As part of Groundwork’s ongoing series of equity interviews, today for Pride Month, we hear from Adrienne Brown-Reasner, Up North Pride’s newly hired first Executive Director, and also first full-time employee. Based in Traverse City, Up North Pride serves the LGBTQ+ community in five northern Michigan counties. [As told to Jeff Smith]

Adrienne Brown-Reasner: I have always been someone who wants to make sure that those who don’t feel they have a voice, have a voice, or have someone to help advocate for them. I’ve been involved in a number of nonprofits, but it’s always really come down to the fact that I personally want to make sure nobody feels they’re on their own, or left out, or feel like they don’t matter. It’s my driving force behind everything that I do.

I wasn’t super involved until my early 20s, after college, and I started volunteering with the Grand Rapids Pride Center. I started helping out occasionally in the office area, and then was brought on board to facilitate the youth group, which is 13- to 17-year-olds. They can be anywhere under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and come from any school. We had a lot of home school kids, too. So it was just an open space for teens to be themselves. And if that meant their pronouns change week to week, great. If they have different names week to week, also fine. If their parents know that they come or not, that’s OK too. It was their own space to let them be truly, authentically who they are.

And for me, I think that is really where the passion for this work was really, really lit, because it’s seeing kids who have no place else where they’re allowed to just be themselves, to finally have that freedom. And it’s almost like watching them take a giant breath for the first time to be able to say, This is my name, these are my pronouns, dress how they want, and know that nobody in that room is judging them or questioning them. It’s just totally supportive of each other and wanting to find a way to make sure everybody can always feel that way, no matter where they are.

There’s so much more to someone’s identity than how they identify as far as sexual orientation, yet somehow that still, in 2025, is such a primary focus for so many people to know what box you fit in. You know, I’m also a very avid golfer, or I like to paint, or I have 18 cats, like, whatever those other things are, should be so much more important than who I’m attracted to, and the fact that we as a society just keep coming back to that being such a defining characteristic is really odd. But at the same time, to stand in a room full of people and to be able to say, “I am this,” is very empowering.

Certainly things have evolved, though. During the ’80s, there was a lot of focus very specifically on homosexual men through the AIDS epidemic—which, obviously is not done—but at the crisis moment of it in the ’80s. Then there was kind of a secondary wave of pride movement when shows like Queer as Folk, and the L Word, and even the Ellen Show, all these things, started putting homosexuality in pop culture moments, and it became a bit more mainstream.

Homosexuality became something that wasn’t always behind closed doors, or it wasn’t this one little group that we only heard about when something bad happened. Around, the late ’90s, early 2000, it became more commonplace, these are people who live next door. These are people who own the business down the street. These are our friends and neighbors and colleagues. And we don’t have to be as closeted about it, and so I guess it was kind of a secondary pride moment. And then more recently, as non-binary and transgender issues have become more and more in the discussion, we’re now seeing almost another wave of movement.

I will say, as soon as the election happened in November, I, like everybody that is even somewhat connected to anybody that is part of the LGBTQ plus community, got very scared, and very nervous, and very worried. We all could kind of see we’re about to be attacked. And now we are. We are legitimately under attack just for living and being who we are, because our lives don’t fit into what people think should be an acceptable life. You know, we are also seeing very dangerous policies being, if not actually put in place, at least being proposed, that very, very detrimentally affect people’s health care and their mental care and there’s really, there’s no other way to say it. It’s just an attack for no reason, and it is scary. And we’re always a little bit on edge about what comes next, and that is very focused on specifically the trans population.

I could quote a million different statistics about how there are so many negative things that happen when you suppress the ability of people to, number one, access the care that they need. But you suppress their ability to just be themselves, you’re telling them that who they are is just inherently wrong and doesn’t deserve to be here. That is a ludicrous thing to think about in this day and age. We have been taught that we live in a country that has better protections and better governance than other countries. But we are seeing now that is not necessarily always true. It is being shown very, very clearly that is not a true statement at this moment, in terms of personal freedom, in terms of being able to to say that, you know, we protect human rights only if you fall into certain categories, or we protect these constitutional rights, only if you fall into certain categories. So it’s like we now are in a state that picks and chooses who has certain rights and who doesn’t.

There’s so much attention and so much energy focused on this particular thing … why and why now? Not just at the federal level, but also in the state of Michigan. The senate was just talking about bathroom bills and sports bans in high school. There are currently only two trans students in the entire state participating in sports that way. There are so many things so much more important than this.

When I look ahead, some things I am hopeful about. Lawsuits came up immediately after some executive orders. But still I have concern and worry because we have seen Roe v. Wade overturned. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we will lose marriage equality. Things we thought would not be a concern. It’s not etched in stone when a decision is made. For example, we are seeing things when it comes to identification on a passport. If you live in a state where you have the ability to update gender on your ID and it doesn’t match your passport, are you allowed to travel any more? We never thought this would be something you have to worry about.

What we are trying to do with Up North Pride is make sure the community knows there are spaces that are safe and supportive. There are people you can turn to. You don’t have to go through this alone. You can stay connected.

That’s really the best thing that we can do to prepare for whatever is coming. People know there is a community here. And there’s a network of people and businesses who want to help and are here to help. Downtown TC is so supportive overall. And when you walk downtown you see so many businesses have Pride flags or Up North Pride signs. And have that year round. Even if they did that 15 years ago, it was not as open back then as it is now.

The area Is more accepting and inclusive than it used to be. And honestly the community here is more accepting here than other places. For example, at the Grand Rapids Pride Festival they see huge numbers of protestors who show up every year. Here, there was one person with a protest sign. There’s much more of a supportive feeling here.

Just in the last couple of weeks, a business here had property sitting empty. They asked us if we can use it for something. Now we have an office and community meeting space. They said they’d rather see something going on in this building than it sitting empty. Over the weekend, we had a crew of people come mopping and landscaping and ripping up old carpet. They were excited to do it because it means we have a space in downtown. That is a huge accomplishment for a small org, and for a small town to say we have LGBTQ+ space.