Andrew Moran, board president of the Rochester Rainbow Union, sits down with JoDee Kenney this week to discuss everything you need to know about the Rochester Rainbow Union.

"The Rochester Rainbow Union has the largest collection of LGBTQ+ books in the entire state." he explains. "And we kept it here for a reason — if it was in a county library or city library, that would be subject to whatever happens in government if right wing or radical people take power, they could get those books and try and hide them. By having it in our own space for the LGBTQ community, we can safeguard our history, we can safeguard our culture, and we can make it available to everyone that will never be hidden."

"Also, part of the collection is an archive of the Empty Closet, which was for a while the nation's longest continually published LGBTQ newspaper. It started in 1970 with the Gay Liberation Front, which our organization stems from, in the basement of the University of Rochester, which actually has no historical designation because of that. The publication and shutdown in 2020 and now with our new board and our new organization, we're working with a group of local activists, local artists, local community members, to really bring it back and might kind of go back to how it looked in its early days, almost like a 'zine format. The goal is really to focus on sharing information within the Rochester community, bringing the organizations together, uplifting each other, just really helping us to work together. As with any community, we're only as strong as we are when we work together. So it's still a progress in motion. We're exploring funding opportunities that it's something that much of the community is excited to have again."

You can hear the full conversation between Andrew Moran and JoDee Kenney via the video player above. And be sure to tune in for a look inside the biggest issues impacting Upstate New York, on In Focus with JoDee Kenney — every Sunday on Spectrum News 1.