A chorus of cheers erupted along the Pikes Peak Pride parade route on Sunday as grand marshal Richard Fierro – the local brewery owner and Army veteran who famously tackled the Club Q shooter – banged a drum and waved at the rainbow-clad crowd celebrating Colorado Springs’ LGBT+ community less than seven months after it was attacked.
The city showed up in full force for the first Pride since the November massacre which left five dead – including Raymond Green Vance, the boyfriend of Mr Fierro’s daughter. The names and photos of the victims were front and centre throughout the weekend’s festivities: Daniel Aston, 28; Kelly Loving, 40; Ashley Paugh, 35; Derrick Rump, 38; and Mr Vance, the youngest at just 22. Their family members and other survivors were also marching at the front of the parade on Sunday, one day after Colorado Springs residents gathered for a memorial and commemoration ceremony at the city’s Alamo Square Park.
Volunteer Terhesa Phillips was standing in the gazebo on Sunday at the park, which marked the parade route end, offering people the chance to write a message to be included on the memorial’s panels.
“It just hits a little heavier today,” said the 28-year-old, adding that the volunteer coordinator warned the duties would be “really heavy lifting on the heart.”
“It’s super important to me to support my friends, because the majority of my friend group are queer or identify in that sort of way, and it’s important for me to be here and be very publicly on their side,” Ms Phillips said.
The first Pride festival since the massacre, she added, represented an important opportunity for the wider Colorado Springs community to mark its support and inclusivity.
“I think a lot of us feel like it, and we have to show them what side we’re on – and it’s the only side to be on,” Ms Phillips said.
The full weight of this year’s festivities was not lost upon the organisers.
“Every year, we do our best to pull off the very best events that we possibly can, but this year is especially important, of course,” Gretchen Pressley, the festival’s director of communications and marketing, told The Independent, less than 24 hours before the weekend’s events began. “Not only is it the first Pride after the Club Q tragedy that happened to our community in November, but across the nation, we are just seeing so much anti-LGBTQ legislation sweeping our nation.
“And so, even though here in Colorado we feel so lucky to have a state that cares about us, that is setting up safe legislation for us, we know that so many of our friends in other states are not so lucky.”
Ms Pressler added: “We really want this particular Pride to be a huge moment of healing for our community. We want to remember those we lost; we want to recognise the survivors; we want to recognise the heroes; and we just want to continue standing together and helping everyone through their healing journey.”
Safety concerns, however, were top of mind.
“Especially after Club Q, we have worked extensively with the Colorado Springs Police Department and other security forces to do pretty much constant sweeps of the area,” she said. “We also made the decision to have an open Pride. We considered putting up barriers and having entrances, but that would restrict the entrances and exits in case there is a problem.”
Mother-of-two Erin Retka, who was setting up to watch the parade more than an hour early with her five-year-old, “had a hard conversation about if it was going to be safe to even come out” with her husband.
“We ultimately decided that that makes it all the more important for us to be here and be visible and supporting this community – and making sure that we are part of creating that safety and that they’re not kind of bullied back into the shadows,” she told The Independent.
A few blocks away across the street, another mother felt similarly. April Lavely-Robinson, 39, was attending the parade with not only her own children but also her mother and sister, who is gay. They stood proudly alongside a sign reading: “I promise to teach my babies to love your babies.”
An annual Pride attendee, Ms April Lavely-Robinson said that “today is going to be more emotional.”
“It already has been for me,” she told The Independent, tearing up behind her sunglasses. “I saw the names of the victims of the Club Q shooting, and I got choked up. The shooting hit home, and the Club Q, I’ve been going there since I was a teenager ... I couldn’t believe that this happened in my home, in our place of community and safety.
“I think it’s going to be emotional, this today, and good – it should be,” she said. “I’m getting choked up now. We should grieve because we’re angry.”
That undercurrent of outrage and defiance was bolstered in Colorado Springs during Pride weekend by an outpouring of positivity and love. Virginia Dunn, standing at the end of the parade route, joined other parents in a booth offering “free mom hugs.”
“I have children, nieces, nephews that are part of the [LGBT+] community,” she told The Independent. “And I think more parents should support their children regardless of who they are ... more people in the community than you would think have families that don’t support them, and so there’s a lot of tears from people who don’t have a mom, per se, or a dad or a grandma who can come out and give them those hugs.”
Following the Club Q shooting, she said, Colorado Springs needed Pride “more than ever now.”
“I think that this community is really showing up big this weekend just to prove that we are there for our whole community, regardless of who they are,” she said.
Music blared and parade-goers danced as flags swirled around her just miles from the site of the November shooting. Club Q remains closed, its cordoned-off parking lot adorned with flowers and messages. Plans and fundraising are underway for a permanent tribute.
For many – including the grand marshal – Pikes Peak Pride offered an important and visible opportunity to showcase the strength of Colorado Springs and its diverse residents.
“It’s a mark of kind of a restart,” Mr Fierro told The Independent on Friday. “I think this is a good moment for everybody to come out, show support, let the LGBTQ community in the Springs know that they’re welcome, that nobody has hate for them, and we’re all safe again. We’ve got to keep that mentality, because, at the end of the day, you can’t always fear. You have to get to live in the present. So that’s the goal.”
The festival organisers echoed his words – as did the theme of 2023 Pikes Peak Pride itself.
“Our theme this year is the power of Pride – and what that means to us is that we are stronger when we stand together and when we come together for a common goal,” communications director Pressley said. “We’re here to support each other. We’re here to fight for each other. We’re here to love each other and continue that love in the face of all hatred.”
