07/22/2024
Eugene Pride
Greetings Pride Community, **We are postponing our final planning meeting on Monday. This is an urgent request for the LGBTQ+ community to attend Monday night’s (7/22) Eugene City Council meeting and read a prepared statement (or create you own - talking points below). Continue reading for details. **
Planning this year’s festival has been extra challenging, especially around transportation. Kesey Enterprises booked a sold-out show at the Cuthbert Amphitheater over our festival, and they, with support from the City of Eugene, have taken away all control of traffic and parking in Alton Baker Park away from the festival and our community for the entire day. In addition, they are taking away 2/3 of the grass parking in the park and the entire paved lot behind the Cuthbert. This, despite the fact that the concert does not start until one hour after our festival ends.
Efforts are being made to mitigate this impact, including arranging shuttles and alternate parking areas, and you can visit our transportation page for more information. However, as you might imagine, this is creating severe challenges for our attendees, organizers, sponsors, vendors, exhibitors, volunteers, and community. At this time, we have entertainers pulling out of the festival as a result of these complications.
Additionally, the Eugene Police Department has given us zero details about how they will approach this year’s festival or the protesters that disrupt the event. Without this information, we cannot proceed with our final planning meeting on Monday night and are postponing
Finally, we received a Proclamation that will be read at Monday’s City Council meeting naming August 10th as ““Eugene/Springfield LGBTQ Pride Day.” The version that was sent to us contained typos, including an entirely repeated clause, with a statement that this was copied from previous years. As you all know, this is not the time for our leaders to phone in their support for our community with performative, poorly written language while those who would rather we not exist are literally organizing for our elimination.
As a result, we are organizing to have as many folks as possible attend Monday night’s City Council Meeting at 7:30pm to express our dissatisfaction with how we are being treated by our City. If you are able, we would encourage you to testify, and we are preparing a statement that we will read during public comment. Attendance is encouraged even if you do not feel comfortable testifying.
Please reply to this email or reach out to Brooks McLain, board president ([email protected]), if you are able to attend and would like to help coordinate a response. Not able to attend? Contact your City Councilor at [email protected] and let them know this is unacceptable.
Yours in Pride,
The Board of Directors and Planning Committee of Eugene Pride
Below are some talking points you can use if you would like to write your own statement. Please note, this is an evolving situation and we will update you if circumstances change prior to Monday night's meeting.
Public parks belong to the PUBLIC, not to private companies that are making a profit off our public commons.
Eugene's largest cultural festival should have unfettered access to the park where it will be held. It's unsafe for organizers, attendees, and the citizens of Eugene for Eugene Pride to be conducted without any control over access to the event. We have held this event for 30 years, 15 of which have been on the same Saturday every year in Alton Baker Park.
Eugene Pride has been working with the City for 10 months to address traffic, access, and safety for people using the streets around Alton Baker Park during this event. To proclaim your support for our community while at the same time implementing barriers to access to our most significant event is performative and not actual support - it's the height of hypocrisy.
100's of volunteer hours have been spent organizing alternate places to park, grants to pay for shuttles and advertising, arranging alternate transportation, and navigating City processes so that our community can attend their Pride event. Those are hours not spent organizing our festival and money that could be used for additional scholarships for LGBTQ+ youth. Where is the City's investment and what is your responsibility in educating the public about transportation in the City? What is Kesey Enterprises obligation to Eugene's public other than ensuring VIP access to the park for its concertgoers?
This is not happening in isolation. Eugene already this year has lost its two largest Black cultural events, Eugene Juneteenth Celebration and the Black Cultural Festival, proving that racism in Oregon is still more potent than homo/trans/queer-phobia, and the strain on Eugene Pride is incredible. Simultaneously, members of our community are having Pride flags ripped from their homes and their houses egged, and our own cutting of the original Pride flag was stolen. We will lose our baseball team, which organizes the second largest Pride event in Eugene; not to mention the loss of our hospital. Our leaders are allowing Eugene to be hollowed out of its cultural institutions and integral public services. Do better Eugene - you're failing us.
3 weeks out from our Festival, and we have no information from the EPD on how they will approach our event or handle the protesters that attempt to disrupt this gathering. This, after ten months of conversations. Will bigots from out of town using the guise of religion be allowed to roam rampant through festival grounds, step on people's picnics, and shout slurs at us over amplified sound that they don't have a permit to use? Will Pride staff be required to keep public safety while officers stand ready to arrest Pride-goers should the slightest movement go awry? This was our experience last year, which is unfortunately an improvement from EPD showing up in riot shields, helmets, and batons; however, what is Eugene's responsibility to keep its actual tax-paying citizens safe?
