About an hour ago
A group of Black LGBTQ activists announced Monday they are taking the lead in organizing a Pittsburgh Pride festival next year.
They also reaffirmed their commitment to regularly protesting in the city to call attention to racial inequity and outlined demands they have for leaders in the region to address.
Members of the Pittsburgh LGBTQ Coalition and the group TransYouniting have participated in the region’s Black Lives Matter protests since May. They also now are taking the lead in organizing the area’s Pride festivities which had been organized by the Delta Foundation of Pittsburgh, a group that is dissolving.
During a press conference Monday on the Grant Street portico of the City-County Building Downtown, the groups announced they’re commitment to Pride 2021 and their continued resolve to demand reforms in Pittsburgh.
“We’re sick and tired of all these injustices, so we’ll continue to be in the streets,” said Dena Stanley, founder of TransYouniting. “We deserve equality. We deserve the same rights as everyone else.”
Among the demands the group has is to make the police Civil Affairs Team that’s been responding to the protests a full-time unit with all-Black leadership, to drop charges filed against activists Nique Croft, Lorenzo Rulli and Dena Stanley, to create a “federal injunction of affirmative action” for Pittsburgh police to hire and promote more Black officers and to get a seat on the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review board.
“We will be rallying for justice,” Dalen Michael, vice president of the LGBTQ Coalition said. “We want a more diverse police force in Pittsburgh.”
City government needs to be more reflective of the diversity population of Pittsburgh, Stanley said.
“We need someone in there who looks like us, that can understand us, that’s going to represent us properly,” Stanley said. “That’s a problem here.”
Stanley, Michael and LGBTQ Coalition founder Kenny West called Mayor Bill Peduto’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests in the city “a whisper” of support.
Peduto’s also “putting out false statements,” West said, about the protests and the police response to them. Police tactics have been called into question several times since May 30, most recently last week when a protest outside Peduto’s Point Breeze home ended in what the mayor called “an impasse.
Participants were then led by police to Mellon Park where they were corralled and told the park was closed. One protester was arrested and charged.
On Friday, Peduto announced a shakeup of the police force that elevates the police Civil Affairs Unit to answer directly to Chief Scott Schubert and calls for other policy changes for how protests will be handled.
On Friday night, Rulli was arrested after a standoff outside the mayor’s home. Rulli faces charges including possession of an instrument of crime for his use of a megaphone to shout his stance against the mayor and police.
“Mayor Peduto knows there is still a lot to do to make Pittsburgh a city for all, and he is committed to working with community partners to do so,” Peduto spokesman Tim McNulty said in a statement.
Peduto created the city’s LGBTQIA Commission last month, McNulty said.
The mayoral staff is also made up of 50% people of color and more than 50% women, McNulty said.
“Police minority recruitment reforms have been in place the last several years under a legal agreement signed with the ACLU,” he said.
Public safety officials and the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to comments about the coalition’s demands.
“Either the mayor can stand with us or he can whisper ‘Black lives matter.’ We’re going to call him out,” West said.
The coalition is also seeking cooperation from LGBTQ groups from across the region as it organizes Pittsburgh Pride 2021.
The festival had been organized by the Delta Foundation of Pittsburgh, another LGBTQ group that is dissolving.
“Pride is our way of showing that we love and we stand together as a community,” West said. “We want people to be able to come and enjoy their friends and celebrate their life.”
They’re seeking other partners to help with the event.
“We want you to come to the table and help us plan and inclusive and diverse pride moving forward,” Michael said.
The event will start June 4 Downtown and include a June 5 parade and a June 6 barbecue.
“This is about moving forward, bringing love back to the community,” West said.
Tom Davidson is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tom at 724-226-4715, tdavidson@triblive.com or via Twitter .
Categories: Downtown Pittsburgh | Local | Pittsburgh | Top Stories
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