Dear Pride Family,
Pride leaders from around the world are about to descend on our beautiful city!
In 1981, just 12 years after the Stonewall Riots, San Diego Pride board member Doug Moore created the most comprehensive list of Pride organizers from around the country, and from that list in 1982 half a dozen Pride organizations met in Boston. In 1983, the Pride Coordinator’s National Conference was held in San Diego as our movement’s activists and organizations made efforts to share strategies, resources, and best practices.
Over the years these early efforts grew into what is now called InterPride, a global organization that connects and uplifts LGBTQ activists and Pride organizers around the world, hosts an annual conference, oversees the WorldPride bid, provides grants to LGBTQ human rights work around the world, conducts research on the international Pride movement, and recently received Consultative Status with the United Nations.
In 2020 when Prides, as we knew them, came to a standstill, InterPride helped bring together organizers from 163 countries to produce the 27-hour virtual Global Pride celebration viewed by over 57 million people. Our staff and volunteers took an incredible leadership role in helping to make that possible.
With our international focus and partnership with the San Diego Diplomacy Council and the Department of State, we have met with 609 delegates from 142 countries around the world. In fact, this last month we hosted one of their fellows from Turkey who is doing inspiring LGBTQ justice work in their country. Through this international exchange program, we’ve also been able to send our staff to other countries to assist with organizational capacity building.
Between speakers, volunteers, entertainers, and activists we’ll be hosting around 500 people from around 40 countries and 190 cities around the world. We’ll have visitors from all across Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Denmark, El Salvador, Germany, Ghana, Guinea, Haiti, India, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Liberia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Zambia.
If you’d like to join us, registration is still open and we’re also looking for volunteers to help out. Social passes are available for folks who just want to get to know our international guests without going to the entire conference. You can see what those exciting events are here. It’s an honor to be a small part of this LGBTQ global network-building legacy and I’m so grateful to each of you and all of our predecessors who made this work possible. It’s over 40 years of collective action that has helped InterPride and a world of Pride Family Thrive!
With Pride,
Fernando Z. López
Pronouns: they/them/theirs
Executive Director
San Diego Pride
Fernando Lopez was the Executive Director of San Diego Pride. Lopez’s years of LGBT advocacy, nonprofit management, public education, diversity consulting, media relations, guest lectures, and organizing have made them a consistent presence ensuring the struggles of the LGBT community are ever visible.
