A rainbow crosswalk on the corner of Monroe and 7th Streets in Stroudsburg is quiet now, but soon the pavement will echo with the sounds of music and thousands of feet.
The brightly colored stripes represent the borough's support and excitement for the annual Pocono Pride Festival, which is set for Sunday, June 2 — and just one among a weekend of events to kick off June, which is observed as LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
“Now is year four and we have expanded the footprint to essentially double in size,” Michael Moreno, the borough's first openly gay mayor, said of the event.
“We started with one stage, now we are at two stages. So we've doubled the amount of performances, both musical and drag," Moreno added. "For the attendees, we have also exceeded 100-plus vendors this year.”
Organizers expect 6,000-8,000 people will attend this year’s Pocono Pride Festival, which has grown substantially in a handful of years.
Moreno established the LGBTQ+ Business Council six years ago, when he was the government relations and membership manager at the Pocono Chamber of Commerce.
“I was advised to essentially have the Pocono chamber 'come out' as a supporter of the LGBTQ community by way of introducing this council,” he said.
In 2020, the group hosted its first Pocono Pride Community Day, smaller than originally planned due to the pandemic. About 700 people attended that initial event at Rainbow Mountain Resort in East Stroudsburg.
This year's event will begin with Zumba at 11:30 a.m. and continue until 5 p.m. The 21+ afterparty will begin at 5 p.m. at Siamsa Irish Pub. One stage will have family friendly performances with nearby activities available for kids.
“We're trying to create two different kinds of separate spaces,” Moreno said. “One that's a bit more relaxed, if you get a little bit overwhelmed with how typical festivals can be.”
Celebrations all weekend
Pride Month celebrations in the region will actually get underway two days earlier.
The first ever Pride Fest Kickoff and Champions of Pride Awards Ceremony will be held Friday, May 31, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Mount Airy Casino Resort, with three allies recognized for their contributions to the local LGBTQ community.
Corinne Goodwin, founder and Executive Director of the Eastern PA Trans Equity Project, will be honored as Person of the Year.
Goodwin’s nonprofit serves 34 counties in Eastern and Central Pennsylvania as a “go-to” for transgender people. They offer services including peer support groups, name change assistance, financial support and more.
The Eastern PA Trans Equity Project also focuses on education.
“We try to enlighten people about the challenges that we have, and then we talk about how they can become better allies,” she said. “We go out and we train companies and government institutions and medical students on cultural competency and how to work with transgender people.”
Goodwin attends Pride events to inform people about her nonprofit and how she might be able to help connect them with services to empower them.
She shared a rewarding experience from a recent Pride event in New Hope.
“One of our young name change clients who's a 17-year-old person came up and introduced themselves,” she said. “We got a selfie together and their parents were there. And all of us were crying.
“If you think about when you were 16-years-old, and you got your driver's license, right, and that spirit of freedom that you had,” she said. “So many young transgender people will not get a driver's license, won't get a learner's permit, won't get their working papers, won't apply for a job, because all those documents have their dead name on it.”
Other honorees include Camp Out Poconos, which was named Business of the Year, and Mount Airy Casino Resort, Ally of the Year.
The event at Mount Airy Casino Resort is 21+. Tickets are $20.
Heightened security
The expanded interest in celebrating Pride also comes with an awareness that opposition and the risk of violence are also on the rise.
“We have an increased security presence,” Moreno said.
Stroud Regional Police, Pennsylvania State Police, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office will be at the event June 2.
The group secured grant funding to install traffic bollards that would prevent vehicles from driving into the festival.
The U.S. Department of State issued a warning to advise U.S. citizens of “increased potential for foreign terrorist organization-inspired violence against LGBTQI+ persons and events.”
The FBI and DHS also released a Public Service Announcement to warn of the potential for foreign terrorist organizations and their supporters to target LGBTQ+ events or venues.
A region divided
While support and sponsorship for the event in Stroudsburg has grown over the years, the greater Poconos community remains divided.
Officials in every municipality in Pike County are being asked to accept a proclamation to recognize June as Pride Month.
Pike County resident John Hellman is leading the effort to garner acceptance.
“I want to give them the opportunity to have conversations with us, to learn issues, to hear our perspective,” he said. “We have to give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt that they have not been exposed to LGBTQ history or issues.”
“There's always been an undercurrent of this in our nation. But it is particularly powerful right now,” Goodwin said.
More than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced this year, four of them in Pennsylvania.
Goodwin’s message in educating the public is simple.
“We do the same thing as everybody else, we love our animals, and we just want to go to work, and we want to get a good education and make a bunch of money and buy a lot of stuff, because that's what you do in America,” she said. “Ultimately, it's all about understanding that we're people too and that we want to contribute to our communities and give back and we will do that if we just get a chance.”
“The good news is that the great people at Pocono Pride and other organizations, ours included, are doing what we can to try to break that cycle. I will say that I was at the very first Pocono pride, and you can just feel the joy and the relief that young queer people had at finding a safe space that they could call home even if it was just a day. I mean, people were literally coming to our booth and crying. And we see that experience at rural Prides all the time.”
The Pocono Pride Coalition, a nonprofit, was founded this year in partnership with the Community Foundation of Monroe County, and plans to host events throughout the year and in other parts of the Poconos in the future.
Moreno is hopeful that acceptance will spread beyond his borough.
“I find that in Pike County, the leadership there is not supportive of this community, which pains me,” he said. “But in due time … The more that people support it, it will eventually come through … If you just see America as a whole, how far we have come, you know, things take time. It doesn't happen overnight. You need to win people's hearts.”
