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Challenges Downsize Pride Celebration

 by Euan Bear 

    Between the poor economy and new demands imposed by the Burlington Police Department, P.R.I.D.E. Vermont is facing the downsizing of its annual month-long celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and allied identities, cultures, and communities. Hoping this is a blip in the growth of the festival rather than a sign of decline, organizers are hoping for a huge turnout for the Burlington Festival and a surge in volunteers to work on the committee on an ongoing basis.
      Pride Vermont’s Brian Cina reported at Queer Summit IV that there will be fewer events outside the Queen City this year, fewer events in general – not enough to call it a “Pride Month” as was done last year – and that responses to the committee’s fundraising and volunteer recruitment efforts have fallen far short of its needs.
      At the same time, Cina insisted in a phone interview that although there will be “less things,” there will “not be less quality of things.” The events that take place will be stronger, better publicized, more colorful, and better attended and supported, he said. And for the first time, there will be a Stonewall-Juneteenth commemoration connecting gay and African American experiences of discrimination.

Money, Honey

     The Pride Vermont committee has held raffles, benefit concerts (including Lucie Blue Tremblay on May 31), written grants, and solicited donations to make up its budget, asking the community to dig deep for our communities’ celebration. Through press time, Cina said in a phone interview, “We haven’t been receiving as many random donations.” Donations have increased slightly since the committee made available a flyer showing a fundraising thermometer with the amount left to raise.
     According to P.R.I.D.E. Vermont treasurer Mary Abar, a veteran of three years on the committee’s board, “This year we are at barely 65 percent of our projected budget. This is much less than we had last year. At the present time, we are approximately $9,000 short of meeting our costs of a budget which has been scaled back from our original Pride Festival Annual Budget. To date, we have only received $225 by mail-in donations.”
      Grant revenue is also down, in part because the committee hasn’t gone after funders that required specific activities or agendas to be addressed.
      “We’re stretched so thin,” Cina said. One source said there were only four active members of the committee, while Abar identified five to seven regular attendees. Cina said, “People have come to meetings for awhile and then just stopped coming when we asked them to take on some actual work.”

Bodies and Minds

     Volunteers begin coming forward in May, but Pride Vermont needs help long before that: writing grants, lining up entertainment, dealing with parade permits, arranging shelter and sound systems, lining up vendors, doing outreach around the state to foster events outside of Chittenden County, and more.
      In fact, for anyone wanting to help with parade security, there’s a serious need for volunteers to come to a briefing at 7 pm on June 10 at the McClure Multigenerational Center (North Winooski Avenue, Burlington). “You get to walk around with a cool orange vest and a walkie-talkie,” Cina said, as well as helping to keep the parade on track and the parade participants safe.
      In preparing for next year, volunteers who can come to monthly meetings at the Multigenerational Center are not only welcome but desperately needed.

Bureaucratic Barriers?

      In addition, Cina reported, the Burlington Police Department has persisted in throwing up “barriers to success” in the form of additional requirements for security. “They’re trying to treat us like Mardi Gras,” Cina said at the Summit, “‘Mardi Gras had 100 security volunteers on the street,’ they say. Well, we’re not Mardi Gras, not that big.”
      In 2002, the Burlington Police Department required the Pride committee to budget for nine police officers to escort the parade and two to patrol the festival. Only three showed up, since the Pride Fest is considered optional “extra duty.” Cina and Abar said that the Pride committee was not billed for the six missing officers.
      According to BPD’s Lt. Emmett Helrich, who is supervising the downtown detail this year, it has been recommended in the past that nine officers escort the parade. “But for one hour of parade duty, it’s tough to get cops to come in, even for time-and-a half,” he said. “We can usually get two to sign up for the six hours of the Festival.”
      According to Cina, the BPD is requiring the Festival to ante up for four officers.
      Another issue mentioned by Cina was a threat to ban throwing candy from the parade’s floats. “They told us if one piece of candy was thrown from a float, there’d never be another Pride parade.”
      Helrich, reading from a list of concerns in a folder on last year’s parade, recited: “Throwing candy to crowd problematic, should be banned.” But, he said, “I don’t really see it as a problem.” He thought the concern might be related to bystander prejudice against “who was throwing it.” In the final permit stipulations, throwing anything from floats is prohibited as a safety measure.
      Other concerns for the police last year included:

The Chittenden County Transportation Authority was apparently not made aware of the parade route, making it difficult to get buses out

The parade was slow and too spread out

“Volunteers were nonexistent”

The lack of police officers made traffic control difficult

The presence of Take Back Vermont counter-protestors

The attempt by a well-known town character to burn a rainbow flag.

      Cina reports that all concerned parties, including churches along the way, the fire department and the CCTA have now been notified of this year’s parade timing and route.
      He contested the “volunteers nonexistent” characterization. “We had all the volunteers they asked us to have at every intersection they asked us to have them,” he insisted.
      But that was then. Now they need many more volunteers to help at the site during the festival, to keep marchers safe at intersections, and to participate in future Pride committee meetings.
      The most difficult challenge has been a requirement first imposed at last year’s Pride for every “vendor” (regardless of whether the group was selling a product or just providing information about services and organizations) to show proof of being covered by liability insurance to the tune of one million dollars each.
      The Pride committee called all the vendors “in a panic” just a couple of weeks before the event, and then the Parks and Recreation Department granted waivers to many organizations – especially those not selling or providing home-made food.
      The million-dollar liability coverage requirement is still in effect, and waivers are less likely this year. According to Abar, “If a vendor does not have insurance, we can apply under our policy for their coverage for the day. This has to be done in a timely manner, and payment made upon request for coverage, prior to the day of the festival. There is an application form which has to be filled out. Premium amounts are as follows: $50 for information only, $100 for product vendors. We are hoping that this will be of some help to those Īvendors’ who do not carry the necessary insurance.”

Beyond Burlington

      “Last year there were 69 people at the event in Hardwick, which is pretty good for Hardwick! There were 100 people at the trans dance in North Montpelier,” Cina said. But there has been no response to the Pride committee’s inquiries from groups that sponsored events around the state in Hardwick, St. Johnsbury, Montpelier, and other locations in 2002’s 30 Days of Pride celebration.
      And because there are so few active members of the committee this year, there has been no energy to find other sponsors for around-the-state events. “We’re limited by our limited human resources,” Cina explained.
      However, a Rutland-based youth discussion on glbtqia issues will still be held this year, and there’s a plan for a brunch that as of press time was being set up for either Grand Isle County or Franklin County.

Beyond 2003

     The greatest need is for continuing leadership and a smooth transition process. Cina has been involved in Pride Vermont for four years, and he’s exhausted. In the beginning of his work with the committee, he recalled, the previous organizers called a public meeting with organizational representatives and individuals and announced they were done and walked away, leaving a $2000 debt and no documentation.
      Although the outcome was the same, former Pride committee participant Sarah Harrington recalls the last transition process as better planned and more intentional. “We had a lot of criticism that year, so we thought that we should get more community input into our decisions,” she recalled in a phone interview, resulting in the community meeting.
      This year, Cina said, the committee has documented everything, from permit procedures to grants and their outcomes, from insurance requirements to porta-potties. And it hopes to begin planning for next year at least debt-free, and possibly with a small surplus. Pride has managed to carry over a small surplus for the last two years.
      Cina said that the Pride Vermont committee is looking for people who want to be part of a group doing collaborative work: “Everyone benefits when it’s with people, not just for people.” He cited the collaboration involved with the beyond-Chittenden-County outreach of previous years, this year’s Rutland glbtqia youth discussion, and the Juneteenth-Stonewall commemoration showing of Brother Outsider, a film on the life of gay African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. The event is co-sponsored with R.U.1.2?, the Women of Color Alliance, Outright Vermont, SafeSpace, CEDO, and the Vermont Anti-Racism Action Team, among others. Juneteenth is a commemoration of the date on which the last African-American slaves were notified that they had been freed by presidential proclamation – more than two years before.
      Such work is not without stress and challenges of its own. The national and local Juneteenth organizers have declined to officially co-sponsor any events with gay organizations in Vermont and elsewhere.
      The committee is exhausted, and there’s a real concern that there will be no Pride celebration next year unless there’s an infusion of new energy and fundraising know-how.
      Abar adds, “Our biggest challenge is finding a broader spectrum of people to be willing to represent the community, as a whole, on the committee. Our desire would be to have someone from all areas of the LBGTQIA community voicing their ideas, concerns, etc. Volunteers, as any organization knows, is a vital part of success – we need more!
      “Our committee consists of the same people holding board positions for the past three years. The committee as a whole, on the average, has 5-7 people in attendance at any given meeting... this has been a great deal of work to be accomplished by so few,” Abar wrote in an email.
      All it takes to be on the P.R.I.D.E. Vermont board is to attend one of the meetings. Meetings are held at the MultiGenerational Center on North Winooski Avenue in Burlington on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month, from 7-9 pm. “Not only do we need Board members,” Abar wrote, “but volunteer committee members are very necessary as well. It is a wonderful committee to be a part of.”
      Among the opportunities Abar mentioned are helping with specific events, organizing fundraising, helping with the silent auction, participating on the day of the Festival and the month of June or doing grant requests. “There are more than enough areas that one could choose to help out in, and offer as little or as much time as [a person] feels comfortable giving. One extremely important way to contribute to the community and to P.R.I.D.E. would be to attend the events that are hosted throughout the year to raise funds for the Pride Festival.”
      But for now, the committee assures us that with the addition of some onsite and security volunteers, this year’s Pride will be as good as ever, full of rainbows and joy and celebrations of our journeys.