have to face the reality of racism as each and every day when I wake up, you know, I go to bed feeling good, and I wake up and get back in this work, and somebody is out there that is not going to embrace us. So when they talk about the overall attitude of anti gayness in Ohio, and we got a lot, we got four bills going on Ohio now against gays, well you know we have those four bills. But I wake up as a black man. There's anti blackness every day, So not just for gay issues,
but every day. And so I do believe that the term joy is more of a mental state of mind, that we're existing, that we're alive, and that we're well and we're celebrating our life. And my young guys work here, when I told them about the joy pride, they all said today, what joy? After of course they asked me, what are you talking about joy? What do you mean? Because everybody want to know what's the Joy. It's a struggle for us to raise money to put these events on.
It's a struggle to maintain Wars open. So you know, we didn't raise two hundred thousand dollars in six months for six Hour Party.
Yeah, I think that that's I mean, that's an important differentiation to make, which is, you know, there has long been an issue around the commercialization of pride, right, the corporatization of pride in many ways, but that money being used to rainbow wash companies who are doing dirt against our communities during you know, at night, but taking the
money by day. What does it mean to you know, have these corporations give to the quote unquote mainstream organizations while really denying the work of localized organizations that are working with whether it's the black queer community, the Lacks, the next queer community, what have you. I think is a really important distinction to make. I ask about Joy because I find, you know, particularly as we see the silencing and the erasure that is happening at a national level,
I have a lot of concern for LGBTQ youth. I have a lot of concern and it goes back to you know, the beginning of the two thousands, when you've heard you know, the campaigns around it gets better, right, and this idea that you know, just keep moving, keep pushing, have faith right that each generation's responsibility is too better, you know, is to better society than the way that
we found it. And so Peter, I'll start with you with this question, which is, you know, what are your both your hopes and your fear for lgbtqu at this time, and what kind of support do you see that they need.
Well, I think we're seeing now more comfort with authenticity than ever before, and I think that is what is scaring the right wing to these crazy reactions that we're seeing around the country in terms of just targeting youth and their families for discrimination, criminalizing trans healthcare, banning library books, banning drag shows. I mean, there is a lot of fear that's coming up against I think a lot of authenticity. So I do remain hopeful just given everything I'm seeing.
I was at a show last night for an artist named Declan McKenna, who I've never heard of before, but who's very popular with the young generation, and most of the audience was young, queer people of all colors, and it was beautiful to see, and I couldn't believe just the way they were a dressed and how free they were. And I'd never seen such an assemblance of young people like that outside of my and this was just a concert.
So I have a lot of hope, But at the same time, I'm concerned in places like Florida where you can't even teach anything LGBTQ related now through twelfth grade. I mean, we're not even talking about the Don't Say Gay bill through third grade that was passed over a year ago, and now we're talking about you can't talk
about it through high school. That's scary, right. Luckily streaming content, television, all those stuff, you know, but what's next, Right, That's my concern is this kind of censorship and shaming and if the people pushing it get even more power than
they already have. And the consolidation of media assets in the country, you know, with media markets being consolidated in papers, and television stations and radio stations all being owned by two or three companies, is very, very very concerning to
me what the goal there? And I think most alarming is the effort by conservatives to take over school boards and affect and change curriculum because that we're seeing cuts across a lot of issues, trying to deny the Holocaust, talk about slavery and a completely different context and taking it completely out of context and erasing LGBTQ people. So I'm scared for all oppressed people because I think we just are going through this cycle like humanity doesn't seem
to learn the lesson. Ever, you can go back one hundred years ago and look at the world and the debates and the conversations and the discrimination and targeting that was starting to happen one hundred years ago, and here we are again. Yeah, it's scary. So we all have to have each other's backs too. I think that's the most important thing, is that we're looking out for each other.
We're trying to understand each other, where we're coming from each other's life experiences, and having each other's backs, because once they come for one of us, they're coming for the rest of us.
Man.
Yeah, that is one hundred percent true.
And Steve for you.
You know, again, with regard to the pressures and the reality that LGBTQ youth are up against, you know, how do you think those that are listening, you know, those that are able to attend, you know, and go to your center in Ohio. What what can people do to be of better allies, to be a better support to LGBTQ youth.
Uh? You know, that's a good question. But before I talk about what they could do to be a better ally and support, I have to address my youth that come here. They lack knowledge, they lack awareness, and we're all we have a Wednesday dinner here every night and it's all about some subject on the table. One time we were talking about Rosa Parks and one of the guys said, well, you know, that wasn't real. That really didn't happen. And I said, it didn't know me, Steve,
that didn't happen. And I'm like, well who told you that? Well, I learned that in school. I don't believe none of that kind of stuff. This is an openly gay man telling me that. As we explore things like that, there's a whole lack of knowledge that are young people coming here with even from voting resil to vote, to get involved, the knowledge level is not there. The identity about who they are in this struggle of being gaged during these
suppressed times is not there. We have four House bills at state Senate now that is trying to erase us and to get them involved consciously to address those issues and say let's go to the state's capitol with the other people on the charter bus and protests. Is like why and I'm like, oh wow, So that there is where I'm focused on. They need to come and get involved. A lot of them don't even want to come out of the to the gay pride because they feel like
someone may see them. And I'm okay, but this is Ohio. Now, we talk about allies. What can our allies do?
You know?
I work with a lot of cistender black folks in this city, and I let them know that our needs are great. I let them know that if you can help us, do that. If you want to sponsor a Wednesday dinner, do that. But I always got to approach them in a way that you can do this, please help us. They're not lining up at the door, even though they know what we're going through, even though they know we've been suppressed and marginalized. They're not lining up at the door. And we're in Ohio at one of
these little Bible belt places. So that has a major impact on how people receive us. You know, I even had a young guy a couple of weeks ago. Wait, mister, you know we're gonna go to hell. I said, well, I'm not going to hell, you know, but if he has if they had two years old, oh, if that's his consciousness, it's that his mindset. Even though he just said it so easily, it tells you there, we have a damaged person in hand. And if we got that one damaged person that has that little mindset, then we
have another one and another one. So the first thing we need to do is have our allies to rally around, to help educate, to help mark awareness about who they are and be proud about who you are. And I'm constantly preaching that we are somebody we can make a change, and we're doing it. Ten years ago this center and even existed here in the city, no one even believe
it was gonna get off the ground. It might be a small change, but it's a big change over the period of time and the history of people that we impact, And so I think it's important for us to uplift them and bring in allies in that can focus on our issues, be political allies that they be state representative, federal representative and support us as we turn around and support you because they do want our votes.
Yeah, one hundred, one hundred percent. For those people who would like to get involved, who would like to attend your events, who would like to visit the center, Peter, you first, and then Steve, please tell folks how they can get connected, how they can follow, and how they can participate.
Thank you again, and thanks for having me. I think it's important to mention that my organization does do year round programming. So we do a big Pride festival, which is great, and that's once, you know, one day in June, but we do year round programming for teens, for seniors, for families, for trans individuals, and so we're really proud of that. So they can get information on all of our programs as well as Pride at Outmontclair dot org. Outmontclair dot org.
Okay, wonderful, Thank you Peter and Steve.
Yes, we as well do all year round programming. We have a housing program for youth between eighteen and twenty four. We provide rent assistance. We can provide deposit and two months of rent for them if they're homeless. We also have a transitional house that has four people in it right down, one lesbian and three gay men, and we provide them shelter. They stay there for six months. We do stabilization program, get them a job, get them in school, get them off the streets. And for our pride and
our food bank here. We have our clothing bank here, our HIV testing, our COVID testing that we do here, and our anti violence group. We have a high number of violence among our community and so we were funded to do anti violence and we just got funded from Centerling to do mental health referrals, so we're doing that as well. But to contact O us to just go to OHIOAAC dot org, Ohio aac dot org and it pulls up our site, it pulls up all our instagrams. And I do have some young people here that do
the social media thing. As I told them, I know nothing about birth and no baby, so they do that quite well. They get up and they do all of that because it's not that's not in my genre seventy years old. So they do that, and you can reach us through our social media and OHIOAAC dot org.
Okay, Peter and Steve, thank you so much for making the time to join wokp Thank you both for the work that you are doing in your respective states and regions. We really appreciate it. We will make sure, folks that you are listening that you'll be able to connect in the show notes area and the episode description. Thank you, Peter and Steve really appreciate you. And happy pride to both of you.
Thank you, Danielle, Happy pride.
M hm.
That is it for me today, dear friends on wokef as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fun