[Reprint from September 12, 2021]
Yesterday was the Hartford Pride.
I looked up in my diary the first Pride that I went to and it was on September 2001. Wow! I cannot believe that it has been twenty years!
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| The COS tabling crew, I'm on the left |
I wrote back then in my diary (note over the 20 years meaning and usage of words have changed),
If you asked me a year ago if I would be in the Connecticut PRIDE, I would of said “No way!”. Even six months ago or last week I would have said the same thing. But, T caught me in a good mood and I said yes. So, here I am shaving my legs, doing my nails getting ready to go out, march and help out at the COS [Connecticut Outreach Society] table. In a most public GLBT event of the year, with newspaper and televisions reporters. I’m scared, but I’m going. As the Grateful Dead said “What a long strange trip it’s been.”
Just got back from the Pride Day festivities. I had a very good time. Sat around the COS table-answering questions people had about COS and Transgenderism. The Pride day celebrations were held in Bushnell Park right behind the state capital. As usual T got here two hours late and we got there to late for breakfast with the state legislators or the parade.
It was a very good experience, I meet a lot of interesting people and possibly some new members. All in all a very productive and positive day.
Now it is different then it was 20 years ago, the difference is that twenty years ago I didn’t know anyone, Saturday it was like old home week. I knew so many of the people there, as they went by the CTAC table we said hi and talked for awhile. I got up and made the rounds of the other booths, someone from the Stonewall Speaker recognized me and we talked, and at the Prime Timers table I recognized the whole crew at the table, I took a bus trip with them to the Culinary Institute of America and then to West Point. Wandering down some more booths we a cooperate sponsor’s booth where I picked up a couple of flags. About three quarters around the circle of tents was the Health Collective tent where I volunteer.
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| 2021 Hartford Pride --Photo by Sue. |
Then I stumbled down to one of the last tents and it was the Planned Parenthood tent and it was tabled by an old friend, I have know here since 2006 when we were at the first meeting of the anti-discrimination coalition’s meeting on passing the gender inclusive non-discrimination bill, over the years we have worked on many bills together. She is the lobbyist for Planned Parenthood here in Connecticut and a classmate at the UConn School of Social Work and is the one who told me at the Legislative Office Building that I was named in the state budget appointing me to the legislative committee, “LGBTQ+ Health and Human Services Network.”
There are so many good memories at the Pride.
Hi Diana, Richard Nelson here. I still don't know how to get around that anonymous as commentator.
ReplyDeleteFor the past few months, I have been documenting Pride Festivals from the very first, Liberation Weekend brought to Hartford by the Kalos/Gay Liberation Front in 1971 up to this year 2022. What a job! I have been recording the ups and downs of putting together pride and noting how much it has changed from a political force to a rainbow hot dog eating contest, a Trinket Tribe, cops blowing rainbow kisses, and war mongers trying to convince us that pink bombs don’t hurt as much. I just read in the Gay INC. magazine The Voice that there is even something call Dog Pride. What have we become is a question that I ask in a political commentary I am writing to go along with the documentation? In late winter of 1973, my then boyfriend Miguel and I moved to the east coast. In June we attended pride in Washington Sq. Park. Yes, dears I witness how nasty many gay and lesbian could be to the Trans community when Sylvia Rivera was booed and booed while she was speaking. Jean O’Leary and her crew were to put it mildly not very nice. I will never forget that day. Most of the big cities in Connecticut can’t even get their crap together enough to hold their pride celebrations in June. I wonder what this year will be. Will we be reminded that the train of Legal Fascism has arrived, and the Transgender community and Women’s reproductive freedom are under attack or will we be satisfied with another rainbow trinket. Harry Hay reminded us “a law is a law on the books one day and off the next.” Perhaps you can ask your friend at Planned Parenthood about us having to fight the same old battle over and over and what the solution is.