Sunland Tujunga Pride Festival 2022

[Sharon W]

The event will take place on Saturday, June 4th, 2022, 1-5pm, at our local park, Sunland Park, located at 8651 Foothill Blvd. The event organizers are Sunland Tujunga Voices United, ABRA, and Sunland Tujunga Forward. These same groups brought the community the first ever Juneteenth celebration last year.

Organizers are raising funds for the event, please help if you can. ST Forward is a 501c3 so donations are tax deductible.

givebutter.com/FLcWIV?s=QTSdMK&fbclid=IwAR1IJze2EuzQdx9RFEW9unr96opo6Mt0qoxgYQ02maK38m-5r45vHYIZ1Lc

[Brian]

Wow, Sharon -- thanks! I saw that $1,000 had been collected when you started this thread. Anni and I just chipped in five days later, so now the total is $1,325 towards the goal of $3,000.

We plan to be there on June 4.  For more information, here's the link to the event's webpage on the ST Forward website:

www.stforward.org/news

[anni]

The schedule for next Saturday is HERE:

[Brian]

Event organizer Evelyn Serrano sent an e-mail to donors Friday evening. Everything she wrote came to pass at Sunland Park on Saturday, so I might as well quote her:

Sunland-Tujunga Pride 2022 is upon us!

Tomorrow we will be celebrating our LGBTQ+ community, and creating, with your generous help and collaboration, a beautiful space for building a more inclusive, diverse, and welcoming Sunland Tujunga. We are deeply grateful for your donation and generous support...We will have several community organizations, hands-on activities (ie: art making, pronoun bracelets making, poetry writing and more), and several local leaders, including Senator Portantino. And, of course, we will also be welcoming many artists and presenters from the LGBTQ+ community. We will be joined by local LGBTQ+ youth leaders and activists. And we will be showcasing the inspiring work of young Sunland Tujunga artists. The Fiesta Truck will be providing delicious yums and drinks, and we will have a great playlist featuring LGBTQ+ artists...

Your donations funded honoraria for inspiring LGBTQ+ artists and presenters, event insurance, the park rental fee, some food and drink offerings for participants, lunch for our amazing volunteers, port-a-potties for the public, event security guards, Pride posters, and a college scholarship for an LGBTQ+ Verdugo Hills High School senior, to name a few. Thank you for your trust in the organizers, and for your showing up for our community to make a difference.

I wore my Montrose Peace Vigil t-shirt and passed out a bunch of Roberta's business cards promoting the Peace Train, which should return this December after the Montrose Christmas Parade was canceled the past two years because of the pandemic.

Sharon and Bill's friend Liliana recognized Anni and me from the Junteenth celebration at the park last year and invited us to put some cards on a display table.  We met local poet laureate Pam Shea and event team member Katelyn from Koreatown, who was visiting Sunland for the first time.  We also enjoyed talking to Congressional candidate Maebe A. Girl Puldo and Carolyn "Jiyoung" Park, who is running for Superior Court judge's office 118 on the La Defensa slate endorsed by Ground Game LA and the new California Working Families Party.  Kudos to State Senator Anthony Portantino for coming, especially after Sunland-Tujunga was drawn out of his district starting with the next term.

And Anni won the raffle for a print of a painting of Frida Kahlo!