The Greater Boston community cast their ballots for the 2018 Boston Pride grand and honorary marshals and theme, and … drumroll, please … the results are in:
“Rainbow Resistance” is the theme. Transgender nondiscrimination advocacy group Freedom for All Massachusetts and Dyke March leader Jo Trigilio are the grand marshals. And longtime Pride volunteer Gordon Burns and marriage equality hero Edith Windsor are the posthumous honorary marshals.
Boston Pride shared more in a December 1 press release:
2018 Boston Pride Theme
Rainbow Resistance — The theme is a call for every segment of our community to unite in the resistance against the oppression and backwards policies of the current administration in Washington, DC, the systemic threats to communities of color and trans people in our country, and the potential repeal of trans equality legislation in Massachusetts. The social media hashtags for the 2018 Boston Pride celebration will be #WickedProud and #RainbowResistance.
Grand Marshals
In June 2015, the broad-based bipartisan coalition Freedom for All Massachusetts launched with the goal of updating Massachusetts’ longstanding civil rights laws to include nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in public places. The campaign aimed to add gender identity as a protected category in the Commonwealth’s public accommodations law. By June 2016, the law had passed by an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority of votes in both legislative chambers. Shortly after it went into effect on October 1, 2016, opponents of the law secured signatures to force law onto the 2018 ballot. The Freedom for All Massachusetts campaign continues to build the Commonwealth’s familiarity with transgender people, and to grow support for fair and equal treatment, so that we keep trans equality in the law of the Commonwealth.
Jo Trigilio has been a leader in the LGBTQ community serving on the Boston Dyke March organizing committee for more than a decade before stepping down a few years ago. Jo was instrumental at growing the march from a few hundred to several thousand participants, and maintaining its status as a grassroots, noncommercial, and radical event committed to all-gender inclusion. They now head the Boston Dyke March History and Archive Project which makes archival materials publically available online. Jo is a known peace maker, beloved professor, and activist. Jo is an ongoing contributor to the Pride Guide and has extended themselves to assist Boston Pride in addressing issues brought by the community. Jo is currently the Program Director of Gender/Cultural Studies at Simmons College. Jo’s current work focuses on nonbinary gender and ethnic/racial intersectionality.
Honorary Marshals
Gordon Burns, who recently passed, was a longtime Pride volunteer and Committee member. Gordon joined Boston Pride over 10 years ago to foster the engagement of LGBT older adults in the Pride celebration, and to ensure continued exchanges between the older and the younger generations of our community. Deeply engaged and active in our region, Gordon was a founding member of the Senior Pride Coalition, as well as a member of the Boston Prime Timers, the Boston Partnership for Older Adults, the Massachusetts Association of Older Americans, and OLLI Lifelong Learning Institute at UMass Boston. His joyfulness and willingness to help everyone will always be remembered.
Edith “Edie” Windsor, a hero of the fight for marriage equality, was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that bears her name. Edie made groundbreaking contributions to our community through her activism over the years. The “Windsor decision,” which was handed down in 2013 by the US Supreme Court, ensured the federal recognition of same-sex marriages performed in 13 states and in the District of Columbia.
