Albany's “In Our Own Voices,” one of the nation's oldest social-community services organizations serving LGBTQ+ and people of color, recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.
“In Our Own Voices” was formed when four activist groups, the Feminist Action Network, SABIL, Sisters, and Brothers in the Life, Gay Men of Color of Alliance and the Social Justice Center joined forces in 1998 and established a presence on Central Avenue.
Tandra LaGrone is CEO.
"This is huge, for a LGBT people of color organization to be celebrating 25 years when there are so few organizations of color that are in existence," said LaGrone. "And so, not only are we excited to celebrate these 25 years, but this is history in its making."
Dave Lucas: "Were you here at the beginning?"
"No," LaGrone said. "And I'm smiling right now, because I mentioned SABIL earlier. I like to say that I'm a product of SABIL, Sisters and brothers in the Life. Actually Sisters and brothers in the Life started in early 90s. And then we grow and join the network of FAN as I said earlier, I am, I just in February, had my 18th anniversary. So I've been here 17 of those 25 years."
In 2003 the organization moved into its present location at 245 Lark Street and purchased the building in 2014.
"When I started at "In Our Own Voices," it was just me," LaGrone said. "And today we are fully staffed we have 25 staff. And like I said, we owned our building during COVID 2021. And you know, there was a lot, we say, there were two pandemics going on at the same time. You had COVID and you had the social unrest around racism. We were able to work with the city of Albany to do the Black Lives Matter narrow on Lark Street. We provided over 1000 people with access to COVID vaccinations."
LaGrone says Albany is vastly different from many other U.S. cities when it comes to diversity, tolerance and understanding.
"We are fortunate to be in New York State period, compared to a lot of other states," LaGrone said. "You know, last two weeks, I just came back from Florida, and we already know the state of Florida, right? We know what's going on in Tennessee. Just this year alone, over 500 anti-LGBT bills are have been introduced, and we're only in March. And so when we compare ourselves to other states we are one of the most progressive, one of the most LGBT friendliest states. But when you then narrow that down, and we're talking about the umbrella of LGBT, but when you look at LGBT and you break it down into demographics, and race, and gender and sexuality and looking at sexual minorities, we still have a lot of work to do. And that work begins with looking at how we can do this work through an intersexual lens. Just because we are an LGBT community does not mean that the racism, poverty and all of the other isms doesn't exist in our community."
LaGrone says "In Our Own Voices" will always stand tall as a beacon in the Albany area.
"Locally, you know, here, there has been a strive that "In Our Own Voices" has tried to uphold, which is to have our door open and to collaborate and to partner with anyone," LaGrone said. "But I think, you know, we still have work around, that there's still a lot of opposition, of why are there two LGBT centers? Why are there two Prides? That's even though we're celebrating our 17th, 18th year of now, we just renamed it to BIPOC pride. It was Black and Latino gay pride. There's still opposition. And so I think with anything that surrounds race, there's always work to be done."
