Year In Review | 2011 Highlights: Bed-Stuy Pride
Check out some of ELIXHER’s highlights from 2011! Earlier this year, the Audre Lorde Project hosted the first annual Bed-Stuy Pride. ELIXHER spoke to program coordinator Chelsea Johnson-Long about the importance of Pride in the Brooklyn neighborhood and we were on the ground the day of the event.
Bed-Stuy Pride: Celebrating Self And Community
For decades, Bedford-Stuyvesant (more commonly known as Bed-Stuy) has been a cultural hub for Brooklyn’s Black population. While White faces trickle into the neighborhood and quaint coffee shops and wine bars pop up along the brownstone-lined blocks, one thing that has always been here and will remain is its Black queer community.
“There’s a misconception in Bed-Stuy that queer folks are gentrifiers, which is completely untrue,” explains Chelsea Johnson-Long, coordinator for a program of the Audre Lorde Project called the Safe OUTside the System Collective (SOS). “There are plenty of queer people who grew up in Bed-Stuy,” she adds. This is one of the many myths SOS, an anti-violence program that operates and serves lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, trans and gender non-conforming (LGBTSTGNC) people of color in central-Brooklyn, seeks to dispel with Bed-Stuy Pride.
Bed-Stuy Pride, which will take place August 21 at Herbert Von King Park 12pm – 6pm, is also an effort to address the harassment that often occurs against LGBTSTGNC people in Bed-Stuy. “Our community members experience a particular kind of violence here,” Johnson-Long explains. “Not just violence because of their sexual identity but also because of their race.”
Read more here!
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