An estimated 40,000 attended the Stonewall Pride parade. Plenty more events are in the works.

Abigail Hasebroock, Lisa J. Huriash, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
·6 min read
327

After the Wilton Manors Stonewall Parade & Street Festival drew thousands amid a soggy weekend, the organizers of other gay Pride events in South Florida also are looking ahead to their festivities.

Among those on the calendar are the Miami Beach Pride, a multi-day celebration of arts and culture, and Palm Beach Pride next year.

The Wilton Manors event was an affirmation to the people following it to continue as planned for April 2024, organizers said.

Patrick Gevas, a spokesman for Miami Beach Pride, said Monday he predicts events going forward will be “getting back to the roots where pride is a protest. You cannot legislate us back into the closet. We are here to stay, and we will make our voices heard. We are not running scared.”

Tens of thousands of people flocked to the parade Saturday night in Wilton Manors, with some event-goers facing sheets of rain and trudging through puddles.

Days after the event, an event organizer declined to speak about how it fared. Scott Newton, the mayor of Wilton Manors, known as the unofficial capital of the LGBT community in South Florida, declared it a success. “Everything went awesome,” he said. “We had a little rain but that wouldn’t damper our spirits. We had no incidents, no complaints filed with the city.”

He promised the parade would be back: It’s “certainly good for next year unless other crazy things go on in Tallahassee.”

The Wilton Manors parade came one month after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 1438, titled “Protection of Children,” legislation that prohibits anyone from knowingly admitting a child to an adult live performance.

That led to a list of rules by organizers with the Stonewall parade: No profanity, nudity or sexualized conduct and no items that mimicked or suggested genitalia.

In preparation for the new law, Wilton Manors city leaders approved an amendment to their event permits to require parade organizers “to comply with all applicable federal, state, county, and municipal regulations.” The city’s mayor said the change “was necessary to protect our businesses, and to minimize the risk of receiving penalties, fines, and legal repercussions.” He said it sought to ensure that adult performances take place where only adults are present.

Related Articles

Wilton Manors Police Chief Gary Blocker said unofficial estimates so far had the attendance over 40,000, and overall it went smoothly with everything going to plan. “This event saw no arrests made, and we received no reports alleging violations of Florida’s new adult live performance law,” Blocker said. “The silver lining within the inclement weather was the number of heat-related medical calls for service were down significantly. We received about 25 police-related calls throughout the event, with 60% of them being inadvertent calls to 911.”

The new state law had led to some cancellations elsewhere in the state. Tampa Pride in May announced the cancellation of its ‘Pride on the River’ event. And recently in St. Lucie County, the Treasure Coast Pridefest was limited to those ages 21 and older, while its parade was canceled. Although Wilton Manors’ event was slightly tweaked in advance, organizers for other pride parades say they won’t make any changes. Palm Beach Pride is expected to go as planned in March 2024.

Michael Riordan, spokesperson for the Compass LGBTQ+ Community Center, which runs Palm Beach Pride, said although the law prohibits children from attending ‘live performances,’ “our interpretation is people sitting on a parade on a float is not a performance, they are participants in a march. We have no plans on changes in anything we do in the parade.”

The parade will comply “with the laws as we see them,” Riordan said. “It is not a live performance, it’s a march.”

That’s the history anyway, Riordan said: “The first Pride parades were really political marches.” They started after the 1969 riot that took place at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, that was raided by police. That began “the modern civil rights movement,” Riordan said. “It started as a protest and fight for our liberties. I feel like we’re getting back to that. It’s a march again.”

In Miami Beach, organizers said they, too, won’t budge. “We will not let them win by separating us, we won’t,” Gevas said. “The onus is on us to stay connected and continue to change the minds of those in power and if not, remind them they work for us.”

For her 16th birthday, Karelegih Ollivierre wanted to attend the Stonewall Pride Parade. She attended drag queen shows and Pride events as a child, and so to her it was a celebration. Her actual birthday was days earlier, so the festival seemed like perfect timing.

Karelegih was there with her mom, Jocelyn, and 2-year-old brother, Austin, who sat in a stroller with rainbow pinwheels perched on top of his head. Karelegih Ollivierre was one of the people at the Wilton Manors parade under the age of 18, and her little brother was one of only a couple of toddlers present.

This was the family’s first time at the Stonewall parade, but they’ve lived in nearby Oakland Park for about three years.

“I grew up with gay pride every year,” their mother, Jocelyn Ollivierre, said. “Every year it was just the thing to do. That’s just how I was raised. I wanted that for my kids.”

Event supporters said it was about a bigger picture: Before the parade, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz addressed the scores of people battling the rain, condemning recent actions by Republican lawmakers. “It’s all generated by fear,” she said. “The white supremacists, the right and extremists, they are about fear, and we have to just continue as we are today.”

Wasserman Shultz called for a persistence in pressing for policies that continue to make progress for marginalized groups. “Every community is in jeopardy if we do not push back against hate,” she said.

The congresswoman was later joined by the mayor of Wilton Manors, and Commissioner Chris Caputo, who came dressed in drag, wearing a purple dress, blonde wig, thick high heels and a sash emblazoned with the name “Lady Vote.”

“We showed up in force in hopes of calling the governor’s bluff in trying to enforce the law,” he said days after the event. “We’d love to see this end up in court because we’re sure it would be struck down. The law is there to create fear in our community.”

Caputo said he knows people who were “a little afraid” to attend Saturday, but he hopes going forward, if the law is not challenged, it will be ignored, and more people will be comfortable to come back.