Tag Archive: pride

  1. What’s the Plan?

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    In my office hangs a copy of the oldest known San Diego Pride budget. We had a deficit of one dollar. 90% of our income came from button sales. The year was 1975, the first year to have a permitted Pride Parade, but not the first year of Pride in San Diego. I love having that piece of history hanging next to me as I work every day. It reminds me of the legacy gifted to us by the pioneers of our movement – those early struggles and successes of our community as it fought legal oppression, societal norms, and too often internally.

    Ad hoc committees would come together each year to produce Pride Parades and Rallies that eventually added a festival. In 1989, Christine Kehoe, Neil Good, and others in our community decided to take Pride in a more professional direction and San Diego Pride became the first Pride in the world to hire an Executive Director, Tim Williams. Together they helped us become our own nonprofit in 1994, a year that marked the beginning of the Parade route and Festival location most people will find familiar.

    In 2011 San Diego Pride hired our first Black Executive Director, Dwayne Crenshaw. The board, ED, and staff at the time shared a vision of utilizing the power of Pride’s visibility, economic strength, and volunteer base to turn the organization into a year-round education and advocacy organization. In 2016 the board and staff redoubled that commitment by creating a strategic plan that would guide our expansion and service to the community. In just the last 11 years we’ve quintupled the size of our staff, budget, and festival attendance. We’ve become the most philanthropic Pride in the world and have over 40 year-round programs with local, national, and international reach.

    What’s next?

    Throughout this year we have been soliciting feedback from community members, event attendees, volunteers, programs, nonprofit community partners, entertainers, sponsors, elected officials, government agencies, and anyone connected to the organization. We want to hear from you. If you haven’t yet completed our 2022 Strategic Plan Survey please do so before you go to sleep this Sunday, August 7, 2022. Over the next few months, we’ll evaluate all the feedback and data we’ve collected from the last year to help us map out the road ahead. It is truly an honor to be a small part of the continuum of this movement and organization and serve alongside so many driven and dedicated people. When I joined Pride over 11 years ago I couldn’t have imagined all that we would become, and I’m excited to envision who we will become in the future as we pursue Justice with Joy.

    With Pride,
    Fernando Z. López
    Pronouns: they/them/theirs
    Executive Director
    San Diego Pride

    San Diego Pride logo with various pictures in background

    Public Health Notice

    Recent outbreaks of viral monkeypox disease require our community’s attention. Learn more about the signs, symptoms, prevention, and treatment here.

    Printable flyers are available in the link above so you can help educate our community.

    San Diego County now has a text update system to provide you with the latest Monkeypox information including vaccine availability.

    Sign up by texting “COSD MONKEYPOX” to 468-311.

  2. Join Give OUT Day!

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    Your Pride, our Pride, here in San Diego is truly something special. Not only are we a massive beautiful celebration and protest of LGBTQ art, culture, issues, and resources, but support for those events is what also helps to fund our ever-growing year-round programs. Nearly every single event and program we produce for Pride season and all year long are free and open to the public. Even our Festival is free for youth, seniors, and those most in need. The work, however, requires financial investment. 

    When COVID-19 took away our organization’s main source of income I have to admit that I was terrified at first, but our community quickly showed that they had our back. It’s been inspiring to watch the number of people who donate to Pride grow over the last two years. Because of you, we have been able to sustain and grow our programs and reach more LGBTQ community members than ever before.

    This year we’re again joining Give OUT Day, a national call to action to support LGBTQ nonprofits like San Diego Pride. Our goal today is to raise $56,000!

    You can help!

    • You can donate and thanks to one of our sponsors, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, they’ll match every dollar up to $5,000 – so every dollar you give is DOUBLED up to $5,000! 
    • You can share the word about Pride’s Give OUT Day campaign today, that same social media took kit is there to help!

    Our Pride has grown, expanded, and diversified over the past several years thanks to the hard legacy-building work of our Stonewall generation and current intergenerational community volunteers donating time every day. I hope you will join us this Give OUT Day by sustaining that work and our programs with a donation. Every dollar helps us continue serving our community as we create Justice with Joy!

    With Pride,
    Fernando Zweifach López
    Pronouns: They/Them/Theirs
    Executive Director
    San Diego Pride

  3. Kesha Coming Out To Support San Diego Pride

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    Kesha Photo 2San Diego Pride is thrilled to announce that multi-platinum artist Kesha will be headlining Saturday night at San Diego’s Pride Music Festival.

    Kesha has used her international fame as a platform to educate others about the LGBT community, highlight inequality, and empower others to be themselves unapologetically.

    Her 2010 anthem “We R Who We R” was a response to the wave of LGBT teen suicides hitting the media at the time.

    “I am beyond excited to perform at San Diego Pride this year. We have come a long way with the equal rights movement, but we have so much more work to do. In my home state of Tennessee they recently passed anti-lgbt legislation – it’s another reminder that groups like Pride are so important, and I’m honored to be part of San Diego Pride’s event on July 16. I’ll never stop fighting for people who just want to be able to express themselves freely for who they are,” said Kesha.

    “Each year our community volunteers work tirelessly to put on the best event possible, and this year we are honored to bring an advocate and artist of this caliber to San Diego Pride,” said Stephen Whitburn, San Diego Pride executive director.

    San Diego’s Pride Music Festival will take place July 16-17, 2016, in Balboa Park, and will include 96 acts across a main stage, a Latin stage, a Hip Hop stage, and an 80’s/90’s stage.

    New to the event this year will be a free area called the Rainbow Zone, which will house many of Pride’s LGBT serving non-profit organizations that will help connect community members with vital resources, such as youth and senior services, women’s health care, HIV testing, sobriety support, and more.

    Kesha’s first album, “Animal,” debuted at number one in the United States in 2010. She has two number-one singles, including “We R Who We R” and “Tik Tok.” In 2012, Kesha’s second album, “Warrior,” brought her an eighth top-ten single, “Die Young.” Kesha has been nominated for over 60 awards and has been recognized for her both her musical talent and her LGBT advocacy.

    Click here for tickets!