Newsletter - Pride 2020 edition!
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We know you are all with us in feeling the challenges of this year. We can’t wait to say “bye girl, bye” to Ms. Rona. We are however proud of how our community came together in the midst of a pandemic. The challenges of this year have also been met with many accomplishments. We were proud to march with young community organizers, Angel Venty and Yaj Derick in the first ever march for Black Trans Lives Matter. This peaceful march in protest of the violence that our Black & Trans siblings face every day, sent a powerful message to our community, that we will not stand for such violence, and brought us together like never before. About a week after that event, for the first time in our 14 year history, we stood alongside the Mayor, City Council members, and the LGBT Center of Greater Reading to raise our flag at city hall. We watched in pure joy, and with tears in our eyes as our beautiful flag took its rightful place at City Hall in recognition of Pride month.
The very next day, we, along with members of our LGBTQ+ community met again to pay our respects to Reading Pride’s longest serving president, Richard Spangler at his funeral. Richard meant so much to our community and worked closely with community leaders to ensure that the city our LGBTQ+ siblings call home, offered them protections under the law.
Just two days after the funeral, we heard the news of SCOTUS decision to grant long overdue workplace protections to our community, and again joined by our community, we met again in a rally of celebration on the Penn Street Bridge.
What a whirlwind this has been! With all that is going on, the work never stopped. We made the unfortunate decision to cancel our Pride Festival for everyone’s safety, but realized the deficit this brought to our community. We’ve said over and over again, we don’t need a festival to show our Pride, we should “Celebrate who we are'' everyday. Doing so through supporting and loving one another can’t have far more of an impact than any festival ever will.
After much discussion, we thought, we should still try to do something, and again making history with our first ever and, hopefully, last ever Virtual Pride. And then we went “Green, '' which gave us another idea, we couldn’t bring our large festival back with the current restrictions, but we could do something.
After much discussion, and lots of work, we were fortunate enough to put together our Virtual Pride, After Party: The live show at the Gables @ The Stirling Mansion. It’s only July. 2020 is not over, and neither is Ms. Rona. After the whirlwind we have already experienced this year, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. One thing we do know, is that no matter the challenge, we will face it together, we will continue to celebrate you everyday, and encourage you to do the same.
Together, we will go running into 2021 as a stronger LGBTQ+ family.
A message from our President:
This has been a tough year for all of us, including our organization. I took on a challenge that I thought “I can do this”. But it takes an army to make changes and I learned that this year. I have a great team on the board and committee members to make RPC bigger and better and we were making strides to do this.
Then we were hit with the pandemic of COVID 19. That put the brakes on everyone's lives. We ended up making the hardest decision we ever had to make at RPC and that was to cancel our event this year. We were all in tears when we made the announcement public. But our Vice President came up with the suggestion of going VIRTUAL. He pointed out that while many of us don’t need a pride festival to be proud of who we are, for some the festival is their only chance to be surrounded by people like them, and feel welcomed. We’ve never done anything like that before, and the thought terrified us.
We decided the importance of Pride outweighed our fears, and we had to make it happen. We hired Drag Kings and Queens. We heard our community’s demand and crowned our new Miss Reading Pride Celebration 2020, Majestee.
We found Speakers to participate, including the Governor, and Mayor of the City of Reading. For the first time ever, we named a Grand Marshall, Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s Health Secretary. The Gables at Stirling Guest Hotel allowed us to film there and hold our Virtual Pride and After Party Show on July 19th, 2020. Enrique wanted to make this the best thing we ever did and immediately went to work finding sponsors. We were fortunate enough among the many sponsors to have Abilities in Motion immediately jump in as our title sponsor, noting their passion for our community. A complete list of our sponsors can be found on our website.
Thankfully, after much hard work, and following CDC guidelines, it's all come together and we are finally here at Pride weekend. Thank you to all who made this possible. Happy Pride everyone.
Black Lives Matter to Reading Pride Celebration
Written by: Amber Brown, Secretary, Reading Pride Celebration
Even as Pride parades and festivals were canceled or postponed all across America in 2020 because of Covid-19, our diverse community harkened back to our protest roots, and used this time to honor the Black Lives Matter movement.
This June, members and allies of the LGBTQ+, Black and POC communities came out to show support for one another, and fight against a common foe: law enforcement and their history of violence. Reading, PA took the streets to protest police brutality and also gathered online in a virtual town-hall to highlight racism within the LGBTQ+ community, especially toward Black transgender people.
White privilege still gives some members of the LGBTQ+ advantages compared to BIPOC, especially Black trans folks. In 2019, at least 27 transgender or gender non-conforming people were fatally shot or killed by other violent means in America. Year after year, Black transgender women are the main targets.
Too long have BIPOC members of the queer community been burdened with the work of fighting racism in our community. While white queer folks were fighting for marriage equality, BIPOC queer people were fighting for survival. Although we share the same oppressors, white LGBTQ+ people must also come to see the role we can play as oppressors in our community.
Reading Pride Celebration’s mission is to celebrate diversity in the LGBTQ+ community of Greater Reading. Reading Pride Celebration is committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by building a community that embraces and supports differences and seeks to eliminate racial oppression, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and other oppression.
This year, and every year, as we celebrate Pride we look to uplift marginalized voices until we are free to live proudly as who we are.
Making History with our flag at City Hall...
“What a difference a year makes.” - Enrique Castro Jr, Vice President of Reading Pride Celebration
Written by:Johnathan Rodriguez-Baez, DEI Officer, Reading Pride Celebration
On June 12th, an opportunity that had been denied a year ago, we, the community, claimed it back. Accompanied by Mayor Eddie Moran, members of City Council, The LGBT Center and our LGBTQ+ community and allies, Reading Pride Celebration raised Quasar’s Progress Flag in City Hall.
Why the Progress Flag? Because that’s what we should chase: progress. Progress for our Black community, progress for People of Color, progress for our Trans sisters, brothers and siblings, progress for a community that has been marginalized by systematic oppression and inequality. We decided to raise a flag that will represent us all by also making us look forward.
What’s wrong with the regular flag? There’s nothing wrong with the rainbow flag, but if a voice whispers or shouts, we have the responsibility to listen. If a voice tells us that they are not represented, if a community shouts that it has become a symbol for a certain, privileged group, then we need to hear, reflect and act.
We also have to remember that a flag is just a piece of fabric, but that fabric has power. It can inspire, it can empower and it can move us to a direction. There’s work to be done, yes. But we can work while we watch that white, pink, light blue, brown, black, red, yellow, orange, green, blue and purple waving from the distance.
If we, as the Reading community, could make this happen, imagine what we can do in a year from now.
A word about Covid-19, AKA CoronaVirus, AKA Ms Rona...
First, came the fear. Then, the quarantine. After that, the colors red, yellow and green. This Sunday, we paint ourselves with a rainbow. Even though we are celebrating in person, that does not mean that we are being less careful. That’s why we encourage everyone to follow the guidelines of the CDC when engaging with other people.
We almost didn’t do it. We were scared, worried and didn’t even think people would be interested in attending. But we also have a responsibility to celebrate our community. Having the opportunity of being in person, even if it’s limited and with restrictions, is something that we must not take for granted, but to treasure and benefit as we can.
And although we would love to hug each other, be close to one another, dance and be free, we must be mindful of our neighbor, our friends and our families. We can celebrate, yes, and we will be smiling the whole time… just with a mask on.
Please, let’s keep each other safe by:
Washing your hands for at least 20 seconds
If water and soap are not available, use hand sanitizer
Cover your mouth and nose with a cloth face cover or mask
Always cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze or the inside of your elbow and do not spit
Maintain 6 feet between yourself and people who don’t live in your household
If you’re feeling uneasy, experiencing fever, cough, shortness of breath or other symptoms of COVID-19, please, as much as we would like to be together, we ask you to think about your health and the others.
Let’s take care of our community as we also have fun. We hope to see you while social distancing!
Reading Pride Celebration would like to extend our gratitude to all our sponsors. Without them, Pride would not be possible this year, or any year.
