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At about 17th street, I stopped for a moment and climbed a pole, and when I looked back I could still see people coming out of Christopher Street. It made it a joyous occasion which reminded me of the very first Pride in New York 1970 where I was a marshall. It was the one day we’d put down our differences and unite. If you took pride in yourself and your community, you were welcome to march. Those early Philadelphia marches in the 70’s were loose but had many of the elements of the New York march.
WHEN IS THE GAY PRIDE PARADE IN PHILADELPHIA TV
Saj and I would go on to disrupt TV shows as part of the Gay Raiders, but at Pride, Saj did his day job, so to speak: he was part of the entertainment. I identify now as gender non-conforming.”
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I identified back then as a drag queen or simply a queen. “As I remember it,” Tommi said, “people of color and transpeople who were involved with the 72 and 73 march include: Cei Bell, Kiyoshi Kuromiya, Ada Bello (who was Cuban, if I remember correctly) a black lesbian whose name I can’t remember, I think she was from HAL possibly Saj and Ray Henry (a black gay man from Temple GLF) myself and Sweet Basil Razzle Dazzle (from Philadelphia GLF, who did genderfuck, also known as radical drag). I particularly wanted to ask about BIPOC, Trans people, and nonbinary people. So who was part of that first Pride in Philadelphia, and how inclusive were they? I asked Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who now lives in San Francisco but in the early 70’s was part and parcel of all things LGBT here in Philly. Most were from Gay Activist Alliance, Homophile Action League, Gay Raiders, Radical Queens and Temple Gay Students, toss in some fairies, and that was it. The ones who created it in Philadelphia were a brave lot. Today’s activists aren’t the same as the ones who created Pride in New York or Philadelphia. That can’t happen, since there can only be one original pride. Today across the country there is a movement to “reclaim” that Pride. So Pride actually translates to protest and celebration, and that Pride came from walking out of our West Village, Christopher Street Ghetto and marching publicly uptown to Central Park. We were celebrating a community that we had begun to build that included organizations which delivered services, information and activities to the LGBT community, services that for the first time were not centered around then-illegal clubs and bars. Yes, it was a protest that came one year after Stonewall, but it was also a celebration of our fighting back. If you ask any of us who were part of organizing or marshaling that very first Pride in New York in 1970, you would hear one word about it: joy. Philadelphia’s first Gay Pride Parade in June 1972.