Hello Alameda! Welcome to the Island City Beat podcast. I'm your host Angie Watson-Hajjem. Today I am talking to Jeramie Andehueson, who is the creator of Alameda Pride, a nonprofit that he founded in 2019, as a way to create and maintain a safe, inclusive environment for our city's LGBTQ plus community and their allies. And today, i'm going be talking to Jeremy a little bit about his personal biography about growing up gay in a very conservative state, his journey to Alameda, planting roots here as a husband, as a father, as an activist whose work is helping to make a difference in the lives of so many people here on our island.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:So with that, I wanna say hello, Jeramie. Welcome to the Island City Bee Podcast. Great to have you here.
Jeramie Andehueson:Thank you Angie, for having me.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:So I want to talk a little bit about your younger life, your beginnings. You grew up in South Dakota, which is not known to be a very welcoming, inclusive environment for people who are part of the LGBTQ plus community. And so I would love for you to share a little bit about what life was like for you in South Dakota and growing up as a gay child, being a gay person in that environment that can, I'm sure sometimes could be very hostile.
Jeramie Andehueson:Yeah, so, you know, in my younger years, obviously, you know, it's other people see it there more than you do yourself until you get to the puberty stage and so on. But that, I played with Barbie dolls, and I did the things that sometimes you might see in other little queer kids or things like that. And so other family members had noticed it, but they had put upon me that it wasn't normal, it wasn't something that was accepted. And so I kind of shoved it down just because of the demographics of where I was at in being in South Dakota and stuff like that. Now mind you, this is also the late '80s, early '90s.
Jeramie Andehueson:So that's just another hit against it being in South Dakota and then being in the late '80s, early '90s. Well, when I did start to realize, I kind of shoved it down in my teen years and just kind of kept myself active in other things so I didn't have to worry about it. But sometimes your mannerisms come out or sometimes you might be looking in a different direction, and so I still got bullied in ways that people assumed that I might be part of the queer community and things like that. And so it was just nothing that I was ever able to be my authentic self. I couldn't actually come out and be who I wanted to be or who I actually was because everyone else kept telling me that was wrong or it wasn't right.
Jeramie Andehueson:And then, you know, as you get older, you start to notice things such as, you know, certain things that could eventually evolve into a hate crime or certain things that could eventually evolve into really getting bullied or, you know, God forbid, teen suicide, which we see a lot of now today. And it's just a place that I really didn't feel comfortable, in being my authentic self, so it was hidden. And then I went on to do some college, and college was a great place for me to it was still in South Dakota, but it was a great place for me to meet people and things like that. And eventually, started to meet people that accepted me for who I was, but it was when I came out at 21, I was actually engaged to a woman, and we were about eight months away from getting married, but I had to I felt like I had to save her life by telling her actually who I was, but it was very hard for me to kind of enter into that world of unknown when I was in an area where I had very little support. So I came out and moved to the nearest closest big city where I could discover myself, and that was Minneapolis.
Jeramie Andehueson:So there I was able to find my true authentic self. But, you know, it's like starting a whole new world and a whole new second life at age 21. So it's a lot of finding yourself and things like that. But, you know, I look at if I would have had that support system, if I would have had those things in place that I needed to be able to be my true authentic self, but yet at the same time feel safe, then I probably would be a lot further than I am today, not that I regret anything. But and that's what I'm trying to create with what I'm doing here is that, you know, nobody's really safe in the queer community.
Jeramie Andehueson:No matter where you are, you're always going to have some sort of bigotry, some sort of hatefulness, some sort of I'm better than you, so I'm going to put you down type of thing in every parts of the world. But the more we can build a support system, the more we can bring resources to the table, the more we can bring knowledge knowledge is power then we can avoid the things that I had to go through in the mid '90s in South Dakota.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Yeah. Wow. So you came to Alameda back in 2014, and I was reading a little bit about your biography. Was so funny. I had to chuckle a bit because you were saying that you felt like you you bought the Midwest with you.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Or the Midwest was here when you came to Alameda. I mean, you just felt it was a very welcoming vibe, as you say. Yeah, you felt like it was a good place, and you felt like, yeah, this is the place I want to be.
Jeramie Andehueson:Right. So aside from the support of being a young, queer kid, there is a lot of support in family and community back in the Midwest, so I do give them that. I have an amazing family, a huge family of like you go down to First Cousins, I got about 55 family members in my immediate extended family to First Cousins, and they're all very supportive of Jeremy, but they're not they're still uncomfortable with gay Jeremy, but they support me. So and that's kind of the thing, like, they lift each other up in who you are, not necessarily as being different, but as being their family member. And so that support and then the community was something that I kind of found in Alameda, but I obviously wanted to take that one step further to be supportive of my authentic self.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:And so in 2019, was it Alameda Pride was born. So tell us a little bit about the thinking, inspiration behind Alameda Pride.
Jeramie Andehueson:Right, so in 2019, Alameda Pride was actually more of a thought in that stage. So it was a thought, and, you know, the biggest thing was is that I came to this place, and I loved it so much, and I was just like, you know what? I love Alameda, and I also love myself for who I am, so why not create something to celebrate that? And that's where I was like, there needs to be an Alameda pride, you know? We have San Francisco pride.
Jeramie Andehueson:We have Oakland pride. We have, you know, Silicon Valley pride, and they're great, and they're great, but, you know, each pride plays out to a different demographic. And when I moved out to when I moved to Alameda, I noticed there was a lot of LGBTQ plus families coming in, and I wanted to really play off of that because I don't think that there's as much support for LGBTQ families. And so, you know, like, going to San Francisco Pride is great and stuff like that, but it's very, very adult, you know, young adult, middle age based and things like that, and there's nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with that. I enjoy myself every time.
Jeramie Andehueson:But I wanted to create something that could be a wider age spectrum to the queer community and create support that way. And so in 2019, yes, it was just a thought. I had told people about it a little bit, and then obviously 2020 happened, and we reached the pandemic. Well, that was not was not good, but it wasn't bad either because it gave me a lot of time to think because I couldn't work for nine months. So a lot of thinking and planning, and in 2021, the summer of 2021, I brought up to the table, asked some city officials, part of the downtown Alameda Business Association, the Alameda Recreation and Parks Department, if they would, you know, kind of mentor me in kind of building this huge event, because, you know, you have permits and things like that.
Jeramie Andehueson:And in October, I can't remember the exact date, but in October 2022, Alameda Pride was born, and at that time it was called Alameda Pride, and now it's morphed into Pride in the Park, and Alameda Pride is actually the umbrella that is overseeing all of these different components that we have going on, and is now a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:And that first Alameda Pride in the Park, 5,000 people came.
Jeramie Andehueson:Yeah. About It
Angie Watson-Hajjem:It was a pretty nice success that you had
Jeramie Andehueson:Yeah. It was it's an approximation, but but I guess the city has this way of seeing people's body heat and stuff like that to be able to kind of estimate how many people were there, and it was about 5,000 people. Our numbers, you know, have been up and down the whole time, but they have never dipped down below at least 3,000. I think that was because there was another event conflict that year, so.
Jeramie Andehueson:But yeah, it's been amazing, and it just shows that there's a huge need for it.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:So one of the programs that you have under the umbrella of Alameda Pride is the LGBTQ plus Youth Teen Center, and that just opened up last year, like in 2024, so it was pretty new. Tell us about that and some of the kids that come and hang out and participate in your programs there.
Jeramie Andehueson:Right, so let me start by saying that when I created the nonprofit Alameda Pride, the components that I had that I really, really wanted to reach were five components, and that was the foundation to umbrella the whole thing. Then it was the all inclusivity event to include everybody, all ages, all allies, all, you know, everybody, and that was the Pride in the Park event. And then I was like, I really want to make sure we have visibility because it's very important to be seen. We can stand there and say nothing, but as long as we're seen, then people know we're here. And we do that through the Alameda fourth of July parade in which there's 60,000 spectators every year.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:You were the grand marshal, I heard.
Jeramie Andehueson:Was the grand marshal.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Didn't make this parade. I didn't get to see it, but congratulations on that.
Jeramie Andehueson:Thank you. We had we got a lot of allies and friends and family members and everything, and we came across as a big rainbow in the parade. It was the first year they allowed a contingent to be behind the grand marshal to show all the work that I have done. We had about 150 people on the ground marching and showing positivity and everything like that, so it was amazing. And then another component is the fundraiser, which we can talk about in a little bit that I'm working on for next year.
Jeramie Andehueson:But, yeah, what you're talking about is the youth. The youth component that I wanted to be part of the five components, and that opened up last year on 10/11/2024. So this year, 10/11/2025, is our Pride in the Park event, also National Coming Out Day for those who don't know. So it's going to be quite a great event with having a year anniversary of the Queer Center and the Pride in the Park and National Coming Out Day. But the Queer the Queer Teen Center started last October 11.
Jeramie Andehueson:We started it once a month. It was the second Friday of every month, and the kids come from six p. M. To nine p. M.
Jeramie Andehueson:To the Veterans Memorial Building here in Alameda, and they just get together. It's a place for it's a way for them to be diverse in a safe space. We are very confidential. We don't let a lot of adults, if they haven't been fingerprinted or approved to be there, there because we want to make sure we're not outing anybody such as, you know, like I had an experience with in my younger days, it was detrimental. But so we try very hard to be very confidential.
Jeramie Andehueson:And so now, as of January, we have gone to every Friday from six to nine because it's become so popular. We usually have about, on average, 25 to 30 kids coming once a week, which I think is amazing for Alameda. In my mind, you save one kid from being bullied or one kid from teen suicide, then we've succeeded. We've done our job. So 30 is amazing.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:It is. It's a nice amount of people, yeah.
Jeramie Andehueson:Yeah. So our goals for the teen center, and by the way, the kids, we let them kind of do everything, make their own rules, They get to name the place. They named it QTAC. It stands for Queer Teen Alameda Center, and we're always accepting volunteers, just so you know. They just have to get fingerprinted and things like that.
Jeramie Andehueson:So now we're moving towards every Friday. It's been going very well. We have volunteers. We have a committee for this. And in January, we're hoping we can bring in outside programming.
Jeramie Andehueson:So we'll call on the county. We'll call on other organizations that might have, for instance, mental health counseling or recovery or addiction counseling, or we can even have a pronoun class so people can get to know, you know, more about how to speak to people. We can have a whatever we decide we want to have, we can bring in outside counselors and things for that. So we have a special room that they can go in and talk one on one, but right now, we also do a lot of programming as far as like fun activities. Doesn't mean that they have to do them, but we have like queer karaoke one night we had one night, which was queer karaoke.
Jeramie Andehueson:We've had different art things. We've had a talent show, but our big, huge, huge success thing we had, and all the kids were so excited about this, was in May, we had our Alameda's first ever queer prom, and we thought we'd get 20 kids or 30 kids. We had 85 kids that came.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Wow.
Jeramie Andehueson:Not only that, but we had a lot of donations from different businesses around the city as far as food, DJ decorations. We had a mask. It was a masquerade theme, so we had a masquerade making table. And on October 31, Halloween, we are going to have something similar, our big monster bash for the kids, and we're gonna do something very similar, but it'll be a pumpkin carving, pumpkin making kind of class type of thing. So and then eventually, you want to start taking field trips, field trips so that they can see a part of our history, the LGBTQ History Center in San Francisco, the Oakland LGBTQ plus Center.
Jeramie Andehueson:So with that, you know, we just need to keep building our funding, and that's why all of Alameda Pride works together. Money we make at the Pride in the Park goes to help fund the queer teen center. So it all works. It's very cohesive.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Yeah. I just thank you for creating a space for our kids because so many kids in so many cities across this nation don't have what we have in Alameda. So it's just such a gem, such a wonderful thing.
Jeramie Andehueson:Thank you. Well, you know what, they are the future of our tomorrow, and I have a little daughter, and I want to lay the pathway for her to be free to be who she wants to be. And, you know, the only way we can provide that for them is through knowledge and through resources and things like that. So that's what we try to provide.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:I think we'll talk a little bit about the fundraising that you're doing. Tell us about that.
Jeramie Andehueson:So I'm calling it the gala.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Gay What's it? Gay
Jeramie Andehueson:The gala, g a y l a. Oh, okay.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:G a y. Okay.
Jeramie Andehueson:It's gonna be more of a black tie affair. I want it to be a little over the top, but it's going to include some entertainment like maybe jazz dinner music, wine, and a plated sit down dinner, more of a black tie affair, and it's going to be firstly opened up to our past sponsors and people who have supported us and then to the general public, but it'll be a way for us to tell the community what we're doing, tell the community what we're going to be doing, and ask for their help. But, you know, we'll have different surprises in there, maybe a live auction. We're not exactly sure yet. So but we're working on it.
Jeramie Andehueson:I'm hoping that this will be a segue to opening up sponsorships and vendorship opportunities for the current year's Pride in the Park. So we're planning for April because it's exactly six months before the Pride in the Park event, which is always the October. So I'm hoping for a huge success on that. So we're not looking to make a whole lot of money on that. I'm hoping to break even, but it's a great way to let sponsors, you know, choose if they want to be a part of it, and it's also a great way to tell people about what we are doing.
Jeramie Andehueson:There's we've had some other events where we've had testimonials from the kids just so that they can say, hey. This is really needed. Like, we want this. So, you know, so stay tuned for that.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:So one of the projects that you're working on in the future, you mentioned, we were talking earlier about meetups for adults. So tell me a little bit about your plans to have these grown up meetups.
Jeramie Andehueson:Yeah. So one of my board members actually, she had mentioned, she goes, we have something for kids, we have something for everybody else, she goes, but I think it'd be cool if we had something for adult meetups so adults can get to know each other also in this community without having their kids or without having other people around them, and that doesn't mean that, you know, allies and stuff like that can't come up. They really wanna be supportive, but it'll just be a way for us to get together, and it's not gonna be anything crazy. I think each board member is gonna take a turn each month setting up something where we, like, meet at the beach and play sand volleyball, or we meet at the indoor mini golf that we have here and play mini golf, you know? Like, a lot of people think that meetups means we have to meet in a bar, and that's not necessarily Like, I don't drink a whole lot, and, you know, I know not everybody is all about drinking in Alameda.
Jeramie Andehueson:So it's just a and I think that this will also open up the doors for these adults to find out more about Alameda Pride and want to get more involved. So as I said before, it's all kinda working in a in a full circle. So
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Right. So tell me more about what what do you wanna say more about Alameda Pride that we haven't covered? I know you got so many things going on. And I first of I wanna say, don't know. Do you ever get any sleep, Jeremy?
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Because you you're you're a dad to a two year old two and a half year old. You sing in the in the gay men's choir chorus in Oakland. You you've been part of the Kiwanis Club and the Elk Club. I I don't know how you do all this. I don't know when is my time to to sleep, but outside of sleeping, we wanna share with us about the many things that you're doing under the auspices of Alameda Pride.
Jeramie Andehueson:Well, when you find out the answer for me to have more energy to do all this, so stay on all this, please let me know. No, just kidding. You know what? It's the drive and the motivation of making people feel good about themselves because I didn't have that kind of support, you know? Like I had support to, you know, to do good in life, to be successful in life.
Jeramie Andehueson:You know, I had all that support, but I didn't have support to go out in the world and do it as myself, you know? So I want to encourage everybody and anybody to do that. And as far as like Kiwanis Club, Kiwanis' mission is to change the world or change the world one child, one community at a time, and we joined it because I figure if we pay it forward, then it'll come back to me, and I have a beautiful baby girl now, and so it did. But also, you know, like, you know, it's about kids and Kiwanis. It's about kids and pride, the elks actually give money back to the children in community.
Jeramie Andehueson:So it's all working kind of together what I have put together in my life. As far as a chorus, that's my passion. So I don't do a lot of volunteer work with a chorus because I want to be, you know, I want to enjoy it for the rest of my life, which I do everything else, but, you know, everything else involves a little bit of work, nothing crazy, but finding time to do all this. The answer for that, I do not have for you. It's my it's my daughter's a lot of it, so my daughter is what keeps me going.
Jeramie Andehueson:You know, I do I do a lot of this for her.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Well Jeramie, it has been such a pleasure having you on our podcast and learning more about Alameda Pride and the wonderful work that you're doing for the people here in the city of Alameda. Just really appreciate you, and continue all the great work that you're doing. We really need people like you on our island.
Jeramie Andehueson:Thank you. Well, Angie, I just want to say one last thing that we are looking for volunteers for our Pride in the Park this year, as well as the Queer Teen Alameda Center, and so they can go to our website, alamedapride.org, and please subscribe to our website. You will get Mailchimp's. We won't bug you, but you'll get Mailchimp's about updates about things that are going on, not only the Teen Center, but with Alameda Pride, and that way other people can get involved as well. The more the merrier.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Oh, wonderful. Thank you for that plug. And you guys all listened. I hope you guys all heard that. So definitely go to Alameda Pride if you want to learn more, if you want to participate, if you want to volunteer.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:They could definitely need all of us to pull together. So thank you again, Jeramie, for being on our show. It's been a pleasure.
Jeramie Andehueson:Thank you for having me.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Yeah. I hope that you out there enjoyed our show, and I hope that you come back for another edition of the Island City Beat podcast. Until then, I am your host, Angie Watson-Hajjem. Take care.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Goodbye, everyone.