Hundreds of spectators gathered along Ocean Boulevard dressed in rainbow tutus, dresses and shirts, whooping and waving as the Long Beach Pride parade rolled past Sunday morning.
Mayor Rex Richardson, wearing a rainbow lei and holding a Pride flag, marched down the street with gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra as Bad Bunny’s “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” rang out.
“Long Beach Pride in the house,” Richardson boomed into a microphone. “Thank you so much for coming out, keeping up this tradition for 43 years.”
But this year felt different for some, after the abrupt cancellation of the Long Beach Pride Festival hours before it was set to kick off.
City officials said this year’s cancellation was due to unresolved safety and permitting issues, while organizers with Long Beach Pride, the nonprofit that organizes the festival, say they worked in good faith to resolve them. The disruption lands at a moment of renewed national conflict over LGBTQ rights and visibility, giving the absence of the festival an outsized emotional and political resonance.
Debra “Deb” Kahookele, who is running for City Council, acknowledged the difficulties in holding a large festival but said, “there’s always a little bit of leniency when it comes to certain things.”
“I feel like, was there absolutely no room to help out?” questioned Kahookele, who attended the parade with her wife of 24 years. “In this moment in time, the community has been attacked in many ways, and so the last thing we needed was for a festival that everybody enjoyed to be canceled.”
“I just feel like Long Beach let the people down,” she added.
Long Beach Pride, established in October 1983, produced the first annual festival and parade the following year, at the height of the AIDS crisis and during an era when communities often organized in the face of political indifference.
This year, the event was slated to run through the weekend with live music, art and food at Marina Green Park. Then, news broke that while the parade would continue as scheduled, the festival would not.
The city said it made repeated efforts to work with the organization and issue an event permit, but ultimately did not receive essential information.
“Out of responsibility to the safety of attendees, staff and the broader community, the city cannot issue the permit and has directed the event organizers to not continue their event,” the city said in a news release Friday.
Joey Velez, 48, and his partner, Nathan Sliwa, 33, both drove down from Oakland on Thursday to celebrate Pride in Long Beach. They learned the next evening that the festival had been canceled.
“We were not happy. It just kind of sucked — we came down specifically for this,” said Velez, who wore a shirt that read “He /// Him /// Daddy.” This would have been his second time attending the festival.
Velez expressed frustration at the city’s decision.
“The political climate that we’re in right now, the last thing we need to be doing is canceling Pride, especially from a liberal city like Long Beach,” Velez said. “That’s the last thing you would expect. Maybe there were some things that happened that the festival themselves didn’t dot their i’s and cross their t’s, but in the political climate we’re in right now, Long Beach should have muscled through that and said, ‘We need to make this happen, it’s super important for us to keep this going.’”
“It sends the message that the city does not value Pride,” Sliwa, a former Long Beach resident, added.
Tonya Martin, president of Long Beach Pride, said she was deeply disappointed by the city’s decision to cancel the event.
“At a time when our community is being targeted and made vulnerable, Long Beach should be doing more to protect and uplift us, not taking away one of the most visible and meaningful expressions of inclusion our city has,” she said in a statement Friday evening.
Around 12:30 p.m., people began gathering at Bixby Park, where the city had planned its own free event called “Canceled? Never Heard of Her!”
People danced along to Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out” and kept cool with rainbow fans.
“Welcome to Bixby Park, home of the parade afterparty,” a speaker told the crowd. “We’re gonna have the party that couldn’t happen across the way.”
Signs of discontent were present at the parade. Jess Shaw, who uses they/them pronouns, wore a black shirt that read “No one can cancel pride; it comes from the inside.”
The 35-year-old Orange County resident said they learned of the festival cancellation while attending a trans movie night with friends on Friday and said the next day felt very heavy.
Shaw said they attended the festival for the first time around 2009, “when I was a baby gay.” Shaw said they previously skated with their roller derby team in the parade.
“It’s nostalgic for me,” Shaw said. “This one has always felt like the best one in our local area.”
Shaw cited the festival’s history, dating back to the ’80s, and its emergence from the AIDS crisis, when misinformation was being spread.
“This is public health, and public health matters at a time like this,” said Shaw, who marched in the parade with Mommabear & Friends, a nonprofit organization in Orange County.
Shaw said people are blaming Long Beach Pride, but that they should “wait for their side.”
“To me, it’s so funny that everyone says they canceled pride. Pride is a … feeling,” Shaw said. “You can’t cancel that. No matter what happens, that’s inside me, and we can share that with each other at places like this.”
The post Bittersweet Pride: Joy at the Long Beach parade, outrage over canceled festival appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
