Bonjour! To anyone who feel inclined to actually read this.Well... This weekend I took part in (by which I mean co-organized) my cities very first gay pride event. My gay youth group walked in the annual town parade. Well I suppose this starts about 8 months ago with the starting up of Prince Rupert's very first Gay Straight Alliance, which I have been a part of since the first meeting. We chose to call ourselves the "Prince Rupert Queer Youth Alliance". Not the smartest choice of name on our part I suppose, looking back on all the difficulties that occured on account of the connotations of the words "queer" and "youth", (pain in the ass actually, but we've got some publicity and have a cool logo so there is no sense in changing it now). However, we have done considerably well for a small town group just starting out, considering the rather conservative view of the town. We have a few regular members, a lot of support from the queer adults in the community (who knew they were even there?!) and support from the school district! We started up a website recently, hosted by the schoolboard (how nice of them) at http://rupertqya.com/. So we have spent the last several meetings contemplating what to do for Seafest, seeing as how that was one of our very first missions, visibility in the community, specifically the parade. So the last couple meeting we get together in a classroom at the highschool to work on a banner, becuase we are too lazy and not artistic enough for a float. The turnout is pretty pathetic, to our disappointment, but what did we expect.
When we finally make it to parade day, ONE of the FIVE adult facilitators shows, myself and 2 of the regular meeting attendees, as well as a couple friends and two educators that were happy to come (horray to you two!). Okay so a couple people had legitamate reasons for not coming but other than that I am incredibly angry at some other specific people. Disgusted really. Arg! Anyhow, the parade itself went pretty well as far as I'm concerned, considering my low expectations. By which I mean we didn't get booed and nothing was thrown at us. But honestly it was pretty good. Some people glared, looked away,shielded their children's eyes, and on the other hand people waved, smiled, looked happy, impressed, a few people even cheered! It was a pretty cool feeling to be cheered for. I only had to shield my face from a few family friends, the ones that would jump to conclusions becuase I was in the parade. Being quazi-in-the-closet it was not the smartest idea to walk in the parade, but foreseeing the innevitable lack of walkers I decided it had to done regardless, under the cover of being there "to support my newly out cousin (who actually lives in Vancouver, lucky bastard). So all in all I am pretty impressed with our little town. My low expectations paid off, because I'm not terribly dissapointed or suprised by the low turnout, I do however have some words for a few people. It's a pretty good feeling being the first to do something so influencial in such a small town. It makes you feel pretty big.
1 koment:
Don't be too hard on the ones who didn't turn out. Coming out in front of your whole town is an incredibly scary and brave thing to do. I'm so impressed by the people who were strong enough in themselves to show up. I wouldn't have been able to do that as a teen, in fact, I probably couldn't have done it last year. But you and the others gave me the strength to do it too. So thank you for helping me on my journey too.
paul
ps, you probably should put comment moderation on so that you don't get spammed.
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