Audio Interview, Kraig Pannell, October 3, 2012

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, and today is October 3rd, 2012.

And I'm sitting here at Creo Restaurant in Albany.

I have to come to Muhammed when Muhammed won't come to me.

And I'm sitting here talking with Kraig Panell

about his experiences being a gay man

and growing up as a person of color

and who recognized his being gay early on.

So I just want to verify some facts.

Where were you born, Kraig?

KRAIG PANNELL: I was originally, I was born in Elmira, New York.

And my mother and I moved to Rochester when I was two.

And, you know, lived in Rochester in the suburbs

until I graduated high school and went off to college.

EVELYN BAILEY: Where did you go to high school?

KRAIG PANNELL: I went to high school

at Brockport High School.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK, so you weren't living in the city.

You were living

KRAIG PANNELL: We were living in Hamlin, New York at the time.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

KRAIG PANNELL: We moved out to Hamlin from the city

when I was in fifth grade.

Moved out there and, you know, was out there until I graduated

went to private school in Brockport.

I went to Nativity in Brockport for fifth and sixth grade.

Negotiated a deal with my mother to let

me go to a public junior high school as opposed

to a private high school.

So I went to Brockport Junior High

and when it came time to go to high school, I was like, OK,

I'll go to a private high school then.

You know, it just seemed to be a little bit

much trying to get into the city to go to a private high school

and all of that.

So I just I stayed in that area I went to Brockport High

and graduated from there.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you out in high school?

KRAIG PANNELL: No.

I wasn't out in high school.

There were several people who were.

I think in high school I knew that I was different.

I knew that there was something different about me.

But didn't really acknowledge it.

I think I didn't acknowledge it because I felt that, you know,

being out in Brockport was a very small area.

It was very I think I needed in my mind,

I needed to be somewhere that was more accepting and more

open before I actually, you know, fully explored, you know,

am I gay, am I this, am I that?

I think I always knew.

But there was a long period of time

where I always like, you know, pray or think

that like, you know, please let me be bisexual.

Then that way it will be a little bit more palatable

or you know I could kind of fake the funk a little bit easier

and whatnot.

But I think I knew and I think most people around me

knew but it was never really a question or

EVELYN BAILEY: Now what year are we talking

when you were in high school?

KRAIG PANNELL: I graduated from high school in '88.

So my high school years were from '84 to '88.

EVELYN BAILEY: Can you share with me

a little bit about the town of Brockport or Hamlin.

Was there much crime?

KRAIG PANNELL: There wasn't much crime.

Brockport and Hamlin sit west of,

about twenty to thirty miles west of Rochester.

You know, Hamlin was more so, there

were some residential areas, but it was basically

a farm community.

There were like some housing subdivisions that were there.

There were people who had lived there all of their lives.

Brockport was a town, a suburb town of Rochester.

There's a SUNY campus there.

So they had, you know, we had access to the campus.

And there was like graduate students

and undergraduate students and a number of different disciplines

that were there.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did it have the flavor of a college town?

KRAIG PANNELL: It did.

It did.

There were you know a number of like any college town.

You know, there are a number of different bars and restaurants

and you know, the off-campus housing

that looks like Animal House.

You know, there were and like the high school

campus was like right next to the college campus.

So like, you know, you would always see the college students

or we could, like, easily go over to the college campus

and walk around, which we frequently did

or attend college functions and stuff.

So it was an easy blend, it wasn't really drastic.

Also living out in Hamlin in the Brockport area

there weren't many people of color.

There weren't any, there were very few

African-American families that lived out that way.

When I was in junior high school, I was, myself

and one other woman in my class, were

the only two African-Americans in the schools

through K through sixth grade.

She left in 5th grade and then in the school

it was just my sister and I that were in there.

In the High school, the majority of the African-American

students were bussed in through our urban suburban program

from Rochester to go to school in Brockport.

And then I'll venture to say there

may have been twenty African-American families that

lived out there, several Latino families.

So it wasn't extremely diverse, but it was (pause)

EVELYN BAILEY: not

KRAIG PANNELL: not too bad.

EVELYN BAILEY: Not pure?

KRAIG PANNELL: Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you ever experience any discrimination

either in Rochester before you moved

to Brockport or in Brockport because

of your African-American heritage or?

KRAIG PANNELL: In Rochester, I didn't

I can't say that I experienced anything overtly.

It was about the time we moved from Rochester out to Hamlin,

I was in fifth grade, I was like maybe ten years old.

So like, I knew that I was different

because I went to private school.

There weren't many ethnic minorities

that went to private school.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

KRAIG PANNELL: So I knew that I was

different from my surroundings.

But the communities that I lived in

were always ethnically diverse.

There was always a number of different races and ethnicities

within my neighborhood where I lived in Rochester.

But going to school, I was one of a handful always.

So any overt racism, I didn't necessarily experience.

I think that, you know, my family

may have noticed it and dealt with it.

But it wasn't anything that, you know, at that age

that I was aware of.

When I went to junior high in Brockport

and I was at a private school, you know,

there was some taunting by an underclassmen.

And, you know, I kind of just ignored it

until I really couldn't take it any longer.

And he said something to me, I don't recall what it was.

I just remember picking him up by his neck

and throwing him into the trash can. (laughs) You know

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you expelled for that action?

KRAIG PANNELL: No, no.

My mother was called and was like, you know, I did that.

And then I immediately had this I

guess I had an emotional reaction because I don't like

to get that upset and I don't like people

to see me get that upset.

And I was more mad at myself, not for what I did,

but for allowing it to get to me to take me to that place.

And the school knew and the administration at the school

knew that it wasn't common behavior for me.

They also knew that I had been taunted for a while

and did nothing.

And they were surprised at the fact

that I hadn't done anything until that point.

So it wasn't I didn't get expelled or anything like that,

but it was definitely one of those things where, you know,

parents were called and that type of thing.

EVELYN BAILEY: And the witnesses were more than [one] raced?

KRAIG PANNELL: Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: And in high school?

KRAIG PANNELL: High school, I think in high school

because we had a lot of the students,

the majority of the African-American students

were being bussed in from Rochester,

there was a good mix, there was a decent mix

of people at the school.

There were a number of but I also think at Brockport

there were a great deal of migrant workers' children

that would come into the school system

at different times of the year.

And I think they beared the brunt

of a lot of different things from a lot of different angles.

You know, we might see them there

at the beginning of the semester and then not see them again

until you know, they might be there like through November

and then you don't see them again until April.

And then, or there would be different

people that would come in.

So I think they, because their culture was different

and their experience was different,

you know, I think they beared the brunt

of a lot of the racism, a lot of the hatred that was going on.

In this school, there was power in numbers.

So I think a lot of the students that were bussed in

and doing the urban suburban program,

you know, they were more aware of like racism overtly

or covertly.

So like if anything happened it was addressed.

WAITRESS: Do you want some time, and I'll come back later?

Because I have specials all day.

KRAIG PANNELL: Thank you.

So I think that they kind of enlightened the rest of us

around what was going on.

In high school I think there was only maybe one incident

that I recall where somebody, you know, slung a racial slur

my way.

And you know I got fairly belligerent about my response

to him.

And you know, principals got called in,

we sat down in the principal's office,

then you know I had this whole thing.

But I think most people I don't think never really

said anything to my face because I was very,

I wasn't confrontational, but I spoke my mind and you know,

you knew where you stood and that was just me.

EVELYN BAILEY: It didn't mess with you.

KRAIG PANNELL: Not to my face anyway. (Bailey laughs)

Not to my face.

You know, there were things that I would

hear through the grapevine.

And I would say, well, you know, this is what I heard.

And if you feel that way then fine.

But you know, next time say it to me.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what about college?

Where did you go to college?

KRAIG PANNELL: I went to Bucknell University

in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. (pause)

College was a lot of things.

It was, it was, um (pause)

EVELYN BAILEY: Was let me get the racial thing out

of the way.

Did you experience any racism at Bucknell? (pause)

Missed opportunities because you were African-American?

KRAIG PANNELL: Oh no.

No, no, no, no.

I didn't miss any opportunities.

I don't think that I think it was very covert.

And like, when you think about the population of students

and where they came from.

There were students from all over the world that

came to Bucknell.

A vast majority of them were from families

who had significant wealth.

A lot of them, you know, boarding schools and this

and that and the third thing.

There was a, I'll say a fairly representative population

of ethnic minorities and international students

on campus.

Percentage wise, I would say compared

to the population of the United States at the time.

So you know if it was like 10 percent African-American,

there was like 10 percent African-Americans on campus.

It was very representative that way.

But not necessarily economically.

There was a vast economic differences amongst people.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

KRAIG PANNELL: And there were some, you know,

ethnic minorities that were on campus

who also came from families of significant wealth.

And international students who came from significant wealth

as well.

So you have this real diverse and disparate social class

and strata that was there.

So I think that at Bucknell there were

some covert pieces of racism.

There would be things that you would hear that people would

say underneath their breath.

I think there would be things that people would

do that would be taken as racist, but most of the time,

we took them as an educational moment.

I think some people didn't necessarily

view it as them being racist, whether it

was them posting a sign and someone looking

like they were in blackface.

And you're like, you can't do that.

Then they'd be like well why?

This is a caricature, this is what

whatever, and then you have to go through the whole history

of it.

So I think that in addressing, you know,

what was racist or perceived to be racist on that campus,

we tended to seize it as an educational moment.

I was president of the Black Student Union

and then we changed the name to the I

don't know, instead of the Minority Student Union,

we called it the we changed the name

to a couple of different things.

And I'll say for like about two and a half, three years,

I was the president of that organization on campus.

I was, you know, welcomed into, you

know, receptions at the president's house

on a regular basis, and student government

to talk about different things, and invited

to speak at forums about racial diversity

and ethnic diversity on campus and you

know what we wanted to do.

But the school also had a very active social justice

curriculum.

They also had a, you know, African-American Studies

program and, you know, a lot of classes on race, class,

and gender on campus.

So you had a lot of academics who

were very interested in racial dynamics and ethnic dynamics

and feminism and politics of power.

EVELYN BAILEY: Pretty progressive.

KRAIG PANNELL: Yeah, it was very progressive being there.

And I think it's very surprising when,

you know, you're in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania,

(Bailey laughs) you know, and the community

is not that diverse.

And when the college I want to say we

had maybe three thousand students on campus

that were so diverse and so different.

Freshman year was difficult. I went to college

thinking I'm going to be around people

who are more worldly and more open and more understanding

and not as judgmental.

And I think that's where I felt that I

was going to be able to come out and be able to do my coming out

process and understand myself a little bit more and grow.

But when I got there, I realized some of them

are just the same people I went to high school

with but just from a different area (both laugh).

You know, whether it was their socioeconomic status,

their race, their ethnicity, their mentality,

their whatever, it was like, OK, I'm

not in a place that's vastly different from where I went

to high school where I live.

EVELYN BAILEY: And not safe.

KRAIG PANNELL: And I didn't, I never felt unsafe.

I never felt unsafe there.

But it was like it wasn't what I wanted college to be.

I wanted it to be a more worldly place

where I would be able to be to feel

I could be a little bit freer and a little bit more

expressive.

Where I could, you know, grow and be my own person.

And not to say that I didn't do that in college,

but I think my freshman year and my first experience there,

I was just very much like, oh my god.

This is just not what I anticipated

or what I expected college to be.

EVELYN BAILEY: So when did you find that place?

After you graduated obviously.

KRAIG PANNELL: I think it was a process.

I think, you know, it started in high school.

But it was like, I also knew that there were certain things

that I needed to accomplish.

There were certain things I needed to achieve.

There were certain expectations that

were held of me, whether by myself, my family, or society.

You know, I needed to achieve.

I needed to

EVELYN BAILEY: What was your degree in?

KRAIG PANNELL: I have a degree in Political Science and Black

Studies with an emphasis on American Politics and Policy.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you were thinking maybe

the presidency might be reachable,

might be an obtainable goal.

An achievement that wasn't expected, but would be greatly

applauded.

KRAIG PANNELL: I think that maybe as a policy advisor.

But not necessarily the president.

I didn't set my goals that lofty (both laugh).

But yeah, I think that there were things that one,

I wanted to achieve.

And then two, that I felt that, you

know, for me thinking about at the time

it wasn't really cool to be gay.

It wasn't one of those things that was accepted.

It was one of those things where, we are also

talking about at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic going

on.

And you have people talking about calling it GRID,

and it's all about the gays are the ones who are doing it.

And there's all of this vitriol going on about gay is this

and gay is that.

So you don't know what to say or how to feel

or, like, you know, if I do come out,

how is it going to received.

And you know, I'm not the most masculine of people,

but you know, it's like, you know you look at me,

you can tell.

Unless you're Helen Keller (Bailey laughs) or something

like that.

But it was also one of those things

where I had to come to terms with it and I had to be

and I think it was a process.

And you know in college, I had some very supportive friends

that I came out to in college.

And they were understanding and changed nothing.

Even after college as I began to come out to some of my friends

more, they were very supportive.

I had a couple of cousins who I told, but I was never,

I was never really in an area where

there was this active, vibrant, gay culture.

I was living out in Brockport.

When I left Rochester I was eighteen.

You know, the drinking age was twenty-one.

There was nowhere to really, no where

that I knew of to really go and to meet other people.

The one time I went into a gay bar in Rochester,

it just seemed very predatory to me.

And you know, that was just my perception and my fear.

Not saying that it was or wasn't, but that's

just how I perceived it at the time.

EVELYN BAILEY: Where did you go after Bucknell?

KRAIG PANNELL: After I graduated from Bucknell,

I swore I would never live in the state of Pennsylvania

again in my life.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you moved to Pittsburgh?

KRAIG PANNELL: One better.

EVELYN BAILEY: Philadelphia?

KRAIG PANNELL: No, one better.

I moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,

which is in the northeastern (Bailey laughs)

section of Pennsylvania.

And the Wilkes-Barre, Scranton area, just based like you

know right there in a valley around the Poconos.

Just so happened to be after graduating I

came back to Rochester for several weeks.

And just so happened that I interviewed for this job.

They offered it to me and I moved down.

So I went to work for King's College, which

is a Catholic college run by the same

the Holy Cross Fathers, which also run Notre Dame.

And when I went there, I was the coordinator

for multicultural and international students

in the student affairs department.

But I was also the minority student recruiter based out

of admissions.

So I had two titles, two job descriptions, one paycheck,

and two offices (Bailey laughs).

EVELYN BAILEY: So you worked eighty hours a week.

KRAIG PANNELL: Seemed like it at the time.

But you know at the time, you know, I'm in my early twenties,

you know, the world is invincible,

you can do anything.

But you know, I also felt that it

was a place where I could impact some of the incoming students.

I wasn't that far removed from my own college experience

so I could relate to the majority of them.

You know, I enjoyed the travel trying to recruit students

to come to the campus and whatnot.

But it wasn't until I worked for that institution,

that I realized how well I had it at Bucknell.

And I did that for two years.

And it was an interesting experience.

I met some wonderful people, had some eye

opening experiences, meeting some self-identified gay

priest.

You know, hearing them actually swear and curse and drink

and smoke and all of these things

that you know going to private school

that you think priests don't do.

EVELYN BAILEY: Religious women do it too.

KRAIG PANNELL: Right (Bailey laughs), you know.

So it opened my eyes to a number of different things.

I was there were also, you know, stereotypical

but in college student affairs there's

a great number of LGBT individuals.

I met some of them were in my student affairs department.

So I created some friendships with my colleagues on campus.

In the Wilkes-Barre, Scranton area

there was an enormous population of LGBT people.

And I swore that it was in the water.

I'm like, where do you all come from (Bailey laughs)

In a city this size, I think the whole one in ten rule

didn't work.

I think this is like one in four.

So it was interesting.

Then again, not a very diverse area,

but very the gay community was very, welcoming and very

EVELYN BAILEY: Was it organized?

KRAIG PANNELL: No, not really.

There was a community.

There were a couple of I want to say like two small bars.

One was like in this, I guess what

would have been like an old house

and like maybe couldn't hold more than sixty people.

And I didn't go there but I heard about it.

And like everybody would flock there.

That's was the spot to be on certain nights.

And we had another bar that was I guess more accustomed to what

a bar would be today.

Or what you would think of as a gay bar.

And you know, pool table, bar stools and all that, you know.

Not a large enough space, but people went there as well.

So it was interesting.

EVELYN BAILEY: When did your political roots

and your community organizing roots take hold of you

and catapult you into activism.

KRAIG PANNELL: I think they've always been there.

I think part of it was when I was at Bucknell,

there were a number of different things that I was involved in.

There were a number of things that faculty and administration

would consult with myself and some of my other peers

about around, you know, new policies and procedures

or new academic requirements or courses they wanted to add.

The educational portion of when, you know, things did happen

on campus, let's address them.

Let's not sweep them under the rug.

Let's talk about, you know, the social political aspects

of these actions on campus.

And, you know, I think a lot of that

was cultivated by Bucknell, and that's

their process of doing things.

So I was fairly active there, which

I also think parlayed itself into when

I started to work at King's and I moved to Wilkes Barre,

noticing the difference between institutions.

Also there it was one of those things where

because I was the coordinator of multicultural and international

students, unbeknownst to me, I didn't realize

that I would be the go to person about what happens

in the community as well.

So there were times where there were swastikas

painted on synagogues and that type of thing,

or there'd be a number of other racial or ethnic motivated

slurs and hate crimes that would happen.

And they would want my opinion about it.

And I'm like, I'm a transplant here.

I don't know your community that well.

But that was one of the roles at the university

or the college played.

So in that position, I had to make statements and be aware

of what local politics were and what the local climate was

and all of that.

I think after I left King's, I really

didn't want to get back into that role.

I needed a break.

Did high school, did four years of college,

did two years of working, it just went on.

And I was like, OK, I need something.

So I worked in retail for about a year.

Might be stereotypical, but I did.

Did visual and blah, blah, blah.

And I was fine.

And it was that I didn't have to do

all of that deep thought and deep thinking piece.

But then the local AIDS council was looking for someone to

EVELYN BAILEY: Was this in Wilkes-Barre?

KRAIG PANNELL: This was in Wilkes-Barre.

Their local AIDS council was looking

to they had just received money to do a targeted outreach

program for men who have sex with men.

And somebody had pointed out to me,

and I had never really thought about it.

And then a friend of mine who was on the board of directors

was like, you know, Kraig, you really

need to apply for this position, you need to do whatever.

So he gave me the announcement and I said, well,

the posting is over.

It's past due.

It's bad form to, like, you know,

submit a resume after the due date.

You just don't do that.

He was like, Kraig, just submit something.

He's like, you already know the executive director.

And he mentioned this guy's name and I'm like,

I know him to see him, but I don't really

have a rapport with him.

So that night I went out and the executive director

came up to me and introduced himself.

And he was like, well, you haven't applied.

I said, bad form, after the date, whatever.

He's like, send me your resume.

Whatever.

So I do that, went, interviewed, and got the job.

And the interesting thing about that was there

was no (pause) I had to create the entire program.

There was there was no target outreach done

to men who have sex with men in the northeastern region

of Pennsylvania.

And when we're talking about creating a program,

we're talking about creating a program for six counties.

Six counties, most of which were rural.

So it was a challenge, and it was fine.

We were a small organization.

It was some very dedicated people

with complimentary skill sets and capacity

and had a passion to kind of make a difference.

So to get back to your question originally

about my political activism and roots and things and whatnot,

I think it was I've been there.

You know, all of my life has been about social justice

and my upbringing was about right is right

and wrong is wrong and wrong will never be right.

So that was what my family instilled in me.

And I think Bucknell fortified some of that.

And then the rest of my career kind of followed

along those lines and snowballed that way.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what brought you to Rochester?

KRAIG PANNELL: After saying that I would not

live in Pennsylvania ever again and after living there

from '92 until 2001 (pause) it was time to come home.

It was time.

My family didn't necessarily like me living out of state.

And they wanted me closer.

So my grandmother had passed away earlier in 2001

and was for me, that was devastating.

But also at the time, when I was working,

I don't know why I couldn't leave.

I just felt like there was something

that had to be done that wasn't done yet,

and I didn't know what it was.

Right around the time or shortly after my grandmother passed,

I knew my work was done.

And I knew whatever I was meant to do

or destined to do there was done.

Still to this day don't know what it was.

But I felt my mission was complete.

So I moved back.

Here I am, thirty-one, almost thirty-two years old,

hadn't really lived in Rochester since I was eighteen.

Whole new world.

(laughs)

EVELYN BAILEY: And it was then that you

were I think, correct me if I'm wrong, weren't you

asked to join MOCHA?

KRAIG PANNELL: When I came back to Rochester,

I was working for what was at the time Community Health

Network.

And I had done part of my work with them.

I did some collaborative work with MOCHA.

And that's how I met Lee Carson and a couple of other staff

over there.

And Lee was like, we're looking for a program

director at MOCHA.

And I was like, well, no, I got here.

I don't really know much about it, whatever.

And I kind of pushed back a little bit.

And then they asked me to be on their board of directors.

And I said, I can do that.

So that way I can learn a little bit more about Rochester,

learn a little bit more about the community

and the organization.

From being on their board and the work that I was doing

in the community otherwise, there was a real push

by the organization to find they had

a program director in Buffalo.

They needed a program director in the Rochester office.

So they had a consultant go and, you know, do

a community assessment and poll the community about who

they think they should entertain or the qualities

about the program director and so on and so forth.

You know, so after he did his whole little thing,

came back and reported that the general consensus

in the community was that the program director should be me.

Much to my surprise, because I was like,

I didn't really think that I was that well known in Rochester

or, you know, whatever.

So at that time, they decided to do

I think I had stepped off of the board for other reasons.

And then they started to do a search.

So I had, you know, waited and waited

and I threw my hat in the ring and went and interviewed

and blah, blah, blah, and ultimately became the program

director for MOCHA in Rochester for their Rochester office.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now step back for a minute.

What is MOCHA?

MOCHA is an acronym for?

KRAIG PANNELL: MOCHA started out as an acronym for Men

Of Color Health Awareness Project.

I can't right now offhand I can't remember

the exact year they started.

I want to say '95.

It was started by a group of African American men who

felt that their needs weren't being met in Rochester as

far as their HIV/AIDS prevention needs

or they weren't being represented

as part of the gay community.

So they wanted something that represented them.

So they started the organization.

And from my understanding, Gary English

was the first executive director of MOCHA.

And they worked collaboratively with a number of different

organizations to kind of establish themselves and get

their 501(c)(3) status and state funding and all of that stuff.

EVELYN BAILEY: Advocacy?

KRAIG PANNELL: They did advocacy.

From my understanding, that's how they received

a lot of their early funding.

They did advocacy around HIV/AIDS prevention

for men of color.

Whether it was locally or with the state.

Also in collaboration with the Center for Health

and Behavioral Training developed

an evidence based intervention specifically

targeting men of color, which is called Many Men, Many Voices.

And,you know, that particular evidenced based intervention is

part of the CDC's DEBI program, which is Diffusion of Evidence

Based Interventions that is used nationally and even

internationally now.

EVELYN BAILEY: So it was education and?

KRAIG PANNELL: They did education, prevention,

social support, you know, whatever needed to be done

and whatever they tried to meet the majority of the need.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was MOCHA the counterpart

to AIDS Rochester in the African American community?

KRAIG PANNELL: I can't really say, because I wasn't there

at the time.

But from what I've learned, MOCHA never

necessarily wanted to be the counterpart to AIDS Rochester.

It was like, here's these gaps, and we're

going to fill these gaps for our community.

We're going to provide services by us, for us.

There were, you know some client service navigation pieces

to kind of, like, you know, to get people through the system

and help them navigate the system

to get them to services that AIDS Rochester may provide

or that CHN was providing or a number of the other

larger organizations.

But it was kind of like, you know, let me have home base

and let me be able to talk to people so

that way we can get our services and have our support needs

met and we can advocate for ourselves.

And they tried to teach people how to advocate for themselves,

but also navigate whatever they needed.

And a lot of the advocacy of MOCHA was around love.

You're not contributing dollars for prevention.

You're not contributing dollars to provide supportive services.

How do you do that and what does that look like?

And that's what MOCHA was.

EVELYN BAILEY: What was the biggest or major obstacle

to getting the services that African American men needed?

KRAIG PANNELL: There weren't people that looked

like us providing the service.

There was a cultural competency piece.

There was a whole lack of understanding.

There's the whole (pause) lack of trust.

There's a lot of historical significance that goes back,

you know, that I think with most racial and ethnic populations.

There's a lot of distrust with the medical field.

There's a lot of distrust from you're not

going to tell me the right thing,

because one, you don't look like me, two,

you're trying to keep something for yourself.

But I don't think there were a whole lot of services that

were marketed or targeted towards that population

to say, look, we want you here.

We're inviting you in.

We want you have a place at our table.

EVELYN BAILEY: Within the African American community,

who were the most supportive? (pause)

Were there specific agencies that really came to your stood

with you?

KRAIG PANNELL: I think at the time, because let's undersatnd,

I wasn't at MOCHA in the whole '95 and all of that.

I kind of came in 2004.

So when I came in, there was

EVELYN BAILEY: ABC?

KRAIG PANNELL: ABC was there, but ABC didn't really

do a lot of stuff regarding they did stuff with people of color

and they did stuff with African American people,

but they didn't necessarily deal with LGBT people specifically.

And then you have that whole black church

piece that's there as well.

There were organizations that wanted to collaborate.

There was (unintelligible), there was ABC,

there was Westside Health Services, Anthony Jordan

Medical Services, SHN.

Everybody wanted to kind of collaborate and do stuff

and they knew that services need to be provided

for that population, but the only organization

that knew how to access that population was MOCHA.

And I think a lot of people felt that, we're

going to collaborate with MOCHA because it gives us entry

to this distinct population.

But then again, you also have to understand

the difficult part is there's a lot of people of color

who I don't identify as gay first.

And that's different than when you're talking

about some other communities.

Because some other communities, well, who are you?

Well, I'm a gay Italian man.

Or I'm a white lesbian whatever.

And their sexuality is first.

And a lot of ethnic minority communities,

their sexuality is something that

goes further down the line.

So you have to be able to know how to approach that.

So you're going into an organization and it's like,

you know, don't put me in this box automatically

or think because I am a gay man, I do these things.

There's other things that I may do

or there might be things that I don't do.

So it was about things being very prescriptive and not

individualized.

And there's a language difference.

There's, you know, whatever.

And not to say that it's only with that

it was a cultural issue across racial or ethnic lines.

I mean

EVELYN BAILEY: Economic lines.

KRAIG PANNELL: It's across the board.

I mean, even when I had moved back to Rochester

and would go out, there were a lot of black gay men

that treated me very differently.

And they treated me very differently

because of the fact that, you know, oh, you have an education

or oh, you have a job or oh, you have a career.

All of these things which are typically attributes.

Oh, you wouldn't know anything about struggle

or you wouldn't know anything about strife.

And they, like, completely discounted me

because I had an education and these things.

And it happened to me more than once.

And that was very overt.

There were people that were very about that.

Oh, you think you're bougie, you think you're better,

and so on and so forth.

And I distinctly remember, you know, sitting somewhere

and this guy was like, well, Kraig wouldn't know anything

about that because he's a decent white woman.

And I looked at him and I said, yes I am.

If you want to call because I know what fork to eat with

and how to speak and how to write and all this other stuff,

being a decent white woman, then fine.

If you want to call the fact that I saw an opportunity and I

chose to take that opportunity and make

the best of it, then fine.

You may not have had the opportunities presented to you

that I had to me, but it doesn't make

me any less black than you.

It doesn't make my experience any less valid or less

of a struggle than yours.

Because no, I don't know what it's like to stand on line

and get cheese.

I don't know what it's like to open a cupboard

and have nothing in the closet.

I don't know what it's like to have

to do a number of different things

that you may have experienced.

But it doesn't make me any less black.

Because when I walk out the door,

that's the first thing that people see.

And if I have to battle them and I

have to battle you at the same time, what's going on?

And a lot of people didn't understand that.

And also when I went to MOCHA there was a lot of push

back by some people.

And there were ways that I would organize things

and I would do events and I would do things.

I don't mind a cookout.

I don't mind doing, you know, very comfortable events.

But there were other things where, like, look,

we need to step it up a bit to attract some different folks.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, professional organizations

need to present themselves in certain ways.

Otherwise they aren't accepted by others.

KRAIG PANNELL: And that was a large part

of what was going on with MOCHA when I came on in 2004

was that people were like, oh, they really don't do anything.

They have this money and it's all social

and laughs and fun and whatever.

You're not really making an impact on anything.

So when I went in, I'm like, OK, we have these programs.

What is the purpose of the program?

I walk the staff through stuff.

Tell me why we do this and what people

are supposed to get out of it?

OK, so now when you go to do this group,

remember this is where you're supposed to get people to.

So this is the purpose of this.

And kind of re-framing things and restructuring stuff.

Because it was pervasive in the community.

It was like, OK, you're basically a social club.

You're not really getting anything done.

You're not making an impact with what's going on.

And it was important for me to go there and be

able to begin to quantify the work that we were doing

or the work with the capacity and skills

that was within the organization and to give it a more (pause)

to still let it be comfortable for everyone to come in

and let it be what it represented in the community,