Rainbow-clad participants marched from Kennedy Elementary to Levee Park on Saturday, June 8, for the fourth annual Hastings Pride Festival. The event was hosted by the nonprofit Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity Alliance (IDEA). The parade consisted of police escort for floats, cars, bikes, and walkers who walked down Tyler Street to the festival where vendors, food trucks, games, music, and other events were taking place.
Among other speakers at the event, City Councilor Jen Fox mentioned how parade participants said they were impressed by the “smiling faces and big hearts,” shown by the Hastings community.
The Pride Festival and parade started in 2020 as a way to foster community during the COVID-19 Pandemic, especially within the BIPoC and LGBTQ+ communities.
“The main thing people were feeling during that time was discontent,” said IDEA Co-founder and Executive Director Marta Tierney.
An open-air festival and parade offered the chance to be together within a community while still maintaining social distance.
Tierney estimates that roughly 800 people attended the first parade and festival. Since then, the event’s popularity has only grown.
“It just kept snowballing,” said Tierney.
Previous year’s parades were so popular people ran out of space along parade routes to park and watch the floats go by. That popularity was part of the reason the parade route changed this year.
Many local businesses like the 2nd Street Depot and even national brands like Redbull became sponsors for this year’s event.
“There is a lot of support and a lot of businesses and community members who have been really supportive,” said Tierney.
IDEA is a nonprofit civil rights organization “dedicated to challenging systemic barriers, injustice, discrimination, bias, inequality and outright hate that is found today towards BIPoC and LGBTQ+ members,” according to their website. The nonprofit was founded in 2020 as a direct response to the murder of George Floyd. During that time, “it kind of just became apparent that there are a lot of voices that we are lacking in the community,” said Tierney. IDEA became a way to not only support those voices, but to amplify them within the Hastings community.
To learn more about IDEA visit their website at https://www.ideaorganization.org/