Events

Oakland Holds Pride Festival and Parade

Published

10 years ago

August 26, 2014

Oakland’s Pride is stepping out from under San Francisco’s shadow.

Celebrating its fifth year, Oakland Pride festival and Parade, Northern California’s 2^nd largest Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride celebration, will take place Sunday, Aug. 31, Labor day week end 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The parade starts at 10:30 a.m. at Broadway and 14^th Street. The festival runs from 11 .m. to 7 p.m. at Broadway and 20^th Street.

This year, and for the first time ever, Oakland Pride will produce a LGBT Pride Parade in the city. Event organizers are expecting over 50,000 attendees who will come to enjoy the parade, multiple entertainment stages with over 50 artists and over 100 food, beverage and community information booths, children’s play area, a wedding pavilion, senior seating, community health pavilion, bicycle parking, easy BART access (19th Street Bart), and more in Northern California’s

2014 Oakland Pride Celebrity Grand Marshal Sheila E.

most diverse LGBTQ city.

After a six-year absence, Oakland Pride’s revival in 2010 had been years in the making. In 2008, out lesbian and then mayoral candidate Rebecca Kaplan captured the at-large seat on the City Council and reconstituted the LGBT roundtable to work on gay specific issues in Oakland.

One of the group’s main objectives was to see Oakland Pride’s celebration reborn.

Oakland has been recognized as having the sixth largest LGBTQ population in the nation, with the largest percentage of African American LGBTQ people in the Bay Area. Oakland is noted as having the second highest number of same sex couples in the nation and is home to the largest concentration of lesbians in America.

Pride is an affirmation of one’s self and the community as a whole. Pride’s movement began after Stonewall riots in New York, 1969, when groups of gay people, mostly transgendered people in local bars stood up to unconstitutional raids by New York Police.

2014 Oakland Pride Legacy Grand Marshall, Joe Hawkins

2014 Oakland Pride Legacy Grand Marshal, Joe Hawkins

Today, many countries around the world celebrate LGBT Pride.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and The East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club will host their 2^nd Annual Oakland Pride Breakfast. Assembly member Tom Ammiano will be given a Pride award for his commitment to the LGBTQ community. Oakland’s first parade Grand Marshals will be recognized: Celebrity Grand Marshal Sheila E, Legacy Grand Marshal nightclub promoter Joe Hawkins and Youth Grand Marshal Lirio Zepeda.

Oakland Pride will connect LGBTQ community members to essential services and programs, including HIV prevention, support for persons of color, women, seniors/elders, youth, people with disabilities, Transgender services and support groups.

The AIDS project of the East bay, a leader in providing HIV prevention, will unveil a newly wrapped mobile testing unit sponsored by the CDC’s “Testing Makes Us Stronger” campaign,

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Related Topics:City of Oakland LGBTQ Oakland Oakland Pride Pride Parade rebecca kaplan

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Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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1 day ago

November 1, 2024

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Oakland Post: Week of October 23 – 29, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 23 – 29, 2024

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1 week ago

October 26, 2024

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Arts and Culture

Soaring Birds and Towering Waves Greet Attendees at 29th Annual Maafa Commemoration at Ocean Beach

The 29th Annual MAAFA Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area was held at Ocean Beach, Sunday, Oct. 13. Warm and cloudy with waves as high as tall buildings, we gathered to honor African ancestors who died by the millions over the centuries of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Published

2 weeks ago

October 21, 2024

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Ayikwei H. Scott (drummer standing), Dr. Uzo Nwankpa (seated), Iya Nefertina Abrams (in background), unnamed participant to the left. Next frame: co-founder, Sister Wanda Sabir at mic. MAAFA winged chorus (center frame). We are singing the MAAFA song Brotha Clint composed. Chorus: Sister Wanda and Antwuanette Queen-Pope, Brother Desmond Iman, Baba Darinxoso Oyamasela. Minister Alisha Teasley (Lower right). Photo montage by Zochi.

By Wanda Sabir

Special to The Post

The 50 or so children and adults attending Maafa, Kiswahili word meaning ‘great disaster,’ came from as far as Monterey and Sacramento to just up the block. We all felt the ancestors’ ethereal embrace as Min. Imhotep and Min. Alicia of Wo’Se Community Church poured libations and invited us to call their names with our mouths, feet, and hands.

Birds on the beach lifted their wings in flight moving towards us and flying overhead the way legends say African ancestors flew away from plantation fields. Their collective Aṣé!

The theme for the 29^th Maafa event was accountability and as Zochi led us through Mu-i (pronounced moo-ee, a movement meditation) we embraced our power from our roots through our crown chakras. Dr. Uzo Nwankpa, a healer in residence at Freedom Community Clinic, taught us the Igbo war chant —“Eyinmba” which was also an embodied movement.

Our ancestral poet this year was Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911), born in Baltimore to free parents. She was a poet, abolitionist, suffragist, educator, and freedom fighter who lived in Philadelphia.
“It’s time to be a grown person,” Wanda Sabir, Maafa CEO stated. “Own up, fess up, get righteous. Accountability means we don’t blame others for our poor choices and their consequences. We don’t blame the system, genetic weakness, structural racism, poverty of the soul, families of origin, peer pressure, ignorance….
“We are more than the worse thing we have suffered. We are more than what our ancestors survived.
“Our ancestors do not want us to be functional. Our ancestors want us to be free.”
The drummers were phenomenal, and the section of the program open to reflections was filled with song, poetry, dance and prayers. A special treat was “Amkara Music” by Karamo Susso and Amina Janta, who will perform at Bissap Baobab in San Francisco on Oct. 20.
Join us for a Zoom dialogue on adrienne maree brown’s article, “Murmations: Love Looks Like Accountability” (Yes! Magazine, 7/25/22): Sunday, Nov. 10, 2-4 pm PT. Register in advance: MaafaSFBayArea.com, 510-397-9705. Here is the MAAFA 2024 program (https://qr1.be/CPFI).