“Society has caught up with us” — More than 25,000 expected at OC Pride as parade celebrates 30th year
Everything about Orange County’s first pride parade and festival in 1989 was a question mark: Where would the event be? How long should the parade be? What should the response to protesters be?
Naive about how to throw a community celebration – Where do you even get that many portable restrooms from? – members of the small organizing committee were sure of one goal: Make O.C.’s LGBTQ community more visible and gather strength to fend off the politicians and religious activists pushing for discriminatory policies.
Expand
The organizers fought on to hold that first celebration in a Santa Ana park, against their lack of experience and against months of protests by evangelical groups trying to block the event they called “the flaunting of the homosexual lifestyle.”
Three decades later, about 25,000 are expected Saturday, June 22, for a parade and festival filling downtown Santa Ana that culminates a week of activities.
“There’s power in numbers, when you are around all your friends and celebrate,” said Kimberly Syre, a longtime volunteer who served as the event’s spokeswoman in 1990s. “Pride is your time.”
It took a lot to get here, she said. But here they are.
“Now, finally, society has caught up with us. The joy we have is contagious.”
The first festival
A 20-minute meeting was all it took for the organizers to secure a permit to hold the inaugural festival – themed “Orange County Comes Out” – in Centennial Regional Park.
But it took months of confrontation, the negotiations with civic leaders and determination by the organizers to keep that permit as Christian groups packed council meetings by the hundreds, pushing for the city to revoke the permission to use the public park.
“Their determination was only fueled by the controversy and negativity which surrounded the planning of the event,” the committee’s president, Janet Avery, once said. She died last year.
The two-day festival opened Sept. 9, 1989.
Link Schrader recalled a melee between a few dozen festival-goers and protesters, who threw objects at the crowd – including dirty baby diapers.
Six were arrested and Santa Ana police considered shutting things down, he said. “We were just looking for a good time. We were sitting quietly just waiting for what the city was going to do.”
The festival was allowed to continue, but all the entrances were closed.
The rise and fall
The festival moved to UCI’s Aldrich Park in 1990 when the school’s Gay and Lesbian Student Union became a co-sponsor. There were protesters, but the crowds attending grew year after year.
“The guys would not let anyone suppress them,” community leader Porfi Alanis said.
At the 1993 festival, The Rev. Rosalind Russell officiated an unofficial wedding between a lesbian couple; one woman wore a gown belonging to her grandmother, Russell recalled.
“It was two people committing their love to one another,” she said. “I never felt like I was doing anything wrong.”
In 1994, organizers moved the parade from university property and onto city streets.
“It made it real, more acceptable, not trying to hide,” Syre said.
But the momentum slowed. The festival stopped after 2001; no one interviewed for this article could identify exactly why, but the Register in 2000 noted light crowds, with vendors grumbling about slow business. Attendance had dropped by half by 2000, compared to six years previous.
The revival
Then in 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8; the ban on same-sex marriages sparked new interest among the LGBTQ community in again holding a public event.
“It was in part doing something, and in part community building,” said James Nowick, a UC Irvine professor who co-organized the festival’s return in 2009. “When something really bad happens, you can’t just do nothing.”
What Nowick called “more of a picnic” in Irvine’s William R. Mason Regional Park drew 500 people; organizers expected about 100.
By 2012, when the event returned to Santa Ana, attendance had grown to more than 10,000.
And the crowds have only grown since, said Hara Alarcon, a longtime volunteer who will be honored as a community leader in this year’s parade for her work in promoting the Orange County Imperial Court, a nonprofit that raises money to help the LGBTQ community.
“More people became more vocal,” she said. “More families became involved, and people got more comfortable in their own skin.”
More than 100 vendors and about 25,000 people are expected at Saturday’s “Stand Up and Stand Out” celebration.
“It’s an opportunity for the community to be recognized. It’s their day in the sun,” Andy Connor, the event’s spokesman, said. “It’s a chance to be outside and be in the collective with the community.”
If you go
When: Saturday, June 22 from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. The parade starts at 11:30 a.m. A paid concert featuring singers Deborah Cox and Kristine W, among others, at the York Theatre starts at 6 p.m.
Where: The parade travels 4th Street from Ross Street to French Street in downtown Santa Ana. The festival, featuring two free stages and more than 100 vendors, is on 3rd Street from Bush Street to French.