PRIDE June 2024 Events - Click Image for Link
Community Partners & Resources:
The Q Corner, The LGBTQ Youth Space, and Billy DeFrank Center are great community organizations supporting the LGBTQ+ community.
Parivar Bay Area is a transgender-centering organization led by South Asian transgender individuals.
Rainbow Chamber of Commerce Silicon Valley helps lift up LGBTQ+ small businesses and owners.
Silicon Valley PRIDE continues to be a leader in celebrating the LGBTQ+ community through various events including organizing the annual Silicon Valley Pride Parade and Festival in late August.
We also must recognize that change has not fully arrived, and we must sustain the work to celebrate Pride and continue to advance the expansion or rights and protections. While we do not want to add sorrow to an annual celebration of love, PRIDE is a recognition of the struggle and loss of life that has made us able to stand here together - some of those brightest hearts we have lost have been those we know like Natalia Smut Lopez. We continue to say her name, and we will continue to say the names of anyone harmed by hate in our community as we stand up to hate - because hate has no place in County of Santa Clara.
D3 is honored to celebrate and recognize PRIDE every year. In the spirit of using celebration as a form of protest and expression - we join community to celebrate Pride and recognize various LGBTQ+ Americans and local heroes that are changemakers.
PRIDE Month 2024 Recognitions
Click on the following images of local, state, national, and international LGBTQ+ individuals we are celebrating
PRIDE Month 2023 Recognitions
Click on the following images of local, state, national, and international LGBTQ+ individuals we are celebrating
Additional PRIDE-LGBTQIAA+ Recognitions
The D3 Team recognizes PRIDE Month to celebrate the contributions of the LGBTQIAA+ community along with recognitions for Black History Month, Women's History Month, Muslim Americans, AANHPI Heritage Month, and more where we have celebrated LGBTQIAA+ individuals. Click on the their images to read more about these additional community celebrations.
History of PRIDE and fight for LGBTQ+ rights
We have to do it because we can no longer stay invisible. We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are. -Sylvia Rivera
Even for those old enough, many may not remember the Cooper Do-nuts Riot in Los Angeles in May 1959, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco in August 1966, or when the Stonewall Riots took place on June 28, 1969 - the moment that birthed the modern day LGBTQ+ Equality Movement. However, many of us are likely to remember the story of Matthew Shepard from October 1988. Our nation was rattled by the horrific display of hate that could be inflicted upon one of our children. Sadly, this would not be the last life senselessly and horrifically taken from us, such as Roxanne Ellis or Michelle Abdill, or the story most often told of Harvey Milk.
Violence is a part of the LGBTQ+ story in America, but it is also not the only part of the story - and that is part of the story we want to tell. We seek to see that generations ahead of us will no longer see how one identifies or how one loves to be a target or measure of judgment or persecution. Instead, like how we are already seeing in our youth, that there is a brighter beauty when we fully embrace and understand our identities - our sexuality and our gender - on our own terms and rights. Like with most of our history, it takes seeing the scars to heal them.
The power to heal also needs the power of the law to ensure justice. In 2009, in honor of Matthew, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, giving new levels of protection and justice in the pursuit of equality and safety for the LGBTQ+ community. County of Santa Clara is still losing LGBTQ+ members of our family, like Natalia Smut Lopez and others whose lives were lost despite the laws intended to protect them. It is going to take us educating, informing, and supporting each other to prevent hate. We have ways to go, but we must feel hopeful. Our hearts are full, our energy is fueled by love, and we will overcome.
What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains. - Tennessee Williams
One of the next big challenges we face is in how we identify, see, and recognize one another. While many of us feel very connected to the language and pronouns that we use each day, not each of our neighbors, colleagues or family members do. The digital age has offered us a chance to be more directly expressive with our identity, and with the pandemic putting screens between us for more than a year, we had the chance to express ourselves more fully. “He/him”, “she/her”, “they/them”, (other) have become familiar additions to our names and a chance for us to more properly and politely communicate with each other.
As we see the newer Intersex Inclusive Progress Pride flag, and many other LGBTQ+ flags, waving across County of Santa Clara and America, we see the truth that America supports equality no matter how loud a few may shout. Love is winning the fight against hate.
America is deeply rooted in the rights of the individual, and we firmly believe that one’s individual rights begin with how they choose to identify. We also need to recognize that language is a not so swift a change as the digital age can be to catch up. As we seek to be more thoughtful and inclusive, it will take both forgiveness and accountability to ensure that our transgender and non-binary neighbors feel seen, recognized and welcomed.
It is absolutely imperative that every human being’s freedom and human rights are respected, all over the world. - Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir
It was often our artists and entertainers that could be openly LGBTQ+ or bend/stretch their sexuality or gender identity without too much reproach. This is also why the LGBTQ+ community has utilized art and the stage so powerfully to express themselves, one of the few places one could fully be free and themselves. We want to recognize these spaces and the heroes that helped ensure there was a place for those who were often left with nowhere to be a bright space to thrive.
Learning From Our LGBTQ+ Community
We should all take a moment to learn from our LGBTQ+ community about unity. We are familiar with the saying, no group is a monolith, in regard to values or stories or goals or needs, yet the LGBTQ+ community saw the strength in another saying, injustice to one is injustice to all. The necessity of the rights for one was the necessity of rights for all.
Through recent years as we have taken a bigger step to confront systemic racism and hate crimes/violence - we are seeing different communities coming together towards justice and reform. This has been particularly significant for the AANHPI community. Times of trouble bring communities together. The targeted harassment, racism and violence against the AANHPI, like that against the LGBTQ+ community, has no place in our neighborhoods or in America. Thanks to the LGBTQ+ community, the AANHPI community has tools in order to stand up to hate and violence, and the tools to unite our very different groups, peoples and cultures that make up the AANHPI community.