Lavender Library, Archives, and Cultural Exchange

Reviewed by the Sacramento Region Community Foundation

0% complete

$15,000 Goal

The Lavender Library is a lending library and archive housing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) books and magazines, various media, and archival materials. It is an integral part of the Sacramento cultural community, and it is open to the general public. The Lavender Library serves patrons in the greater Sacramento Valley and Northern California. It is a 501(c)(3) independent California nonprofit public-benefit corporation. It is a designated United Way recipient agency.

From its founding in Sacramento in 1997, the Lavender Library (LLACE) has been a sanctuary, gathering place, and has held our collective queer histories. The library’s visionaries and founders hoped for a future where the LGBTQ+ community in Sacramento could thrive.

In 1997, as the library’s collection began collecting our histories and materials for archiving, LGBTQ+ rights were being denied everywhere from local governments to federally. Kelli Peterson, who founded the first Gay-Straight Alliance at East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, witnessed this firsthand. She simply wanted a to create a safe space where she and her fellow classmates could “ease the loneliness she felt as a gay student.”  The New York Times describes what happened next: “With that, the three set off a furor that now involves national conservative leaders, the State Legislature and the local school board.” After outraged parents screamed malice and hate at the local school board, the city school board banned all "non-curricular" student clubs in order to keep the group from meeting. Outraged and homophobic parents, teachers, and administrators argued that allowing the club would constitute an "endorsement" of homosexuality and would create a forum for "recruiting" other students to become gay or lesbian. Sound familiar? 

Federally, LGBTQ+ rights were under the same amount of scrutiny and persecution. In 1997, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, denying federal benefits to same-sex spouses should gay marriage ever become legal, and creating an exception to the US Constitution to allow states to disregard same-sex marriages performed in other states. While DOMA was ruled unconstitutional and left effectively unenforceable by Supreme Court decisions, in the cases of United States v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the majority of justices currently seated on the Court do not feel the same.

We’re witnessing a resurfacing of this same hate and fear of our queer community today. During the past nine months, more than 1,500 book bans have been instituted in school districts across the country. A majority of the books banned contain themes of race, liberation, and LGBTQ+ issues, stripping students from reading about experiences similar to their own lived experiences. Just recently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, prohibiting the discussion of gender identities or sexual orientation in the classroom. So far, pop-up bills which explicitly limit the teaching of LGBTQ people, issues, and topics for school children have appeared in over a dozen states. 

Mission

The Lavender Library collects, maintains, preserves, and circulates materials to patrons in a safe and friendly environment. The library promotes the understanding to sexual diversity, and collects and preserves the community's history, writing, and memorabilia, by documenting for future generations the people, places, and events of Sacramento through its archival program.

Needs

At a time when our existence is being used as a wedge issue to divide our communities, families, and government, we must lean into re-imagining what our collective queer future can look like and focusing on Nourishing Queer and Trans Joy. What does a resilient queer community believe in? Where does that community gather and break bread? Share, laugh and learn together? Take action and organize together? That’s the future we’re building at LLACE. With this year’s Big Day of Giving campaign, we’re asking our community members to envision their radical queer futures.

Our fundraising goal this year is to raise $15,000 for General Operating Expenses.

These funds will help us continue to:

- provide monthly programing of Queer Crafternoons, The Other Mic and Book Clubs.

- expand our browsing hours to include Monday and Friday evenings and extended weekend hours

- pay queer and trans performers, speakers, and artists who participate in our events

- ongoing projects of processing our local community history by archiving their donated collections, Oral History Project to record our communities' stories, purchasing books and DVDs to keep our library up to date and relevant.

- provide a local space for our community groups to meet and hold their monthly meetings

- create community workspaces, including free computer and printing access

- offer sponsored memberships; you can now donate $60 to provide a 1-year super membership to a community member in need

That covers our goal for Big Day of Giving 2024, but our dreams don’t stop there! We’ll also be submitting a SMUD SHINE grant application this summer to help us reinvest in our lighting, air filters, and fans and ensure our space is energy efficient and safe.

Equity Statement

The Lavender Library, Archives and Cultural Exchange (LLACE) acknowledges the land which we occupy as the traditional home of the Nisenan, Maidu, and Miwok tribal nations. LLACE stands in solidarity with indigenous people and the legacy of indigenous nations who honor gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation beyond the settler colonial paradigm.

LLACE is committed to creating a community space rooted in social justice, equity, healing, and collective liberation. LLACE fundamentally believes in the power of the people. LLACE recognizes serving our community means that our work must be intersectional across the expansive identities and lived experiences of LGBTQIATwoSpirit+ people: race, ethnicity, social class, gender identity, sexual orientation, body size, ability, neurodivergence, religion, immigration status, foster youth, beyond the nuclear family and monogamy, formerly incarcerated, unhoused, substance usage, and much more. LLACE recognizes that LGBTQIATwoSpirit+ spaces have historically centered assimilative white gays and lesbians; it is critical to name our organization’s own history rooted in whiteness and privilege. LLACE acknowledges the legacy of Black and Brown Trans Women of Color that collectively built the foundation for the queer liberation movement.

In combating all the forms of oppression that stem from white supremacy and anti-Black racism, LLACE is committed to an anti-racist framework and practice by centering and uplifting Black, Indigenous, Queer and Trans People of Color (BIQTPOC) in our leadership, in programs, our collections/materials, and in every area of our organization.

Commitments

LLACE has been working at every front, at all ends with the power that we have by:

Transforming our organizational structure to be more inclusive and equitable for volunteers to fully participate and have an impact.

Transforming, expanding, and evolving our collection/materials (creating a youth and young adult section, investing in books by BIQTPOC authors, revamping our collections policy)

Transforming our physical space (more accessible, comfortable, welcoming, etc.)

Transforming the events and programs to be more engaging and representative of everyone in our larger LGBTQIATwoSpirit+ community

Actions

We identify these four pillars as critical infrastructure needed to achieve our commitments to racial equity:

how we are (organization structure)

who we are (our leadership, volunteers, patrons and community members)

where we are (our physical space)

what we are (collection AND events)

Existing Actions:

Re-designing the space with local queer art and renovating the entire library

Restructuring our organization and building committees: Operations, Collection, Engagement, Events, Fundraising, and Communications

Eliminating barriers to participate in or access LLACE programs and content with a membership requirement

Aiming to become sustained by the community so that the library will be free of memberships

Creating a board representative of our community

Board members and volunteers are expected to uphold, advocate for, and abide by our equity commitments

Being informed by the community of what type of materials are wanted/available in the library (inclusive collection that represents the community we serve, with an emphasis on BIQTPOC)

Sex positive and body positive space and resources that affirm the entire spectrum of sexuality without stigma or exclusion of asexuality

Adding more material to our library in different languages, ASL, audio books, tablets, laptops (accessibility)

Building a young adult section/children section of the library

Partnering with more community collectives

LLACE is at a pivotal point in our legacy, as we are ensuring our foundation is rooted in anti-oppressive values, we practice compassion and humility for ourselves and one another. LLACE is committed to constant evaluation of our practices in order to maintain accountability toward racial equity and anti-racist work in our space and the larger Sacramento community.

Organization Data

Summary

Organization name

Lavender Library, Archives, and Cultural Exchange

other names

LLACE

Year Established

1998

Tax id (EIN)

68-0425405

Mission Category

Arts, Culture & Humanities

Operating Budget

$50,001 - $100,000

Organization Need

Funding: Unrestricted, Funding: Other, Space: Office or Other, Technology, Funding: Program

Demographics Served

LGBTQIA+, General population

Local Counties Served

El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Yolo

Equity Statement

Equity Statement

Address

1414 21st Street
Sacramento, CA 95811

Service areas

Yolo County, CA, US

Placer County, CA, US

El Dorado County, CA, US

Sacramento County, CA, US

Phone

916-492-0558

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