Pride returns to shine a light on Worcester’s LGBTQ community – Worcester Mag
For the first time in three years, downtown Worcester will be full of revelers of all stripes of the rainbow during the first week of September.
“There’ll be something for everyone,” Pride organizer Ali Kane said, gesturing from the sidewalk toward a section of Portland Street that will soon be packed with festival attendees and food trucks.
Pride Worcester has 10 days’ worth of events lined up to celebrate Central Massachusetts’ LGBT community and culture, from dance parties to yoga classes, culminating in a festival in downtown Worcester on Sept. 10, which will feature live performances and vendor booths run by local LGBT artists and nonprofits.
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The Queer Coalition of Greater Worcester is coordinating this year’s slate of Pride events. The coalition formed in 2019 in hopes of representing all facets of LGBT life in the Worcester area, and spent the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic planning to fill the void left behind by the previous Worcester Pride organization.
“There was a vacuum as it relates to serving the LGBTQ population of Worcester,” Queer Coalition facilitator Alford Green said. “There wasn’t a Pride in 2020 because of the pandemic, of course, and then in the summer of 2021, when we realized that there still wasn’t an entity that was set up to organize Pride as an event, the Queer Coalition decided to step forward.”
The Worcester Pride group disbanded in 2019 amid conflict between its leadership and members of its Shades subcommittee, who felt that the organization catered to cisgender white gay men at the expense of other demographics.
According to a 2020 Telegram article, Shades was formed to improve racial equity within Worcester’s LGBT community. Not long after Shades began, its members became concerned that Worcester Pride’s leaders were not appropriately addressing racism or transgender issues. After the subcommittee received pushback from Worcester Pride, it decided to break off from the group.
Former Shades members Rush Frazier and Mitchell James Cho told the Telegram in 2020 that they thought the Worcester Pride organization neglected the community’s needs outside of the yearly Pride parade and festival.
“[I never] saw any AIDS benefits or programs aimed toward helping aging LGBT people,” Cho said.
“I just couldn’t feel good about [the yearly Pride parade] because of all the politics involved, and it was very alienating. You don’t feel like it’s your people,” Frazier said.
According to Lamar Noguera-Brown, who co-founded the Queer Coalition as well as the LGBT production group Queer the Scene, the conflict around Worcester Pride was not unique to Massachusetts.
“After 2020, the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter summer, a lot of Pride organizations ended up tackling racism and antiblackness,” Noguera-Brown said.
Kane said she remembered Worcester Pride as a group dominated by cisgender white men and geared toward an older generation.
“I had gone to some [Worcester Pride] meetings in 2017, and even at that time, even identifying as a cis white woman, I felt like there wasn’t space for me,” Kane said. “If there’s no space, even for a cis white woman, how is there going to be space for anyone else?”
After Shades separated from Worcester Pride, the larger organization dissolved, and LGBT nonprofits throughout Central Massachusetts began banding together to form the Queer Coalition.
The coalition includes representatives from the LGBT Asylum Task Force, AIDS Project Worcester, Safe Homes, and several other organizations dedicated to LGBT issues in Worcester and throughout Central Mass. Its main financial sponsor is Love Your Labels, a nonprofit that serves LGBT youth.
In the summer of 2021, as September approached, the coalition’s organizers realized that without the old Worcester Pride organization, there were no plans for a Pride festival.
With six weeks to prepare, the coalition went to work. They booked vendors, musicians, drag queens and a space for the event at the Worcester Beer Garden.
“There were performances and speeches from politicians and nonprofit leaders. There were queer people of every shape, every size, every color, and I really liked it,” Kane said. “We got some great feedback saying what we did was a great start.”
This year’s Pride festival will be a much larger event. The areas of Franklin Street and Portland Street closest to the Worcester Common will be closed to traffic, and LGBT artists, small businesses, food trucks and sponsors will set up shop on the sidewalks.
A main stage next to City Hall will feature a range of speakers, drag queens, dancers and DJs.
“We’re trying to make sure we have a mix of representation and entertainment. [At Pride] in West Hollywood, I remember Demi Lovato was the master of ceremonies. It was incredible, but it was a Demi Lovato concert. This is going to be more than that,” Kane said.
The Pride festivities came to an unofficial start Aug. 13 with the Pride Worcester Pageant at the JMAC, where Jimmy Nguyen and Robyn Millyonz were crowned “First and Second Majesty.”
Kane said that the yearly Pride festival during the Worcester Pride era worked much the same way, but that there will be one key difference.
“The activities will be the same, but who’s invited to the festival, who’s showcased at the festival, and who’s attracted to those pieces of entertainment will be more diverse in every intersection,” Kane said. “The hope is that [during Pride week] you find something that fits your niche, and then at the festival we can all come together and celebrate that diversity.”
Green echoed that statement, saying that a wider range of cultures will be represented on the festival’s main stage this year. In his recollection, approximately 30% of performers during the first Queer Coalition festival last year were white, as opposed to approximately 75 percent in previous years.
“In general, the look and the types of activities and performances certainly have a different feel, and when people come to the festival this year, they will see that ramped up even more. Lots of energy, lots of entertainment,” Green said.
Inside the Jean McDonough Arts Center, there will be an LGBT history exhibit, a quiet zone where festival-goers can rest, and a range of activities for kids and families run by SWAGLY, a support group for Worcester-area LGBT youth.
“There are so many more queer families, whether that be kids who are queer or parents who are queer, so [we are] making sure there are enough family-focused events,” Kane said.
Kane said that she has spent months coordinating sponsors for the Pride festival, and that the Queer Coalition vetted its sponsors to make sure they were committed to supporting LGBT causes.
“We started with a set of values, and you had to be committed to the community and demonstrate that in one way or another,” Kane said. “If they want to be at the festival, they can’t just be selling insurance or opening bank accounts. They have to talk about queer finance or how they support their LGBTQ+ employees.”
According to Kane, the Queer Coalition wanted to make sure none of its sponsors intended to “rainbow-wash,” a term which refers to the co-opting of LGBT imagery and messaging by companies that do not materially or financially address LGBT issues.
Noguera-Brown said that this year’s festival will prominently feature local LGBT artists and LGBT-owned small businesses as a way to combat the “rainbow-washing” trend.
“This is not just a celebration, but also a political statement and an economic statement. Pride is a money-making business,” Noguera-Brown said. “Why should we allow corporations and other individuals to make the money that belongs to us as queer individuals?”
The festival itself is the centerpiece of over 30 events, ranging from sober candle making to a youth prom and dance workshops.
“One of the major changes [since 2019] is that it’s not a single group of individuals making the complete decision on what’s considered a Pride week event,” Noguera-Brown said. “It’s an invitation to multi-partnered events where if you have something, an idea or a thought, if you want to do something, you can bring it to the table and it’s added to a long, extensive list of events and activities.”
Pride week events will include a Latin dance social on Sept. 2, a gay professionals’ networking event on Sept. 7, a decades-themed dance party for LGBT people aged 18 to 23 on Sept. 8, and the Queer AF fashion show on Sept. 9.
“My hope is that you look at the calendar and see at least one event that you’ve never seen on a Pride calendar that speaks to you,” Kane said.
SWAGLY will put on a prom for middle- and high school-age youth on Sept. 8 at the White Room. According to the official announcement, the prom is intended as a way for LGBT youth to attend a traditional school dance without the bullying or exclusion that LGBT students often experience at school events.
Noguera-Brown, who is coordinating the youth events during Pride week, said that young attendees will be able to take shuttle buses to and from the prom, and that although the event itself is exclusively for ages 11 to 17, there will be offerings elsewhere for parents during the dance.
There will also be two Pride church services led by LGBT clergy, one at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Sept. 4 and the other at First Baptist Church on Sept. 11.
Both Kane and Noguera-Brown said that going forward, the Queer Coalition wants to offer Pride programming for LGBT people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds.
“We started seeing a different vision of how to create a Pride week centered around the individuals who are actually in the community, not just the idea of it being Pride, where we have to have rainbows up,” Noguera-Brown said. “We want you to feel like you’re invested in this Pride.”
“I grew up in Sturbridge, and I remember being in high school when gay marriage got approved and seeing older women getting married. I genuinely thought you couldn’t be lesbian until you were 40,” Kane said. “It doesn’t matter how big the stage is. It matters that everybody feels seen.”
More information, including a full list of Pride week events, is available at prideworcester.org.