Last year, Bennington, Vermont celebrated its first Pride parade, organized by the local group Queer Connect. This year, there will be no parade, but unwilling to let COVID-19 take away their momentum, the group is arranging a number of virtual events—plus a socially-distanced, police-escorted car caravan to roll through town on June 6, according to a May 25 report in the Bennington Banner.
Reports Bennington Banner:
Participants [of the car caravan] will gather at noon that Saturday at the former Kmart parking lot in Bennington Square, according to Lisa Carton, founder and director of Queer Connect. From there, the group will travel through town, escorted by the Bennington Police Department, before heading north through North Bennington, Shaftsbury and Arlington to Manchester, joining participants from Rutland and Brattleboro.
Carton said it’s difficult to estimate how many vehicles will make up the caravan but that “people are ready to do some things” to celebrate Pride. Participants may decorate their cars and play music, though the event won’t feature out-of-car convening. The exact route will not be announced ahead of time, but small maps and flags will be distributed by mask-wearing greeters at the parking lot.
The town of Bennington again has committed to putting up Pride flags downtown and this year will keep them up for the entire month of June, Carton said.
Digital events will precede and follow the caravan. At 6 p.m. on Friday, June 5, in collaboration with Planned Parenthood, Queer Connect will host a panel through a videoconferencing platform that explores what reproductive freedom means for LGBTQ people, Carton said.
The following evening, after the caravan travels through the county, Fab the Duo, a New York-based pop-rock group, will stream a performance through Queer Connect’s Facebook page. The group originally had been slated to perform on top of the Vermont Arts Exchange bus amid the parade.
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