We are working hard to improve the Center and its ability to serve everyone in the community every day.

In early 2020, the Hudson Valley LGBTQ+ Community Center (the Center) received a very public call-out from community members, including a list of demands for action, in reaction to past harms experienced by some in the community – including issues with accessibility, misgendering, patriarchy and imperialist behavior, racism and a white-centered culture, competition, and the hording of resources.

During the subsequent two years, the Center board and staff have worked hard to address these demands and to act more broadly, too, to ensure that similar harms will never happen again. With the assistance of Flannel & Blade, a locally based intergenerational, queer, BIPOC-led organizational development company, we took a hard look at ourselves and our situation: we reflected deeply on how the Center had arrived at this place in time, our strengths and shortcomings, the composition of our team, and consideration of alternatives and avenues for the best way forward.

This document provides a snapshot of the actions we have taken and those still in process. The Center’s board and staff welcome discussion of further details at any time.

We committed to and are actively engaged in DEI, anti-bias, anti-racist, anti-oppressive training for all board members, staff, and group facilitators.

With the help of outside experts, we have begun education and training for all board and staff and will be looking to institute a program for onsite group facilitators, too. During the past year and more, we have engaged in multiple DEIA trainings and programs every month; we recognize that this learning needs to be ongoing, and it will be.

We are soon to publish a comprehensive DEI&A policy statement that will inform how we conduct ourselves always and everything that we do.

Education and training are valuable but only one piece of the foundation we know we need to build to ensure that the Center is a stronger, better organization. We are working on our policy, and an accompanying DEI&A action plan, with Dr. Edward Lawson, an adjunct lecturer at SUNY New Paltz and Assistant Director for Intercultural Relations, who supports diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and outreach for the school. We look forward to sharing our new policy with everyone this summer.

We are addressing a past culture of competitiveness and are committed to partnership and collaboration with LGBTQ+ organizations and service providers across the Hudson Valley.

We have heard and understood the competitiveness issue and are working with all to ensure we make no further mistakes. We look continually for opportunities to collaborate: our role in the 2022 Hudson Valley Pride Coalition March & Festival, as an equal partner with many others, is but one tangible example of how we hope to contribute to the great work for our community being done across the region.