Months ago, national organizers began planning an equality march in opposition to the emerging policies of Donald Trump to coincide with Pride in the nation’s capitol, focusing not only on LGBT issues, but also immigrants and women’s rights and other human and civil rights issues.
In the intervening months, cities around the country, including Nashville, planned parallel demonstrations, as the government increasingly lived down to our expectations. Nashville’s rally shows that our local LGBT community and its allies stand in solidarity with others around the country, as well as other minority communities.
Nashville was also well-represented at the national rally in D.C., with O&AN publisher Jerry Jones providing live coverage of the event via Facebook, and numerous other members of the community traveling to join the resistance.
With the President refusing to acknowledge LGBT Pride and increasingly proposing new measures against the communities participating in the rally, we can expect the need for large, coordinated shows of mutual support to increase in the coming months. But, so far, the resistance has shown strength and resilience.
The pushback against recent gains has also inspired greater interest in local Pride festivals in general accounting to preliminary findings of Community Marketing & Insights 11th Annual LGBT Community Survey (CMI). The survey found that “63% of LGBTQ Americans said that that they will (or already did) attend their hometown Pride in 2017. This is compared to 47% having attended their hometown Pride events last year, representing a 34% increase in interest and participation for 2017.
Further, “84% reported that Pride events across the United States are as important as ever, and 82% indicated that they feared rollbacks of recent LGBTQ equality gains. With recent political changes and uncertainty, LGBTQ Pride events are taking on a renewed importance in 2017, and CMI anticipates record attendance this year.”
