David PanianThe Daily Telegram
TEc*msEH — Lenawee County's Pride festival is making a couple of big moves this year.
For the first time, Lenawee Pride is taking place during June, which is recognized as Pride Month. Also for the first time, it will take place outside of Adrian.
Lenawee Pride 2024 will take place, rain or shine, from 3-10 p.m. Saturday, June 22, outdoors at the Tec*mseh Center for the Arts, 400 N. Maumee St. It is a free, all-ages event featuring live entertainment, vendors, information booths and activities.
Food vendors that are expected to be on site include:
- Shawarma Chef.
- Garnet and Ginger Mercantile.
- The Petite Fleet.
- Musgrove + Company.
- Truck D.
- Sunset Ridge BBQ.
- Ry’s Bakery.
There are at least 24 other vendors and service providers who have signed up, including Foster Care Navigators, Free Mom Hugs, Beautifully Inappropriate, Harwood Lakes Stop, kyle's creations, Advance America, Unified/Vivent Health, Catherine Cobb Safe House, Amazing Grace B&B LLC, League of Women Voters Lenawee County, Lenawee County Health Department, Tropetastic Books and Gifts/Rad Raptor Comics, LoRusso, Peach Rings Studio, It's A Dogs World After All, LLEAD Adrian, Sharp Craft Co. and Crystal Canvas Studio, Alzheimer's Association, Chrysalis Pathway, Fether Studios, Adrian District Library, Mel’s Flower Farm LLC and HOLA of Lenawee/Meijer.
Some downtown Tec*mseh businesses will have specials and discounts, Socorro Sevilla, president of The M Society in Adrian, said. Maps and information about those specials will be available at the festival. The M Society offers support services for LGBTQIA+ youth and adults as well as service projects to increase community involvement and engagement.
There will be a kids area with crafts, activities and a bounce house, Sevilla said. A dance party begins at 9 p.m. as families take their kids home for the night.
Guests are welcome to bring a chair and stay all day or come and go, Sevilla said.
To help people get from Adrian to Tec*mseh, the organizers have rented buses to run shuttles between the old Pharm building at 124 E. Front St. and Tec*mseh Middle School, which is across the street from the TCA, Sevilla said. Buses will leave Adrian at 2:30, 5:15 and 7:30 p.m. and will depart from Tec*mseh at 4:30, 6:45 and 10:30 p.m.
The first four Lenawee Pride festivals took place in September to take advantage of students being back at Adrian College and Siena Heights University and because June can be a busy month. It turned out that it was difficult to find a Saturday in September that lined up well with AC's and SHU's schedules, Sevilla said.
Other issues, including the city of Adrian's relatively new policies and fees for having parades and festivals downtown, had The M Society thinking of not having a Pride festival this year. But then Sevilla found out that myPlanTerra and Paper Street Soap, businesses that share a space in downtown Tec*mseh, were interested in hosting a Pride festival in June and decided to work with them.
"I offered support and resources in helping them plan," Sevilla said.
Subscribe Now: For all the latest local developments, breaking news, and high school and college sports content.
The city of Tec*mseh then offered space to create a larger event, Sevilla said. They considered having a parking lot party downtown but then decided that would not have offered enough space, which led them to the TCA.
"That's the best place for it, in my opinion," Sevilla said.
In the past couple of years, the festival has seen a growth in attendance to about 4,000 people last year, Sevilla said.
Along with myPlanTerra, Paper Street Soap and The M Society, there are 23 other businesses and organizations that are sponsoring the festival.
Pride events can be traced to the 1969 police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village and "Reminder Day Pickets" that took place on July 4 in 1965-69 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. According to the Library of Congress, until 1966 in New York state it was illegal to serve alcohol to a gay person and in 1969 hom*osexuality was still considered a criminal offense. Many gay establishments operated without a liquor license, which provided an opening for police raids and brutality.
The first Pride marches took place June 28, 1970, in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Since then, Pride events have taken place in June.
— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.
Lenawee Pride lineup
- 3 p.m. — Welcome and sponsor shoutouts
- 3:05 — Story time in the garden/kids area
- 3:05 p.m. — Baddie
- 3:45 p.m. — Cat Canyon
- 5 p.m. — Hornet's Daughter
- 6 p.m. — Sponsor shoutouts and thank yous/DJ and family dance party
- 6:30 p.m. — Spoken word and Liv; sponsor shoutouts and thank yous
- 7 p.m. — Jaelyn Rain
- 7:30 p.m. — Open mic or karaoke
- 8 p.m. — Line dancing
- 9 p.m. — Club Wilson
