‘We want to make sure the community knows we support them:’ Pride festival held in Warren
To kick off the fifth annual Full Spectrum Pride in the Valley festival, organizers, businesses and even some allies on four paws marched in a parade around Courthouse Square in Warren on Saturday.
The event also featured vendors and live entertainment.
“We want to make sure the community knows we support them and many of our staff members are part of the LGBTQIA+ community,” said Emily Greve, AWL’s director of community engagement. “It’s really important for us to be here and represent.”
Jack Acri is the pastor of First Federated Church in North Jackson. He said the church has a history of activism dating back to when it was founded.
Acri said the First Federated Church has “been an open and firming congregation since 2017,” and participated in the first Pride event in Youngstown in 2009.
“There’s just so much hate and it just seems like it’s getting worse instead of better [everything that’s been] perpetrated against the LGBTQIA+ community,” said Acri. “State houses across the nation, especially in Ohio, there’s just so much work that you have to have done. Jesus told us to do three things: love one another, forgive, go spread that love.”
In addition to Warren’s event, Pride Youngstown Festival is slated from noon - 9 p.m. on June 22 happening downtown along with more local celebrations coming up.
Pride Greeters keeping festival safe
In addition to local police officers blocking streets and patrolling Courthouse Square on foot, a group of volunteers stepped up to keep the festival safe.
They’re called the Pride Greeters, according to Daphne Carr from Mahoning Valley Queer Action.
She said the Pride Greeters are a community-based safety team.
“We’ve been training for a while to be able to help our community do what they need to do to be safe and have a good time expressing their First Amendment rights out on the streets. We are here today to do that,” said Carr.
With thousands of guests at Pride in the Valley, Carr said safety for attendees and volunteers in the LGBTQIA+ is the top priority.
“Everybody’s having a great time. Unfortunately, we have a few minority people who are trying to gain some recognition for their misplaced idea of how Christianity works by coming out here to spread hateful and bigoted messages against this community,” she said.
Carr said the Pride Greeters’ goal is to protect the Pride in the Valley attendees from any incitement or retaliation from the protesters.
“We know that there has been increasingly large amount of direct physical violence, harassment and actual threats coming to our community every single day,” said Carr. “We are just here to ensure that the people who are here to have a good time and enjoy their lives can do so without being directly harmed by the people who are making bad decisions to come down here and protest against people’s right to live and be together.”
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This story was originally published June 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM.
