Six people on what Pride means to them
It's the last weekend of Pride month celebrating LGBTQ+ identities. Twin Cities Pride organizers anticipate a record attendance of more than half a million people over two days.
Saturday afternoon, MPR News asked celebrants: what does Pride mean to you?
“It's a mixture of joy and righteous rage. I think it's a really important time to reconnect with people and to find camaraderie. I think it's a really great time for stranger love, where you just get those like little moments of excitement between people. And it's also a time to remember like, how much has been done, and still how little we've gotten. How black trans women are still consistently being like the most hurt in our community and that needs to change. How we still need to do a lot of work and there's so much to be angry about - I mean, all the legislation this year. It's a time to reflect and gather and say, ‘how do we as a community feel about it? And what are we going to do about it?’ but also being able to celebrate.”
- Lake Owens, 23, Minneapolis
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“I would say it's mostly about queer joy and being happy despite. I think I'm the type of person who wants to live my life with joy at the forefront. And I think joy belongs in revolutionary practices. So yeah, it's just about finding joy and, you know, doing what you got with the cards in your hand.”
- Ani Cassellius, 23, Minneapolis
“Pride means family. Oftentimes you'll hear in the community that we sometimes have to create our own family, right? It's not about who's blood related, but it's about who is your chosen family? When I think about Pride, I think about that piece of it and I think about all the people that come together to protect each other.”
- Andi Otto, 42, Hopkins, Minn.
“It’s a place where everyone can belong with each other. It doesn't really matter who you are, what you are, what you believe in, who you love. This is a place for you. Like my friend said, you can literally come out with anything you are obsessed with and didn't know where you wanted to wear it. But you could wear it at Pride and have absolutely no judgment from anybody because that's what it is. It's just love and acceptance and just people. There's never any issues here, you know what I mean? Like in other spaces. So that's what it means to me, acceptance and love.”
- Ree Edwards, 48, Rochester
“It’s like a celebration, but I think it's also like a way of letting people know: this community exists. We're not going away. Definitely, there's been like a lot of trouble that our group has had to go over and I think we just celebrate that. We're still here and we're gonna keep it going.”
- Devin Jackson, 19, Apple Valley
“Pride, to me, means the ability to express yourself without any kind of outside influence. True, authentic self.”
- Leopoldo Becerra, 27, New Hope