Cambridge’s Community Pride Day Is a Step Toward Overdue LGBTQ+ Recognition
June 28, 2022
On Friday, June 11th, Cambridge held its very first Community Pride Day on the CRLS campus in light of Pride Month. Students, staff, and families from all over the city came to engage in a celebration of LGBTQ+ identities. A panel of several CRLS students who identify as LGBTQ+, as well as Ericka Hart, Black queer femme activist, writer, speaker, and sexuality educator, spoke about their experiences as queer people. Afterward, participants attended numerous workshops, including Pride Flag Art and Queer History.
An attendee of the event, Ixchel Quinn ’22, president of CRLS’ Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA), known as Project 10 East Club (P10), told the Register Forum, “I have been a leader of [P10] since my sophomore year … My sense of community at CRLS has been defined so hugely … by being part of [P10] and the involvement I’ve had [in it] … P10 has been my home base for creating change and reaching out to people, which has been really great.” Quinn continued, “This year, when a couple people reached out to me about Community Pride Day being an option … I was kind of surprised that no one had thought of it sooner and that this is only happening in 2022. But I think it’s so awesome, and I really hope this becomes a bigger thing for the future of Cambridge in general.”
The Register Forum also interviewed Mx. Jo Quest-Neubert, a CPS educator. “I’ve been involved in the planning of [Community Pride Day], and I’m really excited about it. I think this is something the GSA advisors from the upper schools have been wanting to do for a really long time, and we talked for a number of years about how to get this to happen and what it would look like,” they stated. “This year, it’s happening, and that’s really exciting. To see a lot of very public support for LGBTQ+ students feels very, very overdue, so I’m really thrilled to see it and excited about this as a starting point for things to get even better.” Like Quest-Neubert, many others expressed their excitement for Pride Day, as well as how an event like this should have happened sooner. Another CPS educator and Pride Day co-organizer, Ms. Jenny Chung, told the Register Forum, “I work in the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and … one of the things I heard from GSA leaders at the middle school was that they were trying to plan a GSA summit where youth can come together, so we thought about how we could combine that idea with a space for educators, caregivers, and families. That’s how Community Pride Day was born … I’m just so excited [about Community Pride Day]. I think it’s going really well and the energy is great. It’s so nice to be with folks who want to affirm all identities.”
The inaugural Community Pride Day is a prominent step toward greater LGBTQ+ representation. Many CPS educators, families, and students hope the city and the school will continue to find ways to make the Cambridge community more accepting and inclusive.
This piece also appears in our June 2022 print edition.
