Hundreds packed the Piedmont Park pool to raise money for people with HIV
The first-ever East Side Pride drew a diverse crowd to Clarkston’s Milam Park on Saturday for an afternoon of cooking out, dancing, lawn games and playing on the playground — all while building community for LGBT people who live east of Atlanta.
“I think this year’s picnic was a great launching point,” said Lorrie King, organizer of East Side Pride with her husband, Clarkston City Councilmember Adam White.
King estimated that as many as 125 people dropped in over the course of the afternoon, including several who said they had to see with their own eyes a Pride event in the eastern suburb.
Neighborhoods east of Atlanta put on first-ever Pride festival
Stonewall Week concludes with today’s brunch, rally, picnic and more
Remember Derrick Martin, the Cochran, Ga., teen who made headlines for taking his boyfriend to his rural high school senior...
Film showing coincides with Atlanta's Stonewall Week
For some, Marietta and Cobb County still carry the stigma of 1993, when the Cobb County Commission made international headlines with a resolution condemning the “gay lifestyle” as incompatible with community standards.
But much has changed in Cobb over the last 17 years. The gay bar LeBuzz continues to draw a steady crowd, and a gay man, Johnny Sinclair, serves on the Marietta City Council.
Grammy winner Thelma Houston closed out the stage for Augusta Pride on June 19, but there was one more inspiring moment awaiting the hundreds who withstood the withering heat to be there for the festival’s finale.
As Augusta Pride organizers took the microphone to thank attendees and celebrate the success of the city’s first-ever gay Pride, a faint rainbow arched across the sky.
“That was like a sign from God,” Augusta Pride President Isaac Kelly said.
Some 41 years ago this weekend, a ragtag group of gay street youth, drag queens, dykes and transgender people fought back against a police raid at New York City’s Stonewall Inn.
The 1969 uprising is widely viewed as launching the modern gay rights movement, igniting a more radical approach than the fledgling “homophile” movement that was already quietly underway.
By the next June, cities began hosting rallies and celebrations to mark the anniversary of Stonewall, creating the Gay Pride events that continue to this day.
“Before Stonewall” ended with the Stonewall Riots. “After Stonewall” began with them. Those documentaries from 1984 and 1999 respectively were reissued in a two-DVD set for Pride Month.
“Stonewall Uprising” sounds like it might have been called “During Stonewall,” but an opening title reveals the scarcity of photos and film footage of the actual events. Instead the new documentary uses reenactments and generic materials from the period, in addition to interviews with those involved.
Based in part on David Carter’s book “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution” (with Carter helping vet the interviewees), “Stonewall Uprising” is mostly a variation on “Before Stonewall.” Except for a brief introduction the June 28, 1969, raid that triggers the riots doesn’t occur until 50 minutes into the film. The last half-hour is about the raid, the riots and the aftermath.
The “Out & OutLoud: Stories of Atlanta's LGBTQ Community” event at Radial Café Wednesday night, part of Atlanta Pride Stonewall Week and WABE 90.1 FM’s StoryCorps project, began with a sweet “coming out” story.
The event’s host, John Lemley, who also hosts WABE’s City Café weekdays from noon to 1 p.m., shared with the crowd that he had an exchange of emails prior to the event with Dave Hayward, a local gay historian. Hayward asked Lemley if he was going to come out as gay at the StoryCorps LGBTQ event. Well, Lemley said, if people didn’t already know he is gay, he asked, “Are we headless?”
The crowd responded with laughter and applause.
But it was the stories of local LGBTQ residents who recorded their stories with the Atlanta StoryCorps project that were the true highlights of the evening.