In honor of Harvey Milk Day, Community members joined a organization to hold a small mobile car Pride parade.
Members of the Fayetteville chapter of Free Mom Hugs, a nonprofit that celebrates the LGBT community, wanted to use the parade to show love to the LGBT community.
“We go out and just try and bring awareness and make sure that everybody knows that they’re loved no matter what,” said Audra Ferguson, leader of the Fayetteville chapter.
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician elected in California. He was shot and killed in 1978 by a disgruntled city supervisor. He is honored on his birthday, May 22, for the work he did to stop discrimination against LGBT people.
The event was intended to give a voice to members of the LGBT community, according to Starr Duffany, event coordinator for the Fayetteville chapter.
“We do it because everybody wants to silence them, so we just do what we can for them,” she said.
Ferguson said Free Mom Hugs is planning to make the mobile Pride ride an annual event in honor of Milk. The group hopes to make the event bigger each year, she said.
The ride only included about five cars with about 20 people participating. The parade went through downtown Fayetteville, where Ferguson said people encouraged those taking part.
“It was amazing,” she said. “People were honking and waving and screaming, and it was just awesome.”
Ferguson said she just wants to make sure members of the LGBT community feel loved and accepted.
More on LGBT:Fayetteville Pride aims to increase visibility, inclusion of LGBTQ community
The Pride ride also served as a preamble to events the organization is planning for Pride next month. Some events the members are planning are a community picnic and a commemorative event for the five-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Ferguson said she’d like to have pride events throughout the year in addition to events next month.
“June is like the month, but we should be celebrating pride for our community members every day of the week, every day of the year,” Ferguson said. “So, that’s something that I’m trying to let everybody know, that we should have pride every day, not just in June.”
”
Staff writer Akira Kyles can be reached at akyles@gannett.com.
Support local journalism with a subscription to The Fayetteville Observer. Click the “subscribe” link at the top of this article.
