Newly formed Ithaca Pride Alliance aims to bring together LGBTQ+ community

After years of conversations among local organizations and leaders, the Ithaca Pride Alliance (IPA) has formed to serve as the first official group of organizers for LGBTQ+ focused events.

The IPA currently consists of seven members: Andrew Scheldorf, chair; Crissi Dalfonzo, vice chair; Fred Horowitz, treasurer; Ian Rydgren, secretary; Mack Rovenolt, historian; Kimberly Brown, member at large; and Sarah Barden, Tompkins Chamber Foundation liaison.

Scheldorf, a postdoctoral associate at Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science, performs in drag as Tilia Cordata. They said that over their seven years of living in Ithaca, they started noticing a lack of permanent queer organizations or institutions in Tompkins County.

Vice Chair Dalfonzo moved to Ithaca in 2018. “I just fell in love with the town, really,” she said. 

Dalfonzo originally worked at Cornell University and recently took the position of director of Ithaca College’s Center for LGBT Education, Outreach and Services.

“When the director position at IC became vacant, I knew it was a position I could settle into and really be in for the long term,” Dalfonzo said.

“Through planning the Ithaca Pride Festival over the last few years and coming in contact with the larger collation of other queer organizers in the area, I just started talking more and more and realized the same issue: a lack of longstanding organizations or a longstanding venue for collaboration and community building,” Scheldorf said.

In an effort to change that, the IPA’s three founding members, Scheldorf, Dalfonzo and Horowitz, started holding meetings last August.

“The goal was having a structured organization really anchored and rooted to the county and town and not so much to an individual person,” Scheldorf said. “Myself and several others started thinking about the future. We might not stay in Ithaca forever, but we have done a large amount of work to reenergize the community and form connections. Forming this group will give us something to anchor all of our efforts to so that if someone moves, the queer community has an organization to represent itself.”

The group is an affiliate of the Tompkins Chamber Foundation, the 501(c)3 nonprofit administered by the Tompkins Chamber.

“The Tompkins Chamber Foundation is excited to support the Ithaca Pride Alliance as it is formally established and provide administrative and fiduciary support for their important programming and advocacy work within our community,” said Tompkins Chamber Foundation President Jennifer Tavares.

The alliance will serve as organizers for LGBTQ+ focused events and to create new, safe, inclusive, accommodating, educational and accessible spaces for the LGBTQ+ community, as well as uplift existing ones, in Ithaca and throughout Tompkins County.

“[We] want to be that official hub,” Dalfonzo agreed. “We want community. Whether it’s for the drag community or the sober community or LGBTQ parents, we want people to know, ‘Here is a place I can go to connect with those folks.’”

The alliance will play a role in the Ithaca Pride Festival, which will take place in Ithaca June 7 to 14, though it is important to the IPA that the festival remain a grassroots effort, Scheldorf said. 

The IPA’s relationship with the chamber began in large part because of the group’s need to manage money raised during the 2023 Ithaca Pride event. 

“There were these funds out there raised by this sort of loose group of organizations, that they needed to be able to account for,” explained Sarah Barden, Tompkins Chamber director of community initiatives. “They knew they needed someone to handle the financial and insurance aspect of things.” 

Barden added that the IPA’s formation aligns with the chamber’s mission of “making Ithaca and Tompkins County a more welcoming place for folks.”

Dalfonzo said she anticipates the alliance focusing the majority of its efforts within Ithaca at first but that she foresees their reach expanding into the rest of Tompkins County as more connections are made within those communities. Working under the auspices of the Tompkins Chamber Foundation gives an additional opportunity to do that in ways they could not when partnered with strictly Ithaca organizations such as the Downtown Ithaca Alliance, said Scheldorf. 

“We can work anywhere in Tompkins County with the same authority, so that is exciting and has opened up the possibility for new partners,” they said.

“It’s especially important, when they don’t see themselves represented in a smaller community, that they feel like they are part of a larger community and they can see themselves represented there,” Dalfonzo agreed.

The IPA will help to centralize Pride festival events and will lend its support to new events and collaborations, working in partnership with Downtown Ithaca Alliance and other community organizations, as well as with community leaders around the county.

“We want to make it clear and understood that we are not just kind of the next party organizers or the organizers of a bar night out. We really want to be a part of the community.” Scheldorf said that means helping to host educational workshops on topics such as how to start an LGBTQ-friendly business. It also includes partnering with Ithaca’s existing businesses to host events such as the queer clothing swap that Scheldorf and other members of the alliance recently helped host at Alley Cat Café.

“We had about 60 people digging through clothes, finding pieces, within about a three-to-four-hour window,” Scheldorf said.

They said this demonstrated the desire among the queer community for this kind of event.

“Personal expression is so important to the queer community, but there is also a high economic cost to redoing your entire wardrobe or trying something new and deciding you don’t like it,” Sheldorf said. “A clothing drive is a way to get all those clothes from someone who might have changed styles to someone else who might be interested in that being their future style.”

The IPA will have a launch event Feb. 3 to announce its official formation. The group is collaborating with Ithaca College and Cornell University to host their official launch event, the “All Y’all Clothing Swap,” scheduled for Feb. 3 from 1 to 6 p.m. at the Community School for Music and Arts, 330 East State St. A raffle and social will follow from 5 to 7 p.m. with snacks and non-alcoholic beverages provided.

“We thought that aligned with our values and interests,” Scheldorf said of the clothing swap, adding that for LGBTQ people, clothes tend to take on a crucial role in the formation of identity.

“It’s kind of cliché, but the saying ‘You’re born naked, and the rest is drag,’ is very accurate,” Scheldorf said. “We put on clothes and personalities, attitudes and vocal codes to be taken seriously or to be seen in a certain way.”

This form of self-expression can be especially important for college students.

“We have a lot of trans students in Ithaca, and lots of times these are their first years out of the direct influence of their parents, but they might not have the money to completely overhaul their wardrobe, and statistically queer people have less funds,” Scheldorf said.

The event also serves the function of a social gathering. “It’s a great way to bring together folks of all ages and facets of the community,” Scheldorf said. “They can try new things in a safer space. I know for me, personally, I’m terrified of trying on clothes in the women’s or men’s side of the store when I’m dressed in the other. I feel looked at and judged. Here, we’re not placing any of that fear on people, and you can shop however you want, buying the clothes you think are cool.”

Those who wish to donate clothes to the event may do so at Buffalo Street Books, Mimi’s Attic, and LGBTQ resource offices at Ithaca College and Cornell University. Donations are also welcome at the event.