The City of Fall River held its annual Pride Month flag raising ceremony on June 1, 2023, to kick off Pride Month. Mayor Paul Coogan presented a proclamation officially declaring June as LGBTQ Pride Month in Fall River, affirming the city's commitment to cherishing the dignity of all people, appreciating equality, and denouncing prejudice. Sean Connell, a key organizer, announced the upcoming fourth annual Fall River Pride Festival, to be held at the gates of the city, rain or shine. Several speakers from the Fall River Pride committee shared their perspectives. Jameson, Mx LGBT, spoke about Pride as a rejection of shame and a call for liberation for all. Rachel Loomis, Networking and Public Outreach Executive, delivered a powerful historical account of the pink triangle and the persecution of gay men during the Holocaust, emphasizing the importance of remembering past struggles. Ren Perry, Vice President of the committee, discussed the significance of empathy, privilege, and community support, and the dual nature of Pride as both a celebration and a protest. Sean Connell concluded the speaking program by highlighting the Fall River Pride committee's work, including remembrance walks, drag story times, fundraising, and building bridges with local agencies and faith-based institutions. He shared a personal story about the importance of creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth to thrive. The event culminated in the ceremonial raising of the Pride flag at the Fall River Government Center, symbolizing the city's stand against bigotry and ignorance.
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Council
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all right hello my friends I am so so happy and honored to be here today to kick off June 1st 2023's pride month so um I don't wanna I'm not gonna keep us here for too too long we have a couple of speakers I want to share some stories with the LGBT community why we're here why this matters but first I want to call up our partner in crime here with the city of Oliver mayor Coogan
0:31I will um I first of all I want to thank everyone for coming out today we're going to have a great Festival this weekend and we hope people get a chance to go by the gates last year I was able to present a proclamation declaring June as pride month in our city and today I'm happy to be here to kick off pride month with the Fall River Pride committee and other elected officials and members of the
0:53community as a city when we raise the flag we celebrate the journey we have taken towards acceptance and equality we are also reminded that we still have more work to do to continue providing resources and safe spaces for lgbtq people as well as all the people in our city as your mayor I will continue to make sure this is a city where everyone belongs and no one should ever feel discriminated against and to that end
1:21I want to present my longtime friend Sean with a proclamation which basically States the city of Fall River cherishes and values the Dignity of all people and appreciates the importance of equality and freedom where we are all welcome in our city to live work play and every family in any shape deserves a place to call home where they will feel safe happy and supported by friends and neighbors the
1:45city of Fall River denounces Prejudice and unfair discrimination based on age gender identity gender expression race color religion marital status national origin sexual orientation or physical attributes as an affront to our fundamental principles in Fall River and the City of Fall River also appreciates the cultural Civic and economic contributions of the lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer plus
2:13lgbtq Community which strengthen our social welfare and it is imperative that young people in our community regardless of their sexual orientation gender identity and expression feels valued safe empowered and supported by their peers and Community leaders now therefore I Paul Coogan mayor of the city of Fall River do hereby Proclaim June as lgbtq pride month in the city of Fall River I wish you all a great Festival
2:42this weekend I will definitely be there and I congratulate you on your efforts in the city of Fall River and I want to present this to my good friend Sean Connell thank you back to you thank you thank you so yeah so as you guys know our Fall River pride festival our fourth annual we got two big two bold and we had to move down to the gates of the city yes we are
3:06monitoring the weather but we are going to continue to go on rain or shine as long as it doesn't pour us out because it's a celebration as much as it is a protest and to those ends I want to invite a couple of speakers from my committee up first up I want to introduce mix MX which is our gender neutral pronoun part of our lgbtq Royal Court Jameson
3:37hello everyone and thank you for being here with us today my name thank you my name is Jameson and I am followers current reigning mix LGBT as most of you know June is recognized as pride month widely around the world the word pride is a rejection of the shame put on to us queer people throughout history it is a choice to proudly Proclaim Who We Are Pride to me is about waking up in the
4:05morning and choosing to live my life for me it's about living my life with courage and joy it's about celebrating differences in community with others without the fear of being judged or harmed for who you are I'd like to share a quote from Stone Butch blues that I hope will inspire others in our community during these dark times I'm not saying we'll live to see some sort of paradise but just fighting for
4:30Change Makes You Stronger not hoping for anything will kill you for sure take a chance you're already wondering if the world could change try imagining a world worth living in and then ask yourself if that isn't worth fighting for you've come too far to give up on Hope I ask you all to think of something you can do this month to show your pride and to support those who cannot do so safely
4:56there is no Pride for some of us without Liberation for all of us thank you so much Jamie and I would like to Quick up another one of my executive board members Rachel
5:17hello my name is Rachel Loomis I'm the networking and public Outreach executive for Fall River Pride committee uh most people with any knowledge of the Holocaust recognize the pink triangle and what it represents it was the gay men's yellow star branding them unacceptable Unworthy of Hitler and his acolytes New World Order but while many of us might know what the triangle represents a few of us are
5:42alive today who remember what the story of what it actually means before Hitler's rise to power Germany had the most thriving gay culture in Europe bars nightclubs Community groups even an Institute on sexuality and gender before 1933 securing lgbtq equality in Germany appeared to be a foregone conclusion then the Nazis came to power because of their biased rhetoric and the way it prayed on the worst part of human
6:09nature the safety and freedoms enjoyed by the lgbtq Germans vanished almost overnight the pink triangle represents the stories of more than 100 000 gay men that were rounded up after the Third Reich strength in paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code criminalizing any sexual act between men of those one hundred thousand as many as fifteen thousand were sent to concentration camps and
6:32it's estimated that by the end of the war upwards of ten thousand had perished an unknown but likely significant portion to Suicide some historians even believe that the numbers of persecuted and dead are significantly higher but as with much of our community's history the biases of the time LED leading researchers and historians to erase lgbtq individuals from the narrative the cruelties visited on these victims
6:56and survivors make for a nauseating read few survive to tell their own stories viewers still felt safe and deserving enough to speak of it those who did describe unspeakable brutality Pierce Steele a gay Holocaust Survivor from Nazi occupied France describes being interrogated tortured and forced to watch his lover mauled by a pack of dogs all before the age of 18.
7:20straight and gay cyber vibers alike reported that the Nazis treated gay men worse than any other group saved Jews they refers to forced to work harder labor for longer hours under the belief that it would cure them Nazi scientists took a different approach castrating and experimenting on them in their disgusting search for a cure these men were beaten often to death and not only by the guards other
7:43prisoners participated in the violence one concentration camp isolated them in so-called blocks to prevent them from mixing with the other prisoners helpless and hated they were subjected to everything from verbal abuse to torture and murder another Survivor known by the pseudonym Hines heiger recalled inmates at the same camp people accused of heinous crimes like murder calling them filthy
8:05queer and 175er he recalled gay men having to sleep with their hands above the blanket unless they be forced outside even in Winter to have buckets of water thrown over them another account from 1941 details the forcible drowning of two gay men in a bathroom and worst of all isn't what happened to these men during the war no the worst part is that their persecution didn't end with the war because while the pink
8:29triangle tells the stories of the lives torn apart by the cruelty of those years ago to represent the lives that Hitler's regime continued to destroy long after the ink dried on the Paris peace treaty because while 1945 marked a chance to heal and rebuild for most of the survivors but the lgbtq community the end of The Nightmare wouldn't come for another 47 years paragraph 175 toughened the penalties
8:52for homosexuality while broadening the scope of the law under Hitler's right good people primarily primarily good men suffered from the perceived crime of loving someone of the same sex and these men's punishment didn't end when the alley swept through in 1945. even after Liberation gay men left the camps convicted criminals some were even forced to serve out their full sentence
9:13in German prisons the Nazi era amendment to paragraph 175 endured for another two decades in West Germany and the law itself wasn't abolished entirely until June of 1994.
9:25pink lists were created lgbtq West Germans were forced to back into the shadows and survivors of the camp were forced to stay silent at a fear of persecution in the two decades that the harsher paragraph 175 remained unaltered a law strengthened and enforced by war criminals the country initiated around a hundred thousand further proceedings against gay men and this was after the
9:47official end of the Holocaust in World War II it wasn't until the 1970s that victims began speaking out and it wasn't until 2017 that the German boonstog voted to Pardon and compensate the survivors of paragraph 175.
10:01so what does the pink triangle mean like the yellow star like our pride flag and like the celebrations throughout the month of June it's a reminder a reminder that we stand here today because of the struggle and the tenacity of victims and survivors some whose names and stories we will never know who suffered horrible Injustice and stood against it who fought lost and started fighting again we belong to
10:26communities built on their backs the pink triangle is a reminder to honor that sacrifice to remember separately and collectively that the goal this and other symbols remind us to strive towards never again thank you so much Rachel and uh we have one last speaker before I make some closing remarks and that is my good friend and vice president of the fall of a pride committee Ren
11:01hello everyone my name is Ren Perry I am the vice president of the Fall River Pride committee uh so I want to start off by saying I went back and forth about how to approach this speech what mood I should set how cautious I should be became a ping pong match in my mind in the end the only thing I knew for sure was to be honest about my plans for the future
11:24someday I'd like to buy a small house with my partner where we can live with our pets and create a warm and loving home with a basement for a shared man cave for our hobbies and maybe a pool in the backyard allowing us to invite our chosen family to come over have fun and be themselves we still have many goals to accomplish before we can get there but honestly that feels so far away when
11:50surviving becomes harder and harder each day I could talk about all the ways that things have been a consistent struggle for me but instead I remind myself of something else despite all the chaos I'm privileged in many other aspects and this isn't just about me when it comes to privilege I think it's easier for many people to say to themselves I do care about circumstances that are
12:15disproportionately out of whack for said marginalized communities but every time I try to help it feels like I always mess up or why should I get involved in someone else's business it's a lot harder to say I'm sorry let's try again and how can I do better or I'll be more mindful instead of those second statements being spoken defensiveness comes out when somebody's learning to do better
12:41when it comes to these moments it was Plato that said the highest form of knowledge is empathy for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world the more I learn about lgbtq plus history I am proud of how far we've come but saddened by how much has stayed the same or become worse around the country I am aware and thankful that the state of Massachusetts has been a safe state
13:04for lgbtq plus folks in law right here in Fall River we've had a tremendous outpour of compassion support despite all the bigotry we've also faced here I believed at this Pride was a possibility with all support and compromises that have been made to get us here by the city of Fall River and all of our friends and allies Pride isn't just about only having a fun party where we can all hang out a good
13:31portion of lgbtq plus people LGBT sorry everyone lgbtq lgbtq plus people are on a widely opposing ends of how they feel about getting better access to not just fundamental rights but how we live our day-to-day lives at Pride though that's a place where we can come together and not have to explain any of that or do the opposite in a neutral place it's a common ground of Mines where we remember
14:03where we came from right now when the past is becoming more and more the future and not in a good way I think we need as many people to come together and support no matter where we stand uh there are a couple of songs that really speak to the larger encompassing portions of our community you may know somewhere over the rainbow with our famous Ally Judy Garland singing it there's another one that I'd
14:26like to end the speech with as my final words that have been sung by Ben E King to Florence in the machine if the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall or the mountains should crumble to the sea I won't cry I won't cry no I won't shed a tear just as you stand stand by me thank you
14:52so um as we kind of bring our our speaking program to a conclusion here I just wanted to make a few remarks and I can't thank you all enough for coming to the Annual Pride flag raising I want to thank the city of Fall River and mayor Paul Coogan for his unwavering support of the LGBT community I need us to remember that pride is as much of a celebration as it is a protest
15:13the celebration reminds us of how far we've come the protest continues because of how far we still have to go pride month is a time of reflection and as I reflect on the past year and the year ahead I am unbelievably inspired and so proud of the work of the fall over Pride committee has accomplished we walked along the boardwalk in remembrance of our fallen trans siblings we've hosted drag story times in spite
15:41of the hate the bigotry and the lies perpetrated against us at those events we've raised funds we've joined coalitions we've built Bridges we've worked with multiple local agencies and we've even partnered with local churches in an attempt to heal Rifts between the queer community and faith-based institutions now I'm not going to please everybody I tend to disappoint sometimes I was just told today that I
16:08disappointed local committee members because of my Outreach efforts but unity means all and Healing Begins when we roll up our sleeves and we do the soul work required for a brighter future when I was a kid I never imagined myself speaking to a crowd of local officials when my weird little gay lisp and my friends and people from the Community Partners to talk about gender and sexuality and and pride month I never
16:36thought I would wear a dress in public and not be endlessly harassed and feel more Pride than I feel shame and guilt but all of that was a journey and here I am doing just that we here at the pride committee we're striving hard to be the adults that we needed When We Were Young we received this all the time why do you work with kids why did you do drag Story Time why
16:59work with young people as a personal story I wanted to end my life when I was 12. I was 12 years old and I'd already had enough shame in my mind that I didn't want to live so if I could feel that level of Shame and pain and guilt at 12 years old than it is suffice to say that younger than that starts to develop who they are and starts to figure out who they want
17:25to be in their authentic bodies and skins but yet we're constantly told that we're wrong that it's a phase that there's something that we'll grow out of that if you try to transition or you want to change your social gender or your social identities that you're making a grave mistake that God hates you all of these other things that we have heard every single day of Our Lives
17:49so to take a moment to be at Fall River Government Center the seat the heart of government here in our little city and watch a mayor give us a proclamation watch this progress flag raise above us to say we do not stand for bigotry we do not stand for fear and we do not kowtow to ignorance we are here because we survived and as survivors it is our right to pay to
18:16forge forward the path so the Next Generation can not only just focus on Surviving but on thriving and on becoming a community that is as much a part of the fabric of this city as every other community and we do so together thank you so much for being here today and for hearing our stories and for understanding how important it is to the youth the forward to the young queer
18:41people out there who are watching us and US leading the way to create the safe spaces that are so desperately needed so we can heal grow and move all of us forward as one thank you so much I would love to have you guys join me for the flag raising to take some photos and thank you so much all right which one of my friends want to help me raise the flag come on Friends
19:10don't be shy