Annual Pride Week will be mostly virtual
EL CENTRO — Local members and allies of the LGBT community will be celebrating their pride virtually this year, as the annual Pride Week event will be taking place mostly online.
It was announced during a planning meeting Tuesday that the event, which will take place between Oct. 6 and 10, will have three of its four days in an online video meeting format.
The only in-person event will be a Pride caravan parade on the final day.
Since its creation five years ago, the Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Center’s annual event has grown considerably.
In its first year, Pride Week was a one-day event and drew in just enough supporters to fill up the parking lot of the center’s headquarters on Ross Avenue next to Bucklin Park.
Fast forward to 2019, when the event expanded to take place over several days throughout the week.
The main event of last year’s Pride Week, whose theme was “Past, Present & Proud,” drew in enough supporters to close off Main and Sixth streets in downtown El Centro.
Rather than allow COVID-19 precautions to cause this year’s event to be canceled completely, the LGBT Center has a plan in place.
The center also has a proclamation to honor, as the county Board of Supervisors recently proclaimed the second week of October to be Imperial Valley Pride week.
Oct. 6 will be Trans Pride day. On that day, Georgie Kelly, a transgender man, will be a guest speaker and will discuss ways of conceptualizing transgender identity. This event will take place from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
On Oct. 7, friends and family of LGBT are invited to join the Allyship 101 virtual get-together. The allyship event aims to be fun and educational.
The Center’s director, Rosa Diaz, said she hasn’t “ever seen this done locally.”
The allyship event invites all allies of the LGBTQ+ community to attend and discuss what it means to be an ally.
The event will take place from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
On Oct. 9, a Pride drag show performance will take place. Diaz explained that drag queens will submit videos of themselves, and the videos will be played during the event.
To cap off Pride Week, a Pride caravan parade will be taking place Oct. 10. The center invites the public to come out, decorate their vehicles with Pride spirit and wave their flags.
A vehicle decorating contest will take place at 1 p.m. Line-up for the parade begins at 2 p.m. near the LGBT Resource Center, 1073 Ross Ave. The parade will begin at 3 p.m., and is estimated to last until 4:30 p.m.
The caravan will travel through neighborhoods in El Centro.
Participants in the caravan will be asked to give a $30 donation or a gift basket valued worth $30.
The other three days of virtual events will be completely free to the public. The link to each of the virtual events will be posted on www.ivlgbtcenter.com/pride/
Following the parade, the Center will award two scholarships — one worth $1,000, the other worth $1,500. This is the first year that the LGBT Center will award scholarships.
Details on how one can apply for the scholarships are still in the works,
Diaz said.
One of the scholarships is titled the Marilyn Cazares Hope scholarship, which will go to a local self-identified LGBT student.
The scholarship was created in honor of the late Marilyn Cazares, a 22-year-old Westmorland transgender woman who was murdered in Brawley on July 15.
The center held the “I Am Marilyn March for Trans Lives” in honor of Cazares on Aug. 2.
Diaz said that immediately after the event she received three emails from different donors saying they would like to give money toward a scholarship program.
Thus, the Cazares’ scholarship, as well as the center’s scholarship program in general, was born.
Cazares will also be
honored during the Oct. 9 festivities with a presentation titled “Homage to Marilyn.”
The second scholarship will be titled the Courageous Liberation scholarship. It will go toward an ally of the LGBT community.
Both the caravan parade and the presentation of the scholarships will be livestreamed via Facebook.
Tuesday’s meeting was especially important, as
there is no Pride event coordinator this year as there was in years past, Diaz said.
Consequently, the Center’s director said she is seeking as much collaboration and volunteerism from the public as possible.
The center is still seeking volunteers to help promote Pride Week. The next planning meeting will take place online Sept. 8. at 6 p.m.