The following letter was submitted to Watershed Voice for publication by Rev. Brenda Deily of The First Presbyterian Church Three Rivers/Centreville.
Pride
June is recognized as Pride Month, a time when people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, and racial identities have a safe place to celebrate LGBTQIA+ Pride. Watershed Voice has compiled a list of resources for local, summer Pride events for Southwest Michigan.
Andrew George of Three Rivers Pride stops by Keep Your Voice Down to chat about the upcoming and first ever Pride Festival in the City of Three Rivers on Saturday, June 24. Andrew, Alek, and Doug talk about how a Pride flag ban protest and the community support it garnered spurred on the creation of Three Rivers Pride Festival, how it all came together in under six months, and details on what to expect at the event.
The comeback of in-person Pride is coinciding with the re-emergence of a dark phenomenon: A recent increase in anti-LGBTQ+ violence and threats that experts say hasn’t been seen for years.
The tone at the Michigan Capitol in Lansing was as defiant as it was celebratory, with more than 200 members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community gathering Sunday for a Pride rally on the seventh anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage
Topics for this week’s episode of NerdPop Radio include:
Mandalorian season 4
Kenobi
New Pokémon trailer
What Pokémon games are you familiar with?
Drew’s board games
Were you disappointed when Grogu chose Mando over Luke?
Post Malone album
What would be your Vecna song?
Does Facebook have an end date?
Fast food or junk food?
Pride
Umbrella academy season 3
The Boys season 3
Morbius returns to theaters
The Three Rivers Community Schools Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to lift the district’s temporary Pride flag ban and return to business as usual following a pre-meeting protest, a lengthy public comment period, and an even longer closed session.
Former Three Rivers Middle School teacher Russell Ball joins Keep Your Voice Down to talk about his recent resignation after Three Rivers Community Schools staff were asked to remove Pride flags from their classrooms due to an “external challenge.” Ball details the events leading up to his exit, what the flag represents to members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and why the flags should remain in classrooms not only in Three Rivers but around the world.
At the top of this week’s episode Alek and Doug address Monday’s troubling news that teachers within the Three Rivers Community Schools system were asked to remove Pride flags in their classrooms in response to an “external challenge” by an unidentified party.
The hosts of Keep Your Voice Down are also joined by Sarah Lee, Director of Marketing Communications at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation. The trio discusses Sarah’s role at KZCF, her upbringing in Malaysia and how she became deeply rooted in Kalamazoo, the importance of being “equity-minded” when addressing matters of social and racial injustice, the foundation’s efforts to support local journalism, and the story behind the formation of the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative.
The event focused on disparities in health care, homelessness and the availability of jobs for LGBTQ people.
After a student-led Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club at Whitehall High School sent out an email to the student body that included resources about sexuality and identity during Pride week, that kickstarted an often-heated conversation in the small West Michigan community about where the line is between schools and families in talking about LGBTQ issues.
Friend of Watershed Voice, Emme Zanotti, on Pride: “And that’s what the first Pride was. It was a revolution fueled by the fire of Black trans women and trans Latinas. A revolution generated by the kind of spark and passion that can only exist in the hearts and minds of people on the receiving end of an oppressive force so strong that it’s quite literally costing them their lives. The First Pride was a language of the unheard, to paraphrase Dr. King.
“And through it all, we (white people, yes the gay and trans ones too) tried not to uplift the voices and stories of Black and Brown people, but rather we tried to silence them. For decades we erased their memory from the origin story of Pride. We erased their faces from our dining room tables, and we erased their experiences and wisdom from our decision making tables. The people who have given the most to our cause haven been rewarded the least. I’ll repeat. The people who have given the most to our cause have been rewarded the least.”