Shepherd Express - June 2022

Page 66

HEAR ME OUT | SPONSORED BY UW CREDIT UNION

Pride 2022

A YEAR OF CELEBRATION AND RENEWED POLITICAL ACTIVISM BY PAUL MASTERSON

T

his year’s Pride Parade, the first since the COVID pandemic essentially shut down life as we know it in March 2020, announced its official theme “Pride is …”, encouraging participants to fill in the blank with an appropriate response. While those responses could span a spectrum from “Pride is Personal” to “Pride is Universal”

66 | SHEPHERD EXPRESS

Photo by Michael Burmesch.

and almost anything in between, in these days of relentless attacks from the right on LGBTQ equality, I believe “Pride is a Political Act.” As it happens, for Wisconsin’s LGBTQ community, Pride 2022 marks some significant historical moments in our progress to equality. It is the 25th

Anniversary of the annual June PrideFest at Henry Maier Festival Park. The move there in 1996 was a significant achievement not only for the Milwaukee’s LGBTQ community but also for the city itself that, by including PrideFest in the lakefront festival line-up as part of World Festival’s Inc, raised its embrace of equality for all. To its great credit, through

Background by SophonK/Getty Images.


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