Pride celebrations everywhere—from the big urban centers to rural communities—are proving the spirit of the community prevails despite the pandemic by taking full advantage of the medium you’re likely reading this on right now: online.
Take Rural Pride in Claremont, New Hampshire, as Matt Moonshian, founder of Rural Outright—which organized the festivities, gone virtual in this, its third year—explained to New Hampshire Public Radio.
“You know for a lot of folks who come to Rural Pride, it might be the only time of year that they get connected with, you know, a company that has binders if they’re trans,” Moonshian said. “Or it might be the only time they get to see a drag queen out in public. Or it might be the only time that they get to talk to someone about affirmative sex ed.”
The festival took place this past weekend and included a virtual flag-raising of the Progress Pride flag “just over the state boarder in Vermont,” plus two days of festivities, including a livestream variety show with “storytelling, makeup tutorials and a Queer Q&A session with LGBT leaders from across the state,” according to NHPR.
As NHPR reported, Rural Pride also had “a more intersectional lens this year, in light of the death of George Floyd and protests for racial justice across New Hampshire and the country.”
“LGBTQ liberation and liberation for people of color, for Black people especially, are very interconnected,” Moonshian said. “We often say that a Black transgender woman threw the first brick at Stonewall. And that’s very true.”
Click here for more on Rural Outright, which aims to “support LGBTQIA+ people, their families, and allies; educate community members; and increase public awareness of the need to value and respect everyone, regardless of gender identity, expression or sexual orientation,” according to their mission statement.
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