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VA Pridefest 2021 Postponed

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This morning brings a sad but necessary announcement; VA Pridefest, originally scheduled for Saturday, September 25 at Brown’s Island, will be postponed until 2022. The decision was not made lightly, but with COVID numbers once again on the rise due to the Delta variant, the organizers felt that it was the right thing to do.

COVID strikes again. Back in the spring, when vaccines were all the rage and numbers were falling rapidly, it felt like we were seeing a light at the end of the tunnel where the pandemic was concerned, and at that time, a lot of plans were made for the summer, the fall, and beyond — when, we assumed, COVID would be mostly behind us. But of course, like the meme says, there was our fall plans, and then there was the Delta variant.

The news out of VA Pride today is another strong indicator that we’re not out of the pandemic woods yet. After missing Pridefest 2020 due to COVID, everyone was excited to get back to Brown’s Island for the biggest LGBTQ Pride celebration in the state. Unfortunately, it is not to be; this morning, VA Pridefest organizers have announced that the 2021 Pridefest, scheduled for Saturday, September 25, will be postponed. They tentatively hope to reschedule for June 2022, in order to coincide with the national LGBTQ Pride Month celebration.

“After consulting with our many corporate sponsors, organizational partners, and volunteers, we have decided it is in the best interest of the health and safety of our community to postpone VA Pridefest 2021 until next year,” said James Millner — program director of Diversity Richmond, of which Virginia Pride is a part — in a statement. “The data available from the Virginia Department of Health shows that cases of COVID-19, positivity, and incidence rates are projected to increase through the end of September when our event was scheduled, and we want to be certain that we are doing our part to help mitigate the spread of the virus.” 

Diversity Richmond and VA Pride — which merged earlier this year — began planning for an in-person Pridefest in June, when things relating to the pandemic were still trending in the right direction, and had done quite a bit to ensure that 2021 Pridefest would be a truly great event, on par with some of the best of prior years.

“In a very short period of time, we were able to raise record amounts of money, secure phenomenal entertainment acts, and plan an event of which our community and the entire Richmond Region would have been proud,” Millner said in a statement. “Our preparation puts us on solid footing as we postpone the festival to 2022, when we hope to hold it in June as part of the national observation of LGBTQ Pride Month. This has long been a goal of ours, and this just may give us that opportunity.”

VA Pridefest’s organizers stressed that the decision to postpone was not made lightly, and was arrived at with the help of VA Pride’s sponsors, volunteers, and community partners. Black Pride RVA co-founder Luise “Cheezi” Farmer offered her organization’s support for the decision to postpone, saying, “Posponing Pridefest is the right thing to do under the circumstances. I know I speak not just for Black Pride RVA, but for other LGBTQ and allied organizations when I say that we are grateful to the volunteers and leadership of Virginia Pride for putting the health and safety of our community first.”

VA Pride hopes to be able to hold some smaller events in September that will have more limited attendance, and at which they can require masks and/or proof of vaccination. Still, losing the big VA Pridefest throwdown at Brown’s Island for another year is a big blow to Virginia’s LGBTQ community — and no one knows this better than the organizers of VA Pridefest.

“We know this is not the outcome that we, nor anyone in our community, had hoped or planned for,”Millner said. “But we are also firm in our conviction that is absolutely the right thing to do.”

Photo from VA Pridefest 2018 by Sara Wheeler

Two LGBTQ Organizations Merge; In-Person Pridefest On The Horizon

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Diversity Richmond and VA Pride are now one organization, and they are currently hard at work to bring us the first Pridefest of the post-pandemic era this fall.

Decades ago, it was hard to imagine that Virginia’s annual Pridefest would swell from 75 to over 40,000 attendees. 

The commonwealth has in recent years moved to better protect LGBTQ citizens, and much of that is due to the work of community organizations. Two Virginia LGBTQ organizations — Diversity Richmond and Virginia Pride — recently merged following a two-year long process.

“We were very intentional about the process, so that’s why it took so long,” said Luise Farmer, chair of the Diversity Richmond board. “We just wanted to make sure that what we were doing for the community was the right thing to do.” 

Diversity Richmond was founded in 1999 as a place and resource for the LGBTQ community. The organization has donated over $1.1 million to local organizations such as Health Brigade, Side by Side, and the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities in the past 21 years, according to Bill Harrison, the president and executive director of Diversity Richmond.

Virginia Pride has helped organize the annual Pridefest event since the ’70s, according to its website. After decades of organizational fluctuation, it gained nonprofit status in 2006 and expanded its LGBTQ community advocacy and outreach. Virginia Pride is now a program of Diversity Richmond.

The merger will help expand the organization’s statewide presence and fundraising ability, and amplify resources to support Virginia’s LGBTQ community. Or as Farmer stated when the merger was announced, “we hope to take one and one and make three.”

Harrison said the merger will increase fundraising for Virginia Pride events and help fund salary and office space for staff. Corporate sponsors are more “comfortable” making donations when a staff is involved, not just volunteers, according to Harrison.

“Now, with the fundraising ability of Virginia Pride combined with us, both of us will just be able to do more for the community, now that we’ve combined forces as opposed to once separate,” Harrison said.

(L to R) Anonymous, James Millner, Stephanie Merlo, Luise Farmer and Bill Harrison announce Diversity Richmond’s partnership with Virginia Pride. Photo by Eric Russell.

June is celebrated nationally as Pride Month, in honor of the Stonewall riots, though Richmond’s Pridefest is held in September. Pridefest was cancelled last year in the thick of the pandemic. 

The 2021 event will be held in person, according to James Millner, the program director of Virginia Pride. Organizers are still uncertain what parameters will be in place for the festival but said they will follow local, state and federal guidelines.

“One thing the pandemic has taught us is that nothing is the same anymore,” Farmer said. “We are very conscious about how we put on Pride this year. Very, very conscious, because we would never want to put anyone at risk.”

The Centers for Disease Control announced Thursday that vaccinated individuals don’t have to wear masks or social distance unless a law or regulation requires it.

Millner said organizers will consider factors such as the number of vendors, vaccination rates, negative misconceptions from social media posts and how corporate sponsors could be affected. No corporate Pridefest sponsors have been announced this year. Past sponsors include Capital One, Facebook, Nissan North America and SunTrust.

“We know that people in our community look to our organization for leadership, and we want to be good stewards of that trust,” Millner said.

PrideFest and similar events are important to Richmond’s LGBTQ community for many reasons, Millner said. It helps affirm a sense of community to have representation in a historically conservative state and to have companies supporting LGBTQ employees. 

His ultimate goal is to create a safe space for people to express and be themselves — whether it’s wearing leather, rainbows and glitter, or simply holding their partner’s hand in public.

“It’s very important that we come together in large numbers, in big waves, and say: ‘We are here,’” Millner said. “We are part of the fabric of this community, and we deserve every opportunity, every bit of equality, we deserve to be treated just like everybody else.”

Written by Aaron Royce, Capital News Service. Top Photo by Brianna Swank, from Pexels.

Stronger Together

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In order to increase their impact in the Richmond Region and the Commonwealth, Diversity Richmond and VA Pride have joined forces and will officially merge on April 1.

On Tuesday, they made it official. February 23 saw the announcement by Diversity Richmond and VA Pride, two of the leading LGBTQ organizations in the state, that they will officially merge into one organization as of April 1. VA Pride will become a program of Diversity Richmond, and will continue to produce its annual PrideFest and other events supporting the Virginia LGBTQ community throughout the year.

One big change resulting from the merger will be a paid, full-time Program Director for VA Pride, which previously operated in an all-volunteer fashion. In the past five years, VA Pride’s budget quintupled and it has continued to increase its work putting on events and advocating for the Virginia LGBTQ community throughout the year. Merging with Diversity Richmond will give the organization a boost in the form of providing staff and organizational structure that will allow Virginia Pride to avoid potential growing pains.

“Virginia Pride enters into this merger with Diversity Richmond at a time when both organizations are thriving,” Virginia Pride President Stephanie Merlo said in a statement. “In recent years, Virginia Pride has experienced exponential growth of our events, including an annual PrideFest that attracts more than 40,000 people, and has seen the significant impact of our advocacy efforts to make the Richmond region a better place for LGBTQ people to live, work, and visit. Merging with Diversity Richmond will ensure we continue to build on our legacy of success.”

Diversity Richmond has also been on a growth streak in recent years. Having distributed more than $1.1 million in grants for LGBTQ and LGBTQ-aligned programs and organizations since its founding, it has really stepped up to the plate since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since last March, Diversity Richmond has held three food drives, hosted press conferences with Governor Ralph Northam and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, and served as a COVID testing site for the Virginia Department of Health.

“By joining forces with Virginia Pride, we hope to take one and one and make three,” Diversity Richmond Board President Luise “Cheezi” Farmer said in a statement. “We are confident that this merger will amplify the impact of the work of our organizations and allow us to better serve not just the LGBTQ community, but the entire Richmond Region.”

While the two organizations just announced their merger this week, it’s been in the works behind the scenes since 2019, and has involved leaders within the local LGBTQ community, who were consulted to ensure that the combination of the two organizations would have community support.

“I think it’s great that Virginia Pride and Diversity Richmond are merging,” Zakia McKensey, Founder of Nationz Foundation, said in a statement. “They are two of the most visible and respected LGBTQ organizations in Richmond and I think that our community will be very well served by them working together.”

James Millner, who has held multiple leadership positions with Virginia Pride and is currently the interim Executive Director, will transition to the role of Virginia Pride Program Director once the merger is complete. “This new structure will allow our volunteer leadership to have the support of full-time staff, and will ensure that we are able to continue to produce the fantastic events and provide the support to our community that we are known for,” Millner said in a statement.

“I remember when the first pride festival was held in Richmond 42 years ago when 75 people attended,” Bill Harrison, President and Executive Director of Diversity Richmond, said in a statement. “If you had told me then that one day we would have 40,000 people at Pridefest, I’d have laughed. But, here we are. What Virginia Pride has accomplished as an all-volunteer organization is astonishing to me. Diversity Richmond is honored that we have this opportunity to provide the support they need to continue their incredible trajectory.”

“Diversity Richmond and VA Pride see this as an opportunity to combine our resources and talent to better serve the LGBTQ and allied communities,” said Millner. “We believe, simply, that we will be stronger together.”

Top Photo: James Millner, Stephanie Merlo, Luise “Cheezi” Farmer, and Bill Harrison. Photo via Diversity Richmond.