More than 20,000 people gathered in Downtown San Jose over the weekend to celebrate the end of Silicon Valley’s Pride Festival. Since 1976, the week-long festival has celebrated the LGBTQ+ community and their allies, with this year’s being the largest gathering prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The week’s events culminated with the parade and day festival on Sunday. Floats from more than eighty organizations, businesses and coalitions passed down Market street, with the final stop at Plaza de Cesar Chavez. LGBTQ+ members and allies paraded down the street carrying signs, banners and flags, rallying support and cheer from onlookers.
Members of the queer community came together to celebrate being “proudly authentic,” the theme of this year’s Pride. The week-long event included drag bingo, a cook-off and the annual Pride flag raising at San Jose City Hall.
“Events like [Silicon Valley Pride] are essential because you get to see all this support in the community that exists,” said Bonnie Sugiyama, the director of SJSU’s PRIDE Center, which was a sponsor for the festival. “For me, when I was younger going to pride, it meant seeing all these different types of folks that existed and are able to exist in our society, and that was really important for me.”
For many, that was the first Pride celebration since the pandemic shut down the nation, putting a hold on the colorful vibrant voices of the LGBTQ+ community.
“COVID, in many ways, was difficult for a lot of students who basically had to come back into the closet, and go home to unsupportive families,” Sugiyama said. “The pandemic forced many queer students who were living on campus to move back home, as in-person classes and events were cancelled.”
That created a challenging situation for SJSU students who felt safer on campus than with their families.
For some students, it was their first time at Silicon Valley Pride.
“Today was my first time being in the parade, it was amazing seeing all the faces and all the support,” said Meg Ross, forensic science junior and member of the PRIDE Center.
Ross believes that Pride is an event for all people, not just the LGBTQ+ community.
“People can learn. It’s 100% important for everyone to be educated on LGBT issues and be educated on our concerns and also our identities” she said. “Even queer people can learn new things.”
As events including Pride became possible again, many members of the LGTBQ+ community finally had an opportunity to be themselves in an incredibly welcoming environment.
“In some ways, it was good for some people,” Sugiyama said. “A lot of people were coming out because they had time to sit with their feelings and find out who they were. A lot of people emerged and came out in recent years because of the pandemic.”
“I’ve known I was gay since I was like 10 [years old] and I’ve worked at San Jose State for 25 years, I come out every single year,” said Sonja Lilienthal, adjunct faculty member of the College of Science. Lilienthal attended in the PRIDE Center parade float.
Ross, Lilienthal and Sugiyama all participated in the parade and helped support the SJSU PRIDE booth, which served as both a showcase for the center as well as a gathering place for SJSU students. The booth handed out free Pride flags, buttons and t-shirts as promotions for the campus organization.
Plaza de Cesar Chavez was transformed into a small festival center following the end of the parade. Tents lined the sidewalks of the park, full of small businesses and large corporations.
Queer-owned businesses sold handmade jewelry, handed out zines and held live art demonstrations. The mainstage became a showcase for a wide variety of traditional music and performance art.
”Events like [Silicon Valley Pride] are essential because you get to see all this support in the community that exists,” Sugiyama said.
