Cleveland Pride

   Cleveland Pride started as a stressful day for me. I was taking a group from the Center up to Cleveland to march in the parade and to have a booth at the festival, but I wasn't entirely sure who was going. Some people had backed out the day before, and I was worried that we wouldn't have enough people. Contrary to my worries, everything turned out wonderfully!    More people showed up in the morning than I thought would, and we headed on up to Cleveland. We checked into the festival and got our booth set up. A call from my mom brought us heading down to the march starting point where my mom happily joined the few of us that were marching. I had thought that since there weren't a lot of us that perhaps we shouldn't march. But I was determined to have Akron represented in the march. The coolest thing was that as we walked along, people would come out of the crowd exclaiming that they were so glad to see people from Akron that they wanted to come march with us. By the time we got to the end of the march, 4 people had turned into 20! Very cool... Next year we need to bring candy to throw.    The festival was very good as well. I spent some time trying to get back to the booth, as they wouldn't let my mom through the beer garden without her ID. Once we got there, everything was already running so I hung out with my mom for awhile. We ate hot dogs and fried veggies, and shopped the (extremely) crowded walkways for rainbow stuff. How cool is it that my mom came and marched in the parade and hung out with me at the festival? How lucky am I? After she left I went back to the booth and helped out there for the rest of the day. We had a lot of people stop by asking questions and wanting to know more about the Center. I very much enjoyed talking with everyone, and also getting to hang out with fellow volunteers from the Center.    Save for the craziness at the beer garden, I had a very positive experience this year at Pride. I know people say that Pride celebrations are often a distraction for the LGBT rights movement, but they serve a purpose. They bring the community together, help disperse information to everyone, and hey, it's a big party.